I CRY FOR YOU

Accept the cost of discipleship as well as the benefits

(from the Sunday Sermons On CD-ROM Collection)

"Mary said, 'I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me as you say' " - Luke 1:38

When a young man falls in love with a young woman, he often resorts to very extravagant language to express his emotion. He may say, "I would climb the highest mountain, I would swim the deepest river, I would walk through fire for you." He may even say, "I would die for you." And everyone knows-especially the young woman if she is at all smart-that he doesn't mean anything of the kind. These are only figures of speech that he is using. In fact, in nine cases out of ten, at the first sign of suffering, the young man disappears in a cloud of dust-never to be heard from again. We could ignore all of this except for the very troubling fact that this concept of "suffering love" is built into the very heart of Scripture. And, it is built into the very heart of the Christian life. If we really love another person, we will be willing to suffer with him and for him. We will be willing to be inconvenienced. We will be willing to be humiliated. We will be willing to shed blood. And the Christian accepts this voluntarily because it is at the core of what it means to belong to God and to Jesus Christ. This is where so many of us begin to "cop out." It is one thing to come to Church and get a little inspiration, and talk about belonging to Christ and talk about love. But when we get down to ''where the rubber hits the road as the young people say, many of us don't seem to be ready for it.

• There is a wonderful story about a college football game which turned out to be a terrible mismatch. One team outweighed the other by thirty pounds per man, was more experienced, better coached, etc. The lighter, weaker team was being terribly beaten, not only on the scoreboard but also on their bodies. They were bruised and cut and bleeding and several first-stringers already had left the game because of injuries. As they gathered 'round in their huddle late in the final period, the quarterback noticed that they had twelve men on the field, one more than the eleven allowed by the rules. That's all they needed! If the referee discovered the extra man he would assess a penalty, thereby adding to their already deep humiliation. "Look," the quarterback said to his teammates, "we'll try a running play that will take us past the bench. In the confusion, as we pass the bench, I want one of you to drop out. If we can do this fast enough, the referee may not notice and we can avoid the penalty at least." Whereupon, amidst great confusion, they succeeded in running the play right past the bench. When they returned to the huddle to decide on their next play, the quarterback discovered, to his amazement, that six men had dropped out.

When you are in there getting knocked around, bruised and bloodied, and you have a chance to drop out, you drop out! And so do I. And that's healthy the psychologists tell us. The healthy person doesn't enjoy suffering. He wants to get out of it. He wants to resolve it. He wants to move the situation on toward healing. That is why it is so difficult to identify with the Biblical Theme of voluntarily accepting the bruising and the bleeding. When we see how Jesus volunteered and accepted suffering and humiliation and death on our behalf, we discover there is no hiding place, no escape hatch, no way to get out from under, for those who want to be His disciples.

What does it mean when we say that Jesus Christ suffered and died for us? If you really had to explain this, what would you say? We know, of course, that an enormous amount of Theology has been written about this. We know also that it can become very confusing. There is the story of an old missionary who needed an assistant. They sent him a young scholar with a Ph.D. in Theology. When he arrived, the young man had to speak to the natives through the old man because he didn't know the language yet. In his first talk to these simple but wonderful people, the young man delved deep into his learning and said: "Truth is absolute and relative. The Gospel is absolute truth but its application is relative to immediate needs." When the old missionary heard this, a frown came over his face for a moment. Then he arose to translate and said: "He says he's glad to be here." This happens to some of us, I am afraid, when we read some of the theologies of the Crucifixion. We frown a lot because we're glad it happened but we really don't understand-until we realize that in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ we have God's supreme expression of His love for us. That's all! Everything you can say about the Cross must build on that simple statement.

• There is a beautiful symbol of voluntary acceptance of suffering on another's behalf-supposedly a true story from the time of Oliver Cromwell in England. A young soldier had been tried in Military Court and sentenced to death. He was to be shot at the "ringing of the curfew bell." His fiancee climbed up into the bell tower several hours before curfew time and tied herself to the bell's huge clapper. At curfew time, when only muted sounds came out of the bell tower, Cromwell demanded to know why the bell was not ringing. His soldiers went to investigate and found the young woman cut and bleeding from being knocked back and forth against the great bell. They brought her down and, the story goes, Cromwell was so impressed with her willingness to suffer in this way on behalf of someone she loved that he dismissed the soldier saying, "Curfew shall not ring tonight."

That is exactly what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. You tie yourself, voluntarily, to the bell-clapper and you let yourself be knocked about. It doesn't mean you do it every day and in every situation, obviously. Before long there wouldn't be anything left of you. But it does mean that there are situations which arise constantly in our lives when the time is right for us to give ourselves in this way. Being Jesus' disciples means that we voluntarily accept the cost of discipleship as well as the benefits. We need to remember that Jesus turned away many people who were not willing to pay the price. People came to Him because they wanted the benefits, they wanted the healing, they wanted the excitement, they wanted the comfort that came with discipleship. But when they began to make excuses for avoiding the inconvenience, Jesus simply said "No!" He didn't say "Go and do what you have to do and then come back and we'll talk it out." He said, "No! This is not for you!" There is not a single person who is forced to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. You and I are free to accept His call or reject it. But if we accept it, part of the cost is this matter of giving ourselves to others and doing for others-family, friend, stranger and foe alike-even when it hurts. We don't need to be grim about it. We don't need to project a martyr complex about it. The fantastic thing about it is that the life of true discipleship is the most fulfilling, most glorious life possible. And if many of us are not experiencing that kind of life it is because we've only come half way. Willingness to tie yourself to the bell-clapper is at the very heart of what it means to belong to Him. It is what the young mother-to-be, Mary, meant when she said to God's messenger, "I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me as you say" (Lk.1:38). Lord, we are your servants also. Let it be done to us as You say!

(Reprinted with permission from the Sunday Sermons on CD-ROM Collection. This collection, which contains seven complete fully-illustrated sermons for each Sunday of the three year lectionary cycle and regularly sells for $297, is available through December 24, 1999 for the special price of $199.95. For more info or to order, please visit the Homiletic Resource Center.)