Midweek Lenten Sermon (March 11, 2015): Fruit of the Spirit: Patience

Texts: Exodus 34:5-6 and 2 Timothy 3:10-16.

            Beloved in Christ, I don’t know who coined the phrase, but I love it: “God is always fashionably late.” He doesn’t show up exactly when you think you need Him, but sometime afterwards. Add to His tardiness the fact that God works sideways. You think that you know exactly how He is supposed to handle a particular situation, but He doesn’t. He does something you don’t entirely want Him to do. Only in retrospect do you discover that He has given you something better than you had originally want.

            It takes a lot of patience, therefore, to be a Christian. But, to be fair, it also takes a lot of patience to be God. Therefore, before we look at the reading from 1 Timothy, which tells us Christians how to be patient, let us look first at the passage from Exodus, which tells us how God Himself is patient.

            A little bit of context is necessary. The LORD God was not completely unknown to Moses at this point. He had first appeared to Moses through a burning bush. He had repeatedly given instructions as the plagues unfolded against the Egyptians. He had commanded Moses and the Israelites to march through the Red Sea. He had thundered from atop Mount Sinai, as the whole area was covered in a thick cloud of smoke. And then He had invited Moses to spend forty days with Himself on Mount Sinai. If anyone should have known God, it was Moses. But Moses had been sent back to the Israelites because they had built a golden calf and began worshipping it. Moses had put a stop to all that nonsense and prayed for God’s mercy. God had heard him and not blotted out the Israelites. It was only after this experience that Moses at last asked to see the LORD God in all His glory. The LORD had said that was humanly impossible, but nonetheless He promised to show as much of His glory as Moses could handle.

            That was why “the LORD descended in the cloud and stood with [Moses] there.” And whenever the LORD comes, He never stands silent. Thus, He did more than just descend and show off His glory. He proclaimed loudly who He was: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” You could say that all of those phrases are really God’s name. Yes, He usually goes just by “God” or “the LORD,” but you really need the full expression to understand completely who He is.

            In His name we see hints of His great patience. First of all, He is described as “merciful and gracious.” Someone who is merciful bears with someone who is weaker. Someone who is gracious bears with someone who is less deserving. God is both. He pities us in our weakness, and He pities us trapped by our sin. Neither form of patience is easy. It is not easy to bear with people who aren’t as fast as we are or who need extra help. It is especially not easy to bear with people who are defiantly sinful. And yet He does.

            The LORD God adds that He is “slow to anger.” People like to criticize God for His judgment upon people, especially in the Old Testament but also in the New Testament. But you have to admit that God has an awfully long fuse, much longer than ours. We would have given up on the Israelites as soon as they had built a golden calf, especially when we had just told them to do no such thing. We wouldn’t have patiently borne with the sins of the Amorites for seven centuries, but would have blotted them out immediately. In fact, we would not have allowed the world to have grown so corrupt over the millennia, but would have abandoned the project long ago.

            Finally, God describes Himself as “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” He is so steadfast in love and so faithful that He cannot help being patient. He is more committed to our cause than even we are. But it isn’t that God is merely patient, just biding His time until He can give us our just desserts. No, He loves us despite our insolent treatment of Him, despite our love of sin. Therefore, He did more than just put up with us. He atoned for our sin. He sent His beloved Son to earth, to be mistreated and crucified by us, all so that we could be reconciled to Him. So God has a level of patience that far exceeds ours.

            And yet we too ought to be patient with one another, even as God was patient with us for Christ’s sake. In the reading from 1 Timothy we are reminded of the importance of being patient, especially when things are going badly. Paul talked to Timothy about all the things that might have tried his patience: his “persecutions and sufferings” that didn’t happen in only place but in several: “at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra.” Far from thinking that these awful sufferings were unique to him, he knew that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse.” In other words, to be a Christian requires patience.

            One of the things that allowed Paul to be patient is that he could boldly and truthfully confess: “The Lord rescued me” from all those trials and tribulations. It wasn’t that he never suffered, but that he survived them and went on to thrive elsewhere. As we go through various bad experiences that test our patience, it helps us to remember that God is delivering us. If we face opposition for our faith, God will not let their stratagems prevail against us, for He has promised that the church will break down the gates of hell. If we have people who mistreat us for no particular reason, we know that God will keep us from being overwhelmed by them. We have the testimony of the psalmists, who cried out to God frequently because they were oppressed by evildoers, but in the end they were delivered. If we suffer from some physical affliction that tries our staying power, we know that God in the end will vanquish disease and death when Christ returns in glory.

            What helps us to grow more patient is to get to know God better. That is why Paul pointed Timothy to the Scriptures. Yes, Timothy was supposed to imitate Paul’s behavior and had done so. Paul commends him for doing so. There certainly is a place for us to learn from godly brothers and sisters who have lived longer and more deeply in the Christian faith. But Paul also pointed Timothy to the Scriptures. Not only did they lead Timothy to faith in Christ so that he could be saved, but they also could daily help Timothy with “teaching…reproof…correction…and training in righteousness.”

            We grow in patience as we are taught more about God and learn who He is and what He has done for us and what He expects out of us and why. But this is no idle knowledge. It strikes home a lot of times for us as “reproof,” as admonition, as we are shown just exactly how impatient we have been with one another and with God. But we should bear this reproof patiently, for it works godly sorrow and repentance. Then the Scriptures unfold for us the “correction,” all that God has done to forgive our sins and get us back into His good graces. And then there is “training in righteousness” that naturally follows, as we learn to be more patient from Him who excels in this virtue.

            Beloved in Christ, may you follow the examples of the saints who have gone before us and, above all, of our Lord. And may you also delve deeply into the Scriptures so that you might know the God who is patient with you and then grow in patience with Him and others. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Lent 3B, March 8, 2015

Text: John 2:13-21

            Beloved in Christ, is there a temple in the New Testament era? The Old Testament temple was destroyed in 70 A.D. But do we Christians have to worship in a temple or are we free to worship anywhere we choose? The answer to that question might surprise you.

            Now most people in our country would probably say that there is no temple in the New Testament era nor do we need such a thing. Many Christians in our land would say that temples (along with the priesthood and the sacrifices) were so much hokum that belonged to the Old Testament era but have no place in the more enlightened era of the New Testament. Others, especially non-Christians, would say that the important thing is that we are all spiritual people, whatever we believe, and we can be spiritual whether in the woods or by a lake or even in our homes.

Salomon de Bray,
The Queen of Sheba
before the Temple of Solomon
in Jerusalem

            But the real answer is that we absolutely do need a temple, just as we need a real high priest and sacrifice. What that temple, high priest, and sacrifice consist of may surprise you, but we’ll get to that soon enough. For now let me stress that God has been on a temple-building mission ever since the dawn of humanity. Yes, that’s right. The temple is God’s project, not ours. It is about God coming to us and bringing His holiness and His love into our midst and transforming us and then the whole world. The heathen temples are all about us doing something good for God. But the Scriptures proclaim the opposite: the LORD God’s temples are about Him doing something good for us.

            The very first temple was Eden. God had made a good world, but it had not yet entered into absolute perfection. There in Eden was where He intended it to begin. He would meet with Adam and Eve there. They would cling to His Word and thereby be His holy people. They would guard that sacred area from every form of evil, including talking serpents that badmouthed the LORD God. They would cultivate and tend the garden, for it would be a sacred place to be cherished. And in the very heart of Eden were two trees that would enable mankind to radiate with holiness, if we responded to each as God had commanded. God was the one who had planted these trees there so that they could serve His holy purpose. One tree was the tree of life, which would bring eternal life to those who ate of it. The other was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God had not put that tree there so that we would partake of it, but rather so that we would avoid it. By avoiding it, we would grow in holiness and be the perfect people He wanted us to be.

            But we ruined it. We ignored the tree of life until it was too late and we ate of the forbidden fruit. In so doing we desecrated the temple and made that holy place into a hotbed of sin. We were transformed, to be sure, and so was the whole world, but for evil and not for good. God’s plan of bringing the world into perfection was ruined.

            Since then God has established temple after temple. He built the ark as a refuge for Noah when his was the only godly family in all the world. That ark kept that family of eight safe from an unbelieving world and God’s judgment of the Flood against it. But what happened after the Flood? Noah got fall down drunk in his tent, which led one of his sons to mock him. So much for the ark bringing perfection to earth again. In fact, within a few generations the peoples of the earth had gathered to build an anti-temple, the Tower of Babel, a place by which they would bring their wickedness into heaven and transform it to be like them. Well, God demolished that anti-temple and scattered people across the earth. Centuries went by. At long last God called the Israelites out of Egypt and spoke to them at Mount Sinai. That mountain blazed with His presence and glory. He proclaimed His law and called the Israelites to be holy even as He was holy. He consecrated priests and instituted sacrifices. And He had a tabernacle built.

            That tabernacle was to be a place that brought God’s glory of Sinai into the midst of the Israelites, no matter where they wandered. That tabernacle was the most spectacular of all the places God had established up until that point. But eventually it fell into disrepair and was sacked by the Philistines, for the Israelites had grown neglectful of the LORD God and so God didn’t want His tabernacle profaned by them anymore. Later God commissioned Solomon to build a temple, which was even more glorious. But eventually idols were brought into the temple precincts. Rather than permit such sacrilege, God would rather see His beautiful temple destroyed. And so it was. The Babylonians carted off the Jews to Babylon and destroyed their temple.

            And yet God was still in the temple business. Some seventy years later God had a replacement temple rebuilt. That was the temple to which our Lord would eventually come and where the events of today’s Gospel would take place. Herod the Great had begun a remodeling process in that temple, which had lasted forty-six years at that point. But it was essentially the same temple built after the return from the exile. So God was very much still in the temple business at the dawn of the New Testament era.

            That is why Christ did what He did in today’s Gospel. Note that Jesus didn’t call it “Israel’s house for God,” but rather “My Father’s house.” If it was the Israelites’ house, they could do what they wanted to with that space. But it wasn’t. It was God’s space. In another of the gospels, Jesus quoted the Old Testament and said, “This house shall be a house of prayer for all nations.” It was a house whereby God would gather people from all nations so that they could be transformed by His Word. Gentiles, too, were to gather in its courtyard and worship the LORD God, the only true God, and turn from their idols. But it was precisely the Court of the Gentiles that was being desecrated. That is where the merchants had set up shop so that Jews could offer their sacrifices. But in the process the Gentiles were being pushed out of the temple.

            That is why Christ had to drive out the merchants from there. They were keeping it from being a true house of prayer. Just as God had sent prophets in previous days to warn those who were desecrating the temple to cease and to desist, so Christ warned these people to stop their merchandising on holy ground. But just as the previous prophets hadn’t been able to get through to the priests and the common people, so too Christ wouldn’t get through to them. They would soon be back to their old, evil ways. And just as the previous temples had all been destroyed, so this temple would be destroyed in 70 A.D. In fact, there has been no temple rebuilt by the Jews ever since.

            So are we Christians without temple, high priest, and sacrifice today? Did God finally give up on His temple-building shtick and say, “Enough of that”? By no means. Jesus said that there was yet another temple. Ungodly people would try to destroy it, but it would be rebuilt in three days and be even more glorious. And that temple was His body. The evangelist John had introduced His readers to this concept in the previous chapter. There He wrote of the Son of God, whom He called “the Word,” and of His incarnation. He wrote, “The Word became flesh and templed among us.” Now I know that most of you have heard it translated, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” but “tabernacled” or “templed” would be a better translation. It’s not any old kind of dwelling that He has among us, but a temple kind of dwelling. He is God’s final dwelling place among mankind. Through Him we are at last transformed.

            Why? Because He is not just our temple, but our high priest and sacrifice. His death made atonement between God and people. His death was the sacrifice that finally undid the death we had brought into the world through our mishandling of Eden. His high priestly prayers ever intercede for us. That is why at long last the temple does its transforming work. For in Christ Jesus, God at last forgives our sins, and there is nothing that transforms us like the forgiveness of sins.

            You see, the law can never change us. It isn’t because the law isn’t good or that it’s wrong. No, the law can point out sin, but it cannot change sinners. It may make us wear a smiley face and hypocritically cover over our sins and deny them. Or it can make us hardened and defiant because of its demands. But the law cannot truly transform us. What transforms us is when we hear that God loves us and forgave our sins at a deep cost to Himself. When we hear that news and take it to heart, we discover that not only have we been forgiven, but that we are new people too. We don’t want to just rebel all the time as before. We want to love the LORD God instead of all those idols. And though we will fail again and again, we are encouraged by knowing that God forgives us more freely and abundantly than we sin.

            Jesus is the place of transformation. Jesus is the true temple. Therefore, Christian worship has to take place in the temple, that is, in the temple known as Jesus Christ. If you do not worship in Christ, you are not worshipping at all.

            But what about these earthly buildings, such as these? They are places where we can worship in Christ. They are not the true temples, but rather places where we encounter the real temple, Jesus Christ. But because it is hard to hear the Word of God when the arctic wind is howling in our ears or to receive the Lord’s Supper when rain is making the hosts soggy, we have built these earthly buildings that we call churches. But these churches exist for Christ’s sake, not Christ for the sake of these buildings. We do well to remember that our Lord cleansed more important buildings than this one when the people there failed to listen to His Word. But if this is the place where Christ is present, where His Word is read, proclaimed, and heard in faith, and His body and blood given to sinners for forgiveness, then this is a true temple to the LORD. May this building ever be such a place! In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Midweek Lenten Sermon (March 4, 2015): Fruit of the Spirit: Peace

Texts: Romans 15:1-5 and John 14:25-28

            Beloved in Christ, we are now ready to look at the third aspect of the fruit of the Spirit, namely, peace. To help us understand peace better we have these two passages, one from Romans and the other from John. Let me begin with the second passage, since there Jesus explains the role of the Holy Spirit in a Christian’s life. After all, we have been talking about the fruit of the Spirit for the past couple of Wednesdays, but we haven’t really explored who the Holy Spirit is or how He works in us to bear this fruit.

            In fact, you may ask, “If we are Christians, then what does the Holy Spirit have to do with anything? We are not Holy Spirit-ians, after all, but Christians. So why don’t we speak of the fruit of Jesus Christ instead of the fruit of the Holy Spirit?” Well, we are taught by Scripture to acknowledge not only Jesus Christ as God and Lord, but to acknowledge the Father and the Holy Spirit as God and Lord, too. And yet there are not three Gods, but one God. There are three distinct persons in the Trinity and none can be blurred with or equated with another, but they remain distinct. Furthermore, each person is fully God, not just part of God. But in an awesome mystery beyond our ability to explain, there is one God. And so just as we acknowledge the divinity of the Father and of the Son, so too we acknowledge the divinity and authority of the Holy Spirit.

            Of course, we acknowledge the special role that the Son has played in humanity’s salvation. That is why we are rightly called Christians rather than Father-ians or Holy Spirit-ians. Unless the Son of God had taken on our human flesh, we would have been ignorant of God’s truth. All our theology centers around Jesus Christ. His words are the absolute standard of the Christian faith. His very existence as God in human flesh and His work of holy living, dying, and rising for us teach us all we need to know about God.

            I am not saying that the only part of the Bible that is authoritative for us is the four gospels and then only the words printed in red. After all, Jesus pointed to the prophets of the Old Testament as people who knew of and foretold His ministry. He cited them as authoritative, and well He should, for He, the Word of God, also spoke to the prophets before His incarnation. Moreover, Jesus commissioned His twelve apostles to preach and to write down words for the next generation and made their witness authoritative. Thus, throughout the entire Bible we see the words of our Lord.

            But there was something unique, we have to admit, about those three years that our Lord conducted His ministry with the apostles. As He concluded His earthly ministry, He said, “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you.” There was nothing that our Lord failed to teach His disciples that they or we need to know. Yes, there are some things He didn’t reveal, such as the exact day when He will return in glory. But everything that was necessary for our life here on earth and for our eternal salvation He has revealed. There is no need of new revelation to supplement what Christ has spoken. In fact, Jesus makes this point clear: “The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” Notice how the Holy Spirit works. He teaches us by “[bringing] to [our] remembrance all that [Christ has] said.” The Holy Spirit brings no new revelation, but gets us to believe what Christ has already taught us.

            Do not despise the Holy Spirit because He seems to have a subordinate role, as if the Son is the teacher and the Holy Spirit is merely the teacher’s aide or a tutor. Every person in the Trinity delights in the work of the others and honors them for it. The Son does not reveal any truth other than what the Father has given Him. The Holy Spirit reminds us only of what the Son has originally taught. The Father glorifies the ministry of the Son and the Holy Spirit in bringing mankind back to Him.

            Wherever the Holy Spirit does His work of reminding us of our Lord’s words and convincing us to believe them, He not only brings about faith in God but also godly fruit. One aspect of that fruit is peace. Our Lord says four things about that peace. First, it is His gift to us. He is the one who leaves that peace in our midst. This peace is not something we can acquire on our own, but He must give it to us—and He freely does so.

            What exactly that means is illustrated by the next thing He says: “Not as the world gives [peace] do I give to you.” In other words, Christ’s peace is different from the world’s peace. How does the world give peace? First of all, it knows of peace that is based on external circumstances. If we can get all the warring parties to lay down their weapons and cooperate like grownups, then we will have peace. Or if life is going well for us, then we might have a feeling of peace and contentment inside of us. But Christ acknowledges elsewhere in the gospel of John that the world will hate us and fight against us. So the peace that He gives cannot be based on our external circumstances. Moreover, the world knows peace only as a temporary thing. It lasts for a while, then disappears. Historians have analyzed every peace treaty that they could find, and pretty much every one of them has been broken, in spirit if not in letter. Peace, as far as the world is concerned, is just a delay of war until one or the other party thinks that it has become strong enough to defeat the other side. But the peace Christ gives lasts forever.

            That leads us to the third point: Christ’s peace helps us not to be troubled or afraid amid a troubled and scary world. That is because Christ has conquered all the forces of evil. He atoned for our sins that could have separated us eternally from God. He has defeated the devil, who has been raging against us from eternity. He has forced death to surrender its hold on humanity by His own resurrection from the dead. He has overcome the world, even though the world had condemned Him to die.

            We know that we can put up with all sorts of things on a temporary basis if we know that there will be something good coming thereafter. We have all moved into an apartment or house that we really love. We put up with boxing everything up for a week or more before the move and with living out of those boxes for a week or even a month afterwards. We do this because we know that there will be something good that results, if we can be a little patient. In fact, we might be so excited about being in the new place that we don’t even think of how bad it is to be living out of those boxes. In the same way, we know that Christ has gained the victory and so we don’t need to worry and fret because of our circumstances now. As our reading from Romans tells us, God wants us to live so that “through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” The Bible encourages us, which leads us to endure the bad things, so that we might have the hope that peace gives.

            The last thing Jesus says about the peace He gives is that it causes us to rejoice in Christ’s exaltation. Because Christ has conquered evil in this world and given us an inner peace to deal with the troubles of this world until He comes in glory, we can actually rejoice that He has triumphed. Yes, even when things are difficult for us, the fact that He is exalted gives us peace and joy.

            Having looked at length at the second reading, I would like to look more briefly at the first reading. You might say that in John we learned what the peace of God consists of, while in Romans we learn how that peace looks like in practice. If we have peace with God and a peace within ourselves despite what is happening on the outside, we are free to live in peace with one another. That sort of peace will show itself through the strong “[bearing] with the failings of the weak.” The world teaches us that those who are strong should force the weak to do their will. Might makes right, or so we are told. But those who live at peace will strive to bear with the weak and to build them up.

            That is because we do not strive “to please ourselves.” Those who war do so because they want the world to be more to their liking. They want weaker powers to obey them. They want the lowly to build them up. But if we are at peace with God and others, then we are free to love and serve our neighbors.

            That is true even if the world around us is very ornery and hard to please. As Paul reminds us, our Lord Himself was scorned and cursed. But He sought the world’s good, not His own, and so He let the world’s scorn roll off of Him. He, the Giver of all peace, couldn’t have His peace disturbed, not even by the most unruly of people.

            And so, beloved in Christ, turn away from your warring impulses and submit to the Prince of Peace. Let His peace cast out your selfishness. He has battled the forces of evil and conquered them so that He could establish a lasting peace. Enjoy that very peace that He has come to give you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Sermon for Lent 2B, March 1, 2015

Text: Mark 8:27-38

            Beloved in Christ, we looked at the first two paragraphs of today’s gospel back in January, when we celebrated the Confession of Peter and those paragraphs were the text of the day. Today’s Gospel adds the third paragraph, and so we will spend a good portion of today’s sermon looking at that part of the text. But still it would be helpful for us to go back and understand what the first two paragraphs of today’s text teach us.

            We see that we Christians must know who Jesus is and what He has done for us. We must know that Jesus is the Christ and that He came to be our Savior. We must know both these truths. If we believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the Father’s anointed messenger, but have no idea why He came for us or have the wrong idea, it does us no good. Or if we believe that He came to be our Savior, but think that He is just another ordinary mortal, it does us no good, either. We have to believe that He is the incarnate Son of God—that is, He is true God and true man—and we have to believe that He alone is our Savior from sin, death, and hell.

            Of course, when we confess that Jesus is the Christ and the one who was crucified and raised in order to save us, we confess several things about ourselves, too. If Jesus is the Christ—God’s Anointed One—then we are not. We are not the Messiah, and neither is anyone else. If Jesus is the unique Son of God, then we are not. If Jesus is our Savior, then we must have some sins to be atoned for. If it cost Jesus His life and that in a most gruesome manner, then our sins cannot be trivial. If Jesus had to undergo death and resurrection for our sake, then our problems cannot be trivial but must be matters of life and death. And if He was willing to undergo all these things, then He must love us indeed.

            As we meditate on these things, we are led to view our lives more deeply. We have a tendency to think too highly of ourselves, too little about God, and too trivially about our sin. But if Christ is the holy Son of God and our Savior, then we are led to think humbly about ourselves, to think highly of God, and to think deeply about our sin. We are not naturally inclined to acknowledge our sin but, if we do, we speak of them as trifles, as mere foibles hardly worth mentioning. You see, we just love to gossip to pass the time; we have no malicious intent. Or we just love a little risqué humor; we don’t mean anything really by it. Or it was just a worthless item we took that nobody will miss; we’d never take anything valuable since we’re not thieves. Or we just got a little too tipsy, not fall down drunk; we’re not an out-of-control boozer. Or we just uphold high standards; we’re not snooty, self-righteous people. In short, we cannot think that all of our little quirks—annoying though they may be to others, as we may well admit—are really all that serious, let alone damnable. But then we look at things in light of the cross and we see they are.

            People tend to be amazed that our Lord was willing to die on the cross in order to save murderers, gangbangers, rapists, robbers, and the like. They are amazed that Christ in His mercy can save such people. I, however, am amazed that our Lord was willing to die on the cross in order to save the so-called petty sinners, those who suffer from the same sinful nature as the notorious sinners do but who are blind to its real influence. A tumor that is visible to all can quickly be seen to be cancerous and removed. But the tumors that lie deep within the body and cause no real discomfort or pain go a long time without ever being noticed and thus prove more deadly. People who have sinned in blatant ways can quickly submit to the divine surgeon’s scalpel and have their guilt removed, but people who sin in slyer ways often never come to the point of having the sin dealt with. That is why we Christians gather weekly to confess our sins and look to Christ’s forgiveness, for we understand the grave danger our subtler sins pose to us. Only by God’s law do we see the danger, and only by Christ’s death for us is that danger removed.

            Therefore, Christ’s death remains the focus point of the Christian life. In His death on the cross we see exactly how much we deserved to suffer because of our sins. We also see exactly how much God loves us in that He was willing to experience all that for our sake, so that we would never have to undergo it. That is why the cross remains such an important focal point in the Christian Church. It is at the heart of Christian theology. Everything we need to know about ourselves and about God is revealed through the cross.

            It isn’t that we deny the resurrection that followed on the third day. No, we rejoice greatly that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and lives forever and ever. But the resurrection of Christ shows us the real power that was unleashed on the cross. It shows us that Christ’s death on the cross was not just the anguish of one more man suffering at the hands of an unjust regime. Rather, here was Almighty God, willing to go into the bowels of death for us. The resurrection underscores just how momentous the crucifixion had been.

            There is nothing in world history like the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But it isn’t just His story, but ours too. Jesus lays down the pattern of the cross and resurrection as the pattern for our lives. He tells us to deny ourselves and take up our crosses and follow Him. Just as the cross was the way that He gained great glory for Himself and did great good for the world, so too our crosses give us great gain and allow us to do great good for our neighbors.

            I read a remark of G.K. Chesterton this past week where he noted that the idea of “Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life…will save it” is not just sound theology, but sound advice in every sphere. He pointed out that the sailor and the mountain climber live by that principle as much as does any cleric. When climbers face one side of a mountain that is particularly dangerous, they must scoot around to another side, often exposing them to greater danger temporarily. Or when sailors are passing through a storm, they will have to expose themselves to the elements and risk being swept out into the unruly sea, just so that they can batten down the hatches or trim the sails or do whatever else is necessary to keep the boat afloat. The safe course guarantees disaster. To live safely, we must be willing to risk even our life.

            But our Lord does not call us to throw away our life on every last foolish adventure. A sound mountain climber doesn’t try to jump fifty feet away in some grand gesture. A sailor in a storm doesn’t try surfing the waves. Instead they focus on doing the task that they should. We are called to take up our crosses and follow Jesus, not take up our crosses and go any which way. And Jesus shows us what that venture consists of: holding onto His words in the midst of an “adulterous and sinful generation.”

            Our Lord warns us not to be ashamed of Him and of His words. That is the real challenge. That is the real cross. You see, there is something a bit embarrassing about His words. They don’t fit in with a society that believes it needs no savior. They don’t fit in with a culture that believes that enjoying the good life is what it is all about. They don’t fit in with the American belief that we are our own saviors and don’t need any help, divine or human. Yes, there is something embarrassing about our Lord’s words. If you don’t find that to be the case, either you’re not paying attention to His words or you live completely ignorant of the society around you and the impulses within you. But it is an “adulterous and sinful generation” we live in. We should not be embarrassed by what they are embarrassed by, but embrace the words of the one who will matter for all eternity.

            And so, beloved in Christ, look to Christ’s cross and do not shirk your own. It is the way of Christian discipleship. It is the way of life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.