St. Timothy's Church

Matthew 16.21-28

Loosing Ones Life

 

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.’”

 

In the Name of God:   +  Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

 

I want to begin by paraphrasing verse 24 which I just read:

 

Jesus is saying, “If you want to be included among those who follow me (mine!) you must once and for all say goodbye to self interest, your desire to only live in comfort, you must be willing to accept pain, discomfort, even shame and persecution for my sake and because of my teaching, resist temptation to take the easy way out and regardless of what happens you must continue to follow me and believe in me and my goodness and victory.”

 

Okay, a bit long but necessary.

 

If we break this down we find that Jesus is talking about denying oneself, taking up a cross and following Him. . . three things a follower of His must do.  EVERY DAY

 

To deny oneself runs counter to much of what we’re exposed to every day – the hundreds of messages and products designed to pamper us, make us beautiful, give us comfort, entertain us, make us feel good about ourselves.

 

So when we simply read the words in plain language, just as they’re given, I would consider this to be perhaps the most challenging, griping, paradoxical teaching in scripture.

 

It’s implications touch our fears of death, need for pleasure and comfort, our desires for an easy, comfortable life – even our prejudices, theology, will, and ability.

 

Jesus isn’t saying we should despise ourselves, have low self-esteem, go around abusing ourselves like people who cut themselves or abuse drugs or have a death wish.

 

Denying self means we’re going to think and act counter to our unsaved nature.

 

It’s like the lion laying down with the lamb and not eating it! 

 

Denying self means I depend on God and His salvation alone and through Him I build a foundation for living.

For example, I don’t build a moral foundation for life out of my own clever ideas about what may be good or bad, right or wrong, but discover the foundation in God’s word.

 

I don’t look at “work” as a way to buy what I want and live in comfort looking for others to tell me I’m a success. . . . My “work” is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, yet as I have grown in maturity as I listened to God I realized He had a direction for my life and had given me gifts and opportunity to use them and from that came “work” that has been satisfying.

 

The denial of self is a remarkable adventure inasmuch as God who has a perfect plan and desire for us will direct us to things which we could never have hoped for ourselves, alone.

 

By nature I’m selfish, focused on me, and what I want. . . . by nature there’s a lot of focus on “me” and “I”.

 

To deny myself means I place the Lord before me – to die to self says my self interest is second to His interest.

 

Galatians 2.20, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me; and that life which I now live in flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

 

Denying oneself means to submit ourselves to Christ and His discipline.

 

In concert with that we read that we’re to take up our cross –

 

Keep in mind Jesus has already said this once before in 10.38, “and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me . . . . “ He goes on to talk about loosing and finding ones life.

 

I’m not sure if we have a parallel in our culture that would shock us as much as this saying would have persons of the day. . . NOT A CONVERSATION FOR POLITE COMPANY

 

A follower must be willing to die a horrible death, die in a way reserved for political rebels, slaves, murderers; die a shameful death – one believed to be a curse from God –done in public where ridicule and scorn were heaped upon the condemned PERSON(S) by BYSTANDERS he passed by on the way to the place of execution.

 

1 Peter 2.21 teaches us that following after Christ means to trust in Him, obeying Him and walking where He walked – like following His footsteps. . . . where you see His footprint you step your foot on top of it.

 

 

Even though Jesus never describes the size of the cross we’re to carry we know that what He’s talking about is a cross the size one could die on. . . . it’s not the nice, pretty, gold or silver cross hanging around our necks. 

 

It’s probably big, heavy, more than likely difficult to carry and probably feels heavier as each step saps our strength – the more we carry our cross and especially just when it seemed hardest to carry the faithfulness of Christ who makes all things new and brings rest to the weary comes to us and the miracle of grace occurs: it gets lighter– instead of breaking down in defeat we’re lifted up in victory.

 

So our cross isn’t the spiffy WWJD wrist band or the religious ring or scapula’s some wear; It’s not knowing how to make the sign of the cross (although wonderful and important) as a sign of piety – these things I’m pretty confident are not what He was talking about.  This goes beyond polite signs

 

Jesus was talking about following Him and every day carrying – taking upon us – His willingness to suffer, His love, His determined prayerful obedience to The Father solidified by the Holy Spirit working in Him.  THE SAME SPIRIT WORKING IN US

 

Within this lies the greatest of virtues in carrying ones cross – that is humility.

 

Humility and humiliation that is given through following Jesus.

 

Carrying the Cross of Christ results in humiliation, but a humiliation in which the person humiliated gives full assent. . . . we’re okay with humiliation!

 

Christ suffered humiliation by coming from heaven to take the form of flesh and blood;

 

Christ suffered humiliation by being hounded even as a child and having to flee to Egypt;

 

Christ suffered humiliation each time He had heard the spurious remarks made about Him – even to the point of being accused to be in league with the prince of darkness.

 

Of course we all know about His arrest, being slapped, spit upon, scourged, nailed to a cross and dying a revolting death.

 

He suffered humiliation with full assent – not with vengeance or cursing or screaming threats – but in quiet assent and trust in His father’s will and plan.

 

Sometimes we read about Jesus and say – well that was Him or He’s God and do these things. . . . . what about people we might consider “ordinary people”. 

 

Are there Christians who carry their crosses as Christ directed?  To the level he meant?

 

I have read that in Persia there once was a plague and Christians came to help and worked as sanitary workers.

 

The Persians responded to their kindness (and sacrifice) by throwing their dirty clothes on the Christians and asking in loud cry’s to the heavens that these infidels be stricken with plague and not them.

 

In the story of the Black Death at Marseille only four of the monks at Mercy Monastery survived.  Three ran away and one stayed despite the deaths of his seventy-seven companions.

 

Humiliation for the sake of Christ is like being the one who stayed while three others fled.

 

A soul at peace (total confidence) believing in God’s goodness in all situations.

 

In regards to the Black Death at Mercy Monastery 77 died and 4 lived.

 

Yes, four lived but one lived a life far different then the other three – because he stayed. 

 

I’m convinced he was further molded into Christ’s image through the fires of staying when others fled; where he trusted his life to Christ and was willing to loose it to gain it.

 

And gain it he did!

 

The year 1941.  The place Auschwitz.  Fr. Raymond Kolbe and four other monks are held prisoner there for adding Jews. Prisoners at Auschwitz were slowly and systematically starved, and their pitiful rations were barely enough to sustain a child: one cup of imitation coffee in the morning, and weak soup and half a loaf of bread after work. When food was brought, everyone struggled to get his place and be sure of a portion. Father Kolbe however, stood aside in spite of the ravages of starvation, and frequently there would be none left for him. At other times he shared his meager ration of soup or bread with others.

 

In the harshness of the slaughterhouse Father Kolbe maintained the gentleness of Christ. At night he seldom would lie down to rest. He moved from bunk to bunk, saying: 'I am a Catholic priest. Can I do anything for you?' 

 

A prisoner later recalled how he and several others often crawled across the floor at night to be near the bed of Father Kolbe, to make their confessions and ask for consolation. Father Kolbe pleaded with his fellow prisoners to forgive their persecutors and to overcome evil with good. When he was beaten by the guards, he never cried out. Instead, he prayed for his tormentors. 

 

In order to discourage escapes, Auschwitz had a rule that if a man escaped, ten men would be killed in retaliation. In July 1941 a man from Kolbe's bunker escaped. The dreadful irony of the story is that the escaped prisoner was later found drowned in a camp latrine, so the terrible reprisals had been exercised without cause. But the remaining men of the bunker were led out.

 

'The fugitive has not been found!' the commandant Karl Fritsch screamed. 'You will all pay for this. Ten of you will be locked in the starvation bunker without food or water until they die.' The prisoners trembled in terror. A few days in this bunker without food and water, and a man's intestines dried up and his brain turned to fire.

 

The ten were selected, including Francis Gay-O-Nid-Zek, imprisoned for helping the Polish Resistance. He couldn't help a cry of anguish. 'My poor wife!' he sobbed. 'My poor children! What will they do?' When he uttered this cry of dismay, Maximilian stepped silently forward, took off his cap, and stood before the commandant and said, 'I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. I am old (47). He has a wife and children.'

 

Astounded, the icy-faced Nazi commandant asked, 'What does this Polish pig want?'

 

Father kolbe pointed with his hand to the condemned Francis Gay-O-Nid-Zek and repeated 'I am a Catholic priest from Poland; I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children.'

 

Gay-O-Nid-Zek later recalled: 'I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. . . . I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me - a stranger.'‘

 

Father Kolbe was thrown down the stairs of Building 13 along with the other victims and simply left there to starve. Hunger and thirst soon gnawed at the men. Some drank their own urine, others licked moisture on the dank walls. Maximilian Kolbe encouraged the others with prayers, psalms, and meditations on the Passion of Christ. After two weeks, only four were alive. The cell was needed for more victims, and the camp executioner, a common criminal called Bock, came in and injected a lethal dose of carbolic acid into the left arm of each of the four dying men. Kolbe was the only one still fully conscious and with a prayer on his lips, the last prisoner raised his arm for the executioner. His wait was over ...

 

It must be noted that the German SS reported that at every inspection, when almost all the others were now lying on the floor, Father Kolbe was seen kneeling or standing in the centre as he looked cheerfully in the face of the SS men. . . .”  Kolbe never asked for anything and did not complain, rather he encouraged the others, saying that the fugitive might be found and then they would all be freed. One of the SS guards remarked: this priest is really a great man. We have never seen anyone like him”.

 

A Polish prisoner assigned to clear the bodies from the starvation bunker said this, “Immediately after the SS men had left I returned to the cell, where I found Father Kolbe leaning in a sitting position against the back wall with his eyes open and his head drooping sideways. His face was calm and radiant”.

 

Fr. Raymond Kolbe was executed on 14 August, 1941 at the age of forty-seven years, a martyr of charity. The death certificate, as always made out with German precision, indicated the hour of death 12.30.

 

His body was removed to the crematorium, and without dignity or ceremony was disposed of, like hundreds of thousands who had gone before him, and hundreds of thousands more who would follow.

 

The heroism of Father Kolbe went echoing through Auschwitz. In that desert of hatred he had sown love. A survivor declared that Father Kolbe's death was 'a shock filled with hope, bringing new life and strength ... It was like a powerful shaft of light in the darkness of the camp.'

 

Francis Gay-O-Nid-Zek survived and told the story of Father Kolbe’s heroic sacrifice to everyone he could until his death in 1997.

 

On October 10, 1982, Pope John Paul II canonized him, proclaiming also that he was to be venerated as a martyr.

 

Jesus stayed and carried His cross and won freedom for a sin filled broken world.

 

One monk stayed in Marseille and gave dignity and the strengthening love of Christ to seventy-seven of his brothers.  While 3 ran away.

 

Raymond Kolbe said take me and stayed with nine others and offered them the cross and glory of Christ as they faced death.

 

While some will leave and seek an easier way – those who stay will surely face difficult days.

 

We all learn about suffering at some point – it’s the rare instance when someone can say they’ve led a life void of suffering.

 

Jesus says to be counted among his own we are to deny ourselves (place Him first); Carry our cross daily (as necessary be prepared to suffer) and follow Him (walk where He walked).

 

It is in this way – by grace – we loose our lives, yet gain them and can claim Christ’s glorious victory is one we share eternally – to His honor and glory!  Let’s pray . . . . .

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