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.