And then of course there’s Grandparents’ Day. This year we’ll be part of the mob rushing to buy cards from our son to send to the grandparents. Not to mention we have to remember to send cards on Valentine’s Day and if you’re blood runs green, then you can’t miss Saint Patrick’s Day.

I heard someone call this card-giving craziness of holidays the Hallmark Holidays. I guess they thought Hallmark was inventing new ways for us to send cards. But, you’ve got to ask yourself: does that make these card-buying events “holidays”? The very word “holiday” is from “holy day.” And that implies that some kind of religious observance is involved. But, other than the biggies like Christmas and Easter, most religious holidays don’t get room on the rack at Hallmark.

That is certainly the case for Pentecost. Now, you’d think a greeting card giant like Hallmark would be all over this holiday. I mean, what’s not to like? You got your fire, your wind, your speaking in other languages, your birth of one of the great religious movements in history, your built-in holiday Spirit — all the stuff that makes for a memorable event. It even lends itself to great slogans like “Hope you get fired up this Pentecost” or “More (Holy Spirit) power to ya!” But, alas, the shelves at Hallmark are empty of Pentecost cards. It seems like Pentecost is the forgotten holiday.

And what a shame! Pentecost is an amazing event in the history of the Church. But even more importantly, it reminds us to celebrate the present reality that God is always with us.
At least that’s what our passage for today is trying to tell us. It’s located in what’s called the Farewell Discourse in the Gospel of John. This is the centerpiece of John’s gospel. It takes place toward the end of Jesus‘ ministry as he is preparing the disciples for his death, resurrection, and ascension. In other words, Jesus is telling the disciples that he’s going to leave and he wants to prepare them for his departure.

I’m sure we’ve all thought or at least heard at one time or another: “If only we would have been there when Jesus was around. It would have been so much easier.” The idea, of course, is that with Jesus around we would have understood everything because he would have explained it and told us what to do. Not to mention, he would have encouraged us. It’s a pretty common perception. It’s certainly crossed my mind a time or two. But, it’s wrong on two accounts.

First of all, the evidence of the gospels suggests that even when Jesus was around, folks didn’t get it. Mark’s gospel is famous for the fumbling disciples who never quiet understand what Jesus is trying to teach them. Let’s face it: Even when Jesus was around, people couldn’t really make him out.

Second, in this passage from John, we learn that Jesus has promised to be around always. In fact, he’s promised that it will be easier, not harder, in this new mode. So, you’ve got to ask: How will he be around, now?

He has promised to send us his own spirit, his own breath, his own inner life.  He uses a special word to describe the spirit. In verse 16 he says that the father will give us “another helper.” This “helper” is the spirit.

But that word “helper” is rich and many-sided. It doesn’t simply mean someone who comes to lend assistance in our various tasks. It certainly does mean that as well, but it also means much more. Let’s look at that more closely.

First, when Jesus says the father is sending another helper he means it in the traditional sense of the word. The spirit comes to give God’s people the strength and energy to do what we have to do, to live for God and witness to God’s love in the world. Certainly that fits the definition of helper quite well.

But, we could also say the spirit is our “comforter.” Comfort is a strange and wonderful thing. Have you noticed how, when someone is deeply distressed, after a death or a tragedy, the fact of having other people around, hugging them and being alongside them, gives them strength for the next moment, then the one after that, and the one after that? Outwardly nothing has changed. The tragedy is still a tragedy. The dead person won’t be coming back. But other human support changes our ability to cope with disaster. It gives us strength. When the spirit is spoken of as the “comforter,” this is what it means. That kind of extra strength to meet special needs when they come up in life.

So, the spirit is our helper and our comforter, but there is one more way that we should understand the work of the spirit. We see that the spirit is also an “advocate.” An advocate stands up in a court of law and explains to the judge or jury how things are from his or her client’s point of view. The advocate pleads the case. Jesus assumes that his followers will often find themselves on the wrong side of official persecution. That certainly proved true throughout the Church’s history and even today as countless Christians are persecuted for their beliefs in countries like China and Sudan. As our advocate, the Spirit stands beside us throughout life’s challenges.

As a result of this promised spirit, the spirit of Jesus himself, we are never alone. Jesus didn’t come and go away forever. Instead, when Jesus returned to the Father in Heaven, he sent the Holy Spirit to be our helper, comforter, and advocate. He sent his own spirit to be with us always so that we might continue on the way he set before us.

In my opinion, that is something worth celebrating. That’s something worthy of a “holy day.” Pentecost doesn’t simply remember a day long ago past, but rather it celebrates the enduring truth that Jesus Christ is with us always. So maybe there isn’t a card for Pentecost, but that doesn’t have to stop us from recognizing the dynamic presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives today and every day as we see to live, work, act, and represent Christ to the world.

Let me pray for us…

I recently learned something really cool about the song “Amazing Grace.” You may be surprised to learn that the writer of this favorite hymn was a former slave trader. Crazy, I know. But it’s true. His name was John Newton and he was a wretch! John didn’t grow up in the church. He started working on ships by the age of eleven and was totally void of any relationship with God. Then, during a particularly brutal storm at sea, he gave his life to Christ. As a new Christian, the business of slave trading began to wear on him and he left the sea behind. Eventually, John became a minister and preached the Gospel for 43-years. Truly, John Newton was lost and then found.

And that’s what this parable of the lost coin is really all about. Being sadly lost and then joyously found. In Luke 15 we find back to back parables about being lost and found. And each one shows a different way people can get lost in our world.

First, the parable of the lost sheep shows us how people, like lost sheep, can get lost by just wandering off. Just drifting away. Second, the parable of the lost coin reminds us that sometimes people can get lost and not even know it. Third, the parable of the lost son depicts how people sometimes willfully and arrogantly just run off and get lost by their own selfish choosing.

But in all three cases, the lost are found. They are brought home and restored to their rightful place. Today, I want to take a closer look at the second parable. The story of the lost coin.

I imagine losing a coin in a first-century home is like losing a coin in our homes today; it’s not a very hard thing to do. There are all kinds of places that a coin could slip into and we would never notice. So looking for a lost coin in a house is like looking for a needle in a haystack. And yet, the woman in this story is searching high and low for a single lost coin. A single coin doesn’t sound like much to us, but you gotta think about it from her perspective. In the first-century, it was probably the equivalent of a day’s wage. Not to mention, most people were pretty poor. And like my momma always says, “every penny counts.”

I also read that the coin might have had even greater value than it’s spending power. Married women wore a head-dress made of ten silver coins linked together by a silver chain. And girls would scrape and save for years to gather ten coins for the head-dress. It was kind of like our wedding rings today. Who knows, it may have been one of these coins that the woman lost. So she searched for it as urgently as any woman would search is she lost her wedding ring. Imagine her joy when she found it!

In this parable, Jesus is reminding us that God loves and values and cherishes each one of us like that. When we get lost, God urgently wants to seek us and find us. God’s not just going to let one of us get away. God launches an all out search and rescue mission. Maybe it doesn’t make much practical sense, to go searching for one single lost thing when you’ve already got a bunch, but that’s exactly what Jesus is saying in this parable. God is searching for each and every one of us. And, God is committed to finding us.

Now, if it was you and me, we’d probably give up a whole lot faster than that. We’d probably figure out a way to justify the loss. But, God’s not like that. God’s out there trying to find us no matter the cost even if it means death on a cross. God is willing to go all the way to the cross in order to reach out and find every single lost person. God is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure no one is left out. Even if it means death on a cross. That’s how much a single solitary person matters to God. Make no mistake, God wants to find every lost person.

And there’s an unexpected twist. God is trying to find us. We usually operate under the impression that we’re trying to find God. Like it’s something that we accomplish, finding God. We’ve all heard it said a million times that this person or that one needs to find Jesus. They need to find God and stop whatever it is they’re doing wrong. Haven’t you heard that? Haven’t you thought that? So and so needs to find Jesus!

But, you know, folks, I don’t think Jesus is missing. We’re the ones who are lost. Sure, we’d all like to think it was some great accomplishment on our part, finding Jesus and all. Maybe there’s a part of us that needs to believe it’s up to us to find God.  There’s a part of us that needs to see our own accomplishment at work here.  Because if we had something to do with, then we’re a whole lot better then those folks who can’t get with the program and find Jesus. If it was up to us to find Jesus, we really could look down our noses at all the people who hadn’t done their own searching and finding. We’ve gotten used to thinking that we’re the ones looking for Jesus; but Jesus isn’t missing.

We’re the ones who are lost. This parable is pretty clear on that point. The coin didn’t even know it was lost. That was certainly the case in my life. I had no idea that I was lost. As most of you know, I didn’t grow up in the church. Heck, I didn’t even know that being in a relationship with God mattered. I was happy. Content even with the way my life was going. I guess is pretty easy to be happy and content when you don’t know what you’re missing. I was like that coin in the parable: totally unaware that I was even lost.

This parable says that God is like the woman, desperately searching for that one lost coin. And if we’re like the coin, that means God is desperately searching for us! God is trying to find us.

Jesus is pretty clear that God’s in the business of looking for us. God has launched an all out search and rescue mission for every single person who is lost. And you know one of the ways we can know for sure that every person, every single person, matters? Jesus tells us God celebrates when even a single sinner comes home. God gets down right giddy when we’re found! So, God throws a big party in Heaven. God is so excited when a lost persons is found that God celebrates.

It’s like John Newton wrote, “Amazing Grace… that saved a wretch like me.” He knew it wasn’t anything he did. John didn’t claim he found Jesus. Instead, he knew it was God who found him and brought him home. Just like God has done since the beginning and continues to do. God is on a search and rescue mission to find every single lost person. And, here’s the kicker, God has enlisted our help in the mission. We are called to seek the lost right alongside God. God wants us to reach out to people, maybe even folks who don’t know they are lost, and invite them to know Christ. We’re all part of the search and rescue mission to be sure that every single lost person is found.

Let me pray for us…

I suppose every family has those things they like to do together. Some families to hike. Others play golf or watch sports together. Maybe other families like to debate politics. My family, well, we like to eat together. It’s safe to say that eating is pretty much our hobby. Whenever we get together, even now when Americans are suppose to be getting more health conscious and eating less and healthier foods, we feast! And, I do mean feast. There’s always enough food to feed an army! These days, when we’re scattered all over God’s green earth, these meals together have taken on a new meaning for our family. When we’re gathered around the table, it doesn’t matter how much time has passed or how far we’ve traveled, we pick up right where we left off. It’s as though our time together around the table binds us together. For my family, eating together is an important part of who we are.

And I think Jesus would agree that should be the case for the church. Eating together is an important part of what makes us the Body of Christ. And that’s what we’re going to explore today. But first, I want to take a closer look at a very important meal that Jesus had on the road to Emmaus. Let’s remember the story:

It’s just a few days after the terrible events of Good Friday when Jesus died on the cross and rumors are floating around that maybe Jesus wasn’t dead after all. But, these two followers of Jesus aren’t sure. They’re confused and hurting so they decide to walk the road to Emmaus. Emmaus is about seven miles from Jerusalem and they’re going there precisely because its seven miles away from Jerusalem. That’s seven whole miles away from the pain and confusion of Jerusalem.

And that’s where Jesus found those two disciples: going to a place where they could sort through the pain of Christ’s death and the confusion of rumors floating around that maybe he wasn’t dead after all. Jesus approached the disciples as a stranger, and his mood didn’t match their own. He was informal and kind of chatty. I imagine the scene went something like this: “What are y’all talking about?”

The disciples look at him, filled with all kinds of sadness, and a little annoyed at the ignorance of this guy. “What hole did you just crawl out of? Everyone knows what’s been happening in Jerusalem.” And the disciple began to tell this stranger on the road about Jesus, his death, and the rumors of his resurrection.

Jesus rebuked them for being so reluctant to believe. To prove his point, he ran through all the scriptures from Genesis through the Prophets explaining how they pointed toward this very moment. They listen to the familiar teaching, but still the disciples did not recognize Jesus. Finally, as our strange trio of travelers approached their destination, Jesus, who’s always several steps ahead of the disciples, walked on as if to continue his journey, not wanting to impose on the hospitality of the disciples or to force himself into their still-mourning hearts. But the disciples urged him to stay. I think Jesus must have had a small smile on his face before turning back to the disciples. His disciples were slow to believe but at least they were kind to him—a stranger—and that was a lesson he had worked hard to teach.

Now the scene changes. The strange traveler, now their honored guest, has been given a spot at the head of the table. As they prepare to eat, he follows a pattern that he has used before, and that we have used in the church ever since: he took the bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples. That was the moment they needed. The disciples finally recognized Jesus in the breaking of bread.

The story of Emmaus reminds us that we are all invited to know Jesus in the breaking of the bread. The problem is, the simple act of sitting down around a table is something a lot of people don’t find very important. But, for Christians, the shared meal is a vital aspect of spiritual life. Perhaps no other theologian better captured this than Dietrich Bonhoeffer who wrote a little book called Life Together that talked about his experience of Christian community at the height of the Nazi regime in Germany: Read from Life Together, page 66

Bonhoeffer is saying meals are important. Jesus still visits us at mealtime, often through the friends, family and strangers we eat with. Christ is found in our companions, the ones we eat bread with, and the supper table is the Lord’s everyday cathedral. It is in the saying of table grace and the breaking of bread with one another that a meal with Jesus is celebrated, and his resurrected presence is experience.

Meals are a time for celebrating. They remind of us that God nourishes and sustains us. And that is a reason for celebrating. Ecclesiastes puts it like this: Read Ecclesiastes 8:15. Through our daily meals God is calling us to rejoice, to celebrate in the midst of our busy hectic lives.

At meals we are also reminded of our obligation to feed others. The Lord’s Prayer says it is our daily bread that we eat, not mine and not yours. We share our bread. We are bound to one other not only in the Spirit but in our whole physical being. Breaking the fellowship of the physical care also breaks the fellowship of the Spirit. This is what James warned against in his letter concerning faith without works: Read James 2:15-16. After all, Jesus meets us in the hungry.

The fellowship of meals teaches us that here we still eat the perishable bread of our earthly journey. But if we share this bread with one another, we will also one day receive the imperishable bread together in God’s house.

Meals enable us to experience the joy of intimacy with others and with God, but perhaps no other meal is more intimate than the Lord’s Supper. In this sacrament, in this mystery of our faith, we take, bless, break, and give the bread and cup as a holy act of sharing in the life of Jesus Christ. In doing so we remember the love of God in the Crucified that sets us free from sin and death. We give thanks for the real presence of Jesus in the bread and cup through the power of the Holy Spirit. And we celebrate the foretaste of the great heavenly banquet we will one day share.

Let us now celebrate a meal together in the sharing of Holy Communion.

Avatar came out on DVD this week and I couldn’t wait to watch it again. One of the things I appreciated about the movie was the attention to detail. Nothing was overlooked by the creator James Cameron. He even developed a language for the film’s aliens, the Na’vi. It has about 1000 words and adds a unique flare to the movie. Now, you might think this is just flashy gibberish, but for Cameron there was more to it. You see, he knew that an important part of any person’s story is the language they speak. He knew that differences in language reflect real differences in the way we think about the world. Literally, language influences thought. It has to do with the way we think and therefore interact with the world. And for Cameron, a unique language made for fascinating aliens who live and think a different way. If that’s the case, then we Christians need to have a language of prayer. So that as we think and interact with the world, we are guided by prayer.

Unfortunately, there’s some evidence that prayer is dying in the world. Maybe that isn’t true. A survey showed that 82% of adults in America pray at least once a week. And 89% believe there is a God who watches over us and answers our prayers. Yet, you’ve gotta admit, praying once a week hardly seems like a strong endorsement of the power of prayer. If we really believed that God answers prayer, then why would we only pray once a week?

Maybe the problem is that we haven’t spent enough time really learning the language of prayer. So we find ourselves just mouthing the words because we don’t know how to pray. The disciples felt that way. In our passage today, they say to Jesus: Read Luke 11:1. In response, Jesus teaches them to speak to God as though God is a close family member. He tells us to call God “Father.” And he suggests that we should make three requests. We should ask for bread, for forgiveness, and for deliverance. And, we should trust God to give us whatever we need. Today, I want to spend time breaking this down in the hope that we’ll walk away a little more versed in the language of prayer.

First, Jesus teaches us to approach God in the same way we would approach a loving parent. He tells us to call God “Father.” Now, this may be a difficult thing for some us. Let’s be honest, not all us have wonderful earthly fathers. And that makes it really hard to relate to God as Father. If this is the case for you, let me suggest that you interpret the word “Father” by all that you’ve missed in life. The fatherhood of God represents an ideal, the very best of what it means to be a father. So, the first thing Jesus teaches us is to approach God like a loving parent, the very best of what it means to be a parent, by calling God “Father.”

Second, Jesus teaches us to trust that God will hear our prayers and answer them in ways that meet our needs. Jesus tells us this much here in the Lord’s Prayer and he also spells it out for us in another place: Read John 14:13-14.

Jesus promises us that God will answer our prayers. If this were literally true, then every eight year old girl in the world would be prancing around with their very own pony. But — there’s always a “but” right? — But, there’s an important dimension to these requests we need to keep in mind: All requests need to be consistent with the words “Your kingdom come.” God isn’t a genie granting our every wish and whim. Asking God for things like a new boat, a flashier car, a bigger house, a job with more money are human desires. Not necessarily divine desires. When we’re sending up prayer requests to God through Jesus, the only thing that matters is: “Thy will be done.”

Fortunately, requests for bread and forgiveness and deliverance all fit with God’s desires for our well-being. That’s why Jesus teaches us to pray “give us this day our daily bread.” It’s a petition for the most basic needs of this life. It’s much more than simply the bread you eat. When Jesus tells us to pray for our daily bread, he means all those things that we need to sustain us in this life. When we ask God for our daily bread, we’re really asking God for everything necessary in this life: food, health, work. Jesus is urging us to talk to God every day about every day stuff we need.

Again, it’s about needs. Let’s be honest: We’re prone to confusing the word “need” with the word “want.” As in, “we need a big-screen TV for our new home theater.” Or, “I need a new pair of shoes to go with my new outfit.” That’s not going to fly here. Jesus is teaching us to pray for the most basic needs of life and to trust that God will answer those prayers. God may not plop a big screen down in your living room, but you can trust that God is providing for your must basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing. Our daily bread — our daily needs — come to us from a God who loves us and wants to support us each and every day.

Of course, we don’t live by bread alone. We also need forgiveness. It’s as necessary to our well-being as food and water. Without this gift from God, we’d gradually be crushed by the burden of our guilt. It’s a load that grows heavier and heavier with every sin we commit. Imagine a backpack on your shoulders with someone putting in a brick each time you sin. It’d get pretty heavy, don’t you think? God invented forgiveness to save us from this burden. Our task is to ask for forgiveness.

And this forgiveness from God gives us the ability to forgive others. In fact, the two can’t be separated. They’re part of the same heavenly package. God shows us mercy, we need to show others mercy. We’re all going to mess up. We’re all going to be the victims of another person’s mess ups. What God is asking of us is to show those guys the same mercy we hope to experience. You might say that in the language of prayer: forgiveness received always has to be linked to forgiveness given. It’s like a subject and a verb – you need both to make a complete sentence.

The last thing Jesus teaches us is to ask for deliverance. We pray that God will  “lead us not into temptation.” That means were asking God to keep us on the right path. Temptation is the stuff were fleeing when we finally get into a relationship with Jesus Christ. We want to live our life with Christ, but we all know that from time to time things pop up in life that tempt us to walk a different path. For me, one of the greatest temptations I face is to live in a house of my own. For most of you this might not seem like a big deal. If you don’t own a home now you probably will in the future or at the very least you get to pick where you’ll rent. But, that’s not the case for Methodist pastors. We live where we’re told to by the bishop and in houses provided by the church. Now, I don’t want to give you the idea that I’m unhappy here or that I don’t love the home we have because I do. But every now and again, usually when I hear about another friend or someone in the family buying a house, I get this little pang in the back of my head that says “I want that, too.” To have that, to pick where I live and to own my home, would mean leaving the path God has called me to. Because God has called me to be a Methodist preacher, and that means being sent wherever the Bishop says to live in a home provided for me. So everyday I pray that God will help me to stay on the right path. To be true to where God has called me to serve. And to help not give in to temptation.

I imagine the temptations in your life are different than mine. But we all have temptations. Things that are singing in the back of our heads to take us off the path God wants for us. In the language of prayer, Jesus gives us to the words we need to pray for God’s help to resist those temptations.

It is up to us Christians to preserve the language of prayer. We live in a world full of skepticism that taints prayer. Within the church, we are challenged to create a healthy habit of prayer. One where we’re not afraid to ask for the gifts of daily needs, forgiveness, and deliverance. One where we’re talking with God like a loving parent. A language that shapes who we are.

Like all languages, the language of prayer has the power to change the way we think and see the world. If we can allow prayer to shape us, then we will indeed be heirs of the kingdom of God.

Let me pray for us…

You’ve gotta admit that this is is a pretty shabby way to end a Gospel. Any of us who know the other Resurrection stories could have done better. Imagine how Easter worshippers would respond if the service concluded with Mark’s words and they were sent out too afraid to speak to anyone. You can’t blame other early Christians for turning the sixteenth chapter of Mark into a patchwork of endings, each one trying to improve on the one before it. But biblical scholars generally agree that Mark ended it with verse 8.

That’s pretty much the equivalent of watching a basketball game in progress, and it’s down the last second and the winning shot is in the air when someone changes the channel. When you read the last chapter of Mark, you wonder: Who changed the channel?

It’s no wonder that others felt compelled to add endings. Here’s Mark’s ending one more time: Read Mark 16:8. What kind of closure is that? If you were going to write a biography of Jesus that went all the way up through the resurrection:

Would you end with a sentence saying that some of his followers — three women specifically — were afraid?

Would you point out that despite being told by no less than an angel that Jesus had risen from the dead and that they should pass this news to the disciples, the women were so terrified that they said nothing to anyone?

Wouldn’t you conclude the story on a more upbeat note, even a triumphant one? Stopping at verse 8 seems seems like leaving out the rest of the story. After all, the resurrection was a marvelous triumph over death.

But, you know, I think Mark’s non-ending to the Gospel leaves us with something vitally important. He gives us a word of hope. The good news from Mark’s version of the Easter story is not conclusive evidence of the resurrection or a closing argument that will nail down a verdict. The good news is that we are given hope. Mark says that a young man, dressed in white, sitting at the entrance of the tomb told those frightened women: Read Mark 16:6-7.

The other Gospels offer us evidence for the Resurrection. All Mark has to offer is hope. Hope that the Risen Christ goes before us and that we will find him, not in the tomb, not in the place of death, not in the place of broken dreams and shattered expectations, not in the reminder of our past… but out there, ahead of us, in the ordinary places of our lives, along the road that leads to the future. We celebrate Easter not to remember a resurrection in the past, but to experience the presence of the Risen Christ in the present and follow him into the future.

One preacher said this about hope: “Hope is a state of mind independent of the state of the world. If your heart is full of hope, you can be persistent when you can’t be optimistic. You can keep your faith despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing does the evidence have any chance of changing. While I am not always optimistic, I am always hopeful.”

The good news that was given to the frightened women at the tomb may be just the word we need today. We don’t need to be afraid anymore. The Risen Christ goes before us into all of the incomplete, unfinished, confused, and often conflicted construction projects in our lives…and if our eyes are open, we will find him there.

Don’t be afraid! The Risen Christ goes before us in life. He meets us in the ordinary, mundane, everyday places where we live and work, laugh and cry, suffer and rejoice, succeed and fail. Easter means that tomorrow is never just another day.

Don’t be afraid!  The Risen Christ goes before us in death, and we will find him there. As children of the Resurrection, we don’t need to hide from our own mortality. We can confront the awful reality of death in the awesome assurance that Jesus has already gone before us through death, into eternal life. For through our union with Christ in our baptism, Christ’s resurrection promises our resurrection. We sang words of this promise this morning:

Soar we now where Christ has led, ALLELUIA!

Following our exalted Head, ALLELUIA!

Made like him, like him we rise, ALLELUIA!

Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, ALLELUIA!

What wonderful words of promise, that Christ goes ahead of us, that we can share in the gift of new life, that the resurrection means not a memory of the past but a presence and promise here and now. But in Mark’s Resurrection story, we need to hear the angel’s words carefully. The angel is telling us that Easter represents a call as well as a promise. A call to pledge our loyalty to the risen Christ.

Maybe that’s what frightened those women at the tomb on that first Easter morning. They had been with Jesus. They had heard what he said. Maybe it was the call that scared them. Maybe that’s what scares us too. To experience the Resurrection is to discover that we, like them, are sent out to become the bearers of that good news to others. We are given the command, “Go, and tell everyone and anyone, that he is risen and he goes before you.” We are called to be construction workers in the ongoing extreme makeover of this creation into a place where the Risen Christ can take up residence.

To know the presence of Jesus the Risen Christ is to know that we are sent into the very incomplete, broken, and ragged world to bear witness to the new life that Christ came to bring. We are sent to complete the Easter story with our story, just the way other writers tried to complete the ending of Mark’s Gospel by adding their own experience of the Risen Christ.

Mark’s non-ending of the Gospel offers the invitation to each of us to complete the Resurrection story with our story, to allow our lives to become the living witness to the presence of the Risen Christ. So let’s not keep our Easter experience within the walls of this church. But let’s go out, knowing that Christ goes before us in all areas and aspects of our lives, and let us share the good news of the Resurrection with all those we meet.

Let me pray for us…

I’m a Mac user. That means I’m one of the minority who uses a Macintosh computer instead of the Microsoft varieties. It also means that I have a storehouse of useless tidbits about Macs. Like this one, in the 1970’s when the cost of computers was still super high, an engineer named Alan Kay decided to try something revolutionary. One observer called it “wasting transistors.” You see, instead of reserving the pricey power of computers for valuable functions like processing information, Alan Kay started using it for fun stuff like drawing cartoons on the screen. Those cartoons and other on-screen things he created, like pointers and windows, gave birth to the first Mac computer. In other words, by “wasting” computer power, Alan Kay actually made computers simple enough for the rest of us to use. Decades later, someone wrote: “This is the power of waste. It feels wrong, but done right, it can change the world.”

But before that can happen, somebody has to use it in an extravagant, “wasteful” way. And that brings me to our passage for today. In the last days of his life, Jesus visits the home of Simon in Bethany. Suddenly, an unknown woman comes in with a jar of expensive perfume and pours it over Jesus’ head. The pure wastefulness of the woman’s action simply astonishes everyone in the room. The perfume she poured on Jesus was high quality, pure nard, shipped in from India, worth at least 300 denarii. That’s equal to the annual salary of a common worker. It was the kind of treasure you would put aside as your financial security for the future. But this woman wasted it—just poured it out like water.

The early Christians could never forget what she did, but they never agreed on who she was or where she did it. In fact, each Gospel reshaped her story to fit its own theological purpose. John placed the story in Bethany, in the home of Lazarus, whom Jesus had just raised from the dead. He identified the woman as Lazarus’ sister Mary. We can almost excuse her extravagance as an unrestrained expression of love for the one who brought her brother back to life.

Luke placed the story in Galilee, in the home of a Pharisee named Simon.  He didn’t identify the woman, but he said that she was “a woman of the city, who was a sinner.”  That description has led to a whole lot of speculation about the exact nature of her sinning. Whoever she was and whatever she did, Luke explains her action as an extravagant expression of gratitude for the forgiveness of her sin.

That brings us to Matthew and Mark, both of them set the story in Bethany, in the home of Simon the leper. But neither one left any clue as to who this woman was or what caused such an action. She just walks in from nowhere.  Without a word of explanation, she breaks open her alabaster jar and pours the oil out on Jesus’ head.

That’s when the good, practical, responsible folks around the table go ballistic. Mark says they scolded her: Read Mark 14:4-5. Matthew, Mark, and Luke seem to give the disciples the benefit of the doubt that if they actually had the 300 denarii the ointment was worth, they would give it all to the poor. John is more skeptical. He says it was Judas who asked the question, and John goes on to say: Read John 12:6

Whatever the motivation of the critics, all the Gospels agree that the folks around the table were shocked, scandalized, appalled by what appeared to be an irrational, extravagant waste. But Jesus saw something else, something none of them could see, something that may, for all we know, have surprised the woman as much as it surprised her critics: Read Mark 14:8-9.

And, lo and behold, wherever the gospel has been proclaimed throughout the world, right down to this present day, what she did has in fact been told in remembrance of her. But what is in this story for us? How does the story of this woman help us understand the extreme makeover God wants to do in our lives?

Let’s begin by looking at the context of the story. Mark locates this story two days before Passover. It’s three days before Good Friday. It seems that he places it here to prepare us for what follows, just the way this woman prepared Jesus for his burial. Mark places it here as a sort of spiritual lens through which he wants us to see the rest of the story. It’s as if Mark is inviting us, as we walk through Holy Week to ask the questions people might have posed around the table that night: Why this irrational waste? Why this extravagant sacrifice?

Then, of course, the other questions that we ask during Holy Week:

• Why the ruthless betrayal by Judas?
• Why the soul-wrenching agony of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane?
• Why the charade of a trial before the high priest’s council?
• Why the painful denial by Peter?
• Why trade Jesus, the peacemaker, for Barabbas, the murderer?
• Why the humiliating mockery by the soldiers?
• And why, are the only words that Mark records from the lips of Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The truth is, that as Holy Week comes to an end and the darkness of Good Friday closes in, there’s something in us that wants to ask: “Why this waste?” Why did Jesus have to die?

From the earliest days of the Christian church, scholars, theologians, preachers and lay people have wrestled with that question. They’ve done their best, and sometimes their worst, to find an answer, to explain the sacrifice of the cross, to calculate the mathematics of the atonement, to rationally explain the irrational extravagance of God.

There is a place for this kind of intellectual adventure. There’s a time for asking difficult questions and searching for rational answers. There is a time for mental calculation of the cost of atonement. But Holy Week isn’t that time, and Golgotha isn’t that place. I think Mark locates this story here to prepare us to experience the extravagant gift of God’s sacrificial love on the cross and to prepare us to offer ourselves in extravagant self-surrender to the One who dies for us.

One preacher said we define the love of God by the cross. He wrote this: “The cross is the most costly thing that could be said about God…from morning to night God was trying desperately…to make whole again the life that we had taken up in our hands and broken into bits.”

The cross means that this extravagant God was willing to pay any price, to go to any length to accomplish the works of salvation. God is willing to do anything necessary to do an extreme makeover for every one of our sin-twisted lives and for the whole sin-broken world. The cross is the costliest thing that can be said about God.

The only appropriate response to the extravagant sacrifice of the cross is to offer ourselves the way this woman in the Gospels offered her gift—in unrestrained, extravagant obedience to Jesus Christ. Like the sinful woman in Luke’s Gospel, we are invited to fall in humility before the one who forgives our sin. Like Mary of Bethany, we are challenged to respond in unrestrained gratitude to the one who promises to raise us to new life. Mark invites us to go beyond rational calculation or intellectual curiosity to experience the extravagant grace of God at the cross, to behold the power of waste.

As we enter this Holy Week, this homestretch of Lent, let’s focus upon the incredible and extravagant love that God has shown to us in Jesus Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection.

Let me pray for us…

There are a lot of famous walls in the world. There’s Hadrian’s Wall in Great Britain. It was built over 2,000 years ago by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. It stretches over 73 miles across the northern part of Britain. There’s also the Great Wall of China. It was built in the 5th century BC and stretches more than 5,000 miles. And who could forget the Berlin Wall? It was built in the early 1960’s around the city of East Berlin. There are many other famous walls in the world. No matter where they are located or who built them or how long they’ve stood the test of time, all these walls have one thing in common: They were built to keep others out.

I imagine when the Christians in Ephesus heard Paul’s words about “the dividing” wall of hostility they thought of another wall that kept people out. It was the wall in the Temple in Jerusalem. This wall wasn’t very big, but it effectively separated the outer court from the inner court. Which pretty much means it separated the Gentiles from the Jews.

The dividing walls we construct may not be as blatant as a physical wall, but they’re no less real. The extreme makeover that God wants to do in us takes more than just construction. Sometimes it involves de-construction. There are some parts of our lives that need to be built up. But there are others that need tearing down.

When we look more closely at our passage today, we’re confronted by the question: What are the walls of our lives? What are the things that keep others out or stop us from reaching out to others? Paul tells us: Read Ephesians 2:13-14.

In Christ, we have been reconciled to God. That’s the great joy we anticipate on Easter morning. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our sins have been forgiven and we’ve been restored to right relationship with God. Our sinful condition no longer has power over us. We’re free from the powers of sin and death. But this gift is not for us alone. Not only has Christ’s death reconciled us to God, but we’ve been reconciled to one another. Christ tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance.

There’s no doubt that Paul was speaking specifically about the division and separation between Jews and Gentiles. Yet, his message of reconciliation is timeless. And it should challenge us today. The gospel declares that God’s way of breaking down the walls that divide us isn’t the way of force or violence or intimidation or war. God’s way of breaking down the walls of hostility is the way of redemptive love. Specifically, the self-giving love of God revealed to us at the cross. It is the way of the One who comes to alienated, separated, lonely people, and through the costly love of Jesus draws us out of our isolation, out of our hostility, out of our loneliness, and into a whole new humanity, into one body shaped by the cross.

I don’t mean to make this sound easy, because it isn’t. The process of reconciliation is hard work, as hard as Jesus’ work in going to the cross. And it doesn’t happen all at once. It will, in its own way, be just as costly for us as it was for Jesus. But it can happen. And it does happen. The walls can come down.

We saw it in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., who called us to move beyond retribution to reconciliation, beyond conflict to community. We saw it in the lives of Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, who led their people out of hatred into hope and toward a common destiny in a new nation. I’ve seen it in the lives of alienated couples who, through the hard costly work of love, have found forgiveness and a new start. I’ve lived it in my relationship with my Dad. After years of hurt and anger, we were brought back into relationship with each other through a lot of hard work and much grace.

Reconciliation isn’t easy work. But Christ has paved the way for us to follow. He has shown us the power of God’s forgiveness. Because of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, we are forgiven and reconciled to God. Now, we are called on to continue the work of forgiveness in the world. So, the question becomes: How do we forgive?

One of my favorite books on the topic of forgiveness addresses this question head on. It suggests there are four steps in the dance of forgiveness.

First, We become willing to speak truthfully and patiently about the cause of the conflict. This is not unlike the warning we receive from James: Read James 1:19.

Second, we acknowledge both the existence of anger and bitterness and the desire to overcome them. It never does anyone any good to ignore hurt feelings, especially anger. One of my favorite writers explains this better than I ever could: Read Beyond Words, page 18.

Third, we summon up a concern for the well-being of the other as a child of God. Often we make the mistake of seeing the person on the other side of the wall as an enemy or rival, but if we can see them as children of God then maybe we’ll recognize the potential to become friends.

Fourth, we recognize our own complicity in the conflict, remember that we’ve been forgiven in the past, and take the step of repentance. This doesn’t mean ignoring differences between victims and victimizers, sometimes it’s very clear who needs to repent and those who must struggle to forgive. But on the whole, most cases involve two parties who’ve hurt one another. And we need to resist the temptation to blame others while exonerating ourselves. This is certainly what Jesus has in mind when he gives us this warning: Read Matthew 7:1-5.

The truth is that forgiveness isn’t an easy thing to do. Yet it is God’s desire for us to be a united and reconciled people. Let us be thankful for the forgiveness we’ve received through Christ Jesus our Lord. And seek to forgive others in the same way. Only then will we be able to tear down the walls of our lives.

Let me pray for us…

Here’s an interesting piece of presidential trivia. The President who served the shortest term in office was William Henry Harrison, our ninth President. He was inaugurated in 1841 and served for just 32 days. Interestingly enough, Harrison also gave the longest inaugural address in history. The speech went on for an hour and 45 minutes. President Harrison delivered the speech in a snowstorm, caught pneumonia and died a month later. On the other hand, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address lasted about two minutes, yet it stands out as one of the most formative addresses in our nation’s history.

So, what can we learn from these tidbits? Well, you could say talk is cheap unless it results in action. Or, you could put it like 1 John: Read 1 John 3:18. And that is what God is doing in our lives. The extreme makeover that God is working in each of us isn’t a matter of talk, it’s about truth and action. Instead of jackhammers and bulldozers, God is using love to work a major renovation in our lives. It’s not the kind of love we encounter in hallmark. But rather, the love defined by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That means this love is action packed. It’s about something we do rather than something we feel. The kind of love God has for us and wants us to share with others isn’t love in word. It’s love in truth and action. It’s the love shaped by the cross.

This Lenten season we’ve ben thinking about the extreme makeover God wants to accomplish in and through us. The Bible tells us that God wants to totally reorient our sin-distorted lives. And even more, God wants to completed rebuild our sin-damaged world. It’s nothing less than extreme makeover on a cosmic scale. This week we’re going to look at the foundation of our extreme makeover. It’s the fundamental element that drives and influences everything else. You guessed it: Love.

At one point, a religious scholar asked Jesus, “What is the greatest, the first, the most important of all the commandments?” In answering the question, Jesus reached back to the foundation of the Hebrew faith: Read Mark 12:29-31. There is absolutely nothing new about those commandments. Jesus was quoting familiar words right out of the Old Testament, from Deuteronomy and Leviticus. What is unique, is the way Jesus tied two separate commandments together. For Jesus, the greatest commandment was the combination of love for God and love for others. Basically, he’s tying together the kind of love that involves our whole being — our mind, heart, soul, and strength — with the kind of love that takes action on behalf of others. Let’s break that down.

Jesus says, “You shall love the Lord your God.” That means love doesn’t start with us but with God. We don’t begin with our human understanding of love and then define God by it. Now, we’ve talked about this before. Our human understanding of love is washed up in a sea of fuzzy feelings. We say things like “I love pizza” and “I love my husband.” Do I really only love Josh as much as I love pizza? You can see the problem. So, instead of defining love by our human understanding, we need a definition that begins with God’s great act of love in Jesus Christ. The love that God defines is not a force of nature but rather a choice. It is love in action, love that chooses to give itself away for the good of someone else. It’s at the core of the Gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son…” We all know that verse, we’ve heard it a million times, but have we ever stopped to think just how radical it really is? Here’s how radical the love of God is:

• You are loved so much by God that Jesus died for you.
• Your family members, even the most irritating of them, are loved so much by God that Jesus died for them.
• Your neighbors, even the ones who drive you crazy, are loved so much by God that Jesus died for them.
• Democrats are loved so much by God that Jesus died for them.
• Republicans are loved so much by God that Jesus died for them.
• Israelis and Palestinians are loved so much by God that Jesus died for them.
• Osama bin Laden is loved so much by God that Jesus died for him.
• God loved every human being in this whole broken world so much that Jesus died for them.

Are you starting to get the picture about the radical love of God? Cross-shaped love begins with God’s act of love in Jesus Christ, and then, on the basis of what God has done for us, we are called to actively love others. Here’s how 1 John puts it: Read 1 John 4:20-21.

Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. And love every person you meet with cross-shaped love. Jesus said this is the greatest commandment. When we act for others in self-giving love, Jesus said we are not far from the kingdom of God. When we act in Christlike love, we become the answer to the prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

God is at work to renovate our lives and reconstruct our world through active, self-giving love. When we demonstrate that love in tangible action, we participate in the coming of God’s kingdom. Every individual act of love undermines the power of evil, violence, hatred, and sin in this world and becomes a part of God’s great, saving love for the whole creation. When we live in the self-giving love of Christ, we speak a word of truth to the world; we demonstrate God’s love in our lives by sharing and giving it to others.

And let’s not make the classic mistake of getting hung up on the idea that these actions need to be something big and earth shattering. Love in action can happen in small ways right here in Atkins, Arkansas. Love in action can be helping a neighbor rack leaves or clear snow. Love in action can be volunteering at the schools to laminate stuff for busy teachers. Love in action can be putting together health kits for people in Haiti. Love in action can take a million forms, we just have to look for the opportunities.

You know, I’ve always been a fan of Martin Luther King Jr. It’s a shame that sometimes we forget he was a preacher before he became an activist. In one of his sermons called “An Experiment in Love” he wrote this: “To meet hatred with retaliatory hatred would do nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness.  We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.”

Basically, he was saying: When love is shaped by the cross of Jesus Christ, it is the most powerful thing in the universe. That’s the kind of love that rests at the foundation of God’s extreme makeover in our lives.

Let me pray for us…

We’ve probably all come across those “you might be…“ lists. You know, “you might be a redneck if you own a homemade fur coat.” Or, “you might be a yankee if you think barbecue is a verb meaning ‘to cook outside.’” I love these good-humored lists. I think they’re funny because they have a ring of truth. But, I recently came across a “you might be…” list that wasn’t so funny. It’s the “you might be self-centered if…” Here’s the top three on the list:

• You might be self-centered if you assume that anyone who doesn’t like the same movies, music, or TV shows that you do is clearly a person with little or no taste.
• You might be self-centered if you gave your spouse a birthday gift that was something you really wanted for yourself.
• You might be self-centered if you feel a sigh of relief in knowing that you aren’t as poorly dressed, ill-mannered, unimportant, unintelligent, or just plain tacky as all the self-centered sinners who are siting around you in the congregation.

Unfortunately, there’s a ring of truth in this list. We live in a pretty self-centered culture. One of my favorite preachers called it the Me-first culture. He explained that the basic assumption of the Me-first culture is that we are here to get what we want, when we want it, the way we want it and that everyone and everything else exists to serve our interests. And the truth is, we’re all afflicted with Me-first attitude. The only way to be free from its bondage is to invite God to work an extreme makeover in our lives.

And that’s where our passage for today comes in. Jesus is turning the Me-first attitude upside down and inside out and then kicking it to the curb all together. He’s got a new vision for how people will think and act in the Kingdom of God and he’s trying to get the point across to the disciples. As they were making their way down the dusty roads of Palestine, Jesus was eavesdropping on the disciples’ conversations. Over dinner that night, Jesus asked the disciples what they were arguing about on the way.

Mark says the disciples were silent. I bet it was one of those really awkward silences. They’re probably a little ashamed to confess that they were arguing about which of them would be the greatest disciple. Basically, they were trying to guess which of them would win “America’s Next Top Disciple.” They wanted to be the greatest.

The disciples’ self-centered debate created the opportunity for Jesus to define his own, very peculiar way to greatness. Jesus said: Read Mark 9:35. Talk about an extreme makeover! Unfortunately, the disciples didn’t get it. It was so odd, so outside the box of the world’s expectations, so contradictory to their cultural assumptions, that it went right over their heads.

James and John clearly didn’t get it. But, you gotta respect their nerve because not long after this conversation, they announce what they want like a demanding customer: Read Mark 10:35-37.

I love that Jesus plays along with them by asking, “What do you want me to do?” And, oh boy, did James and John know what they want. I bet they could see all the glory and prestige and just picture how amazing it would be to sit at the right and left hand of Jesus. I have to admit, I’m pretty sympathetic to these guys. The idea of being on the right or left hand of Jesus seems like a primo spot to me. But then I remember that Mark uses the exact same phrase “one at your right hand and one at your left” when he describes the crucifixion. Mark knows what it means to be on the right and left of Jesus. It will mean being with him at the cross.

But these jokers, James and John, just don’t get it. Maybe we don’t either. Jesus replies to their outrageous request with a haunting question: Read Mark 10:38b. They naively reply, “we’re able.”

There’s a great old hymn that asks that very question. “Are ye able,” said the Master, “to be crucified with me?”  “Yea,” the sturdy dreamers answered, “to the death we follow thee.”  The refrain answers, “Lord, we are able.  Our spirits are thine.  Remold them, make us, like thee, divine.  Thy guiding radiance above us shall be a beacon to God, to love, and loyalty.”

Whenever I hear the chorus, I can almost hear Jesus saying: “Are you sure you heard the question?” The question Jesus asks is “Are you able to be crucified with me?” Turned another way, the question is: Are we willing to leave behind the great Me to follow Jesus in the way of self-giving love?

This dialogues with James and John turns into another opportunity for Jesus to once again define his view of greatness: Read Mark 10:42-45.

All of the world’s ways to greatness have one thing in common: They assume we’re here to be served. Isn’t the whole point of life to get what we want, the way we want it, when we want it? But Jesus has a strange new way to greatness. He begins with the assumption that we’re here to serve. Jesus is calling for an extreme makeover in the way we view greatness. He’s asking the question to each of us: Are you here to be served or to serve?

Tom Fox was a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams who chose to follow Jesus’ way of nonviolence as a witness for peace in Iraq. He was kidnapped, held hostage, and ultimately murdered. In October 2004, he wrote in his blog from Baghdad: “It seems easier somehow to confront anger within my heart than it is to confront fear.  But if Jesus is right then I am not to give in to either….I am asked to risk my life and if I lose it, to be as forgiving as he was when murdered by the forces of Satan. I struggle to stand firm but I’m willing to keep working at it.”

Tom Fox got it.  He understood Jesus’ radical way of servanthood. Now, the problem with this kind of heroic witness is that most of us will not go to Baghdad, and most of us will not be martyrs for the faith. So maybe your mind just blew off the illustration all together. Yet, that doesn’t mean we’re not called to a life of service in very ordinary, often mundane, sometimes boring lives.

So, the question we have to ask ourselves is: Where are we are called to be servants to those around us? The obvious answer begins in our church and our homes. But everywhere we go gives us the chance to serve as Christ served. In our schools and places of employment, at the post office and the grocery store and the gas station. All of the people we encounter in all of the places we find ourselves are opportunities to practice and re-enact God’s self-giving love as revealed in Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.  In all that we say and do, let us seek to  be in service to others, not to gain glory for ourselves, but to live as witnesses to the gracious, self-giving love of God who boots the Me-first attitude to the curb.

Let me pray for us…

In my second year at Duke, I took one of the best classes of my life. It was a class devoted to the study of Christianity and Literature. Since, as you know, I am a big reader, the class was a perfect fit for me. We read all kinds of stuff and the discussions were always interesting as we dived into debates about an author’s choices and the deeper meaning behind seemingly unimportant details. It was fantastic. I’m not sure I enjoy anything more than the meshing together of good books and healthy debate. Through that class, I discovered a musical satire from the 1960’s called For Heaven’s Sake.

In this 2-act play, the homeowner invites God into his into his home to do what he thought would be some minor repair work. The homeowner knew that his home needed new gutters and a new coat of paint. He was aware of rotting floor boards and cracked plaster. He thought he could get God to do some modest patch and repair work. To the homeowner’s surprise, God came in and began a major rebuilding of the entire house! The homeowner fumed about the “divine house wrecker” who ripped out rotten beams, tore open picture windows in the walls of his cozy hideaway, added new floors, and launched a nonstop rebuilding project that turn what was a quiet little bungalow into a castle fit for a king. The homeowner began to feel like the house no longer fit his old, small-house lifestyle and finally told God that it was more like a place where God would live. That’s when the divine renovator told the homeowner that the purpose of the renovation was for God to take up residence in him.

And that’s exactly what God wants to do in each and every one of our lives. God wants to work an extreme makeover. God has big plans to rebuild our little lives into a place where God can take up residence and be at home. This is the theme for our Lenten journey. Each week we’re going to explore a little more deeply what it means to have God work an extreme makeover in our lives.

A good starting point for understanding the design of God’s extreme makeover comes from today’s passage. It records a conversation where Peter makes the bold affirmation that Jesus is the Messiah. Now, we have to be clear on what’s happening. Calling Jesus “Messiah” doesn’t mean calling him “divine.” Jesus was and is divine, but this moment in the gospel story is about something else. It’s about the politically dangerous and theologically risky claim that Jesus is the true King of Israel. The disciples weren’t expecting a divine redeemer. They were longing for a king. And they thought they’d found one. And of course, they had some expectations of what they wanted in a Messiah. They expected the Messiah to rebuild or cleanse the Temple. The Messiah had to defeat the enemy that was threatening God’s people. And the Messiah had to bring God’s justice to both Israel and the whole world. That’s what they expected in the Messiah and greatly hoped Jesus was there to fit the bill.

But right after Peter makes this amazing confession of faith, Jesus crushes their expectations. Jesus tells the disciples that he must undergo great suffering, be rejected by the political and religious leaders, and then be killed and raised again three days later.

Suffering, rejection, and death were not what Peter had in mind.  Mark uses a very strong verb to say that Peter “rebuked” Jesus. It’s the same verb Mark uses to describe the way Jesus rebuked evil spirits. Peter has just recently declared that Jesus was the Messiah, the one who comes to represent God’s reign and rule in this world. But now, the first time Jesus says something that doesn’t fit into Peter’s plan, he rebukes Jesus, turns his back on him, and heads off in the opposite direction.

I bet we’re a lot like Peter at times. The moment our faith begins to disrupt what we think or how we live or what we do, we decide to turn our back on it. It’s like we want just enough Christianity to be religious, but not so much that it disrupts our lives. We don’t really mind attending church for an hour each week so long as nothing else comes up that sounds better or we’re not really too tired and need to sleep in. And we’re real happy to add a safe, predictable dash of spirituality to our lives, but we don’t want to confronted with anything that challenges how we think. So it’s okay to talk about the love of God and Jesus is your friend, but let’s not mention all those passages about giving our money or making sacrifices or God forbid caring more for others than ourselves. Let’s face, we don’t mind if God shows up to do a little repair work, but we’re not so sure we want God doing major renovation!

When Peter rebuked Jesus, he may not have been all that different than we are. He was just a little more honest about it. But, Jesus turns the tables when he says: Read Mark 8:33. Peter is too focused on his expectations, on what he wants and desires, that he can’t see the divine plan. He can’t wrap his mind around the idea that God might have something different in mind. Like Peter, we’re often guilty of setting our minds on human things rather than Godly things. Making the switch requires a radical reorientation of our thinking that leads to a radical reorientation of our living. In short, an extreme makeover.

Of course, this is totally contrary to most cultural assumptions. We live in a culture that encourages us to believe we are the center of the universe. But, it’s not all about me and it’s not all about you. Jesus calls us to a radical reorientation of our thinking that leads to an equally radical change in the way we live. Or to return to house building metaphor, Jesus is nothing less than a divine house builder, who isn’t here to do a little repair work but to do an extreme makeover.

Jesus is calling us to a cross-shaped life. It pretty much turns everything the world teaches us upside down and inside out. He defined the fundamental point of the cross-shaped life when he said: Read Mark 8:35. It’s true. If you try to save your life, hold it, hoard it, protect it, squeeze it tightly to your chest, you will squeeze the life right out of it. A life centered in itself ultimately shrivels up and dies. But if you lose your life, if you release your life, if you throw yourself with an almost reckless abandon into the way of life Jesus taught, you will find it!  You’ll find real life, abundant life, resurrection life that can never be put to death.

Jesus is not looking for fans like the ones who line up at red carpet events.  Jesus is looking for disciples: ordinary people who will allow their lives to be transformed by the extraordinary self-giving love of God supremely revealed at the cross. Jesus is calling disciples who will allow the mind-set with which he lived, died, and rose again to become the mind-set in which they live, with which they die, and through which they are raised to new life. It’s the basic design of a cross-shaped life, and that is exactly what God intends to build in each of us.

Let me pray for us…