Followers of Jesus

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.