TAKE UP YOUR CROSS

Mark 8:27-38

Orangeburg Christian Church

September 17, 2006

I want to talk to you today about the cost of discipleship. An old pastor friend of mine once said that my redemption cost God his son, and Jesus his life, and if I paid less than that, I got it too cheaply.

We don't talk about the cost of following Jesus much in this country, I think largely because there generally IS no cost of following Jesus in this country. We don't have the police kicking down the church door in this country. We aren't taken out and killed in the middle of the night for our faith in this country. We don't have to report our allegiance to God in this country. There is SO little cost to declaring yourself a Christian in this country that it's easy to forget that in many parts of the world all those things DO happen. Today, September 17, 2006, it is possible, in some parts of the world, to lose your life for confessing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and that you accept him as your Lord and Savior. But not here.

When I talk to people about how we do not put our lives on the line to follow Jesus, what I hear back, most often, is a little sermon about how great and tolerant our country is, a country where we can worship as we like without consequences. And that's true: it is a great country. It is a country that is blessed with inconceivable wealth, a country whose people live in plenty such as the world has never seen before. What I don't hear is an awareness that we often talk a better story than we act.

A man seeking to enter this country illegally once said that he wanted to live in a place where even the poor people are fat. That's us. Even our poorest are at risk of type II diabetes due to overweight. Our poor are fat while the world's poor die from malnutrition. We live in plenty while much of the world lives in want. We fill landfills with uneaten food, and arm ourselves, vigilante style, at our borders to keep the hungry from entering to eat. And, as I shared with you last time, it is even possible in this country to lose your job for following what you understand God would have you do.

Of course, Jesus never spoke of such a place, nor even hinted at its existence as a desirable goal. Jesus never once said, "Follow me, and you shall have all-you-can-eat buffets, 120 channels and an SUV." Jesus was strangely silent about air-conditioning, television, hybrid automobiles, and the Internet. He made no promises about your 401k plan, and never suggested that Social Security funding should be adequate.

What Jesus DID say was, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me..." Jesus "then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again." For Jesus, the cost of discipleship was his very life. Church tradition tells us that each of the disciples, except John, also paid with their lives for having the audacity to follow Jesus. But in this country, there is no cost to following Jesus. What does that tell us, not about our country, but about us?

Some years ago, I was having lunch with a friend of mine, a very strong and faithful supporter of his church. He was advising me on sermons. (That's what happens when you're a preacher -- everybody understands that you have the potential to be a great preacher, if only you'd follow their advice. Which they then give you....)

Anyway, my friend told me that sermons were, as a general thing, too long. Asking people to sit quietly for fifteen or twenty minutes and listen to a sermon was just asking too much. And, he told me, it was unnecessary as well. All the congregation has to know is that if you do the best you can, God will forgive the things you don't do well, and you'll get to heaven. --- Then he said, "And that's what it's all about, isn't it? Getting into heaven?"

Excellent conversation, that. It's wrong so many different ways that I think this is the fourth sermon I've gotten out of that one conversation.

Leaving aside the whiff of a works salvation theology for another sermon, I was struck by two things: whatever the cost to Jesus of His obedience, my friend thought asking people to sit on padded pews for twenty minutes was too great a cost to pay for church membership, and he thought "getting into heaven" was the goal of Christianity.

Still does, as far as I know. I'm his friend, not his pastor. He'll have to work that one out with his own church. What does Mark have to say about it?

The Gospel of Mark is believed to be the earliest of the four. It contains an emphasis on "the Messianic Secret". When Peter declares that Jesus is the Christ, Jesus immediately orders his disciples not to tell anyone. At first blush that seems odd, but there is a good reason behind it. Until Jesus is killed, until his bleeding dead body is removed, in clear view of everyone, prepared for burial and interred, until Jesus is raised from the dead, nobody, NOBODY can understand who he is, or why He has come. Jesus' obedience unto death and His resurrection, for Mark, are the defining events in the story of Jesus. Until that happens, it is not possible to understand, in earthly terms, who Jesus is, or why He has come. The cost Jesus pays on the cross DEFINES Jesus.

What defines a Christian in 21st Century America?

Well, a Christian in America is supposed to not lie, cheat or steal. Interestingly enough, Buddhists, as taught by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, are not to lie, cheat or steal. Even more interestingly, the Quoran forbids Muslims from lying, cheating and stealing.

Well, Christians are to live good lives, and look after their families, then. Interestingly enough, in China, when a baby gets colicky and cries, the whole village responds as if a siren had been blown. In the Amazon, stone age tribes raise the children of the village communally, each taking an interest in the well being of the child. It appears that thousands and thousands of years ago, Neanderthals interred their dead with touching care, indicating that they were committed to their families.

For every good and admirable quality that we can offer as defining Christians, we can find another, non-Christian, group that honors the same quality. Every attempt !Hear me, church! EVERY attempt to define ourselves as the good guys and everybody else as the bad guys will fail.

There is one characteristic that defines Christians. Marks puts it central in the teachings of Jesus.

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? "

Christians are the ones who deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Jesus, not just to "get into heaven" but because they have weighed the entire world in a scale against their souls, and found that everything in the world, even life and livelihood, are nothing compared to the Kingdom of God. Christians are the ones that willingly take up the cross and commit themselves to loving a world which God Himself so loved that He even sent his only-begotten Son into it to save it.

There's nothing in there about "being good". There's nothing in there about not lying, cheating or stealing, although there is plenty in the Scriptures that tells us not to do that. What Jesus is talking about isn't the sort of house we might build as Christians, but the FOUNDATION we are to build it on. We are, foundationally, to be the people who deny ourselves for the sake of others, the people who willingly take up our cross and obediently follow where God leads, counting the cost as nothing. We Christians are the people who follow God because there is no other leader, obedient, as was Jesus, unto death.

So, if our faith is founded on the need to deny ourselves, to take up our crosses, and to be obedient to the will of God, even unto death, what is the cost of discipleship in 21st century America? What does it mean to deny yourself in a country where even the poor are fat?

My friend thought denying himself 20 minutes a week was too high a cost to pay. Jesus thought his life was not too high a cost to pay. My friend thought "getting into heaven" is what Christianity is all about, Jesus thought that obedience to God's will was what his life was about.

In the noise and distraction of 21st Century American life, we have convinced ourselves that belief in Jesus is all that is required of us -- that a confession of faith and regular church attendance is the cost of discipleship. Jesus led a perfect life, but Mark tells us that he ordered his disciples not to tell who was because living a good life, a worthy end unto itself, is not what makes us Christians. Promising not to lie, cheat or steal doesn't make us Christians. What makes us Christians is the same thing that made Jesus Jesus -- we are obedient to the teachings of our God, as revealed to us in His Scripture. Jesus tells his disciples that by their love will people know them. If we are not willing to pay the price of obedience by loving even the unlovable, then we are ashamed of the life of Jesus. And Jesus reminds us:

"If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."

My salvation, I was reminded by my preacher friend, cost Jesus his life and God his Son. If I pay less than that, I'm cheating. My life, my livelihood, are at the service of God because I am a Christian and have confessed that Jesus is my Lord.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be found pleasing unto the Lord.

IF NOT YOU, WHO IS YOUR BROTHER'S KEEPER?

I Corinthians 8:1-13

Genesis 4:2b-9

One of the best known stories from the First Testament ends with Cain's question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" If questions were golf, this is the Tiger Woods of questions. This is the 800 pound gorilla of questions. It's a question that goes to the very heart of how we understand our lives as religious persons, and yet, since it happens in the middle of the first murder story, somehow the importance of the question goes begging. What do you think? Are you your brother's keeper? I don't mean "keeper" as in zoo keeper or jailer. I mean it in the sense Cain applied it -- as someone who is responsible for the welfare of another. And I don't mean just the ones you like. Cain had murdered his brother, so I think it's safe to say at that moment he didn't like him very much. Are you your brother's keeper even if you don't approve of him? And, if you aren't, who will care for your brother?

Before we discuss that, I need to bring you up to date a little bit. I like to believe that all the congregations I serve keep notebooks on the things I do when I'm not here, but on the outside chance that you haven't been able to keep up, let's review:

As you may remember, I'm the prosecuting attorney in Boyd County. In 2004, two thoroughly nasty pieces of work named Nolan and Campbell went to the home of two drug dealers to buy marijuana. For reasons best left to those wiser than I, they decided to rob and kill them, and they returned and did that, shooting and knifing the man and his wife, then setting fire to the house to try and cover it up. Tragically, there were two children in the house when it was set ablaze. Thankfully, the children weren't hurt, but children are sympathetic victims, and suddenly, this was a death penalty case.

By “death penalty case”, I mean that it was a case where the death penalty could legally be imposed, and one in which it seemed to me that a jury might, indeed, do so. Not all murder cases are death penalty cases. Only the worst of the worst homicides are “death qualified”, and the law is very specific about that. Even among death qualified cases, the prosecutor has discretion in whether or not to seek capital punishment, depending on whether or not he thinks the jury would be receptive to it.

I want you to remember that situation as we turn to the scripture for today, from Paul's first letter to the church at Corinth. Paul is writing about eating meat sacrificed to idols.

You see, in the world of ancient Corinth, pagan temples didn't just take a honking big ox, throw it whole into the flames and burn it to cinders. They burnt the entrails, and the hooves, and maybe the head. Then, the person making the sacrifice invited friends and family in for a feast at which the meat of the sacrificial animal was consumed. For a culture that did not, as a rule, eat meat, it was a big-time party.

But, what if you were a Christian? This meat had been "blessed" by some pagan priest, and the proceeds of the party were being used to support the temple of some pagan deity. For some of the members of Paul's church, this was no problem. Paul says, "We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is no God but one."

For others, as Paul puts it, "Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled."

Paul recognized that, ". . . food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do", but he was wise enough to know that there is another, deeper, problem here, one that touches even us, today.The problem? Not everyone's faith is as strong as Paul's was. Things that wouldn't harm Paul's faith a bit, he recognized, could crush the faith of a weaker member of the church of Jesus Christ. Paul recognized that the correct measure for his behavior wasn't what was good or bad, harmful or not harmful for him. It was what was good or bad for his brothers and sisters in the church at Corinth. He said,

Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol's temple, won't he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against your brothers in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.

Paul is saying to his church that if they, the church leaders, are seen eating this meat in the temples of an idol by one who still doesn't understand that the idols are fake, won't that person be emboldened to think that the myriad gods and goddesses of the pagan Roman world are real?

“Therefore”, Paul concludes, “if what I eat causes my brother to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause him to fall.”

Paul has done a lot more than to address a dietary problem in Corinth. He has answered Cain's question for Christians definitely and forever: yes, you are your brother's keeper. You are responsible for your brother's and sister's well-being. Our strength must be enlisted in the protection of the weakest of our community. It is not what we are free to do that governs our behavior, it is our responsibilities to our brothers and sisters that must shape our every word, deed and thought. By claiming Christ as our Lord and Master, we have taken upon ourselves the care and keeping of our brothers and sisters. If we fail to do so, Paul says, “... this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge.”

Church, I want that statement of Paul’s to rivet itself into your brains. “... this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge.” Christ Jesus, the only-begotten, totally unique, never been this way before Son of the Most High God laid himself down on a timber, extended his left hand and let some Roman bang a nail into it; extended his right hand and his feet, and permitted the same, then was hoist into the air to die in humiliation for the salvation of the weakest, most unregenerate back-sliding reprobate in the community. Hear that, church! Christ did not die just for your saintly Aunt Margaret. He died for all of us, even the ones that are very tough to love. Jesus Christ permitted himself to be killed for the salvation of Nolan and Campbell.

I picked my way through the charred remains of the house, still dripping from the fire hoses. The floor was in pretty good condition. You often find the floors, and even the carpets, sound at a fire scene. Near a door, there was discoloration of the carpet outlining where one body had been. I stood in what was once the hall, near the bathroom where the children were put to die, and I thought about the horror that might have been, and the horror that was.

I can’t tell you how angry I was, how much I hated those who had done this, how much I wanted them to suffer and die. They had it coming. Not only that, but I had more than the right to ask for the death penalty – I had a DUTY to do so. That’s my job – to enforce all the laws.

Hold on to that thought for a minute.

Television gives you an awful view of what happens in real courts, and soap operas are the worst. Work with me here, and I’ll tell you what really happens.

First, the jury has to be “death qualified.” There’s a horrible phrase -- “death qualified”. That means that the judge and the lawyers have to ask them if they could, providing they were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, return a verdict of death.

I stood there in the ashes and in my mind’s eye, I saw myself asking those questions. Then, I saw myself, at the end of the case, urging those death qualified jurors to return a decision that these two men, for whom I cannot, even now, dredge up any love, should die for their crimes. And, just as clearly, I heard a voice say, “The preacher said it would be all right to do that.”

The preacher. Me.

I really want to tell you that this text from Paul's letter came into my mind, but it didn't. Later, at the Archabbey of St. Meinrad, where I go every year, the passage that came to me was from the first letter of Peter, not Paul. The author of that letter wrote, “Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ.”

If I were to stand in front of that jury and ask them to return a verdict of death, the words I speak must be as one speaking the very words of God. I searched my mind for some example in Scripture or experience from which I might conclude that the very words of God included me telling otherwise ordinary Boyd County people that it would be alright for them to decide to kill somebody in cold blood.

I could find none.

Hear what I'm saying. I am not saying these two don't deserve death, in my mind. I am saying I cannot find anywhere in Scripture or experience where I am led to believe that any of us has the right to make that decision.

That hung me up.

If those prospective jurors were going to return a verdict of death, somebody would have to tell them that that this is the right and proper thing to do, and that somebody would have to be me. I'm the prosecutor.

But I'm also a Christian, and a minister. Can a Christian give another person permission to kill? In 2 Corinthians, Paul calls us "Ambassadors for Christ". An Ambassador is someone who speaks for another. Can an Ambassador for Christ urge others to kill?

What if someone heard those words, and took me to be speaking for the church as a whole? What if that person concluded that if the preacher said it, it must represent the teaching of the church? Whatever your beliefs about the death penalty, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has not adopted a position on capital punishment.

Can the civil law of the land supersede the very words of Jesus when he said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another”, John 13:34-35.

What if there were someone on that jury with a poor opinion of Christians who heard me say that, and concluded, “Christians are hypocrites, just like I always thought. They talk about love, then turn around and try to get us to put some poor fool in the electric chair.”

Many times worse, what if someone on that jury, or someone in the public reading about the trial, was “on the bubble” about committing their lives to Jesus Christ, heard that and turned from the commitment? That happened, in another county. A commonwealth's attorney who was very active in her church argued for a death verdict. One of the members of the church heard that, and came to question her own faith.

To paraphrase Paul, I concluded, “Therefore, if what I say causes my brother to fall into sin, I will not speak of this, so that I will not cause him to fall.” It's not our pious words upon which we'll be judged by those around us – it is our actions. “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another”, said Jesus.

I want to be crystal clear about this: You cannot earn your way into heaven by your works, BUT by your works you can deny your brother entry. You can lead him into sin as surely as can Satan. You can be a supporter of your brother's efforts to find his way to God, or you can be a stumbling block to him. If you are a stumbling block to your brother, and do it in the name of Christ, it will be counted against you as surely as if you had committed murder.

Our obedience unto Baptism, our confession of belief, our life in the church is not what we are about as Christians. Paul tells us that what our business as Christians is is to protect the weakest among us from falling into sin by reason of something we do.

If our brother or sister is tempted into the sin of idolatry because he or she sees us eat meat, then we cannot eat meat, even if to do so would not be a sin for us. THAT is the measure of our behavior as Christians. It's not some sappy slogan on the sign out front of the church. It's hard, church. It's hard to love those who are not lovable. It's hard to give up those things we have every right to do because to do them might harm our brothers and sisters.

I could not tell those twelve jurors I hadn't even met yet that they had the power reserved to God alone to decide life or death, however carefully it was done. To do so might cause them to fall into the sin of believing they are wiser than God. I told the courts that I could not, and at the next election, I lost my job, my life's work; my twenty-four year career. And, the jobs of five other families who worked for me. I must now live with that decision.

Tertullian, an early church father, once planned to undertake a course of action which could have resulted in his death. His advisers told him that if he undertook the action, he might be killed. Tertullian replied, “Must we live?” Those who save their lives will lose them. Those who lose their lives on account of me will have everlasting life.

There's one other thing. Many people in Boyd County think I threw away my career, and the jobs of my wife, my secretaries and my assistants for two criminals the world would do very well without, and, from that perspective, I'm the dumbest man alive. I could easily have kept the case, kept my mouth shut, plead it out for a life sentence, and maybe all those people would still have their jobs. All I had to do was to hide my faith under a basket. I chose not to do so. If we, as Christians, cannot stand up and give our Christianity as the very reason that we do the things we do, then there is no point in being a Christian. I might as well be a righteous Muslim, or Hindu or Buddhist. I did what I did, and I said why I did it as clearly as I could manage so that as many people as possible could know that Christianity is the religion of love. "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

I've told you now why I did what I did. You decide if I am dumb or not. It doesn't matter at this point. What matters is what you will do. How will you present yourself as a Christian? Will you permit your actions to lead a weaker brother or sister into sin? Or will you, as Tertullian did, value your very life as nothing against your obligation to be the best Christian those about you know?

Paul answers Cain's question with a resounding, "YES". Yes, we are our brother's keeper. Yes, we are challenged to love the unlovable. The question this Sunday, here, now, is: do you believe it?

Amen.

Beginnings

To be a lawyer, a politician AND a preacher is to leave yourself open to every bad joke ever imagined. It does tend to toughen the skin a bit. Nevertheless, that's what I am, and what I do -- I listen to lawyer jokes, preacher jokes and politician jokes, and try to find the Gospel in them. So far, I am in no danger of running out of raw material. BOY! Do people love to load up on politicians, lawyers and preachers.

This blog is. in many ways, more about storage than about communication. In a simply breath-takingly stupid exercise, I lost all my sermon records when reformatting my hard disk. It's not that they were such wonderful sermons -- it's just that they were mine, and reflected where I was when I wrote them. I mourn their loss.

So, I will post them here, and the good people at blogger will keep them safe, and perhaps someone will drift by, read them, and say, "That made me think! I heard the Gospel in that. I'm going to rethink something I always believed to be true."

That, and the free storage, will be enough for me.