Sermon from April 8, 2001
As you drive out of Baltimore City and into Baltimore County on Eastern Blvd., you will pass East Point Shopping Center. Just past East Point on the same side of the road is a giant billboard with a message on it. The message says, "Tell your kids about sex before they make you a grandparent." I have had occasion to see that sign several times, and I have found myself responding to it in a variety of ways.

First of all, as a parent, I found myself asking, "What is a parent supposed to tell them?" That is the toughest conversation most parents have with their children, and there is no phone number on the billboard you can call for help. No name takes responsibility for this message. Second, I wish knowledge was enough to correct the problem. I am profoundly skeptical about that. But the most disturbing thing about the message lies elsewhere, in its vision of human life.

It sets the bar too low. The motivation it offers for talking to your kids is fear. Now, fear is a legitimate motive, and I do not mean to be harsh with the concerned people who sponsored the sign. They are public-minded, generous people. But the dignity of human beings deserves something better than fear as the motive for nurture of our children. We are made for a brighter vision of human life than that. Such a vision comes from Jesus Christ, none greater than the one we consider today.

The sanctity of the Church worldwide depends on its capacity to receive and live by the words of Jesus that we are about to hear. Likewise, the sanctity of this congregation depends on our capacity to receive and live by these same words.

Now, that capacity differs from person to person, sometimes dramatically. It is important to remember that, because when you hear these words of Jesus, your first response may very well be, "I can't do that." His words give us a vision of human life that is worthy of persons who are made in the image of God. At the same time they set the bar so high that doing nothing about them will seem the only realistic thing to do; but if we do nothing about them, the sanctity of the Church will be diminished.

Maybe you cannot swim the English Channel, but you can swim to the other side of the pool.  So, a better way to respond to Jesus' words is to ask ourselves, "How can I live by these words in some meaningful way?"

Before considering Jesus' words, let's put them in their immediate context in Mark 8:27ff. After a long process, marked by many failures, Jesus Himself posed to His disciples point blank the crucial question that has shaped Mark's entire narrative throughout chapters 5-8: "But what about you? Who do you say I am?"

Peter answered, "You are the Christ." Peter got it right at last. What Jesus said next stunned him. Verse 30 says, Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. Mark explains Jesus' call for silence about His identity in verse 31. He 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.

Verse 32 says, He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. "After all it has taken to get us to recognize your true identity, how in the very next breath can there be talk of death! You are the Messiah, who is supposed to liberate Israel as the true people of God. You are going to take care of the Roman problem."

Verse 33 pulls no punches. But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. "Get behind me, Satan!" he said. "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." Nothing about that rebuke falls on our souls with such mystery as the unmistakable implication of Jesus' last statement to Peter. "You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." If it seems confusing for Jesus to style Himself as a Messiah who is doomed to die, how are people going to understand when He says that it is God's idea? What is going on in the mind of God? It is in this mysterious context that we hear Jesus' words in Mark 8:34-38.

Mark first places those words in their social setting in verse 34. Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples.... Jesus' words that follow do not address some elite inner circle. He meant them for the crowd, for ordinary people like us, who are likely to hear them and say, "I can't do that." His words are heavy. Nevertheless, the sanctity of the Church depends on the capacity of its members to receive and live by them in some meaningful way. He meant for all of us who have ears to ask ourselves, "How could I live by these words in some meaningful way?" The words begin in verse 34.

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Many Jews in first century Israel would have heard these words as a call to revolt against the Romans. Think about that for a minute.

After five centuries of being occupied by foreign armies, many Jews believed more strongly than ever that the words of their great prophets were nearing fulfillment. God's kingdom and God's Messiah were coming to vanquish the Romans. Pretenders arose, who said they were the promised Messiah. When their attempts at liberation failed, the Romans made examples of them by crucifying them. Crucifixion said in on uncertain terms, "This is what happens to revolutionaries."

Only if we read the gospels against this background of revolutionary fervor and national hope can the story of Jesus of Nazareth have its full impact on us. When Jesus said in this violence-tinged, revolutionary atmostphere, "deny (yourself) and take up (your) cross and follow me," it sounded like a call to arms. "Come, stand with me against these Roman defilers of our Jewish nation! Put your life on the line! If you die, you die in a glorious cause."

Now, we know that Jesus of Nazareth never took up arms against the Romans. So, He meant these strong words in a different sense than revolutionary Jews would have taken them. If you leave out the part about the Romans, He was still saying, "Put your life on the line! If you die, you die in a glorious cause."  Jesus is going to have to explain this "glorious cause." He does so, beginning in verse 35.

"For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it." Jesus is saying, "If you really want to follow me, then know that I am calling you to a life of sacrifice, and strange as it seems, when you sacrifice your preferences and privileges for me and the Gospel, then you will actually discover and preserve your true life. Real living is sacrificial living."

But did you hear how Jesus qualified this call to sacrifice? "Whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it." There is the glorious cause we are to put our lives on the line for. Jesus and the gospel are the glorious cause that merits a life of sacrifice. Jesus and the love and authority of God extending to ever-widening circles of human existence constitute the glorious cause for which men and women do well to deny themselves and devote their life.

If Jesus had stopped at the end of verse 35, it would have been good. However, He continued on in a way that expanded the motivation to deny onself, take up a cross and follow Him. Verses 36 and 37. 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?

In other words, Jesus was saying, "The glorious cause I am calling you to sacrifice your life for is worth the whole world. Participation in this cause is what you were created for. Don't miss it! Don't exchange it for anything!" Let's stop for a minute and come up for air.

When I was a teenage boy, Reader's Digest carried the story of five missionary men, who had been killed by Stone-age Indians in Ecuador. It fired my imagination and made me want to learn as much as I could about them. Fortunately, the wife of one of those missionaries was a writer. Elisabeth Elliot wrote a book about the martyrdom of her husband and his four companions called Through Gates of Splendor. I read it while still in high school.

During university years, I read her sequel to that book called The Shadow of the Almighty. It was part love story, part biography, part journal. It quoted extensively from their correspondence and from their private diaries. As such, it provided an intimate look into the souls of two people in their 20s, as they sought together to discover and to do God's will for their lives – a process that led them to marriage and to Ecuador and to martyrdom.

Elizabeth's husband, Jim Elliot, loved certain kinds of literature, and perhaps as a result he had a knack for turning a good phrase himself. Among his quotes in the book was a statement that has served many of us as a memorable commentary on the meaning of Jesus' words here in Mark 8:34-35. He said, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."

That captures exactly what Jesus was driving at when He said, 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? Jim Elliot not only said it; he lived it. He put his life on the line for the glorious cause of Jesus Christ and the gospel.

Mark 8 now closes with a statement that puts this dramatic call to discipleship in an even larger perspective. Verse 38: "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."

Jesus, the Son of Man, will come bursting back into earth's life in all the splendor of heaven, and then, at last, "all will be well, and all manner of things will be well." What we do about Him and His words now will matter enormously then. That is sometimes hard for people today to believe. "I am only one in six billion. How could it possibly matter to God what I think about Jesus Christ?"

We are so used to being treated like numbers that we start to think of ourselves like numbers. God never says, "Take a number." It is good past hope to know that His relation to each person is as profound as the cosmos and at the same time as personal as a kiss. Jesus put it best when He said, Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father .... So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows, (Matt. 10:29, 31).

So, how can we live by these words in some meaningful way? Jesus' words do not address some elite inner circle. He meant them for the crowd, for ordinary people like us, who are likely to hear them and say, "I can't do that." His words are heavy. Nevertheless, the sanctity of the Church depends on the capacity of its members to receive and live by them in some meaningful way. He meant for all of us who have ears to ask ourselves, "How could I live by these words in some meaningful way?"

Let's begin this way. Do you remeber a few years ago when an impressive number of rock and roll artists got together and did an album called We Are the World? They took the proceeds from sale of the album and gave them to a good cause. I cannot recall that they have done anything like that since. I do not mean to find fault. Theirs was a warm-hearted, generous gesture; but it was only a gesture, not a way of life.

Jesus Christ is not looking for weekend warriors. When He said at the end of verse 24, "Follow me," He was inviting people to a way of life. I came across the following statement that expresses what it means to follow Christ as a way of life. "There is no point in converting people to Christ if they do not convert their vision of the world and of life, since Christ then becomes merely a symbol for all that we love and want already – without Him," (Schmemann, quoted in First Things, January 2001, 61-62).

Jesus is saying, "I want to give you a new vision of the world and life. So, learn to walk in my steps and see where it will lead you. I want you with me heart and soul." We can live by Jesus' words in a meaningful way only if we accept them as inviting us to learn habits that work in every life situation.

Have you seen or even used these four letters in your life: WWJD, What would Jesus do? It is easy to dismiss them as a sentimental drivel. It is fatally easy to point out that we really don't know what Jesus would do in many situations. However, those four letters can remind forgetful people like us, who are no more honest than we have to be, that we are followers of Jesus Christ, and in every situation, we need to be looking for His vision of what the world and life can be. And that means we learn in every situation to practice Christian love.

Christian love means intending and, where possible, for the sake of Christ, doing what is best for the other person, regardless of who the person is, regardless of what it may cost us, and regardless of what we get for our efforts. In every situation that is what Jesus did, and that is what He would do in every situation in which we find ourselves.

That does not mean that we will know what to do in every situation. It does mean we know what to begin looking for. We are to pursue this pervasive habit of life, because the Son of Man is coming in his Father's glory with the holy angels. In that day all will see that the sacrifices made for Jesus Christ and the gospel are truly worth more than all the world. And do you know why they are worth more than all the world? Because sacrifices made for Jesus Christ and the gospel here and now anticipate what life will be like in the world to come.

We are to be a community of people whose sacrificial way of life anticipates the coming kingdom of God. The Church embodies an experiment in a new way of being human. It is an experiment. That means it is not for those who cannot stand failure, because we will all have failures. It is for those who choose to find their true identity in the romance of God with man. It is for imperfect people who have caught a vision of the splendid world God is at work to create for redeemed humanity.

Jesus' life gives us the working model. It calls for a way of life characterized by self-denial and at times great sacrifice in the spirit of Jesus' life. The Spirit through the Word gives us the power. Are you willing to work together to make BVBC such a community? In this moment of great personal liberty and at the beginning of this holiest week of the Christian calendar we are being offered the chance to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him. Will you do that? If you have done so in the past, would you renew your promise to God?