All In Or All Out, There Is No In Between

Mark 8:34-9:1

A mother woke up her son one morning and said, “Honey, it’s time to get ready for church.” The son replied, “But mom, I don’t want to go to church today!” Ever been there moms?

Well, the mother persisted. She turned his bedroom light on and said, “But you have to go to church!” The son pulled his pillow over his head and responded, “I don’t want to go to church mom!”

The mother said, “You need to get up.” This time the son asked, “Why?” The mother said, “I’ll give you three good reasons …

#1 – you’re always glad you’ve gone once you get there;

#2 – you always enjoy the music at church and today will be no exception;

and #3 – you’re the pastor and the people need you…..”

To be totally honest, there have certainly been a few Sunday mornings when I’ve felt that way. Not many, but a few. I think most pastors, if they’re honest, will say they’ve felt that way on one Sunday or another. But if you take away the line separating pastor and congregation, I think most Jesus-followers have days when they’d rather mail it in and not REALLY follow Jesus. There are going to be times when it would be easier, more comfortable, and possibly safer to not. The problem is, when we try to do that, we miss out on the adventure of following Jesus.

A few years ago a representative from Teach America paid a visit to one of the premier university campuses – Duke. Teach America hires the brightest students and places them in some of the nation’s worst public schools. So the representative stood before the crowd of Duke students and said, “I can tell just by looking at you that I’ve come to the wrong place. Somebody told me that this was the BMW school and I believe it. Just looking at you, I know you’ve achieved success and that you’re on a track for even more success. Yet I’m here today to convince you to throw your life away in the toughest job that you’ll ever have. I want people to go into the hollow of West Virginia and the ghettos of South Los Angeles to teach in the worst schools in America. Last year two of our teachers were killed on the job. But just by looking at you, I can tell that you’re not interested. So go to grad school, make your millions, and live for success and comfort. But if by chance you’re interested in the toughest job in America, I have a few brochures so come over and see me. Meeting’s over.” With that, those Duke students pushed into the aisles and mobbed that representative, signing up for more information.

I believe that deep down God has wired us for a sense of mission. A challenge-free life might be safe, but ultimately it’s boring, trite, and empty. That’s one of the things I love about Jesus: he can be so kind and gentle and (as we say in the Midwest) so nice.[i]

On the cross, Jesus takes your sin and mine into himself and dies with it there, destroying it. In a way that I don’t fully understand, he reaches forward through history into your life and my life and grabs all of the filth and dirt grim – all of the sin, and brings it back to himself and takes it upon himself as if he were the one doing all of those things, and he dies with it on himself. And in exchange, he gives us HIS life! His perfect righteousness counts toward us, and our filthy sinfulness gets put on him and he takes care of it. He doesn’t sweep it under a rug or just shrug it off saying “You did your best.” He DIES with it, the just punishment for sin. He dies, and we get to live! That’s why we call the life and message of Jesus “gospel.” Gospel simply means “good news.” And I don’t know about you, but for me, Jesus dying in my place and giving me his life in return is really, really good news!

Jesus can be so kind and gentle and healing, and then he can turn around and issue, without apology, a challenge that cuts to the core of our existence. Turn with me to Mark 8:34-9:1.

In dramatic fashion, Peter has just aced and then immediately flunked exams. He has just boldly proclaimed that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and then, when Jesus told his disciples that far from being a powerful and cunning military leader who would help Israel to throw off the bonds of Rome and defeat her enemies, as Messiah Jesus would instead be rejected by Israel’s leaders and killed, and then he would rise again – Peter rebuked Jesus, and telling him not to say or think such things. And Jesus turned right around and rebuked Peter and called him Satan.

And then Jesus calls his disciples, and others in the crowd around them, to gather around him, and for the first time, he teaches them what his cross means not just for him, but for them. Because if we’re going to follow Jesus, we have to carry a cross too. Look at V. 34.

We want grace. We want forgiveness. We want mercy. We want God’s kindness and patience. We want the Holy Spirit to produce love and joy and peace in our lives. But when it comes to carrying crosses, we’d rather stay in bed.

We talk so much about belief in relation to faith that we’ve turned following Jesus into just thinking, or believing, the right things about Jesus, and about a lot of other things too. Faith has become all about what we think about a long list of issues. Now, don’t hear me wrong here, because what we think DOES matter. We need to think the right things about Jesus and his Kingdom. We need to confess that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

But a disciple of Jesus has to do more than just get his title right! As Peter soon found out, when Jesus in essence told him, “You’re right Peter, I am the Christ. Now get behind me and follow me.” And where was Peter, and the other disciples, and everyone else in the crowd that day following him to? Where was Jesus going? To the cross. It was from here in Caesarea Philippi that Jesus began to move, slowly and with purpose, toward Jerusalem and his cross. As followers of Jesus we follow him to the cross. The Christian life is a cross-bearing life. And in Jesus’ day, a walk to the cross, carrying the cross beam onto which your hands would be nailed, was a death march. The way of the cross is a death march.

Jesus took his death walk to his cross and died a death that separated him from the Father with our sin on him so that we don’t have to. But as we follow him, we WILL still carry our own cross. And what must die on our cross? Our self. Jesus said “Deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me.” Your self is your sense of who you are at your core, and every one of us has a sense self that is in one way or another resistant to and runs counter to the Kingdom of God. We have a self that seeks comfort or security or honor or power or pleasure above all else.

In this world, glory comes by honoring the self above all else. And so politicians serve others so long as “public service” satisfies their need for greater power. Military leaders become great by sending other people into battle but not going into battle themselves. We climb the ladder of success by using other people like rungs on the ladder, stepping on them to get what we want. Because money is the most potent form of power, we should collect a lot of it and give away only enough to make yourself look charitable. And give out of your abundance but don’t sacrifice anything that might keep you comfortable.

Jesus turns all of that on its head. In this world, glory comes by honoring the self above all else. In the Kingdom of God, glory and adventure come by walking the way of the cross, crucifying self, and following Jesus. Now, we need to understand something here. Self-denial is NOT asceticism or even self-discipline. Asceticism is denying something TO the self that is or might be enjoyable. Ascetics ALWAYS deny themselves anything enjoyable.

When I was in college in Kentucky just south of Lexington, I was in an area where Shakers had once been. Shakers were a little bit like the Amish. By looking at them, you may not be able to tell them apart. But the Shakers took even Amish restrictions to the extreme and decided, among other things, that as a way of showing their radical dedication to God they would never have sex. Like ever. Even in marriage. Needless to say, the Shaker movement didn’t last long. They didn’t get many converts and they weren’t reproducing within the family either. And they died out. Denial TO self says “sex is enjoyable so I’m going to deny myself that enjoyment always.” Denial OF self says “sex is enjoyable and is a gift from God and therefore I will express it within the boundaries God has set up for sexual relationships and will express myself sexually only within my marriage relationship. I will fast from it outside of marriage and feast on it within my marriage.”

When I deny my self, I do not deny things TO myself, I deny my self. If I am proud, I must die to my desire for status and honor, and so do things and give to things in a way that I do not receive public credit. If I am greedy, I deny my appetite for wealth and things and live simply. If I am complacent, I die to my love of ease. If I am faint-hearted and anxious, I die to my craving for security. If I am violent, I die to my desire for revenge. And as I do that, I pick up my cross and follow Jesus.

Look at Vv. 35-37. It’s easy to admire Jesus. It’s much harder and messier to follow Jesus. Christians, Jesus followers, are not detached observers or admirers. We are people who deny our self and desire for self-preservation and comfort and security and success, and we take up our cross, and we follow Jesus. And what we discover is the great paradox – that it is in dying to self that we begin to truly live. It is in dying to self that life becomes the adventure God created for us, and created us for. Adventure may be a lot of things – exhilarating and exciting, but it is never safe and comfortable.

Following Jesus in the way of the cross is a death march that leads to life. To save your life, lose it. You see, this world is the antithesis of everything Jesus and the Kingdom of God represents. Because sin entered this world, it has become the opposite of everything God intended it to be. And so embracing Jesus and life as citizens of his Kingdom feels like a death and rebirth and will often place us at odds with the values of this world. It requires us to go against the flow, to swim upstream, and swimming against the flow is never easy. You see, it is my false self, my worldly self, that must be crucified. And when it is, I discover the real self that God intended me to be.

It’s easy to admire Jesus. It’s hard and costly to actually follow him. It’s easy to admire the business owner who does what is best for her employees and customers before herself. It’s hard to be that business owner. It’s easy to admire a hard-working, honest employee. It’s hard to be that hard-working, honest employee. It’s easy to admire the kid in the school who sits by and is a real friend to the kids no one else wants to sit by or be friends with. It’s much harder to be that kid who sits by and is a real friend to the kids no one else wants to sit by or be friends with.

But that dying to self comes with a promise. Look at Vv. 38-9:1. “If you cannot die to self, and therefore show that you are ashamed to really follow me, I will not recognize you as one of my own.” But the opposite is also true. “If you deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me, you will discover the real self that I have always intended you to be and will recognize you as one of my own before the Father in heaven.” Admiring Jesus is easy. Jesus doesn’t want admirers. He never did. Following Jesus is hard. Because sin turned everything upside down, our selves innately run counter to everything Jesus wants for his creation and everything the Kingdom of God stands for, and following Jesus feels like a death march. But, paradoxically, it’s a death march that leads to life! To a significance and a purpose and meaning and adventure that we cannot even begin to imagine.

In the September/October 2007 issue of Today’s Christian, Shirley Shaw tells the story of how the sacrifices of a successful cabinet maker named Terry Lane continue to change a drug-riddled neighborhood in Jacksonville, Florida.

My business had prospered to the point my 40-man staff needed more space to produce the quality cabinets for which Mid-Lane was well known. We found an ideal location in northwest Jacksonville and in 1985 built a 25,000 square foot state-of-the-art plant that was soon humming with activity. Life was good. But my peace and comfort were short lived.

Almost immediately, problems erupted. Every night the burglar alarm sounded, and I was summoned to the plant by police officers. Broken windows, shots fired, bullet holes in the walls, stolen equipment, vandalism—even incinerated cars in the parking lot.

One night an officer asked me, “What possessed you to build a plant this close to ‘The Rock’?”

“What do you mean, ‘The Rock’?” I asked.

“The Cleveland Arms apartments,” he responded. “More crack cocaine is sold here than anywhere in Jacksonville, so we call it ‘The Rock.’” And he proceeded to enlighten me about my new neighborhood. The 200-unit subsidized housing complex was occupied by drug dealers, prostitutes, and felons, a place considered so dangerous police were hesitant to go there…

As I sat mulling over the situation, from out of nowhere came a thought so clear it was almost audible: If you’ll love those who despitefully use you, I’ll take care of it. Stunned and shaken by God’s admonition, I wondered how I’d obey this gentle command. Then I sensed him say, “Forget about all the shooting and all the garbage. Look at the children.” …

Days went by as I prayed for my neighbors and tried to figure out how to connect with this community. I bought several basketballs, wrote “Jesus loves you” and “Mr. Lane loves you” on them, and threw them over the fence into the complex. There was no immediate reaction, but at least they didn’t throw them back.

Then one Saturday while working alone, I stepped outside for a break. I heard the noise of children playing beneath a tractor trailer parked on the property. When they saw me, one said, “There’s the man,” and they started running.

“Wait,” I called. “Would you like something cold to drink?” Four or five little kids followed me into the plant where I opened the soft drink machine and gave them a cold soda pop. They went home, and I thought no more about it. Until Monday afternoon when I heard a commotion in the lobby and the receptionist ask, “Can I help you?”

As I walked down the hallway, I heard one little kid ask, “Where’s the big man with the beard?” Turning the corner, I saw 16 kids in the lobby looking for me – well, for the man with the key to the drink machine.

That was the beginning. Suddenly, 35 children adopted me, coming to my office every afternoon after school instead of going home. There was nothing for them to go home to. Day after day, while I worked at my drafting table, I was surrounded by kids on the floor busily coloring or doing other crafts I had brought…

Thus began the journey that would change my world and that of many kids whose addicted parents left them to fend for themselves. Often hungry, unkempt, undisciplined, with no structure in their lives or motivation to attend school or church, these children would be the next lost generation. I felt compelled to do what I could. Years flew by, and the kids I mentored became a part of my life.

Terry Lane’s journey of self-denial continued. Ten years after he first reached out to the kids of “The Rock,” he sold his share of the cabinetmaking business to his partner and started Metro Inner City Sunday School. When the kids got older, they started youth groups and teen programs. It wasn’t long before Terry asked the owner of Cleveland Arms to give him an apartment. In five-years’ time, Lane established a community center called Metro Kids Konnection where the staff feeds over 145 children physically, academically, and spiritually.

Shaw ends her article with these final thoughts from Terry:

There is so much to do, but I’m excited and grateful for the direction God chose for me. My wife and I have gone from enjoying a six-figure annual income to subsisting on $12,000 a year, but God faithfully meets every need. And the rewards are incomparable…

Nothing can replace the joy of having a little child crawl into my lap with a hug for “Pastor Terry,” or for a young man who has been rescued from a potential life of dealing drugs to look me in the eye, shake my hand with a firm grip, and say, “Thanks, P.T.”

That’s my reward for “looking at the children.”[ii]

Do you just admire Jesus, or are you following him? Let’s pray.

[i] Matt Woodley in his sermon “The Ultimate Challenge.”

[ii] Terry Lane (as told to Shirley Shaw), “Look at the Children!” Today’s Christian (September/October 2007)