What Does He Want?

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
First Presbyterian Church
Washingtonville, New York
March 12, 2006
Second Sunday in Lent

What Does He Want?
Gen 17:1-7, 15-16
Mark 8:31-38

You are standing there in the hot sunshine;
You want to find some shade
and a long, cool drink of water.
You have been following the carpenter for some days now,
watching him, listening to him,
taking in his every word, his every movement.
He can’t seem to sit still.
A few days earlier he healed a blind man
in the city of Bethsaida,
along the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
But no sooner had he healed the man,
when he headed north,
to the city of Caesara Phillipi,
near the base of Mount Hermon.
It was a Gentile city,
not within the borders of Judea.

The wind that blew through valley was hot and dry.
Fatigue overwhelmed you,
but Jesus seemed to show no sign of slowing down.
He was like a man consumed, filled with passion for his mission.

You listened to the buzz among the crowd around him.
Everyone seemed to have a different opinion
as to just who this man was.
Some said he was Elijah, back from the whirlwind;
others said he was yet another great prophet
in a line that went back more than a thousand years to Moses.
You still had not come a conclusion;
you were still trying to listen, to learn,
to figure it out.

You were at the back of the crowd
and you could see that Jesus was talking,
but the chatter of the people all around you
drowned out his words.
You saw Peter the fisherman try to pull Jesus aside,
but Jesus would have none of it.
Even from a distance, you could tell that
Jesus was angry with Peter.
Their sudden quarrel caught everyone’s attention
and the crowd grew quiet.
Jesus turned from Peter and spoke to the crowd;
this time you could hear every word:
“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,
and for the sake of the gospel will save it.
For what will it profit them to gain the whole world
and forfeit their life?”
(Mark 8:34-36)

The words fell heavily on everyone standing around you.
You could tell his words made the crowd uncomfortable;
they made you uncomfortable.
“Deny yourself;…
Take up your cross and follow me…
Lose your life for my sake”
This was strong stuff;
Well beyond John the Baptizer’s rantings:
“repent you brood of vipers!”
This seemed so extreme,
so far beyond what you thought he was going to say.
On other occasions you had heard him speak with such compassion
for the poor, the sick,
the elderly, the widows, the orphans.
You had heard him say, “blessed are the merciful,
blessed are the pure in heart;
blessed are the meek…”
But now, “deny yourself;
take up your cross;
lose your life for my sake.”

What did he mean?
A person who takes up a cross
does so for one reason only: to die, to die by crucifixion.
Was he asking people to show their support for his words
by dying, by allowing themselves to be killed?
Did he expect everyone to take his words literally?
What was the lesson this rabbi, this teacher,
wanted his listeners to learn?
What did he want?
What did this man want from those who followed him?
What did this man want from you?

Ah, but it is late in the day
and it is hot and you are tired.
If you leave now,
you can get into town before the rest of the crowd
and find a place to eat and sleep.
And so you walk away, wondering,
what does this Jesus of Nazareth want from us?
What does he want from me?
As you walk away you can’t help but think
that what he wants is far more than you are willing to give.

What does Jesus want from us?
We have been struggling with that question
ever since Jesus first came up
out of the waters of the Jordan.
What does Jesus want from us?
The answer is painfully clear:
he wants a lot more from us
than any of us is prepared to give.
For what Jesus wants from us is simple:
he wants our lives,
he wants all of us, every part of us.
He wants us to die to things of this world,
and to be reborn through him.
And those who have called themselves followers of Christ
have struggled with that ever since.

Jesus wants our lives,
wants us to open ourselves to
transformation through the Holy Spirit,
wants us to turn from lives of the flesh to lives of the Spirit.
But how do we respond?
We adapt Christ to our lives.
We fit Jesus in here and there
in our lives and call ourselves faithful adherents.

Back in the late 1800s, Soren Kierkegard wrote,
“Christ never asks for admirers, worshippers, or adherents.
No - he calls for disciples;
It is not adherents of a teaching,
but followers of a life
Christ is looking for.” (55)
And the life Christ wants us to follow is his life,
the life that led to death,
death on the cross.
Death to sin so that we can truly be reborn.
Reborn in Christ so that we will follow him
working for peace and reconciliation
here and every place in this world;
putting the poor and the hungry first;
Breaking down barriers,
especially those barriers that we ourselves build.
Being reborn in Christ means trying to have the faith of Abraham,
even as we acknowledge
that we do not have the faith of Abraham.

This morning we ordained and installed new officers for our church.
We expect them to know the confessions, the creeds,
this history of our church.
But we expect more from them.
God did not call them to fix budget problems,
or be good committee chairs,
although we hope they will do all those things.
No, God called them to be spiritual leaders,
to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ,
to model Christ-like behavior and help
everyone else to become more Christ-like.

We should have high expectations of them.
We should hold them accountable
for how they govern and lead,
for how they exercise stewardship
over this entire faith community;
for how they exercise stewardship over the staff;
for how they exercise stewardship
over our buildings and grounds,.
Everything they do, everything they say
should strengthen the foundation of this church
both literally and metaphorically.
We should expect our leaders to be willing
to take up the cross of Christ.
But we will have such leaders only if each of us
is willing to take up the cross of Christ.

The great 20th century theologian Karl Barth
once wrote that most followers of Christ
are Christians by convention,
and not by conviction.
And when we live by convention rather than by conviction
it is easy to deny that our Lord calls us to deny ourselves.

Lent is the time for you to die to the old ways
and to be born to new life in Christ,
born as Christ defines it,
not as you might define it.
The first step is to acknowledge
that you do not have the faith of Abraham,
that you find the very idea of taking up your cross
and following Jesus to death
unnerving, even frightening.
When you take that step
you are being honest with yourself
and you are being honest with God.
And when you are honest with yourself,
and honest with God
you have taken the first step toward repentance,
toward new life.

Barbara Brown Taylor has written,
“To measure the full distance between where we are
and where God created us to be –
to suffer that distance, to name it,
to decide not to live quietly with it any longer –
that is the moment when we know we are dead
and begin to decide who we will be tomorrow…”
a convicted, committed follower of our Lord Jesus Christ,
born to new life, a new life in Christ,
a new life through Christ.
(Speaking of Sin, 62)

What does Jesus want from you?
What does Jesus want from each of us?
He couldn’t be clearer:
“Deny yourself;…
Take up your cross and follow me…
Lose your life for my sake.”

Our Lord stands before us now,
before you, before me,
awaiting our response.
AMEN