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A Life Worth Dying For
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| 3/8/2009 |
The scriptures for this sermon are found here.
Jesus spoke openly that he expected to suffer and die, and Peter contradicted him. And why wouldn’t he? When someone we love starts talking about how they are going to die, and how they are going to be all alone in doing so, the human reaction is to say, “Oh, don’t be silly. You’re going to be fine.”
But Jesus, seeing that Peter is speaking for the group, that they share his sentimentality that the mission they are on is filled with only the sunny moments of feeding the hungry, giving sight to the blind, and release to the captive, speaks harshly: “Get behind me, Satan.” When I read this, I always feel embarrassed, like when I witness two people who love each other have a spat in public. It helps to know that Satan here simply means adversary, or better, hinderer. Jesus has said, “I am going to Jerusalem, and there I will die.” Peter replies, standing in front of Jesus, as if to block his way, saying, “Oh no you are not.” Jesus retorts, “Get out of my way. Do not hinder me.”
It is the next words of Jesus that must have hurt Peter, at least they hurt me: “You are speaking your mind not on God’s things, but on your own selfish needs.” Over the ether, one can almost hear Corretta Scott King begging her husband Martin Luther King not to go to Selma, to desist in Montgomery, to avoid Birmingham and to stay out of Memphis. If you can’t think of me, I can hear her say, think of your children. Peter’s position about Jesus going to Jerusalem seems quite considered. But maybe he should know what history has taught: to love a prophet means having to let them go. For a prophet, compassion means confrontation.
Jesus turns to the crowds that have followed him. They have seen him feed the multitudes, and confront the religious establishment. They watched him give sight to the blind. They wanted more. Jesus warns what lies ahead. “If any want to become”--what a word!--become-- “If you want to become my followers, you will need to follow me carrying a cross.” Meaning, to follow me is to die.
Jesus isn’t being figurative here, but literal. History recounts that 100 years earlier than this heated exchange with the disciples and the crowd, a Roman slave named Spartacus--you may have seen the movie with the dimpled Kirk Douglas--organized a slave revolt against the Roman government. He kept the revolt alive for three years, defeating the mighty and powerful Roman armies four different times. Finally, the revolt was crushed by Marcus Crassus. Not only did he crucify Spartacus, he crucified six thousand slaves. He lined them up along the road to Rome for 200 miles. From that time forward, crucifixion became the wholesale torture of the Roman empire; it was the terror that subdued the masses. In Jesus’ day, crucifixion was a daily event in Jerusalem, the crosses marking the entrance to the holy city as warning to any who would enter in hopes of dislodging Caesar’s empire and army.
Jesus gives the crowd fair warning. If they are going to follow him to Jerusalem, bring a cross. Better to be crucified on your own than the one the Romans will provide.
But what does it mean for us, today? Scripture is asking a question that each of us probably ponders in fleeting moments: For what are we willing to die? Better: For what are we willing to give our life?
All parents, it strikes me, are willing to give their life for their children; life’s greatest pain comes when a parent cannot give his or her life for a dying child. For a nation to survive and prosper, it must be able, through coercion or compulsion, to convince its people that the nation’s ideals are worth sacrificing their life for.
Are you willing to die for God’s mission of healing, redemption and salvation in the world? Are you willing to die, as prophets often do, for the justice they seek to restore? Are you able to show the greatest love as Christ defines it, to lay down your life for your brother or sister?
This exchange between Jesus and Peter and the crowd reminds me that scripture slowly teaches us an eternal truth: life’s meaning often comes from knowing for what we will give our life.
Søren Kierkegaard—not exactly a household name but you best get used to him—who said, “Christianity is not the doctrine of denying oneself. Christianity is denying oneself.” To reflect spiritually on the question, “For what are you willing to give your life,” is not a gruesome question. Rather, it is a question of faithfulness.
But it’s more. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes: “To die to self is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self. . . . Only when we have become completely oblivious of self are we ready to bear the cross for Christ’s sake.”
The Christian life is a spiritual journey of wondering about your willingness to die to your self.
While central, I must admit as a preacher that I am not so sure what it means to “die to self.” “Selfless” is not a category I know much about, certainly not “egoless.” As well, I want to have warning signs flash when toxic selflessness is a form of self-abuse, or worse, an invitation for abuse of the selfless by the abuser. Selflessness must not be exile into abusive torment.
Still, there is not grappling with the Gospel without wrestling with the call to die to self.
Now, here is an irony: In denial of self, we discover our ultimate value before God, that we have a life worth dying for.
Jesus’s question to the crowd pierces: What is the profit if we gain the whole world if we lose our life? What can you give from what you’ve gotten in the world to get your life back?
Jesus is preaching that the value of life is the gift of life itself; the value of life is not measured in its accumulation, wealth or power. One can only gauge the value of life by renouncing all things that world judges as valuable.
I must admit that I wonder if I have this right, but I think that Jesus is saying that the denial of self is really a claiming of self back from the corruption of the world that measures life in terms of wealth and power. I am not so sure that he is telling us to die to self as much as he is telling us to die to the world’s view of self.
When we do, if we do, we can claim that we have a life worth dying for.
The Good News is just this simple: Jesus was going to Jerusalem to die for life itself, your life in particular.
Yes, you have a life worth dying for, not because of its accomplishments, or its wealth, but because you have life--you have God’s most precious gift and our only real possession.
The addict in the crack house has a life worth dying for, as does the child afflicted with AIDS. The most corrupt, evil individual has a life worth dying for, because no matter what a mess a person makes of life, the innate human dignity that God bestows in life is never lost to God. When it comes to a Hitler (always the simple example, I apologize), you and I may have abandoned the quest for any dignity remaining in that life, but not God. God’s search for worth in human life is unconditional and never ending.
There is a corollary to this Good News: the poor person’s life is of equal worth to the rich person’s, the Palestinian’s is equal to the Israeli’s, the Iraqi’s and Afghani’s to the American’s, the Muslim’s and the Jew’s to the Christian’s. Marcus Crassus’ life is of equal worth to Spartacus’.
Maybe we only discover this Good News when we die to the world’s understanding of self that measures a life by wealth and power, not the reality of the gift of life that bears God’s image in us all.
I wonder seriously if I could give my life as offering to the very gift of life itself, trusting that God would redeem that life, because I have no worldly gift to offer for it.
But I am certain, because grace has bestowed this certainty upon me through the Holy Spirit’s tender caress, that I have a life worth dying for, as do you, as does he, as does she.
And that Jesus was telling Peter to get out of his way, because he was willing--meaning that God was willing--to go to Jerusalem and die for my life, your life, his life and her life, as a way of proclaiming God’s redemption of life itself.
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