Comfortable Christianity

Comfortable Christianity Matt.16: 21-28 8/31/08

Today we live in an age of “Comfortable Christianity”. We wear comfortable clothes, sit in comfortable seats, inside with air conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter. We also leave out or water down the parts of the liturgy that might offend someone. That leads us to skip the parts of God’s Word that make us uncomfortable.

Preachers preach about social issues instead of heaven or hell. Now some are suggesting that we don’t need a bloody cross and the mystery of the resurrection in our “Christianity”.

Early writers wrote about servanthood because of the servant nature of Christ’s life and ministry. But the later church was uncomfortable with servant because it was too close to slave so over time the concept has changed to discipleship.

A disciple, according to the dictionary is a “pupil or follower of any teacher”. According to God’s Word it is one who learns and obeys all that Christ has taught. Not we find the church is guilty of diluting discipleship to make it more palatable to a skeptical generation.

In our Matthew passage, Jesus is explaining what discipleship is so that we can recognize false teachings and avoid them.

Peter wanted to be a comfortable Christian. The Jews knew they were God’s chosen people. They realized that to be a great nation would take action on the part of God. They thought that God would send them another king to rid the world of their enemies and elevate them to their proper place.

The idea of a suffering servant Messiah just didn’t fit. It was the complete opposite of what they had in mind. Peter loved Jesus - he liked the miracles – he listened to the beautiful teachings, but the cross just didn’t fit.

I think many Christians today come to feel the same way. After their initial encounter with Jesus Christ, They picture a paved road to heaven and when they begin to learn about discipleship.

When they hear words like “suffering” and “servant”, they say, “Wait, this is not what I signed up for. This is not what I expected from a Lord and Savior”. But God’s Word is plain about what following Christ is really about.

When Peter voiced his objection to the idea of the Messiah dying, Jesus answered him sharply. “Get behind me Satan.” That seems to us rather strong. But, at that moment, there came flooding back to him the temptations he faced in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry.

There he had been tempted to take the comfortable way of power. Give them material things and they will follow you. Give them miracles and entertainment and they will follow you. Reduce your standards and they will follow you. Peter was confronting Jesus with the way of escape from the cross that was a constant temptation to him. He was reminding Peter that his place was following.

Our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ calls us to be disciples. His instruction to the apostles, the first church, was to go and make disciples - not Christians – not protestants – not Presbyterians - disciples. All through God’s Word he calls people to be believers and disciples. You must believe in the Lordship of Jesus the Christ to be saved. Once saved, you graduate to discipleship.

In out passage today, Jesus lays out the principle of discipleship; “If anyone would come after me.” We aren’t allowed to come to God on our own terms. We must come to him on his terms. To those who have not yet placed their faith in Jesus, the words “come after me” can be applied to the initial decision to surrender their lives to Christ for salvation.

To those who have already placed their faith in Jesus for salvation, the call to “come after me” is a renewal of a call to a life of daily obedience to Christ. We are all constantly tempted to take back some of what we initially gave to God and use it for our own comfort.

Jesus tells us what he means by “come after me.” First we have to lay something down. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves. To deny oneself is uncomfortable. I’m reminded of the story of the mother who was teaching her 4 year old about Jesus. Things seemed to be going good so she asked him, “would you like to have Jesus in your heart”. The boy replied, “no, I don’t think I want the responsibility.” And sometimes we don’t either.

But it’s important to understand what Jesus meant by deny self-denial we usually mean giving up something. It’s like Lent when we give up things that are important to us, like chocolate or we give up giving up things. He is not talking about denying ourselves luxuries or even necessities. He is talking about giving up the right to rule our own lives.

That kind of self-denial isn’t comfortable or easy. We all have things we want. We all have goals. To deny self means that we can’t always do the things that our natural tendency leads us to do. It means that life’s decisions will be made in the shadow of the cross, and not from our own desires.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t be happy and successful. It means that we find fulfillment and joy and success through dedication to Jesus the Christ. It means that we place ourselves in God’s hands at all times, wherever his hands lead us. We need not be concerned about what the future holds because Jesus is totally sufficient and God is in charge.

It’s not like saying to the Lord - “Here’s my life Lord, I’m giving it all to you”; and that being the end. It’s not one big action. It’s a lifetime of small actions taken daily. It’s when we spend time with a hurting neighbor, when we go to that committee meeting, when we teach the Sunday School class, when we help a needy person, when we spend time in prayer, when we go to church to worship our God.

Usually giving our life to Christ isn’t glorious or comfortable. It’s done in all those little acts of love. It would be easy to go out in a flash of glory. It’s harder to live the Christian life little by little over a lifetime.

After we lay down self, Jesus says we must take up our cross. The phrase, “take up your cross, indicates that there is a decision to make. Bearing our cross is a voluntary form of sacrificial obedience that identifies us completely with Jesus Christ.

To bear our cross doesn’t mean to carry burdens or to have problems. Some feel that a particular illness or other suffering is their “cross to bear”. But these are not things that we choose. These are circumstances or situations that, given the chance, we would not choose. Taking up and bearing our cross means that we choose to live a life of self-denial in following Jesus.

When Jesus spoke of the cross everyone in the audience knew what he was referring to. The cross was a vivid and concrete reality. It was the instrument of execution reserved for Rome’s worst enemies. It was a symbol of the torture and death that awaited those who dared raise a hand against Roman authority.

Taking up one’s cross means being willing to go all the way for Jesus - no holds barred and no holding back - just a stead humble walk that follows where he leads. Jesus said it as simply as he could in John 12:26; “If anyone serves me, let him follow me; and where I am, there my servant will be also. If anyone serves me, him my Father will honor.”

Cross bearing, at times, makes us feel like the man in this story. There was a man who constantly complained about the size of the cross he had been called to bear. He was convinced that he had it worse than anyone else. He wanted to talk to God face to face about the situation. Finally he got on heaven’s nerves enough that a angel was sent to deal with him.

The angel said, “OK, I’m going to take you to a room full of crosses and you can pick the one you want.” That sounded fair, so they went into this huge room full of crosses of all sizes. There were 3 foot crosses and crosses that had to lay down because they were too tall to stand up. The man searched and searched and finally picked a 4 foot cross. He didn’t want to seem petty by picking a 3 foot one.

The angle asked, “are you sure that’s the one you want”? The man said yes. The angle asked again - the man said yes - why do you keep asking. The angle said, because that’s the one you had before you got here.”

To take up one’s cross doesn’t mean that as a disciple we go around looking for suffering. But it does mean that we won’t be surprised if suffering comes. It also means that we shouldn’t be surprised by what can be accomplished by persevering.

George Dantzig was a math student at UC Berkely during the depression. He was unemployed and standing in bread lines to eat. Rumor had it that there was a job of assistant to the professor for the highest score on the math final. George studied day and night.

He studied so hard he was late for the final. He rushed in, grabbed the test and saw 8 problems. Just as he finished and the bell rang he saw 2 more on the blackboard. He told the professor, There are a couple of problems I didn’t finish, can I have more time?” The professor gave him until 4PM Friday.

He worked on those two day and night. Finally he solved one and that led him to the solution to the other. At 4PM Friday he turned in his paper. Sunday morning his professor showed up at his door to tell him he had the job. The professor said, “you weren’t there to hear but those two on the board weren’t part of the test. I put them there and told the class they could have fun the rest of their lives working on those problems declared unsolvable by Einstein.”

Jesus went on to say, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Jesus is speaking in some of the bitterest days of persecution. He is saying that the time may well come when you can save your life by abandoning your faith; but if you do, instead of saving life, in the real sense of the term you are losing life.

The one who is faithful may die but he dies to live. The one who abandons his faith may live, but he lives to die. In this day and age we aren’t likely to be asked to die for our faith.

But the fact remains that if we live life in a constant search for safety and security and ease and comfort - if every decision is made from worldly motives, we will lose all that makes life worth while. Life becomes a soft and flabby thing, when it could be an adventure. Life becomes a selfish thing when it might have been alive with service. It is quite possible for one to gain all the things he set his heart on, and then to wake up one day to find that he has missed the most important things of all.

Jesus ends this teaching with a warning and a promise. He warns of inevitable judgment. Life is going somewhere - and it is going to judgment. The promise to his disciples is that nothing humanity can do will hinder the expansion of the Kingdom of God.

To be disciples of Christ means that we are willing to be lead. We are willing to be lead into places that we don’t understand; even places that are dark and scary and sometimes painful and uncomfortable; because we trust and follow the Shepherd.

A lot of it has to do with the attitudes we display when trials come into our lives - especially those that seem unfair. Nothing could have been more unfair, than for Jesus to have picked up his cross and died for you and for me. To take up our cross means forgetting the belief that somehow our lives are going to be fair.

The cross is an emblem of Christianity that holds special meaning for everyone who identifies with Jesus Christ. When we see a cross, it should speak to us of Christ’s determination to do his Father’s will by dying for us on Calvary. The cross is all about making a choice. The cross is about discipline, hard-work, obedience, and commitment. Bearing a cross isn’t easy - it isn’t comfortable- but it draws us closer to Christ and makes us more Christ-like.

The cross is a symbol of pain and suffering that has been resurrected into a symbol of never ending love and hope. Only by taking up our cross daily and following Jesus the Christ can we be what God created us to be - disciples - children of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.