Afraid of the Wrong Things

I am so grateful for the work of our Children’s Ministry Team. They have been trying to find a great way to celebrate the birth of a baby in this church. One of the ideas was to put a big sign from the church out in the yard of the newborn. You have probably seen that in some of the yards around here. But it turns out that in one situation kidnappers saw this public birth announcement and kidnapped the baby!

O for Pete’s sake! Yet another reason for us to be afraid, when we already have plenty: school shootings, internet predators going after kids on MySpace, extremists around the world who hate America and are lining up by the thousands to hurt us.

All these threats can bring out the primal instincts in us. Like a mother bear sniffing the scent of threat in the air, we can find ourselves constantly on red alert, ready to protect our own interests no matter what the cost.

And what is the cost?

It is important to note that throughout Jesus’ life, Satan hammered away at him by appealing to his primal instincts and tempting him over and over again to save himself.

At the beginning of his ministry, out in the wilderness, Satan tried to get Jesus to use his power for himself: "turn that stone into a loaf of bread;" "I will give you everything you want right now if you bow down and worship me;" "prove you are the Son of God and throw yourself off the temple and see if God saves you." Save yourself, save yourself, save yourself. Jesus said no.

Later on, when Jesus told the disciples that he would be rejected, suffer and die, Peter took him aside and rebuked him for speaking such nonsense. But Jesus turned on Peter and said, "Get behind me Satan! (Mk. 8:31-33) In other words, through Peter Satan was, once again, trying to get Jesus to save himself.

In the garden Jesus begs God, "Abba, Father, remove this cup from me..." Three times he prayed that prayer, and many commentaries think that he was wrestling with Satan, until God gave him the strength to move beyond his primal instincts and go with his best prayer: "not what I want, but what you want." (Mk. 14:32-41)

Then on the cross the same temptations come at him in triplicate once again. The leaders: "He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!" The soldiers: "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!" One of the criminals: "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!"

Save yourself, save yourself, save yourself.

Jesus had every reason in the world to do exactly what they said: he was facing the worst kind of death in the world – a slow death by sheer torture, pure humiliation and complete defeat at the hands of the Romans and the religious leaders.

And yet he is not concerned about himself here, is he? He is concerned about them. "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children." "Father, forgive them; for they do not

know what they are doing." "Today you will be with me in Paradise." Jesus overcomes every temptation of Satan to save himself so that he can save them: all of his enemies.

This, my friends, is who we follow. And just in case we miss the point, Luke begins the passage with Simon of Cyrene, an ordinary countryman like you and me. The cross is laid on his back and he carries it, Luke tells us, "behind Jesus," giving us the perfect picture of discipleship (14:27, 9:23-24).

I think this is the opposite of what we think our Christian faith is all about. Judging from most of our prayers, I think our expectation is that God will protect us from risk and vulnerability and keep us safe. But in his finest hour, Jesus shows us that the opposite is true. It is not God who leads us into self-protection; it is Satan who appeals to our primal instincts and tempts us to focus exclusively on our own safety. God calls us to venture forth into this dangerous world in Christ’s name and spend ourselves for the poor and the oppressed and the captives and the lost.

This is so counter-cultural for us! That is why we need the saints to show us in our own day what it looks like to follow Jesus. Joan Chittester defines saints as: people who "give us a glimpse of the face of God... a taste of the possibilities of greatness in ourselves."¹ Oscar Romero is such a saint.

Oscar Romero was a Catholic priest in El Salvador who was elevated to the position of archbishop in 1977 because he was "a company man," because he played it safe. He was "good, faithful, docile, and supportive of the establishments of church and state." However, when the government started killing leftist-leaning priests and nuns and then killed a Jesuit priest that he knew was a "Christian to the core," something snapped in Romero. He decided to leave the safety of being an establishment man and he took his stand with the poor.

Over the next three years he went to the funerals of one murdered church worker after another. The government threatened him repeatedly and intimidated him constantly until on March 24, 1980 they killed him too. Before he died, he told the people of El Salvador:

Whew! Oscar Romero humbles me. He reveals Christ to me and inspires me not to be afraid of the wrong things. Saints who reveal the face of God to us in Jesus Christ are not people who seek to save themselves, but they risk everything for the sake of the kingdom:

Like the Presbyterian teams that have traveled down to Colombia to stand beside church workers there who are at risk from violence;

Like Beth Pyles, the 51-year-old mother of three from Beechwood Presbyterian Church in Parkersburg, W. Va. (on the cover of Presbyterians Today), who spent 16 weeks in Baghdad recently with a U.S. Christian Peacemaker Team. "Every person is...called by God to work...," she said. "That work always involves risks. Jesus is real clear about that." ³

When we try to avoid the risks; when we try to avoid the pain and suffering of the world and focus exclusively on protecting our own interests, it produces ugly things in us, things that are not Christ-like. We see it nationally, as we struggle to come up with an appropriate immigration policy. If our only concern is to protect ourselves with bigger and longer fences and we don’t deal with the inequities or the fair treatment of our workers, that produces ugly things.

We see it in our swelling prison population where we are eager to protect ourselves and lock dangerous criminals away, but then we forget all about them. We see it in our fear of terrorism and breaking our own laws on the use of torture.

Our primal instincts in the face of threat can so easily take over and lead us away from the One who said: "I was a stranger and you welcomed me... I was in prison and you visited me..." "Love your enemies..."

This is hard for us and it seems to be getting harder. We want to avoid risk not embrace it. We want to make sure our children avoid risk, not walk right into it. But like Simon of Cyrene, we are following behind the One who fought this battle already for us, the One who makes it possible for us to resist Satan’s constant invitation to "save yourself" and follow God’s call to spend our lives for others (e.g. Peter, before and after).

Last weekend several of us went to Berkeley to hear four Christian leaders from the "majority world" (Egypt, India, Uganda and Brazil) invite us to be more faithful followers of Christ crucified. During one Q&A, a young college student shared her own eagerness to live Christ’s self-emptying kind of life, but she didn’t have her parents’ blessing. Her parents want her to get a good paying job, to buy a house and raise children, to have insurance and be safe. She looked around and told everybody in the room: "Bless your children’s seemingly risky decisions."

Not all risky decisions are good ones and should be blessed. Jesus was not foolish. He was innocent of wrong and obedient to God. And, he did not play it safe. He poured his life out for the world. And he calls his disciples to do the same.

I have told you before about Andrew Young, the former mayor of Atlanta, and what his daughter told him when she was home from college:
"Daddy, I heard a missionary talking about ministry in Uganda, and I’ve done a lot of praying about this, and I think God wants me to take a year and go to Uganda as a missionary."
"Well, honey, that’s all well and good, but there’s a lot of poor people right here in Atlanta that need you."
"Daddy, I know that, but I really believe that God is calling me to Uganda."
"Honey, it’s dangerous over there in Uganda, you could get hurt."
"I know that Daddy, but I could also get hurt right here."
"But honey you could be killed there."
"Daddy, I could be killed at any time, anywhere. I really believe that God is calling me to go to Uganda."

Andrew Young thought and prayed about it and finally loosened his tight grip on his daughter and let her go. "When my daughter walked onto that airplane," he said later, "I realized that in baptizing her, and raising her, what I said I wanted most for her was that she would become a respectable Christian. But I wasn’t prepared for her to become a real one!"

Are we ready not only to let go of our children but to encourage them to become real followers of Jesus Christ? That depends on whether we are ready to be real followers of Jesus ourselves.