Losing Your Life to Save it
Video: https://youtu.be/wiAOzxy6N1g
This was one of those weeks where God led me to change my sermon at the last minute. I didn’t have time to write everything so there are very brief notes. Like so many things I depend on the Holy Spirit for words and guidance. The other version is below but was never preached.
Open the eyes of my heart Lord. Jesus wants to open our eyes. He wants to show us what is really happening what we really need. Today, marks a shift in the gospel of Mark. Up until this point Jesus has done some wonderful things: healings, welcoming love, and casting out evil. You would think just seeing these and what they mean would be enough, but last week we closed with the disciples finally seeing Jesus for who He is. The Messiah: God’s chosen, annointed servant, priest and king. This amazing truth is the beginning of what we really need and so Jesus wants to keep opening the eyes of our heart, because there is so much more to see.
And so Jesus starts by telling them a truth that is both terrifying and immensely hopeful. Jesus begins to tell them about His torture and death. You could imagine how you would react if a good friend, young and healthy told you that they were going to die. You would probably say, you’ve got years, decades, don’t talk like that. I have seen parents and grandparents try to talk to their kids about their death and all they got was denial and rejection. It is a strange thing for Jesus or anyone to be talking about death and rejection and yet here being rejected with His closest friends. Yet, we and they don’t usually see what we are doing.
We can so easily be like Peter ignoring or rejecting numb to the struggle, the suffering and death around us, which means that we usually miss and actually deny the hope and life that is contained within that suffering and death. Peter missed Jesus offering Him a greater hope than if Jesus never died. Did you notice what Jesus said after His death, “In three days, He will rise again”? Suffering and death is tragic, but if our greatest servant, priest and king can defeat suffering and death there is no greater hope for us. What could that mean for us?
It seems impossible, it might even appear to be a contradiction, but somehow when we are following Jesus Christ, death actually means life and suffering means a path to fulfillment and joy. Humanities two greatest fears and enemies, death and suffering are utterly transformed in this new life being offered in Jesus. If these two things are transformed and redeemed what is left to be afraid of, fear of loss or any animal is wrapped up in suffering, discomfort and death. Death’s redemption also means that loss is but a moment and we can trust that loss will never last.
Now, you might be saying this is a beautiful hope and belief, but what proof do we have? Well, Jesus was already redeeming suffering and death. He had already raised people from the dead and healed them from pain, sickness, evil, disability and more, but the proof will continue and has continued to this day. We only have to really allow God to open our eyes to see that God is already redeeming suffering and death. I have seen grief stricken families, suddenly filled with laughter and joy as someone’s death has brought them back to long forgotten times. I have seen a cancer stricken teen find new strength and love. I have seen how that same cancer has brought together families that were otherwise wrent in two. Not every redemption is as immediate or obvious as these, but it is there, if we are willing to trust and live in God.
For the disciples, they couldn’t see that at first. We already heard their inability to hear the hope when Jesus first told them and He will tell them three more times. Even after this when Jesus is transfigured in front of them to a new kind of glory, waited on by Moses and Elijah, they were still unable to see what Jesus’ death would mean, but vision of the hope and glory of Jesus would come as it will for us. So we sing, open the eyes of my heart. As at the transfiguration when we see Jesus lifted up and shining because of His love, service, sacrifice, grace, we are given a promise, a hope and shown a better way to live.
Do you know what is happening when we see Moses and Elijah with Jesus on the mountain? Not only are they a confirmation that Jesus is even greater than them, but they are telling us who Jesus is. Do you know that Moses and Elijah two of the very few who saw God while they were up on a mountain? Moses only saw His back and from that image Moses began to shine. Elijah heard a still small voice and came out to talk with God. Both Moses and Elijah were gifted by these moments to become powerful servants of God. Here there is a strange compression of time as Moses and Elijah are brought present to see God again in Jesus, only now we can all see Him, and so now all of us have the opportunity to be transfigured and empowered to live lives like Christ.
3 impossible things - That the world has been made more hopeful and alive through suffering and death
That what happened in one moment lives true in every moment
That our lives and fulfilment are made even greater through suffering and death.
So, Jesus calls us to follow Him in His way of living, to take up our cross and follow Him. To take up a sacrificial life for God and others.
Vs. 1
We have been slowly walking through the gospel of Mark. The shortest gospel in the Bible. What we have found in the first half of Mark, is an amazing offer that comes with Jesus as he brings with him a whole new potential. A new potential for our senses, a new potential for community, a new potential for our work, for healing, life, and well everything. The way we start to live into this new potential, this new kingdom is by humbly accepting Jesus as our Lord Jesus Christ and seeking His new Kingdom above everything else. This is easier said than done, as many people hold things in the way of Jesus, maybe it is pride, or ego, or self-righteousness or monetary wealth, or what they think they know, or honour, or social status, or so many other things. It is easy to let other things become more important than God. I have done it. I am sure everyone here has done it, but in those moments where people step out in humble faith and trust, we can see God’s powerful and loving kingdom at work, as people’s lives are changed forever. Today, we get the natural consequences of this giving up for God as Jesus shows us how He has and will give up everything, even His own life for God and the result is something no one could have imagined at the time.
Jesus begins to tell us that He is going to suffer greatly, be rejected, and die. We can already suspect why because we have seen it in the gospel. As new potential takes shape the old order is challenged, those with the most to lose fight to protect it. So, the religious, social, and political leaders, who should be most willing to embrace the Messiah, the Son of God, are the very ones who will kill Him.
You can only imagine how the disciples would have felt. Here is their friend, teacher, and the one they just proclaimed as God’s chosen priest and king (the messiah), and now Jesus begins to tell them that He is going to suffer and die. I think most of us would react like Peter and reject the idea. I have seen it so often as grandparents talk about their death, or as someone is suffering and dying in the hospital. People don’t even want to imagine it and so they push it to the side, which means that they miss the hope and the truth that lies behind it.
The same thing happened to the disciples. They hear about Jesus’ suffering, rejection and death and what is the result:
1st - they reject that it will happen
2nd - they make it happen when they reject Jesus even in this moment
And 3rd - they miss that Jesus will be raised on the third day - arguably the most important, most hopeful reality one could ever know, and yet there is no comment and they only reject Jesus’ death
This rejection for a moment makes Peter and it can make us into a kind of Satan as Peter tempts Jesus and we tempt others to protect what they have and take the easier road and so we can take away the hope that can only come through the difficult road
The world with all of its quick fixes, comfort food, time savers, makes a lot of promises to lead us on any road other than the difficult one. And so we can all look back on our lives and realize that we are too much like Dorothy: we have all followed the Yellow Brick Road to the Wizard with no real power. Yet the result is that we miss the real life and bounty that has been offered to us in Jesus.
We face this seemingly contradictory reality: if we spend our lives protecting and seeking to save our life that is when we lose it. We don’t live it, but even worse because we have never really found it. We have never actually found the amazing potential that God has given you to change the world and so even if we gain the world, we still have nothing because true joy and life has escaped us. On the other hand, if we are willing to walk the difficult road of following Jesus, we might face suffering, but a hope and life we had never imagined would begin to take shape in us.
That is what the transfiguration points us towards. As Jesus willingly moves towards His death, giving up everything for God, His life is transfigured, glorified, and lifted up as it will be in His resurrection from the dead. So can ours.
There is a lot more in the story of the transfiguration and the demon-possessed boy, like how Jesus is the culmination of Jewish Scripture, how easily the evil spirits of this world manipulate and lead us to death, and how prayer is a humble act of giving up control to God and so we see God powerfully move. This will all have to be left for another time, but for now I wanted to end with a personal story.
Before I was a priest, I moved from Saskatoon, Sk to Toronto to study and be an actor. As will happen in life, things didn’t always go perfectly. I ended up blaming God for the struggle and fighting my hardest to succeed. Within a few months of graduating from Sheridan and U of T, I did succeed. I got a major gig with the Canadian Opera company, a national commercial with Hyundai, and 3 shows that toured for a year and a bit around North America. This was all I was hoping for and yet, I look back and it feels like I was in a daze. On the surface, it looks like a lot, and yet being in it there was often only fickle comforts, it was fleeting and I always felt like I needed more. I remember in one of my lowest points, I turned to prayer and God showed me that I was in a kind of quicksand. The harder I fought, the quicker I sank and the result was that I was losing myself in it. It took a long time, but eventually, after a year or so, I was willing to give up my life even just a little bit to God. And for that moment, something wonderful happened. The stage came to life in a new way for me and that moment eventually lead me to an even more fulfilling life here, but that is a much longer story.
