Sermon for Sunday, September 16, 2007

Being True To Who You Are As A Follower Of Jesus Christ

by

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Mark 8:34-35

³⁴ He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

³⁵ For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.

I think it is fitting on Third Grade Bible Sunday to remind us of a couple of Bible stories from some Sunday school children.

One teacher was describing the story in Genesis when Lot and his family were fleeing from Sodom and Gomorrah when it was about to be destroyed for failure to welcome and be hospitable to strangers. The instruction was that they were not to turn around and look back, but Lot’s wife did and turned into a pillar of salt. 7 year old Jason said; “My mom looked back once when she was driving and she turned into a telephone pole.”

In another class the teacher said, “We have been learning how powerful kings and queens were in Bible times. But there was a higher power than kings and queens. Can anyone tell me who that is? One child immediately said, “Aces”.

Finally a teacher was telling about the story of Elijah the prophet and his run-in with the false prophets of Baal. Elijah built an altar on Mount Carmel and he was going to show the power of God to the false prophets. He was offering God a chance to burn a bull and impress the false prophets as well as King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. Elijah put the wood on the altar, cut the bull into pieces, and told people to pour lots of water on the altar – four barrels of water four times in a row so it would be hard for God to burn up the bull. She asked the kids if anyone knew why Elijah wanted all that water poured over the altar. One little girl said, “I know, I know! To make the gravy.”

Last Sunday we talked about what it means to be true to your self, being true to who you are as a unique person and how other people try to get us to fit into their mold for us, get us to be someone we are not or do not feel called to be, and we talked about apostle Paul’s words in Romans-don’t let the world around you press you into its mold but instead be formed and transformed by God into who God has created you to be.

Today I want to look at what it means to be true to ourselves as followers of Christ-to live faithfully by promises we have made for Christ to be at the center of life and to follow his teachings. If we have ever joined a church we have made that promise. If we have not made that affirmation yet and are still thinking about that, it’s OK and I don’t want you to feel any pressure as we discuss this. The words from Mark’s gospel give us plenty of freedom because Jesus starts our by saying IF anyone wants to follow me…

Before we look at Jesus’ words, let me do an overview of how differently people think about what it means to be Christian. One of the most powerful stories I have read in a long time is in the book Left to Tell by Rwandan refugee Immaculee Illibagiza. She writes about growing up in a large loving family. Her father was an influential leader. They were active in their church. But the family was Tutsi and they became victims of the Rwandan holocaust when the Hutu people set out to slaughter all the Tutsi people. The story of this holocaust was made most famous by the movie Hotel Rwanda.

Immaculee survived the slaughter but almost all of her family was killed. The only reason she survived was that she and five other young women were hidden and given refuge in the very small bathroom of the home of a Protestant minister in a village where the Hutu warriors often came and even searched the house several times but the women were never found. They were released one night to go and find the French soldiers who were intervening in that war and protecting the Tutsis from wholesale slaughter.

It is amazing that she and the other women lived to tell the story. The man who gave them refuge did so at enormous risk to himself and to his family, and if the women ever had been discovered, not only would they have been hacked to death, so would the pastor and his own family. But he had decided to shelter them because it was the right thing to do and because for him it had to do with being true to his faith as a follower of Christ.

If you know anything about the history of World War II, it reminds us of similar stories of people like Ann Frank who were sheltered from the Nazis by other people of faith who, at enormous risk, hid Jewish citizens from German soldiers even though they themselves would be killed if they had been discovered. Actually, the most powerful story about this sort of sheltering is from a little village in France called Le Chambon where the Catholic priest in that town encouraged the townspeople to let their homes and barns become a place of refuge for the Jews fleeing death from the Nazis. Because of the Christian faith of those villagers and their commitment to be true to the faith, thousands of Jewish children and adults were saved from the Nazi executioners.

They took that risk because they were followers of Jesus Christ and to be faithful to Christ, they could not turn their back on people in need.

There are a couple of powerful stories about what it means to be followers of Christ, disciples of Christ.

Let’s think about what other people see when they hear the word Christian. Dr. Marcus Borg will be with us in a couple of weeks. He is not only an internationally known writer and Jesus scholar, he teaches religion classes to undergraduates at Oregon State University. When he was with us in March of 2005, 500 of you read his book “The Heart of Christianity” and were in small groups to discuss the book.

We give that book to our new members who join the church because it provides some new ways of thinking about God and Jesus and the life of faith. He tells in the book about how his students think about church people, especially the students in his religion classes who did not grow up in a church-about half the class members. He invites them to write a short essay on their impression of Christianity. He says they typically use five adjectives about Christians: Christians are “literalistic, anti intellectual, self righteous, judgmental and bigoted.” Why would that be their impression? Dr. Borg says that if you look at most of the coverage in the media, it is easy to see that impression.

Oh yeah, Christians are those people who talk loudly about family values while they are engaging themselves in immoral behavior. They are just hypocrites, some say, like the Louisiana Senator who now is facing new and recent charges from a prostitute who claimed he was a regular client. One writer who was addressing the scandal of the Idaho senator ends her column be encouraging us to be wary of politicians who speak too loudly about how righteous they are-the same could be true of preachers. Ralph Waldo Emerson talks about this hypocrisy when he said about one fellow, “The louder he talked about his honor, the faster we counted our spoons!”

A week ago most of our ministry staff put on our work clothes and spent the day at the Habitat for Humanity home that will be dedicated next Saturday. The day Dale Wood and I were present, we were outside doing yard work. We shoveled and raked and smoothed the dirt and created drainage swales and got the yard ready for landscaping. One of the pleasures of the day was to talk with a couple of the Habitat employees and the Americorps workers about how they got involved. One fellow in his twenties had been to Guatemala after college and was now finishing up on this house before he went back home.

He was very interested in what it’s like to be a minister and mostly about how hard it is to work with people who say the right words on Sunday mornings but don’t really follow through during the week—people in suburbia who are not really followers of Christ but are just captives of a materialistic and selfish culture. He had grown up in church but he also knew how Dr. Borg’s college students felt as well-that many so called Christians are followers of Christ in name only.

We had a great conversation and I told him how none of us in this church has arrived yet, but the fact that is that we do so much outreach-500 of you volunteering to work at Habitat the last few months, the mission trips we heard about last week-and we have so may people who are serious about their values and their faith, that I feel really good about being part of this congregation. Do we still have people who stand up to join or to have children baptized or youth who are confirmed and then don’t follow through very well? Yes, and we will always need to nurture each other and support each other as we grow into those promises to put God at the center of life.

What does it mean for you to be true to yourself as a follower, a disciple, of Christ? The words we heard from Jesus in the gospel of Mark give us a place to start: IF anyone wants to follow me, let them forget themselves, take up a cross and come after me.

The first word Jesus says is very important: IF. We are given a choice about following Christ. It is not a mandate, a requirement. It is a choice. We say in our member information sessions that people do not have to join this church to be active here. We will be your church. If you do join-if you do make a public affirmation that you want to live as a follower, a disciple of Christ, there are some promises, some responsibilities involved. You are entering a covenant with God and with other disciples. There are expectations. There is immense satisfaction and benefit. And there are expectations. There is a covenant.

Jesus says that. IF you want to follow me, here is what is involved. It involves forgetting yourself and taking up a cross. It will mean some sacrifice and some risk and some self giving and some change and some transformation. It will mean, in some words from the Bible, dying to some old ways and taking up some new ways. It means being born again.

It was very fulfilling to me to work ten days ago on the Habitat home. I had a chance to remember how Habitat for Humanity got started. It got started because Millard and Linda Fuller were in their early thirties and were rich because they had sold the business they started and they had come to Americus Georgia-south Georgia-to spend some time with a Baptist preacher named Clarence Jordan and to listen and discern what God had in mind for them for the rest of their lives. It was in that setting that the idea came to Fuller to provide a decent, simple, affordable home for every person, and he pursued that dream.

I got to tell that story to a small group of the volunteers over lunch at the Habitat home ten days ago. And I got to tell about the Baptist minister, Clarence Jordan, one of my heroes. He started this interracial farming community in the 1950’s in south Georgia. Think about that whole statement. He was a radical follower of Jesus Christ who believed that every person is of sacred worth. Because he believed in equal rights for all persons, the Ku Klux Klan threatened his life many times and bombed the small community of blacks and whites living together.

He went around the state of Georgia in the 1950’s preaching about racial equality as a Christian doctrine. He stirred up much controversy. One Sunday evening in a little Baptist Church he had preached on the verse from Galatians-In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, he added “black or white” because we are all one in Christ. This was dangerous. Afterwards a little gray haired lady came to him and said, “Dr. Jordan, my granddaddy was a general in the confederate army and he wouldn’t believe a word you had to say tonight.” Clarence Jordan smiled sweetly and said, “Well madam, you have a clear choice. You can follow your granddaddy or you can follow Jesus Christ”

Let’s bring it to our own time and our own life. Where could it be said to us-You can follow the culture’s values-greed, consumerism, me firstism-or you can follow Jesus Christ?

Let’s be clear. It is not about just admiring Christ. That is not why we gather and sing our hymns and read from the Bible and learn from each other. It is about following. Jesus has plenty of admirers. What he needs is more followers who live by his example and his teachings and who will be true to him and to those teachings-people who are willing to take risks and even take on some sacrifice.

Jesus says elsewhere that this will mean that we are new people, changed people, born again. It will mean that we have new hearts, transformed minds and value systems. It will mean that we are practicing the seven habits of discipleship: worship, study, prayer, faith sharing, service, generosity, putting God at the center.

It will mean that we will be thinking about and be concerned about what Christ is concerned and passionate about-not the next purchase we will make but how we can make a difference.

What is Christ concerned about? He is concerned about hypocrisy. He is concerned about justice, about fair treatment for the least and the left out. He urges us to be compassionate.

What spiritual leaders are concerned about those? It is so refreshing to see U2 band leader Bono using his influence to speak as a Christian about what Christ is concerned about-those who are poor, those who are ill . He does this to be true to himself as a follower of Christ. He is not just an admirer but a follower.

How are we doing? One person this week told me about the fellow who said, If you really want to know if I am a follower Christian, you would have to ask my friends or neighbors.” They would have to tell you if the evidence is there. Apostle Paul had a list of the evidences, the fruits of living close to the spirit of Christ: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, self control.

One more thing about this statement from Jesus in Mark’s gospel:  He makes a promise to us, a very significant promise. He says when we forget ourselves, when we follow him, when we are willing to risk, we don’t wind up losing something, we find everything.

Or, when we lose ourselves in him and in his cause, that is when we find LIFE. Life at its best.

Let’s see if that is true for you: when you have invested yourself, your time, your resources in something bigger than yourself, some relationship, some cause that demands something from you, how has that felt? Has it felt like it has been a drain? Or has it felt worthwhile?

We can look at something so simple as a friendship. When you have been with a friend through some dark times and he or she has come out OK, has that been a drain or has it been something fulfilling?  If you have been involved in something like the Habitat build and it has required some hard work from you, has it been a drain or hasn’t it been fulfilling to know you are making a difference for a family to have a home?

If you are giving money and time to your church and you see the ways we are able to touch people’s lives for the better, does that feel like a drain on you or have you usually gotten more than you have put in? If you have volunteered with the ministry that serves homeless families or visited in a nursing home, has that felt like a burden or haven’t you felt your heart warmed by your offer of service to God and others?

If we are faithful to Christ and act in ways that follow his teachings about life, if we invest ourselves in him and in his ways, we will not feel drained or burdened; we will feel fulfilled. And we will be true to our calling as his disciples.

Discussion Questions

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