In these Wednesday night services, we’ve been
looking at all the things Jesus sacrificed while he was on earth. Jesus
sacrificed his life on earth, of course, when he went to the cross. And we’ll talk about that next week. But Jesus sacrificed some other things, too.
In previous weeks we’ve talked about how Jesus sacrificed
his life in heaven, sacrificed his home, and sacrificed family. Tonight,
we look at something else Jesus sacrificed.
Jesus sacrificed his privacy.
Most of us rather like our privacy, don’t we? It can
be a little harder to hold onto in a small town, of course. People tend
to know more about each other in a town this size than in a big city. And
of course, as we said a couple of weeks ago, Nazareth in Jesus’ time was a
smaller town that this.
Still, there were probably times, before Jesus started his
ministry, when he was just one of the townspeople. A face in the
crowd. Sure, people recognized him as
the town carpenter, but that was all.
There’s no reason to think people treated him as anything special or
different at that point in his life. If they did, the Bible does not
mention it. Jesus was probably just
another guy in town. Someone you’d see
at the synagogue on Saturday. Someone
you’d visit with about the weather or about the crops. Someone you’d have
over to supper once in a while, or who’d have you come over once in a
while. He was just a guy. Just one of the crowd.
And then, he started his ministry. And he started
doing miracles. He started healing the
sick. He started giving sight to the blind. He started feeding thousands of people with
almost nothing. He started teaching people, saying things that only
someone who was at least a prophet could say.
And he could never live a normal life again. Because
all of a sudden, Jesus was a celebrity. He attracted crowds
everywhere. Eventually, it became nearly
impossible for him to get away. As you heard in our reading for tonight,
even when he tried to get away, he could not.
It says he “withdrew...to a solitary place.” And yet, the crowd
heard about it, and they followed him to this solitary place. In fact, before he could even get there, the
crowd was waiting for him.
Now, I’m sure Jesus knew, when he started his ministry,
that this would be the natural consequence of it. He would not even have
needed to be the divine Son of God to know that. All he’d have had to do is use some common
sense. A man goes around healing people who’ve been lame for years,
giving sight to people who’ve been blind since birth--that man’s going to
attract attention. Especially in that time, when the medical profession
was not very far along. Someone who
could actually heal people who had what everyone thought were incurable
diseases is going to have lots of people knocking on his door.
But even though he knew it, I
wonder if he was totally prepared for the reality of it. I mean, think of
yourself. Most of us live pretty
anonymous lives, really. I mean, sure,
everyone in this town may know who we are. But we don’t have to travel
that far to go where very few people know us.
I can go to Aberdeen and maybe run into a couple of people I know, but
not very many, and maybe not any. And even if I do run into someone I
know, it’s not like they’re going to be demanding my attention for hours at a
time. We’ll say hello, what brings you here,
nice to see you, and we’ll go on our way. And I can be just a face in the
crowd.
And you know, once in a while, most of us need that.
Don’t get me wrong. I have no
desire to live in Aberdeen or Sioux Falls or anywhere like that. I like
being in a place where most people know me.
But it is nice, once in a while, to be able to be anonymous. To be
in a place where no one’s going to ask anything of you. To be just a face in the crowd. I don’t want it permanently--we had more than
enough of that when we lived in the Sioux City area. But once in a while,
for a couple of days, it’s kind of nice.
Jesus had nowhere he could go where he could do that.
He had nowhere he could go where nobody knew him. He had nowhere he could go where no one would
ask anything of him. He had nowhere he could go where he could be a face
in the crowd. Everywhere he went, people
knew who he was. Everywhere he went,
people were making demands of him. Heal me. Feed me.
Teach me. Even the disciples were
constantly asking him questions. Even
worse, sometimes the disciples were trying to tell him what to do.
I’m sure Jesus understood why this was so. But still,
I would think that had to be hard on him. I wonder if sometimes he looked
back wistfully at the quiet solitude he’d had in the carpenter’s shop.
Working with wood, or maybe sometimes with stone. Solid.
Dependable. The only demands
anyone made of him were, maybe, that he’d hurry up and get their project done,
because they needed it yesterday. And when the day was done, go home,
relax, have supper, and just forget about everything until the next day. A life that was quiet. Easy.
Peaceful. The kind of life he
knew he was never going to have again.
Jesus gave it up. He gave it up willingly. He
chose to live a life where he would have no quiet and no peace. He chose
to live a life where he would have people constantly crowding around him,
trying to get a piece of him. Sometimes just trying to touch him.
And not only that, a life where people were constantly
challenging everything he said or did. A life where the Pharisees and
others were constantly asking him trick questions, hoping to get him to say
something that would allow them to arrest him. A life where, again, even
the people closest to him were always trying to tell him what he should or
should not do, what he should or should not say.
Most of us would not enjoy a life like that. And
there’s nothing to indicate that Jesus enjoyed it, either. In fact, if
you think about it, there’s nothing in the Bible to indicate that Jesus really
enjoyed much of anything about his life on earth. The Bible does not
indicate that Jesus did not enjoy it, but it does not indicate that he did,
either.
And maybe that’s because, for Jesus, whether he enjoyed his
life on earth was beside the point. He was not sent here to enjoy life on
earth. He was sent here to save us. Jesus was sent here to give us a way to
escape the consequences of our sins. Jesus was sent here to give us a
chance for salvation and eternal life.
Jesus was sent here to show us the way and to encourage us to
follow. I would think--I would
hope--that Jesus got some satisfaction from doing that. But whether he
got satisfaction from it was not the point.
Whether Jesus enjoyed being on earth was not the point. The point was that Jesus did what God the
Father had sent him here to do.
You and I were put on earth to do certain things, too.
Now, that does not mean that we’re not allowed to enjoy life on earth.
I enjoy my life, and I hope you do, too.
It’s not like enjoy life is a sin or something. I hope that Jesus
enjoyed his life on earth, at least sometimes.
But just like for Jesus, you and I were not put on earth
just for our enjoyment. We were put here to serve God. And that means that, sometimes, we need to do
things that we do not enjoy. Sometimes we need to do things we’d rather
not do at all. I hope, when that
happens, we get some satisfaction from doing those things. But whether we
get satisfaction from them or not, we still need to do them, because those
things are the right things to do and because they’re what God wants us to do.
Now, I understand that’s not exactly a news flash to most
of you. I suspect that everyone here has done things you’d rather not
have done, things you did not enjoy doing, because you knew they were the right
thing to do and they were what God wanted you to do. But sometimes, when
that happens enough times, we can start to kind of feel sorry for
ourselves. We can start to get tired of
it. We can even start to burn out. We start to ask, “When do I get to do what I
want to do? When do I get some time to myself? When do I get some time to just relax and
take it easy?”
If you feel that way, know that Jesus understands how you
feel. Jesus might even have felt that way himself sometimes. But even if he did, he continued to do the
right thing. He continued to serve God.
He continued to do what God sent him to earth to do. Jesus knew his primary purpose on earth was
not to enjoy himself. His primary purpose was to serve God. That’s our primary purpose, too.
Jesus gave up his privacy, he gave up his chance for a
quiet, normal life. Instead, he did what God wanted him to do. Let’s be grateful to Jesus for that.
And let’s be inspired by Jesus’ example.
Let’s not worry about what we might have to give up. Let’s focus
on doing what God wants us to do.
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