Our reading from Matthew for today is one of the less comfortable scriptures we have. First, Jesus tells the disciples that he’s going to be killed. Then, Jesus tells the disciples they need to be willing to follow him completely, wherever following him leads, even if it leads to death.
It was an uncomfortable thing for the disciples to hear, too. When Jesus told them that he was going to be arrested and killed, Peter’s response was “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” He did not want to hear it. This was not the way he thought things were supposed to go. We’re not told about the response of the other disciples, but I think we can pretty safely assume that they’d have agreed with Peter.
Jesus gets kind of upset with Peter. The part of this we tend to remember is when Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan”, but that’s not the most important part of this. The most important part of this is the next sentence, where he explains why Peter has things messed up. He says to Peter, “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
The Bible leaves that scene there, and then goes on to Jesus talking to all the disciples again. He tells them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
We’re not told what the Peter’s reaction to this was, nor are we told the reaction of any of the other disciples. I’ll bet they did not like hearing this either, though. They knew, of course, what “take up their cross” meant. It meant they had to be willing to be crucified. I suspect that, when Jesus called them and they became disciples, none of them realized they were signing up for that. They may have known they were in for some tough times, they may have even known they would have to fight and risk death, but they were confident that they were going to win. After all, they were following the Messiah, and their whole idea of a Messiah, as we talked about last week, was that the Messiah was going to be the conquering king. This idea that Jesus was going to give up his life on earth, and that if they wanted to follow Jesus they each had to be willing to give up their lives on earth, too, was not how the game plan was supposed to go. It was not what they’d signed up for at all.
When we hear these words, we don’t really like them very much, either. After all, Jesus did not just mean these words to apply to the disciples; he meant them to apply to us, too. He said, “if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
We do want to be Jesus’ followers, or at least we say we do. I wonder, though, when we decide to follow Jesus, if we really realize what we’re signing up for. How many of us, when we decided to become Christians, thought about having to give up our lives to follow Jesus?
What we sometimes do, when we get to this point in the discussion, is to talk about giving up our lives to follow Jesus as something that only exists for us in theory. We talk about the Christian persecutions of the past. We may even talk about places in the world where, right now, Christians can be killed for their faith. We don’t think about having to give our lives to follow Jesus as something that could actually happen to us.
The fact is that’s probably true. As long as we live our lives here in rural South Dakota, we probably won’t have to give up our physical lives because of our faith in Christ. The thing is, though, that Jesus was talking about more than that. He said that, to really be his followers, we need to be willing to deny ourselves and follow him. When we became Christians, is that what we thought we were signing up for?
Now, in asking that question, let me recognize that I know that there are people here who have done and are doing a lot for this church. You’ve taken time and effort to do things that you did not have to do. There have been times when it would have been much easier for you to go somewhere else, to do other things, or to just stay home and relax, and instead you gave your time and your effort to the church. I know that, and I appreciate it. I don’t want this to be taken as me saying that nobody here does anything, because I know that’s not true. There are a lot of people here who do a lot.
Even so, though, we all have the tendency to do what Jesus said Peter was doing. We all have the tendency to set our mind on human things instead of on divine things.
I do, too. You know why? Because I really enjoy the human things I set my mind on. I like them. They give me pleasure. I don’t want to give them up.
The thing is that those human things are not necessarily bad things. They can be, but not necessarily. It’s not a bad thing to enjoy sports, for example. It’s not a bad thing to like music. It’s not a bad thing to enjoy visiting with people. None of those are bad things. In fact, some of them would be considered good things. They can be bad, though, if we set our minds on them too much. They can be bad if we value them so much that they get in the way of following Jesus.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying our lives, but we can put too much emphasis on it. If our lives on earth become too important to us, we run the risk of doing what Jesus warned the disciples about: wanting so much to save our earthly lives that we risk losing our eternal lives.
Now, if anyone remembers last week’s message, you may think I’m contradicting myself here. After all, last week I said that God wants our service to be joyful. Last week I said that what we should do is take the things we enjoy doing, find others who enjoy doing them, too, and find a way to make that into a ministry. Now, I’m warning against enjoying things too much. Is that not a contradiction?
I don’t think so, and here’s why. What Jesus is warning about is enjoying things for their own sake, and enjoying life for its own sake. If we find ways to make those things into a ministry, though, we’re not enjoying them for their own sake. We still can enjoy them, but we’re taking those things we enjoy and using them to serve God. Our minds may at first be on human things, but we’re finding ways to move them toward divine things.
See, here’s the thing: we cannot try to be someone we’re not. I cannot stop being a sports fan; it’s part of who I am. I cannot stop liking music; it’s part of who I am. God created each of us with likes and dislikes, with various talents and abilities. When Jesus told us to deny ourselves, he did not mean that we should deny who we are, because that would be to not be the people God created us to be.
God created us each of us with those likes and dislikes, with those talents and abilities, for a reason. We’re expected to use them in God’s service. If we keep the things we enjoy to ourselves, if we use our talents and abilities selfishly, then we’re setting our minds on human things and failing to deny ourselves. On the other hand, if we find a way to use the things we enjoy to serve God and others, if we use our talents and abilities to serve God and others, then we’re setting our minds on divine things.
It’s kind of ironic, when you think about it. Jesus told us to deny ourselves and follow him. Yet, it’s only by denying ourselves that we can become the people God created us to be. In other words, it’s only by denying ourselves that we can truly become ourselves; not the selfish selves that we’re sometimes tempted to be, but the Christian selves that we want to be and that we can be.
When we hear Jesus tell us to deny ourselves and follow him, we don’t want to hear it. It scares us. It does not sound like what we signed up for when we became Christians.
The truth is that for most of us it’s probably not what we thought we signed up for. The good news, though, is this: it’s something better. There is no greater feeling than the feeling we have when, even if just for a moment, we feel that we are where God wants us to be and are doing what God wants us to do. When we deny ourselves, and follow Jesus, we truly become what God intends us to be. Then, we can have that great feeling, not just for a moment, but for always.
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