"FOLLOW CHRIST - AN EXERCISE THAT LEADS THROUGH PAIN TO GLORY"

During the season of Lent, we've been on a journey which we've called, "Forty Days to Spiritual Fitness." This series of sermons has focused on various "exercises" that develop our discipleship and lead us to spiritual renewal.

This morning I'd like to share with you about the exercise of following Christ all the way. I think we say that this exercise is part of a Lenten journey because following Jesus can definitely be "a trip!"

Now it wasn't hard for me to think about "traveling" in preparation for this morning's message because Lorraine and I have just done that in order to get here. And it occurred to me that there are some things that are always true when we go on any kind of journey.

First of all, there is our dependence on some mode of transportation. We depend on something to get us where we're going. It may be a plane, a car, our own two feet or a wheelchair. Even Samantha, on "Bewitched," needed her nose -- it was the twitch that the witch had to have in order to travel !

Secondly, we have to have a willingness to endure the trip. Have you traveled on an airplane recently? To sit with your knees at your chest, with a stranger's head in your lap, the stereo effects of jet engines and crying babies in your ears and the savory flavor of stale pretzels on your palate...well, it's a test of endurance.

And then, too, in order for us to travel, we have to have an assurance that our destination exists and that it can be reached. Nobody goes to AAA and asks for a trip-tik to Atlantis. Even if it exists...you can't get there from here!

Dependence...endurance...assurance. Necessities for the trip of following Jesus Christ.

Our Gospel reading this morning reminds us, in no uncertain terms, of what it means to follow Jesus all the way. It means being willing to die to ourselves so that God can bring something new out of our lives. It means giving up our hold and our investment in what we want and submitting to what God wants. It means traveling through a long journey of tension until we reach the triumph that is to come.

"Tension" is the constant pull of opposing forces. On the journey of following Christ, we are pulled at by the tension between the forces of good and evil...pulled by the tension between life for ourselves today and life with God for eternity. We are pulled by the tension between taking the easy way and taking the right way. Traveling successfully through this tension - to reach the triumph that comes at the end of the journey -- requires dependence, endurance and assurance. And all of these are modeled for us in Jesus.

First, on this journey of following Christ, we must realize our dependence. And what is it on which we must depend?

A man appeared at heaven's gate and was met there by an angel, who told him, "It will take one thousand points to get in. Tell me about yourself so that I'II know how many points to give you."

The man smiled and said, "Well, I've been going to church almost every Sunday all my life."

"Excellent," the angel said. "That will give you three points. What else?"

The man was shocked. "Only three points?" he gasped. "Well, I was on the Board of Directors for a while, and I tithed, and I tried to be a good neighbor, and I never cheated on my taxes."

"Very good," the angel said. "All that brings you up to ten points."

The man gasped again. "At this rate, I'll never get in except by the grace of God!"

"Exactly," the angel said. "Come on in."

We are completely and utterly dependent on the grace of God. And, for that matter, so was Jesus. In verse 27 of our reading from John, we heard something we don't often think of with Jesus: despair and anxiety. "Now my heart is troubled...." He says. The other three Gospels report that, when Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before his arrest, that he was "overwhelmed with sorrow."

It's a funny thing isn't it, how history never holds up for us those moments in the lives of great people when they are in despair. We only see them in their greatness.

We hear Martin Luther King proclaiming, "I have a dream!" But we'll never know of the moments when he must have said, in the privacy of his mind, "Lord, don't make me face those crowds again. I can't lead this awful fight anymore!"

We remember Mother Teresa, eternally patient and loving, ministering to the diseased and dying. But can we doubt that, alone in her bed, she must have, at some time, cried and asked for release from her assignment to the sick?

Even Ghandi, our modern-day model of non-violence, must have, at some point, longed to back-hand some politician...just once!

We hear in Hebrews 4.15 that "...we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet was without sin." Jesus was dependent on the grace of God...just as we are. And that grace was sufficient in every way. Remember that we sing, "it's grace that's brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home."

It's our dependence on God's grace that will give to us the endurance that we also need if we are to follow Jesus all the way. We must have endurance on this journey through perpetual tension if we are to reach the destination of triumph.

In the Gospel today, Jesus announces that his "hour", his time of fulfilling his role, has come. He's talking about what he's getting ready to do - give his life. But in some ways, Jesus' death was like his life - he lived in obedience to God's will - he endured in giving himself...he gave of himself for others. And he uses an example from nature to describe his death: he is like "a grain of wheat" which only bears fruit after if appears to have died and has been buried. Jesus' death will open the way for eternal life for others.

But those words of Jesus' are not only about the meaning of his life; they're about finding meaning in our lives, as well. Self-giving results in experiencing more life. And I'm not just talking about length of life in years - no one can guarantee that. I'm talking about depth and purpose in our living...happiness and peace and satisfaction in our living. Jesus called it "abundant" living. And it can only come if we are willing to keep on keeping on.

Radio commentator Paul Harvey once said, "I hope someday to have so much of what the world calls success, that people will ask me, 'What's your secret?' and I'll tell them, 'just get up again when I fall down."

Tn our church, we have a song that we have adopted as our "anthem." It's that short, little praise and worship song we just sang a few minutes ago:

"Lead me and I will follow. Every step of the way.
Lead me and I will follow. Every step...without regret. Every step of the way.
And when I fall down, pick me back up.
And when I slow down, stir me back up.
And when I'm overwhelmed remind me that I'm not alone."

The apostle Paul said it this way: "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

We must be committed to endure on this journey of following Jesus. It's the trip through the tension that prepares us for the triumph yet to come. By grace, we can endure because we have the assurance of faith that our triumphant destination does exist...and we can get there from here!

You see, ultimately faith is not just about God's existence in the day to day...it's about God's ultimate power and control and presence beyond the day to day. The question of faith is not whether we believe in the miracles Jesus performed. The question of faith is whether we trust that Jesus' birth and death are a genuine declaration that God loves the world and wills our redemption. The question of faith is not whether we can successfully draw on Jesus' power to change water into wine or to help us find our lost car keys. The question of faith is whether God is with us fully in our life and in our suffering and even in our death, just as God as with Jesus in His.

You see, faith isn't a matter of getting what we want from God. It's a matter of whether God is reliable enough to see us through even those times when we don't get what we want. The test of faith is not whether Jesus favors us with personal miracles. The test of faith is whether Jesus' presence in us and ours in Him, in life and in death, is sufficient to draw us to God forever.

Not everything we want is what we actually need. God knows that, and so do we, when we are honest with ourselves. When faith is built on getting what we want, we have turned away from God and we worship only ourselves, regardless ofthe words we say in our prayers. True faith is built on trusting God enough to believe that God is reliable. True faith is built on allowing ourselves to be drawn into the dramatic self-surrender to God that is evident in Jesus' birth and in his death. Our personal victories in life don't glorify God nearly as much as our faithfulness in the face of defeat.

The great theologian Dietrich Bonhoffer, who was arrested and hung by order of Adolf Hitler, once said that when Christians face a crisis, their most frequent question is, "How can I successfully extricate myself from this situation?" But that's wrong he said. The only faithful question for Christians to ask is, "What does God require of me in this situation?" To ask the faithful question is to surrender your personal goals, perhaps even your own life as you have come to know it. To ask the faithful question is to allow yourself to be cast into the ground and to lose your life for the sake of the Gospel. To ask the faithful question is to follow Jesus Christ all the way to the cross.

In the season of Lent...and in our Christian lives...we are on a journey through tension where opposing forces are always exerting stress upon us. But notice that I said we re traveling through tension...not from tension. We can't leap frog over the struggles of faith...we can't catapult ourselves past Good Friday and into Easter -- not if we are true to what God has asked of us. We are to travel this journey with dependance and endurance and the assurance that we have everything we need to follow Jesus all the way to the cross...and beyond to the promise of triumph. Amen.

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