St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church

Apr 9

Home
Up
Jan 1
Jan 8
Jan 15
Jan 22
Jan 29
Feb 5
Feb 12
Feb 19
Feb 26
Mar 5
Mar 12
Mar 19
Mar 26
Apr 2
Apr 9
Apr 16
Apr 23
Apr 30
May 7
May 14
May 21
May 28
Jun 4
Jun 11
Jun 25
Jul 2
Jul 9
Jul 16
Jul 23
Jul 30
Aug 6
Aug 13
Aug 20
Sep 3
Sep 10
Sep 17
Sep 24
Oct 1
Oct 8
Oct 15
Oct 22
Oct 29
Nov 5
Nov 12
Nov 19
Nov 26
Dec 3
Dec 10
Dec 24
Christmas Eve
Dec 31

Contact our Web Master

Dying to Live!

John 12:20-33

April 9, 2006

 

1. When somebody wants to tell you how good something is, what do they say? I’ve heard several standard lines. "It’s the best steak ever tasted!" Or "You’ve GOTTA see the new dishes I bought." Or "I can’t live without (You fill in the blank.) But I suppose the quintessential superlative is this statement: "It’s to DIE for!" You’ve heard that one, haven’t you? Every now and then I’ll hear someone say it, and I always wonder just what they mean.

2. "It’s to DIE for!" I suppose those who make that statement mean "I would walk through a field of land-mines, knowing I might be blown apart at any minute, if I knew there was a new luxury Gulf Craft Majesty Yacht waiting for me on the other side of that field." Or maybe "I would gladly give up my life, if I knew my last meal included a dish of Death by Chocolate!" These are all things to die for! But the logic of that statement escapes me! If we have to die just to have what it is that we want, then what? We wouldn’t be around to enjoy it! Wouldn’t it make more sense to find something to live for?

3. The answer to that question is a resounding YES! YES! Something to LIVE FOR! I often talk to my 9-year-old granddaughter on Saturday. She wants to be a minister when she grows up, and always asks me what my sermon is about, then she tells me what I should do with the children. Yesterday I told her about living for something instead of something to die for. I said I hadn’t decided yet what to do with the children. She said, "Oh, I’ve already got that figured out!" (She very quick!) She said, "Give them something SWEET, like candy!" (Her mother doesn’t let her have much candy). Give them something. She doesn’t know, any better than the rest of us, that living for a new luxury Gulf Craft yacht or a dish of some decadent dessert does not lead to life! It leads to death. Jesus said, "Those who love their live [and everything about their life] will lose it." Or, in other words, those who live only for themselves will never truly live. They will die. Our own sign committee said it exceptionally well two weeks ago: The one who dies with the most toys still dies! It’s true! We cannot take our toys with us, folks! Jesus teaches that there is more to life than amassing stuff. I think he really meant it! But we don’t want to believe it, do we? Disciples, then and now, have a hard time hearing his words! Especially me! I love my "stuff." Our home is full of "stuff." And our garage is so full of our stuff we cannot even get the cars in it. Our stuff is even spilling out into the yard – we had to build a storage building in the back yard just to keep it safe and dry. Our backyard storage building is better than some people live in! I’m horrified about our stuff! Do you have stuff, too? Stuff that you love and want to keep? I’ll bet you do! Where would we be without our stuff?

4. I wish I could say collecting stuff ends at home, but I cannot. We collect stuff at church, too! Almost every church I know has a building that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars just to build. And it costs almost as much to heat and cool and water and communicate to and from and furnish and insure. Oh, my goodness, the insurance! Our new insurance provider came to meet us last week and walk through the church. He wanted to see our stuff. He had a note pad with him, and he took copious notes. I’m steeling myself against the next premium payment they will present us just to safeguard the stuff we think we have to have to be a church.

5. But we ARE the Church. And this is Palm Sunday. This is the day we remember Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. People greeted him with palm branches, the only thing they could get their hands on to show their jubilation. And they shouted "Hosanna!" It means "Save us!" They had heard that he saved Lazarus from death, and they wanted to be saved too. They needed to be saved from a fate worse than death. We have the same need. We need to be saved from a fate worse than death. What can we do? We can follow their lead! We can cry "Hosanna! Save us." Save us from our stuff! We’re dying from our stuff! Jesus had to die bodily to live. We must die, too. Maybe not bodily, but certainly physically. The physical stuff we think is "to die for" is just that – it is to die for, or "to die from." This is not what we need to live. Jesus is all we need to live.

6. Twice a month I go to John Calvin Presbyterian Church, where a group of about twelve Presbyterian pastors meet together. We call ourselves "The Missional Church Team." "Missional Church" is a kind of buzz word for a church that is finding ways to carry out Jesus’ mission. Our motto is GOD’S MISSION NEEDS A CHURCH. But what we’re learning is that it’s almost impossible to a Christian and an American at the same time. We’re so caught up in living the American dream that we don’t really want to follow Jesus. We all love our stuff at home and at church. We are all influenced by the notion that to be a successful church we have to be blessed with beautiful buildings, and covered with cool cash, and popping with popular programs. But that’s not what Jesus says, is it? He says "To live, you must die." In other words, you must be dying to live!

7. On this Palm Sunday, if we want to live, if you and I want to die with Jesus so we can live with him, we need to follow him. Peter wanted to followed him. On the night of their Last Supper together, Jesus told him, "Where I am going, you cannot follow me now." Peter said "Lord, why can’t I follow you? I will lay down my life for you!" We all know what happened next. Before the sun came up the next morning, Peter denied that he even knew Jesus. There is bad news and good new in that reality. The bad news is that we are all more like Peter than we realize. We have a hard time telling people that we know Jesus. We have an even harder time convincing ourselves that to follow him means dying to the life we know so we can life in the life he offers. This coming week will be a difficult week for those of us who truly want to follow Christ and carry out his mission. Being a missional church is a very costly matter. It calls for people who are willing to conform the practices and habits of their lives into the practices and habits of Jesus’ life. It calls for people willing to give up their personal needs. That’s hard! It’s hard for us to admit that the human life is not about ourselves and our own needs. Peter struggled with it; I struggle with it. Perhaps you struggle with it, too. That’s the bad news.

8. The good news is that Jesus loved Peter anyway, and made him a cornerstone of the Church. Because Jesus loved Peter, Jesus can love us too, even when we betray him or deny him or don’t believe the good news. But let’s not leave it at that. Let’s get a group of us together to talk about ways we can cut across the grain of our culture to reach a new way of life – ways we can live more simply, so others can simply life. Let’s be "dying to live!"

To navigate through the web site, click on the buttons at the top or on the side of the pages or on any links within the page.  Use your browser's Back button to return to the previous page if that page does not appear in the buttons available.  External hyperlinks should open in a new window - close it to return to this page.