NOTE: Audio recording of this sermon is not available. It was preached at the 8:30 Service. A guest preacher was recorded at the 11:00 service.

Chris Taylor’s Sermon –11/9/08

The Jesus We Proclaim

Joshua 24:14-18

Matthew 16:21-28

He never knew it, but Dr. Richard Halverson and his congregation – Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Md. – had a profound impact on my faith journey. It was through their ministry that I came to know Christ, and through them that the foundation was laid for all the years that have followed.

I loved Dr. Halverson, loved listening to him preach. My favorite time was Sunday evenings. The service then was smaller, and more intimate. Dr. Halverson would lead us in a very powerful experience of worship that always included a wonderful exposition of a passage from Scripture. Long after I left Fourth Pres for college and seminary, Dr. Halverson went on to become Chaplain of the U.S. Senate where he faithfully served for another fourteen years. He died in 1995.

Towards the end of his ministry, Dr. Halverson once spoke of meeting a gang leader and some of his friends from Los Angeles. They had met Christ, and the experience had changed their lives. He was having lunch with them in DC the day the Los Angeles riots broke out after the acquittal of the four policemen involved in the Rodney King beating. The young men had immediately flown home and eventually led their gang to return all the items that they had looted.

Not long after that, the Vice President had visited those gang members in their headquarters. At the very end of the meeting the two gang leaders told the Vice President, “You know we’re Jesus people. We’re not Christians, but we’re following Jesus.”

Halverson’s response: “I love that… because I know so many Christians who aren’t following Jesus!”

Sad to say that there is, indeed, such a thing as Cultural Christianity; there are all kinds of people who call themselves Christian but who have no intention of actually allowing Jesus to shape their lives. Halverson’s words are a challenge to us all. Are we Christian in name only? Or are we truly committed to following Jesus, and allowing him to shape the kind of people that we become?

Here in our text, Peter has just confessed Jesus as the Messiah; the Son of the Living God. It is a turning point in the gospel narrative; that moment when the disciples finally get it.

“From that time on,” our text begins, “Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” In other words, now that they understand Jesus’ nature the disciples are ready to learn about his mission – to learn what it actually means to be the Messiah. But they are totally unprepared for what’s to come.

When Jesus tells them he has to suffer and die, Peter assumes he’s got it wrong. “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” The Messiah doesn’t die! No, the Messiah comes as a great warrior king. The Messiah is all about victory. The Messiah is all about power. Suffering, persecution and death just don’t fit that model. That’s not the way we understand greatness or influence in this world.

Like the disciples in Jesus’ own time, there are many today who are uncomfortable with the cross; uncomfortable with all this talk of blood and suffering. It is so much easier, so much more socially acceptable, to simply emphasize instead that love to which Jesus called us.

Jesus did call us to love, but it is the cross that stands at the center of his saving work. It is through his suffering, through his death, that we are forgiven. God doesn’t break the death-grip that sin has upon our lives through Jesus’ call to love. He breaks it through the cross. It is in taking hold of that cross that you and I are bathed in the cleansing love of our Creator. Take the cross away, and Jesus becomes just one more great teacher. Take it away, and we’ve gutted the heart of the Christian faith.

Hundreds of years before Jesus was born, the prophet proclaimed: (Isaiah 53:4-6) “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Jesus was faithful to his mission. He was obedient even unto death. And by his wounds you and I are healed. That’s an essential piece of this good news that we proclaim.

It is there that you and I come to know the life-changing power of God’s grace; there that the middle-manager who embezzled company funds, there that the neighbor who cheated on her husband; there that the parent who abused her child; there that the anguished soul that murdered his friend find God’s forgiveness and God’s redemption and God’s gift of new life.

So what does Jesus do? Right after talking about the necessity of his own death, he turns to us and calls us to take up our own cross, as well: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

There are many who believe that Judas betrayed Jesus when he realized Jesus wasn’t going to fulfill his dream of political revolution. So, I think, we continue to betray him when we try to force him into the mold of our own worldly hopes and ambitions. Just as Jesus confounded the messianic expectations of his disciples, so he continues to shatter whatever box or compartment in which we are tempted to confine him. He is always so much bigger. It is not for Jesus to conform to our hopes. It is, instead, for us to shape our hopes around him.

Jesus made it clear: if we would be his followers then we must deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow him – follow this one who struggled, and suffered, and died for the sake of others.

What does it mean to deny ourselves? It doesn’t mean ignoring our own needs or desires. What it means, rather, is giving those needs and desires their proper place; making them subordinate to the will of Jesus Christ.

Years ago I came across an interview with a very successful businesswoman who was also a recovering alcoholic. At one point she was asked how she had been able to accomplish so much in her life. She replied that it was very simple. Each morning before she did anything else, she would commit the coming day to the Lord. Then she would ask him how he wanted her to spend that day. Out of that conversation she would write down her to-do list – her best sense of what Christ was asking of her – and then that’s precisely what she would do.

Lots of people set daily goals. What set that woman apart was the way she made her faith so central to that process. When she had been in control, her life hadn’t gone so well. She had descended into the abyss of addiction. So she had made a conscious choice to give that control to someone else. She gave it to the Lord, and that choice had made all the difference.

That is something of what it means to take up our cross; what it means to make this shift from simply being a Christian to being a follower of Jesus Christ. There is a death to self there; a willingness to offer our lives to Jesus and allow him to shape our choices. It isn’t easy, and we may be tempted to believe that that kind of choice is okay for gang members and okay for a recovering alcoholic, but that it is just way too radical for us.

But what that woman would tell you, and what those gang members would say, is that it is precisely there, in our commitment to become followers, that we open our lives to all the goodness, wonder and joy of this beautiful life that God longs to share. We aren’t going to find that life by simply being Christians. We are going to find it exactly where Jesus told us; by making that choice to follow him… and then following him all the way to the cross.