Living for Christ When Dying Is Gain(13Mar2011)
Series: Loving God by Following the Way of Jesus
The Way of Jesus M6 (11 03 13)
Speaker : Ken Shigematsu
Title: Living for Christ When Dying Is Gain
Text: Luke 9:18-27
BIG IDEA: In Christ we have something to die for and something to live for
When I was at a new follower of Jesus Christ at age about 15 or 16 years old and living in North Surrey, I remember watching a film at our church based on a true story called The Cross and the Switchblade. I remember how a young pastor named David Wilkerson from the countryside had read an article in LIFE Magazine about how a teenage gang in New York City had brutally murdered an innocent adolescent. Though he didn't want to go, David sensed God was calling him to work with those troubled teens in New York City and share the love of Christ with them. I don't remember all the details of the movie, but I recall how in one scene David was interacting with a group of gang members and one of them sneered at him and said something like, "You got shoes. I don’t got no shoes.” David then took off his own shoes and gave them to this teenager. David was eventually accepted by gang members in New York City and began a ministry called Teen Challenge.
At the end of the movie, I heard that there was a branch of David's ministry Teen Challenge on Granville Street downtown not far from the Vogue Theatre. On Friday evenings I began volunteering for Teen Challenge. I remember one of the first conversations I had on the streets downtown. It was dark and I was with a man who had long black hair, tattoos on his arms. While I don't remember all the details of the conversation I do remember this vividly. Several times in our conversation he kept asking me, "Have you ever seen someone killed?” “No--I can't say I have.” "I have. I’ve killed someone." My heart began to beat faster, and I tried to appear as calm as possible, but I was intimidated, I was scared. I know this sounds irrational, but I wondered, "Is my life going to end tonight?” While volunteering for Teen Challenge, I got to know people that I would have never become acquainted with otherwise. From time to time, I had the opportunity to talk about the difference that Christ had made in my life or to help refer a young person struggling with drugs or to teen challenges halfway home in Richmond.
Through trial and lots of error, I was learning to engage people whose backgrounds were different from my own, I was learning to share my faith when the opportunity came up, I was keenly aware of how dependent on God I was, and I felt like I was growing spiritually through this experience. As a student leader in my church's youth group, I started inviting my peers to head downtown to Granville Street near the Vogue Theatre to engage other young people… Sometimes it was scary, but it was also exciting too and our faith was becoming alive to us in new ways. But… some parents expressed concern –to me through their children. I remember peers saying to me, "My parents don't want me going downtown on Friday nights--they think it's too dangerous."
I said to my peers: “It's actually more dangerous for you spiritually to be hanging out in the shopping malls on a Friday night or playing video games at home than it is for you to be engaging other young people with a love of Christ downtown.”
One of the paradoxes of the spiritual life is that sometimes choosing what seems safe is actually dangerous for the soul. And sometimes choosing what seems dangerous is actually safer for our spiritual life.
If we overprotect our children or ourselves, ironically we may be exposing ourselves to real danger.
On the first Sunday in January I cited a study from the New York University (NYU Child Study Centre) which reported that educators and research scientists have found that financially-privileged adolescents (defined as coming from households with incomes from $75,000 to $160, 000) are showing growing rates of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. In the last thirty years adolescent suicide in this group has doubled. The irony is that parents who are only committed to giving their children privilege and safety may be raising children that will become bored, have a sense of entitlement, and look for adventure in the wrong places.
Jesus, on the other hand, invites us into a place of adventure, risk, and danger, in the best sense. He gives us something worth dying for and therefore worth living for.
We’re in a series in what it means to follow the way of Jesus.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Luke 9:18-27.
18 Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say I am?”
19 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.”
20 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.”
21 Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone. 22 And he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for you to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit your very self? 26 If any of you are ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of you when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
27 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”
Jesus is praying in private with his disciples. He looks up and asks the question: “Who do the crowds say that I am?” One of his students replied, “Some say John the Baptist. Another said, “Elijah.” Someone else said, “People say you are a prophet from long ago who has come back to life.” And Jesus looked at them and said, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ. You are the Messiah. You are the Son of the Living God.”
Eight days later (as we saw a few Sundays ago), Jesus was transfigured on the Mount of Tabor. His appearance became as bright as a flash of lightning. Moses (who lived 1400 years before that time), and Elijah (who lived 900 years before that time), miraculously appear. And yet God says of Jesus. “This is my beloved Son. This is the One I have chosen. Listen to him.”
Gifted commentator Dale Bruner says that God is saying to us here and in Jesus’ baptism, “All I want to say, I will say through Jesus, all I want to show you about me I will show you through Jesus. If you want to get to know me, get together with Jesus.”
If Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, the Saviour of the world, as God the Father affirms and as Christ himself claims, then in Christ we have someone to live for and someone to die for. If we have something for which to die, then we have something for which to truly live. Perhaps the reason why so many people feel like they have nothing to live for, perhaps part of the reason that suicide rates are so high among privileged young adults, perhaps part of the reason, not all, but part of the reason why so many people of all ages in North America are depressed (some are depressed for biochemical reasons) is because they have nothing to die for, and therefore have nothing to live for.
Jesus Christ gives us something to live for and something to die for. He says, “ Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.”
If anyone other than Jesus Christ was saying this, this would sound incredibly arrogant. If I as a Christian minister were to say, "If you want to learn from me, you must daily sit in your electric chair ready to die for me”– you would need to dismiss me as a crazy megalomaniac. If Christ were only a good teacher or only a great prophet we too would have to dismiss him as a nutty, megalomaniac because he is calling his followers to die for him. Because Jesus said be willing to die for me, because he said things like "I saw Satan fall from heaven" we can't say that he was simply a good teacher or a prophet. He was either less than these things or he was more than these things. He was either a lunatic or he was who he claimed to be – the unique son of the Living God. And if he is the unique son of the Living God, if he is in fact God in human flesh, the Messiah the Savior of the world, then he has the right to call us to lay down our lives for him. And this is precisely what he's calling us to do.
The message of the gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t, as some preachers suggest, a path through which you will be assured of material success or perfect physical health. That message is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not about self-improvement. It is not about becoming your best self right now. The gospel, according to Jesus, is “take up your cross and follow me.” As a German pastor, Dietrich Boenhoffer, who laid down his own life as he led an underground resistance movement against Hitler, said, “It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”
In Christ we have something to die for and something to live for.
Yes, there is a cost in following Jesus Christ. It will cost you your life, but there is also a much greater cost in not following Jesus Christ. There is a greater cost in non-discipleship. In not following him, you will lose your only opportunity for true life in this world and in the age to come.
Jesus said,
. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for you to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit your very self?
What good is it, Jesus says, if a person gains the whole world and yet forfeits their very self. Here he is referring to our true self, that inner part of us, the core of who we are that lasts forever. I recently watched the BBC documentary called “Big Silence,” which follows 5 ordinary people taking time out of their daily lives to go on an 11-day silent retreat with a monk. One of the people is a guy named Jon, who is a very successful entrepreneur about 50 years old, drives a black Mercedes, and doesn’t believe in God. He is an agnostic. But he says, “All of my life I have wanted to get money and power and now I have lots of both… I’ve been married twice… I have kids. But something is missing in my life. I haven’t found satisfaction.” So he goes on this silent retreat with a Benedictine monk, hoping to find an answer.
As Jesus says, what good is it if a man or a woman gains a whole world, and forfeits their soul in this world and in the age to come?
What does Jesus mean when he says, “Take up your cross”? As of this past Wednesday, we have been in Lent and I don’t want to in any way belittle people who sincerely observe Lent. I do so myself and find it helpful. When Jesus says, “Take up your cross,” he is not referring to giving up chocolate or wine for the 40 days of Lent. When he says, “Take up your cross,” he is not referring to enduring the snoring of your spouse or your roommate, or the anxiety you are experiencing because your aunt has Alzheimer’s. I am not saying those are not difficult experiences, but that’s not what Jesus means when he says, “Take up your cross.”
When Jesus said, “Take up your cross,” in his context it meant being willing to take up an instrument of violent execution (use the cross as prop and put on your shoulder). It wouldn’t mean to put on your shoulder a horizontal beam, an instrument of violent and painful execution and carry it to a site of public execution, usually past a jeering mob. Jesus is saying, “If you want to follow me, you must be ready to face literal scorn as you walk to your death.” Voluntarily picking up a cross means you are willing to deny yourself and lay your life down,
For some of our brothers and sisters, it will literally mean actual death.
Michael Ramsden who is from Saudi Arabia, shared this story at a conference in Capetown, South Africa that I had been invited to, but could not attend. I saw to his message online.
“A man and his wife were driving through a remote part of a certain country that Michael is not free to name. As they stopped to buy water, the wife looked and saw a man with a long beard with a machine gun leaning against the wall. She turned to her husband and said, ‘You need to give that man a Bible.’ The husband looked at the bearded man with the gun and said, ‘No, I don’t think it is right.’ She said, ‘No, I am sure it is right. Go over there and give him a Bible.’ She put a Bible in her husband’s pocket, and said, ‘Make sure you give this to him.’ The man went into the shop and bought the water. The man with long beard with the gun followed him into the shop. The husband came out of the shop carrying bags with bottles of water. The man with the gun came out of the shop, and then leaned against the wall again. As they drove away, the wife said to the husband, ‘You didn’t give him the Bible, did you?’ He said, ‘I prayed about. It’s not right thing to do.’ ‘You should have.’ ‘No, I shouldn’t have.’ They had a fight. She bowed her head in car and prayed out loud, ‘O LORD, on the Day of Judgment may that man’s blood be on my husband’s head, and not mine. He was the one who want not give away the Bible.’
At this point the husband stopped the car. They had a friendly marital discussion. With that, the husband said, ‘If you want me to die, I will.’ They drove back into town. He walked up to the man with the gun and presented him with the Bible. The man took it, kissed it on both sides, and said, ‘I do not live here. Three days ago I had a dream in which I was told to wait here for someone to give me a book, the Book of Life. Thank you for giving me this book.’ Five years later that man was martyred for his faith.”
Jesus Christ demands everything … He says, “Me… My gospel is something worth living. It is something worth dying for.”
Taking up our cross may mean we expose ourselves to danger in serving others.
In Christ we have something to die for and something to live for.
A little closer to home, what does is it mean for us to take up our cross and follow him? In a parallel passage in Matthew 10, Jesus talks about how anyone who wants to follow him must take up their cross and follow him. He says, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” These words would have sounded shocking to most of Jesus’ hearers--loving family members, especially their parents, was one of the highest duties in Judaism. Family loyalties were much stronger in Jesus’ day than in ours. Jesus makes it clear that in order to follow him he must become more important than our relationships with our mother, father, son, daughter and even our spouse. You have probably heard stories of people who decided to follow Christ in other parts of the world. Stories in North America are not as dramatic—there can be a cost here too.
I hear the stories of young people who say their parents would rather have them partying, having recreational sex and using recreational drugs than have them become a follower of Jesus Christ. I know someone who gave his life to Jesus Christ when he was in high school. One day he brought a Bible home. His dad became so angry with him that he started shouting at him and picked up his Bible and threw it down the hallway. For some young people, the greatest act of rebellion they can commit against their own families is to follow Jesus. But Jesus says, “I must be more important than your family.” He says, “Yes, of course, love your family. Honour your parents. But if you have to make a choice between honouring your parents, your spouse, your children and me…choose me.”
If you are a parent or become a parent, part of what it means to put Jesus first means that Jesus, and not your child, is the most important priority in your life. If your child is the absolute highest priority in your life, the irony is that is not going to be best for your child, as the NYU study suggests. A mentor of mine has said, “The best thing you can do for your spouse is love God. The best thing you can do for your children is to love your spouse.” If you put God first, then you are going to love your spouse and your kids. “The irony is that for your kids—it is best for them not to put them first.
Taking up the cross means that Jesus comes before your family. Taking up your cross means that Jesus comes before your career. It might mean living with integrity in your workplace in a way that is going to cost you something…
This past week I came across the story of Christian woman named Jana, an experienced nurse, who had recently switched jobs. Her first evening as a nurse a young mother came with her 18-month-old son. He needed his final shot for a routine immunization.
Jana gave the boy his shot when Jana went to record the vaccination on the boy's chart, she noticed that the seal on the vial inside her lab coat was unbroken. Quickly Jana realized that she had given the boy the wrong vaccine.
She had given him a shot from a different vial—a routine vaccination for children, but the boy had already completed that series of shots months earlier.
Jana told said she gasped when she realized her mistake and then went into shock… Here is the sequence of her thoughts, according to what she told me later:
"No one will ever know. No harm done."
"This is my first day on the job."
"I can't tell the doctor."
"The doctor will think I'm incompetent."
"It can't hurt him, can it?"
"It doesn't hurt to be immunized twice for the same thing."
"What will the mother say?"
"But I will always know, and so will God."
Jana weakly paced outside the room.
When the doctor appeared, Jana told him her mistake, almost vomiting her confession. "Let me think about this for a moment," he said. After a few moments, he walked back into the room, told the mother what happened, and asked her to schedule another time for her child's immunization.
There's a part of Jana, like there is a part of me and you, that wants to make a good impression, that wants to appear competent in our work – especially on our first day on a new job. Jana as a Christian decided to die to that particular desire, she took up the cross, and she followed Jesus in that position.
In Christ, even in the small things of our lives we have something to die for and something to live for.
For a student who may not have begun their career yet, picking up your cross might be sharing your faith in Jesus Christ with your friends when the opportunity naturally comes up – much like you talk about music you like or anything else in your life that is important to you. And if you're a young person, chances are what is most important in your world is your friendships and whether you are accepted by your peers – that was certainly the case for me. So part of what it might mean for you to take up your cross is to be willing to share your faith in Jesus Christ when that opportunity naturally presents itself when you feel that God has opened the door for you.
And you die to that desire to need to be accepted, the need to be cool, the need to not be different.
You have something to die for and something to live for.
Taking up your cross, might mean adopting a simpler lifestyle so that you have more to give to God and the world. You can die to that part of you that once desired creature comforts, so you can make more of a difference for God and others.
If we love Christ more than life itself, we will live as if we have nothing to lose. If we love Christ we a treasure in him that we can never lose.
You have something to die for and something to live for.
I want you to now see the story of an 18-year-old girl named Kyung Ju from North Korea who spoke at the Cape Town Conference.
(DVD: TESTIMONY: NORTH KOREAN GIRL)
Kyung Ju’s dad was willing to lay down his life for Christ, and she is willing to lay down her life for Christ, not only because they know that in laying down their lives for Christ they will find them in the end, but also because they know that the one they follow laid down his life for them.
We don't become people who are able to take up our cross because we psyche ourselves up. We become people who are able to lay down our lives when we look into the face of the one who laid down his life for us. We look into the face of Jesus Christ and see how on the cross he offered his life as a sacrifice for our sin so that we might be forgiven, so that we might discover our true life here on earth and in eternity. As we look into the face of the one who died for us, we recognize that in Christ we have someone to die for and someone to live for.
The Way of Jesus M6 (11 03 13)
Speaker : Ken Shigematsu
Title: Living for Christ When Dying Is Gain
Text: Luke 9:18-27
BIG IDEA: In Christ we have something to die for and something to live for
When I was at a new follower of Jesus Christ at age about 15 or 16 years old and living in North Surrey, I remember watching a film at our church based on a true story called The Cross and the Switchblade. I remember how a young pastor named David Wilkerson from the countryside had read an article in LIFE Magazine about how a teenage gang in New York City had brutally murdered an innocent adolescent. Though he didn't want to go, David sensed God was calling him to work with those troubled teens in New York City and share the love of Christ with them. I don't remember all the details of the movie, but I recall how in one scene David was interacting with a group of gang members and one of them sneered at him and said something like, "You got shoes. I don’t got no shoes.” David then took off his own shoes and gave them to this teenager. David was eventually accepted by gang members in New York City and began a ministry called Teen Challenge.
At the end of the movie, I heard that there was a branch of David's ministry Teen Challenge on Granville Street downtown not far from the Vogue Theatre. On Friday evenings I began volunteering for Teen Challenge. I remember one of the first conversations I had on the streets downtown. It was dark and I was with a man who had long black hair, tattoos on his arms. While I don't remember all the details of the conversation I do remember this vividly. Several times in our conversation he kept asking me, "Have you ever seen someone killed?” “No--I can't say I have.” "I have. I’ve killed someone." My heart began to beat faster, and I tried to appear as calm as possible, but I was intimidated, I was scared. I know this sounds irrational, but I wondered, "Is my life going to end tonight?” While volunteering for Teen Challenge, I got to know people that I would have never become acquainted with otherwise. From time to time, I had the opportunity to talk about the difference that Christ had made in my life or to help refer a young person struggling with drugs or to teen challenges halfway home in Richmond.
Through trial and lots of error, I was learning to engage people whose backgrounds were different from my own, I was learning to share my faith when the opportunity came up, I was keenly aware of how dependent on God I was, and I felt like I was growing spiritually through this experience. As a student leader in my church's youth group, I started inviting my peers to head downtown to Granville Street near the Vogue Theatre to engage other young people… Sometimes it was scary, but it was also exciting too and our faith was becoming alive to us in new ways. But… some parents expressed concern –to me through their children. I remember peers saying to me, "My parents don't want me going downtown on Friday nights--they think it's too dangerous."
I said to my peers: “It's actually more dangerous for you spiritually to be hanging out in the shopping malls on a Friday night or playing video games at home than it is for you to be engaging other young people with a love of Christ downtown.”
One of the paradoxes of the spiritual life is that sometimes choosing what seems safe is actually dangerous for the soul. And sometimes choosing what seems dangerous is actually safer for our spiritual life.
If we overprotect our children or ourselves, ironically we may be exposing ourselves to real danger.
On the first Sunday in January I cited a study from the New York University (NYU Child Study Centre) which reported that educators and research scientists have found that financially-privileged adolescents (defined as coming from households with incomes from $75,000 to $160, 000) are showing growing rates of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. In the last thirty years adolescent suicide in this group has doubled. The irony is that parents who are only committed to giving their children privilege and safety may be raising children that will become bored, have a sense of entitlement, and look for adventure in the wrong places.
Jesus, on the other hand, invites us into a place of adventure, risk, and danger, in the best sense. He gives us something worth dying for and therefore worth living for.
We’re in a series in what it means to follow the way of Jesus.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Luke 9:18-27.
18 Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say I am?”
19 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.”
20 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.”
21 Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone. 22 And he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for you to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit your very self? 26 If any of you are ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of you when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
27 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”
Jesus is praying in private with his disciples. He looks up and asks the question: “Who do the crowds say that I am?” One of his students replied, “Some say John the Baptist. Another said, “Elijah.” Someone else said, “People say you are a prophet from long ago who has come back to life.” And Jesus looked at them and said, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ. You are the Messiah. You are the Son of the Living God.”
Eight days later (as we saw a few Sundays ago), Jesus was transfigured on the Mount of Tabor. His appearance became as bright as a flash of lightning. Moses (who lived 1400 years before that time), and Elijah (who lived 900 years before that time), miraculously appear. And yet God says of Jesus. “This is my beloved Son. This is the One I have chosen. Listen to him.”
Gifted commentator Dale Bruner says that God is saying to us here and in Jesus’ baptism, “All I want to say, I will say through Jesus, all I want to show you about me I will show you through Jesus. If you want to get to know me, get together with Jesus.”
If Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, the Saviour of the world, as God the Father affirms and as Christ himself claims, then in Christ we have someone to live for and someone to die for. If we have something for which to die, then we have something for which to truly live. Perhaps the reason why so many people feel like they have nothing to live for, perhaps part of the reason that suicide rates are so high among privileged young adults, perhaps part of the reason, not all, but part of the reason why so many people of all ages in North America are depressed (some are depressed for biochemical reasons) is because they have nothing to die for, and therefore have nothing to live for.
Jesus Christ gives us something to live for and something to die for. He says, “ Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.”
If anyone other than Jesus Christ was saying this, this would sound incredibly arrogant. If I as a Christian minister were to say, "If you want to learn from me, you must daily sit in your electric chair ready to die for me”– you would need to dismiss me as a crazy megalomaniac. If Christ were only a good teacher or only a great prophet we too would have to dismiss him as a nutty, megalomaniac because he is calling his followers to die for him. Because Jesus said be willing to die for me, because he said things like "I saw Satan fall from heaven" we can't say that he was simply a good teacher or a prophet. He was either less than these things or he was more than these things. He was either a lunatic or he was who he claimed to be – the unique son of the Living God. And if he is the unique son of the Living God, if he is in fact God in human flesh, the Messiah the Savior of the world, then he has the right to call us to lay down our lives for him. And this is precisely what he's calling us to do.
The message of the gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t, as some preachers suggest, a path through which you will be assured of material success or perfect physical health. That message is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not about self-improvement. It is not about becoming your best self right now. The gospel, according to Jesus, is “take up your cross and follow me.” As a German pastor, Dietrich Boenhoffer, who laid down his own life as he led an underground resistance movement against Hitler, said, “It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”
In Christ we have something to die for and something to live for.
Yes, there is a cost in following Jesus Christ. It will cost you your life, but there is also a much greater cost in not following Jesus Christ. There is a greater cost in non-discipleship. In not following him, you will lose your only opportunity for true life in this world and in the age to come.
Jesus said,
. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for you to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit your very self?
What good is it, Jesus says, if a person gains the whole world and yet forfeits their very self. Here he is referring to our true self, that inner part of us, the core of who we are that lasts forever. I recently watched the BBC documentary called “Big Silence,” which follows 5 ordinary people taking time out of their daily lives to go on an 11-day silent retreat with a monk. One of the people is a guy named Jon, who is a very successful entrepreneur about 50 years old, drives a black Mercedes, and doesn’t believe in God. He is an agnostic. But he says, “All of my life I have wanted to get money and power and now I have lots of both… I’ve been married twice… I have kids. But something is missing in my life. I haven’t found satisfaction.” So he goes on this silent retreat with a Benedictine monk, hoping to find an answer.
As Jesus says, what good is it if a man or a woman gains a whole world, and forfeits their soul in this world and in the age to come?
What does Jesus mean when he says, “Take up your cross”? As of this past Wednesday, we have been in Lent and I don’t want to in any way belittle people who sincerely observe Lent. I do so myself and find it helpful. When Jesus says, “Take up your cross,” he is not referring to giving up chocolate or wine for the 40 days of Lent. When he says, “Take up your cross,” he is not referring to enduring the snoring of your spouse or your roommate, or the anxiety you are experiencing because your aunt has Alzheimer’s. I am not saying those are not difficult experiences, but that’s not what Jesus means when he says, “Take up your cross.”
When Jesus said, “Take up your cross,” in his context it meant being willing to take up an instrument of violent execution (use the cross as prop and put on your shoulder). It wouldn’t mean to put on your shoulder a horizontal beam, an instrument of violent and painful execution and carry it to a site of public execution, usually past a jeering mob. Jesus is saying, “If you want to follow me, you must be ready to face literal scorn as you walk to your death.” Voluntarily picking up a cross means you are willing to deny yourself and lay your life down,
For some of our brothers and sisters, it will literally mean actual death.
Michael Ramsden who is from Saudi Arabia, shared this story at a conference in Capetown, South Africa that I had been invited to, but could not attend. I saw to his message online.
“A man and his wife were driving through a remote part of a certain country that Michael is not free to name. As they stopped to buy water, the wife looked and saw a man with a long beard with a machine gun leaning against the wall. She turned to her husband and said, ‘You need to give that man a Bible.’ The husband looked at the bearded man with the gun and said, ‘No, I don’t think it is right.’ She said, ‘No, I am sure it is right. Go over there and give him a Bible.’ She put a Bible in her husband’s pocket, and said, ‘Make sure you give this to him.’ The man went into the shop and bought the water. The man with long beard with the gun followed him into the shop. The husband came out of the shop carrying bags with bottles of water. The man with the gun came out of the shop, and then leaned against the wall again. As they drove away, the wife said to the husband, ‘You didn’t give him the Bible, did you?’ He said, ‘I prayed about. It’s not right thing to do.’ ‘You should have.’ ‘No, I shouldn’t have.’ They had a fight. She bowed her head in car and prayed out loud, ‘O LORD, on the Day of Judgment may that man’s blood be on my husband’s head, and not mine. He was the one who want not give away the Bible.’
At this point the husband stopped the car. They had a friendly marital discussion. With that, the husband said, ‘If you want me to die, I will.’ They drove back into town. He walked up to the man with the gun and presented him with the Bible. The man took it, kissed it on both sides, and said, ‘I do not live here. Three days ago I had a dream in which I was told to wait here for someone to give me a book, the Book of Life. Thank you for giving me this book.’ Five years later that man was martyred for his faith.”
Jesus Christ demands everything … He says, “Me… My gospel is something worth living. It is something worth dying for.”
Taking up our cross may mean we expose ourselves to danger in serving others.
In Christ we have something to die for and something to live for.
A little closer to home, what does is it mean for us to take up our cross and follow him? In a parallel passage in Matthew 10, Jesus talks about how anyone who wants to follow him must take up their cross and follow him. He says, “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Anyone who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” These words would have sounded shocking to most of Jesus’ hearers--loving family members, especially their parents, was one of the highest duties in Judaism. Family loyalties were much stronger in Jesus’ day than in ours. Jesus makes it clear that in order to follow him he must become more important than our relationships with our mother, father, son, daughter and even our spouse. You have probably heard stories of people who decided to follow Christ in other parts of the world. Stories in North America are not as dramatic—there can be a cost here too.
I hear the stories of young people who say their parents would rather have them partying, having recreational sex and using recreational drugs than have them become a follower of Jesus Christ. I know someone who gave his life to Jesus Christ when he was in high school. One day he brought a Bible home. His dad became so angry with him that he started shouting at him and picked up his Bible and threw it down the hallway. For some young people, the greatest act of rebellion they can commit against their own families is to follow Jesus. But Jesus says, “I must be more important than your family.” He says, “Yes, of course, love your family. Honour your parents. But if you have to make a choice between honouring your parents, your spouse, your children and me…choose me.”
If you are a parent or become a parent, part of what it means to put Jesus first means that Jesus, and not your child, is the most important priority in your life. If your child is the absolute highest priority in your life, the irony is that is not going to be best for your child, as the NYU study suggests. A mentor of mine has said, “The best thing you can do for your spouse is love God. The best thing you can do for your children is to love your spouse.” If you put God first, then you are going to love your spouse and your kids. “The irony is that for your kids—it is best for them not to put them first.
Taking up the cross means that Jesus comes before your family. Taking up your cross means that Jesus comes before your career. It might mean living with integrity in your workplace in a way that is going to cost you something…
This past week I came across the story of Christian woman named Jana, an experienced nurse, who had recently switched jobs. Her first evening as a nurse a young mother came with her 18-month-old son. He needed his final shot for a routine immunization.
Jana gave the boy his shot when Jana went to record the vaccination on the boy's chart, she noticed that the seal on the vial inside her lab coat was unbroken. Quickly Jana realized that she had given the boy the wrong vaccine.
She had given him a shot from a different vial—a routine vaccination for children, but the boy had already completed that series of shots months earlier.
Jana told said she gasped when she realized her mistake and then went into shock… Here is the sequence of her thoughts, according to what she told me later:
"No one will ever know. No harm done."
"This is my first day on the job."
"I can't tell the doctor."
"The doctor will think I'm incompetent."
"It can't hurt him, can it?"
"It doesn't hurt to be immunized twice for the same thing."
"What will the mother say?"
"But I will always know, and so will God."
Jana weakly paced outside the room.
When the doctor appeared, Jana told him her mistake, almost vomiting her confession. "Let me think about this for a moment," he said. After a few moments, he walked back into the room, told the mother what happened, and asked her to schedule another time for her child's immunization.
There's a part of Jana, like there is a part of me and you, that wants to make a good impression, that wants to appear competent in our work – especially on our first day on a new job. Jana as a Christian decided to die to that particular desire, she took up the cross, and she followed Jesus in that position.
In Christ, even in the small things of our lives we have something to die for and something to live for.
For a student who may not have begun their career yet, picking up your cross might be sharing your faith in Jesus Christ with your friends when the opportunity naturally comes up – much like you talk about music you like or anything else in your life that is important to you. And if you're a young person, chances are what is most important in your world is your friendships and whether you are accepted by your peers – that was certainly the case for me. So part of what it might mean for you to take up your cross is to be willing to share your faith in Jesus Christ when that opportunity naturally presents itself when you feel that God has opened the door for you.
And you die to that desire to need to be accepted, the need to be cool, the need to not be different.
You have something to die for and something to live for.
Taking up your cross, might mean adopting a simpler lifestyle so that you have more to give to God and the world. You can die to that part of you that once desired creature comforts, so you can make more of a difference for God and others.
If we love Christ more than life itself, we will live as if we have nothing to lose. If we love Christ we a treasure in him that we can never lose.
You have something to die for and something to live for.
I want you to now see the story of an 18-year-old girl named Kyung Ju from North Korea who spoke at the Cape Town Conference.
(DVD: TESTIMONY: NORTH KOREAN GIRL)
Kyung Ju’s dad was willing to lay down his life for Christ, and she is willing to lay down her life for Christ, not only because they know that in laying down their lives for Christ they will find them in the end, but also because they know that the one they follow laid down his life for them.
We don't become people who are able to take up our cross because we psyche ourselves up. We become people who are able to lay down our lives when we look into the face of the one who laid down his life for us. We look into the face of Jesus Christ and see how on the cross he offered his life as a sacrifice for our sin so that we might be forgiven, so that we might discover our true life here on earth and in eternity. As we look into the face of the one who died for us, we recognize that in Christ we have someone to die for and someone to live for.
posted by Shigematsu at 4:05 PM
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