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Christ's Passion and Ours

Matthew 16:21-28

March 23, 2003

Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection

²¹From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. ²²And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” ²³But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

The Cross and Self-Denial

²⁴Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ²⁵For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. ²⁶For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

²⁷“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. ²⁸Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

There was a comedian who was pretty popular not too long ago, named Yakov Smirnoff, some of you might remember him.  When he first came to the United States from Russia he was not prepared for the incredible variety of products available in American grocery stores.  He says, "On my first shopping trip, I saw powdered milk--you just add water, and you get milk.  Then I saw powdered orange juice--you just add water, and you get orange juice.  And then I saw baby powder, and I thought to my self, What a country!"

This comedian was obviously making a joke but sometimes we make assumptions like this about Christian Life —that people change instantly after they become Christians.  Some traditions call it repentance and renewal.  Some call it Sanctification of the believer.  Whatever they call it, many Christian traditions expect some quick fix to sin. 

According to this belief, when someone gives his or her life to Christ, there is an immediate, substantive, in-depth, miraculous change in habits, attitudes, and character.  If we believe this way, then we go to church as if we are going to the grocery store: Powdered Christian.  Just add Jesus instead of water and… POW! - disciples spring up from the spot.

Unfortunately, there is no such powder,  and disciples of Jesus Christ are not instantly born.  They are slowly raised through many years and seasons of growth.

Often in the process of that growth, the most important teaching and growing moments are the trials, suffering, and temptations of ordinary life in this extraordinarily sinful world.  [1]

Are you a Christian?  When did you become a Christian?  Do you feel you have been a practicing disciple of Christ ever since your earliest days in Sunday School?  Or did you become a Christian through a sudden and important decision made at a critical point in your life? 

Regardless of how and when it happened, do you believe you have grown and gotten stronger in your faith since that earliest moment of your Christian life?

If so, what makes you think so?  Has your faith ever been tested?  What would you do if your father or mother or some other important person of authority in your life came to you and said to you, "Your faith is going to be tested soon.  You will be tempted an d face deep trouble and if your passion for Christ is true and deep you must stand strong!"

In effect this is what happened to Jesus.  At some point in his ministry, God in heaven, his father, who sent him to earth to teach and minister and be his Word to all humanity, communicated to him that he would have to suffer and die on the cross.  Can you imagine what Jesus must have felt like?  He was probably in prayer at some point, and he knew that a lot of the things he had been teaching, many of the people he had been talking to and the things he had been saying to those people were deeply controversial.  He knew that many of the things he had been doing were going to get him into deep trouble.  But he had been doing it all anyway, because they were the right thing to do, and because to teach those things, to heal those people and to show people that way of life, was why he had come to earth.  It was Jesus' reason for living that he was doing and saying what he had.  But he knew it was getting him into trouble. 

He prayed to God in heaven, his father and partner in ministry and he knew that he could not stop what he was doing.  That he would be killed if he didn't stop.  At the same time, he knew that he couldn't stop.  So he decided to stick to it.

He believed in it so deeply, he was so passionate about what would soon happen that he told his friends, his disciples and his followers what he was beginning to understand.  The Gospel of Matthew says it like this, "²¹…Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised." (16:21)

As he spoke to his disciples about this, they didn't like what they were hearing.  The most important and powerful of the group, the one closest to Jesus pulls him aside and says to him, "Hey Jesus, you know you have some choices here…You don't have to go get killed like this…"

The Gospel of Matthew says, "Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”

And in fact he was right, Jesus did have a few different ways he could have acted, once he realized he was getting in trouble.  He could have just shut up and run away.  If he had left Israel, or gone away from Jerusalem, and back up to his home town of Galilee or even farther north, he would have been safe from those people he was making angry.  But no, he got himself in even deeper trouble until on Palm Sunday, which we'll celebrate a few weeks from now, he jumped right into the heart of the fight!

Or he could have done just that.  He could have taken on the fight that was starting up.  He was the Son of God.  He could have commanded legions and armies of angels and humans that would have followed him into battle and on to victory.  Any little mortal that seemed to be getting ruffled by what he was saying and doing, would have been no match for the Son of the Most High.

But instead of these two obvious choices, what did he tell Peter?  ²³ he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”(Mathew 16:23)

"No way!  I'm not running and I'm not fighting.  You forget why I'm here," he says to Peter, "I'm here to show you all how God wins victories.  Not through violence and war, and not through giving up when things are hard, but through resisting , resisting the desire to do as you would do on the earth, and remembering what my Father in heaven has taught me."

And what happens?  Sure enough he is captured, he is killed and he defeats his captors, escapes their punishment by being victorious even over death, He makes his point once and for all, that to follow in the Way of God is to have everlasting life and to have victory over fear, death and trouble.

Have you ever been tempted to turn from God and run?  Have you ever been tempted to lash out against someone in anger, revenge and hatred?  Have you ever thought you were hiding from God, and did what you knew would not be giving God glory, that you knew was against God's will?  If you are a Christian, and not one of these just-add-water-Christians, then you've had moments like these.

But it's not that bad right?  It doesn't really matter what you do, right?  What's a little cheating on our taxes.  What's a little stealing supplies from the office or not ever returning that book to the library?  What does it matter if you know that God is calling you into the ministry or to use a particular gift or talent for his kingdom, but you ignore that urge?  Its not that bad is it?

The story the father of a small boy would occasionally sneak into a neighbour’s orchard and pluck some of the choicest apples. The man thought, the farmer will never miss a few apples. Yet, he always made sure that “the coast was clear” because he had to carefully sneak over the sharp barbed wire fence. One day with his son tagging along, after carefully looking in every direction around him and seeing no one was there, he slowly started to creep over the fence. When his son called out, “Wait!”  All you could hear was the yelp of the man as he slipped on the barbed wire fence and ripped the seat out of his pants.  The man hanging there, upside down on the barbed wire fence asks his son,  “Why did you yell out.”  The little boy replied, “You didn’t look UP! You forgot to see if God is watching.”[2]

Temptation is always before us and for Christians its particularly difficult to do the right thing.  Temptation to take the easy way is always an option.  Temptation to do as your friends do, as your family does, as your coworkers and all the other people around you do…but we always have choices, like Jesus himself had choices.

Have you been able to resist those temptations?  What has happened to you as did?  As we resist those temptations, we grow stronger in our faith and our passion for God deepens. 

Over the course of this past weekend, Pastor Nathaniel Gaye has led the youth who attended the conference as we have thought deeply about having passion for God.  He explained that having passion for God is really a deep and enduring desire to KNOW GOD.

Here Jesus talks about it only a little bit differently.  He talks about "following" him.  "²⁴…Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." (Matthew 16:24)

Having Passion for Christ involves wanting to know God, as Pastor Nat, taught us all weekend.  But wanting to know God is not an easy process.  It does not happen automatically the moment we first become Christians like just adding water, and knowing God is not limited to just opening the Bible to read and learn about God as we suggested here in our church last week.  It goes deeper.  If means to FOLLOW Christ.  Follow Christ into the hard places.  To take up the cross and sacrifice ourselves for his sake.  Like that song says that we sang a few times this weekend called "Undiginified"

I will Dance I will Sing, to be mad for my King.

Nothing Lord is hindering this passion in my Soul!

And I'll become even more undignified than this, some say it's foolishness.

And I'll become even more undignified than this, Leave my pride by my side.

To be a disciple of Christ, to follow Christ, to have passion for Christ, may sometimes mean we will end up looking undignified, or foolish in the ways of the world.  It may mean we end up working in a career or in a field that pays very little because we want to serve other people in the name of our Lord, and follow in His way.  It may mean we say things that other people, in our schools, our workplaces, our towns, our neighborhoods, and even our churches and our FAMILIES might think are foolish and reckless.  Yet we know that it seems that way because the way to follow Christ its not the way of the world or the way of our friends who are not Christian or not the way of those who are not passionate about God and Christ.  But rather it is the righteous, just, faithful, compassionate and neighbor-and-enemy-loving way of our Lord. 

To have passion for Christ seems foolish and sometimes naïve, unsophisticated in the ways of the world, it may mean we will look undignified, or be laughed at or even disliked by others who don't understand Jesus.  It means getting to know God, following Jesus all the way to the Cross.  It means making the hard choice, for the right reason and allowing God to rule in our lives!

In Philippians 2:8 the Apostle Paul says about Jesus, "He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross; for which cause God also exalted Him."  This is what having the passion of Christ, the passion of the Cross is all about.

In Luke 14:11 Jesus himself says, "He that humbles himself shall be exalted."  To take up that cross and follow in Jesus' footsteps is to humble oneself before God, to follow his will and to take the same kind of chances that Jesus himself took.

And the reward is to be exalted as Jesus himself was exalted.  Even the cross did not keep him from heaven.  Even the grave did not keep him from ascending up to sit at the right hand of his father in heaven.  That ascension, that mounting up, comes as a result of Jesus' passion, obedience, and humility.  For us, that same passion, humility and obedience can by the grace of God, take as farther on our quest to know God and to follow him than we ever imagined, And often this quest means we must risk all for Christ.

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Jewish refugees poured into Lithuania. A large group went to the Japanese Consulate, where they found a sympathetic diplomat named Chiune Sugihara.  Sugihara was the Japanese Representative to the Lithuanian government.

Against the orders of his boss, the Government of Japan, Sugihara issued exit visas for an estimated 6,000 Jews, writing them by hand almost nonstop for a month until the Soviets closed the embassy. His “reward” was eighteen months in a Soviet prison camp with his family after the war, and dismissal from his post when he returned to Japan. For years he lived in obscurity, feeling disgraced. But in 1985, Sugihara was honored by the Israeli government for his heroic efforts.[3]

Believe it or not, this man was a Christian.  A Japanese man, living in Lithuania in 1939, he was fluent in English and Russian, had lived in Finland, and studied in China.  On top of it all, this remarkable person had somehow converted to Greek Orthodox Christianity.  At one point in his life he was quoted to have said, "I may have to disobey my government, but if I don't, I would be disobeying God."[4]  Aside from by the nation of Israel, Sugihara has also been honored at the Holocaust museum in Los Angeles and has inspired an annual contest that has been wildly popular among the high schools of New York City, called "Sugihara Do the Right Thing Essay Contest."[5] 

When Jesus says, "take up your Cross and follow me," this is what he means.  Those who have a passion for Christ, do such things at every opportunity.

Clearly, its not an easy thing, its not a matter of lip service or just speaking words, its hard.

A guy went to a revival meeting.  The first night there was an altar call at the end of the service.  For those of you who don't know, an altar call is a moment in the service when all those who are challenged to give up their lives of sin and decide to become passionate, faithful followers of Christ, can come forward and in prayer, publicly commit themselves to do that.  When at this revival meeting, a man obviously drunk and a real mess, staggered his way up to the front of the sanctuary to the altar, fell to his knees and cried out loud, "O Lord, help me, save me, fill me with your Holy Spirit!"  Everyone was amazed and joyful that this man, who clearly was in great trouble was turning his life around.  Well this revival meeting went on for three nights, and each of the next two nights, this guy came up in exactly the same way, drunk, a mess and staggering to his knees to pray, "O Lord, help me, save me, fill me with your Holy Spirit!" 

The final  night, when this happened, just as he finished his prayer, "…fill me Lord, fill me with your Holy Spirit!" a voice of a woman right next to him at the altar called out, "Don't do it Lord, he leaks!"[6]

Passion for God, the Passion of Christ, does not mean just empty words and silly, empty motions.  It means resisting temptation, it means taking chances and putting our lives on the line, taking the cross which means death and following Christ, expecting in faith that by his grace, He will lift us up, out of that death into New Life..

During Lent, and in all the days of each of our walks with Christ, may we have the courage, the strength and the faith to live with the Passion of Christ!

Amen