Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 28, 2011

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

On March 24, 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Salvador, the capital of the Central American nation El Salvador, was celebrating the Eucharist in a hospital chapel in San Salvador. As he lifted the host, the body of Jesus Christ, he was gunned down, his blood mixing with the wine of the sacrament, the blood of Christ. Twenty-nine years later, in 2009, the government of El Salvador admitted its responsibility for Archbishop Romero’s murder. Archbishop Romero is not yet officially a saint of the Roman Catholic Church, although that process is under way; but the people of Central America already call him Saint Oscar. The powers of his time and place murdered him because he spoke out as an advocate for the poor and against the oppression practiced by the government of his country. He was murdered because he witnessed in his words and his life to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

On November 16, 1989, also in San Salvador, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and the housekeeper’s daughter were murdered on the campus of the University of Central America. The government of El Salvador ordered the murder of the priests. It saw them as subversive because they spoke out against the government’s oppression of the people and in defense of the poor. The housekeeper and her daughter apparently were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The powers of their time and place murdered the priests because they spoke out as advocates for the poor and against the oppression practiced by the government of their country. They were murdered because they witnessed in their words and their lives to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

On April 4, 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered as he stood on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. He was in Memphis to support sanitation workers who were striking for safer working conditions and better pay. As far as we know no government ordered his murder. Nonetheless, he was murdered because he spoke out against the racism of our country, against the immorality of the Vietnam War, and as an advocate for social justice for the poor. He was murdered because he witnessed in his words and in his life to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Matt. 16:24-25 Last Wednesday when I asked my lectionary study group at Merrill Gardens what those verses mean to them they said what I expected them to say. They said, essentially, that these verses mean that we are to bear whatever burdens come our way in life with courage, patience, hope, and faith. Surely these verses do mean that, but is that all they mean? I don’t think so.

Consider the original setting of these verses. In Matthew’s Gospel they come immediately after Jesus’ first prediction of his crucifixion. When Jesus told the disciples that they must “take up their cross” he surely meant it literally. He was going to the cross. Many of them would die as martyrs too, some of them by crucifixion. When the author of the Gospel of Matthew told this part of Jesus’ story this way he was speaking to a community of Christians in which some had already been martyred for the faith, and literal martyrdom was a distinct possibility for all of them. Matthew almost certainly understood Jesus’ words about taking up your cross and losing your life literally, and he meant for his community to take them literally too. Our natural tendency is to tame these words. To make them safe. To make them not a call to the ultimate sacrifice but words of comfort and encouragement in the difficulties of our lives. They are words of comfort and encouragement in the difficulties of our lives, but I’m afraid that we lose a lot of their meaning if we hear them only in that way.

Understood in their original context these word’s of Jesus are a radical call to a life centered not on ourselves but on God. They are a call to care not about our own life but about God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They are a call to put God and the Kingdom of God first, before even our own lives. They are a call to us to be willing to lose ourselves, lose our individual identity, lose even our lives in the work of witnessing to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and working for the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth. These words of Jesus are among the most radical, the most extreme, in the whole Bible. They tell us that what God expects of us isn’t safe. They tell us that God demands of us everything we have. As the great old hymn “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” that I quote so often puts it, God “demands my soul, my life, my all.” Jesus gave his all. His original disciples gave their all. Oscar Romero gave his all. The Jesuit priests of El Salvador gave their all. Martin Luther King gave his all. So many, many other Christian martyrs, some know to history and some known only to God, gave their all.

It is very unlikely that any of us will be called upon to give our all in the same way they did. No one is likely to kill us because we witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So what are we to take from these radical verses? I think that we are to take a direction, in our own life circumstances, to lead lives that are turned away from ourselves and turned toward God and God’s people. That is so hard to do in our culture. We are bombarded every day by the message from advertisers and from politicians of every political stripe with the message that the ones we are supposed to be about are ourselves. Advertising says make yourself more beautiful, healthier, more popular, more successful by buying our product. The politicians ask “are you better off than you were when their opponent came to power or last was in power?” Never do they call us to ask is the nation better off. Not anymore they don’t. Never do they call us to ask is the world better off. They’ve never really asked us that one. They certainly never call us to ask are the poor better off. Not anymore they don’t. Their pitch to us is always to consider only whether we are better off. Leading a life that is turned away from ourselves and toward God and God’s Kingdom is indeed a radically countercultural thing to do today.

Yet it is precisely what Jesus calls us to do. He tells us that it is precisely by losing our lives in a turning away from the self and toward God that we find our true lives. Many Christians have literally lost their lives for Jesus. We probably won’t, but that doesn’t mean that these words of Jesus have no meaning for us. They call us to lose our lives in a different way than physically. They call us to lose our old lives spiritually and to live new lives turned toward God not toward the self. We are forever trying to tame Jesus and make him less radical than he is. We really can’t do that with these words of his and retain any of their original meaning. They demand a lot. In fact, they demand everything we have.

So how are we to respond? The specifics of how are respond to Jesus’ radical call to orient our lives away from the self and toward God will vary a lot depending on our station and situation in life. I really can’t tell you specifically what Jesus’ call to radical transformation means for you. I can tell you this. Jesus calls you and every one of us to discern what his radical call means for us. Maybe it will mean changing the questions we ask when we decide how to vote. Maybe it will mean giving more to charity or volunteering more in some worthwhile cause. Maybe it will mean more than that. For some of us it meant going back to school and changing careers. That may sound pretty extreme, but it’s nowhere near as extreme as the price Jesus, his first disciples, and so many Christians since have paid.

I can’t tell you what heeding Jesus’ call will mean specifically for you. I can tell you that if we heed truly heed Jesus’ call things will never be the same. I can tell you that I and this whole Christian community are here to help you in your discernment and to help you respond in the ways to which that discernment leads. Jesus doesn’t give us specifics, he gives us a call. He gives us a direction. That direction is away from the self and toward God. That direction is toward losing the life we know in order to find our true life in God. We know that responding to that call isn’t easy, and it isn’t always safe; but we know one more thing too. We know that as we respond in faith to Jesus’ call God will be with us. The safety we have is the safety of God’s presence with us in whatever happens, not the safety of an easy life. So be it. We can of course ignore Jesus’ words if we want. We can tame those words, domesticate them, make them safe if we want; but if we do we won’t be true to those words or to Jesus who spoke them. Jesus, Peter, Paul, Oscar Romero, the Jesuit priests of San Salvador, Martin Luther King, and so many, many others understood these words and responded in their own ways. Will we? Amen.