Sermon Mark 8:31-38 September 13, 2015 Ordinary Time B Rally
Day
Followers of Jesus
Tell me friends about the God you want. The God I want is a
God who can take away pain and shame. The God I want is a God who can cure
cancer and AIDs. The God I want is a God who can give people jobs and find them
homes. The God I want is a God who can stop wars and can end family discord. I
want a strong God, a God who will take charge and be in control of all the
things that seem out of control. I want a God who will bring order to all the
chaos in this life. I want a God that will answer my prayers and will protect
my family. The God I want is a God who will help me feel wanted and loved and
who will show me how to love others.
I don’t think wanting this kind of God is unreasonable. As a
matter of fact, I think this is probably the same kind of God the disciples
wanted. It is the God they believed was being revealed to them in Jesus as they
followed him throughout Galilee.
Oswald Chambers says, ‘If a man or a woman is called of God,
it does not matter how untoward circumstances are, every force that has been at
work will tell of God’s purposes in the end. If you agree with Gods’ purpose
God will bring not only your conscious life, but all the deeper regions of your
life which you cannot get at, into harmony.
Somehow along the way God is going to bring our identity
with Jesus and our lifestyle with him into sync. Now I wish I could hit the
sync button on my life to make it happen as easy as it does with the controls
in my car and my phone and all those other nifty sync buttons out there where
it happens in an instant. But God has a sense of humor and looks down at me as
stamps the label, “work in progress” on me.
When I worked in the women’s jail, I used to hear from the
girls as they talked about each other to me. They would be angry about the
behavior of one of the girls after she had made a commitment to accept the love
of Christ into her life. They would sometimes be so angry. “You think she’s a
Christian?,” they would ask. And then they would yell about how she got angry
and cursed and how she was selfish. Then we would talk about how long it takes
a newborn to learn how to walk. Change rarely happens overnight. Being a
follower of Jesus goes beyond our commitment to him. It is a determined
decision that we will follow this Jesus into places we dared not go. It is a determined
decision that this life we live is worth spending following this man who gave
his life of love for us and no matter what we will choose to offer up ours to
him. It is a decision that forever changes us and all of our life is surrounded
by God’s embrace.
To be a Christian has been defined hundreds of time over the
centuries. We have included in church doctrine expected behaviors and we have
shunned, excommunicated and harmed those who have not fit into the context of
the Christian definition. Benjamin Corey one of the authors on the Patheos
blog. says that Christians today are ashamed of the title and have tried to
come up with different titles to describe their relationship with Jesus. But,
ultimately he says he realizes that his identity is not with what others look
to as the Christian definition but his own understanding as a follower of
Jesus.
He encourages these five ways of living as a follower of
Jesus. He read the Scriptures and discovered these things about the followers
of Jesus then. He suggests that we too can be followers in this way. Here are three
of them and then I add two of my own
1.
Jesus followers liked to
talk about him. They did it in a way that others were hungry to know more.
Their talking about Jesus attracted people to the love of God, it didn’t scare
them away.
2.
Jesus followers were full
of compassion for outsiders and the weak, quick to show mercy and grace.
3.
Jesus followers wanted to
share their stuff. They wanted others to join them and to experience life
together as followers of Jesus. They were not afraid of newcomers and when they
were God showed them a new way to learn to live together. They wanted to hang
out together and enjoyed spending their time with each other.
4.
Jesus followers went into uncharted territory.
Somehow they ventured into lands and places they would not have done, but their
desire for others to know Jesus was greater than their fear.
5.
Jesus followers prayed a
lot. They prayed by themselves, they prayed together, they prayed in public and
in private. They prayed all the time.
Being a follower of Jesus is not an impossible task, but it
is a decision to choose to carry the label of faith. It is a decision to choose
to participate in the life of Jesus. It is a decision to accept that we belong
to God, yes, and that we belong to Christ.
Years ago there was a poem that was written. I had one given
to me on a card and a little cross to carry in my pocket. I carried it for a
long time and even had several to share with others. It was a useful reminder
for me of how I belonged to Christ.
And it goes like this: I carry a cross in my pocket
A simple
reminder to me
Of the
fact that I’m a Christian
No matter
where I may be
This
little cross is not magic
Nor is it
a good luck charm
It isn’t
there to protect me
From
every physical harm
It’s not
for identification
For all
the world to see
It’s
simply an understanding
Between
my saviour and me
When I
put my hand in my pocket
To get a
coin or key
His cross
is there to remind me
Of the
price He paid or me
It
reminds me too, to be grateful
For
blessings day by day
And of
the peace and comfort I share
With all
who know my Master
Who give
themselves to his care
So I
carry a cross in my pocket
Reminding
no one else but me
That
Jesus Christ is Lord of my life
If only I
let Him be.
But somewhere along the way as I journeyed with Christ I discovered
that I needed a different understanding of what it meant for me to carry the
cross of Christ. You see each of us has a call that Jesus places on us that is
as unique as we are in God’s creation. And as we grow from our consciousness
into our understanding of Christ in our life we move more and more from the God
we want into the love of the Christ we need. As we grow we recognize the movement
of grace in us-we realize how the work of God through Jesus is not a once and
for all fix it, it is not ‘dunk and done’ relationship, it is a process-and
processes take time-as a matter of fact they take a lifetime. A process cannot
be a forced program. We ourselves cannot create process-no, that’s the work of
God through Jesus in us. We, friends, have to prepare our hearts for process-we
prepare our hearts and ourselves to be open to receive. Becoming a follower of
Jesus, taking up our cross can be as difficult as allowing the process of God’s
love to take over and allow ourselves to be willing to receive a love that will
transform our lives in ways we have never imagined.
I share with you this poem I wrote years ago to help me on
my journey of understanding the Jesus I need and the cross I carry.
The Cross in My Pocket
The cross in my pocket that
I must come to bear is a cross
That Christ has already carried there,
He calls on me and says, “My child,
Your cross is to look on me
And be healed,
No longer carry the pain,
No longer shed the tears,
Give me the anger,
Let me take the shame.
For you my child,
Your cross is to believe.
Your cross is to trust.
Your cross is to walk tall
And be complete in me.
Carry it tall
Lift it high for all to see.”
So the cross I carry in my pocket
Is not a burden you see,
The cross I carry is the
sign of Jesus completed in me.
Let us go forth and respond to the claim of Christ on our
life and say to him, Here I am, Lord. Amen.