Losing Our Lives Following Jesus

Luke (9:23)

Can you recall Jesus's radical philosophy of being a servant to others? The basis of that statement is tucked away in His words: He was saying to them all, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me." Following Christ as His disciple is a costly, unselfish decision. It calls for a radical examination of our self-centered lifestyles. Whew! That's one of those easy things to say but tough to carry out.

Let's see if I can break this down into smaller bite-sized chunks so we don't gag on it. When you look closely at Jesus's statement, a couple of things seem important. First, those who desire to follow Him closely must come to terms with self-denial. And second, this decision to give ourselves to others (taking up our cross) has to be a daily matter. That's costly stuff. Terribly expensive. If we take His words seriously, then it isn't difficult to see some questions that we must ask and answer ourselves, like: Am I serious about being a close follower of Jesus Christ? Do I think of others to such an extent that self-denial is becoming the rule rather than the exception in my life? Is my walk with Him a daily thing?

Our experiences with abandonment and unwanted change are crisis moments when we must decide whether or not to leave behind the life that is gone forever. We can only do that only if we believe in the ongoing creativity of God, who brings light and beauty to the dark chaos of our losses in life.
As pastors, we spend some time with the dying, but we spend most of our schedule with those who are quietly making their way through the ambiguity of daily life.
We see lives that are still being created. We are invited to witness 'the unfinishedness of human existence".

What is unfinished is the high drama of Jesus' next invitation and my parishioners next choice. Will this man become Peter, who drops everything to follow Jesus until he discovers that there is no longer an old life waiting for him? Or will this would-be disciple respond like the rich young ruler, who, when confronted with the cost of following Jesus, returned sadly to the life he could not leave?
Saints know what it means to lose their lives in following Jesus. They also know that they find life in losing it. The cost of their veneration is high-higher than they could ever imagined. Had they known the cost going into this deal 'as it were' with God, they would have certainly backed out.

But I as one who has had the high honor of walking alongside saints in the making, I have become convinced that Christianity is fundamentally an experience in losing the lives of our dreams in order to receive the lives Jesus died to give us.
The good news I have for you is: Jesus is your only hope. If Christians are truly willing to leave everything, either voluntarily or involuntarily, either by design or by accident, a day will come when they realise they have only Jesus. If he alone is savior, then we can find our lives only in being his disciples.

We have to abandon all hope that we can hang onto any other dream, any other relationship, any other vocation. For most of us this is asking to much. Given the choice between selling everything to blindly follow Jesus or returning sadly to our old life, we will choose the latter all the time. That is why  grace often comes in severe ways. We really don't have to seek abandonment. It finds us easily enough.  Usually it comes as God's uninvited angel with the announcement of "good news" that we are about to lose our lives. In one way or another most of us have met that angel.  The question is, can we lean into the abandonment? Can we accept it as the savior's invitation to find our lives at long last?

We will probably spend most of life with family, friends, good health and good work. But they are not ours by rights. They are not promised to us. We may have to give them back to God at any moment. Someday we will give them back. The trick is to learn how to do that before they leave us. This allows us to spend the rest of our time enjoying them as the temporary gifts that they are.

Rev William Bowers