Bishop Will Willimon is the resident bishop for the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. But before he was elected bishop in 2004, he was dean of the chapel at Duke University – one of the most prestigious universities in America. He tells this story from his days at Duke about the day the students received a representative from Teach America on campus. Teach America tries to recruit some of America’s most talented college graduates to go into some of America’s worst public schools. This is how Teach America tries to make America a better place.
This woman stood up in front of a large group of Duke students, a larger group than I would suppose would come out to this sort of thing, and said to them, “I can tell by looking at you that I have probably come to the wrong place. Somebody told me this was a BMW campus and I can believe it looking at you. Just looking at you, I can tell that all of you are a success. Why would you all be on this campus if you were not successful, if you were not going on to successful careers on Madison Avenue or Wall Street?
“And yet here I stand, hoping to talk one of you into giving away your life in the toughest job you will ever have. I am looking for people to go into the hollows of West Virginia, into the ghettos of South Los Angeles and teach in some of the most difficult schools in the world. Last year, two of our teachers were killed while on the job. And I can tell, just by looking at you, that none of you are interested in that. So go on to law school, or whatever successful thing you are planning on doing. But if by chance, some of you just happen to be interested, I’ve got these brochures here for you to tell about Teach America. Meeting’s over.”
With that, Willimon said, the whole group stood up, pushed into the aisles, shoved each other aside, ran down to the front, and fought over those brochures. That evening I learned an important insight, says Willimon: “People want something more out of life than even happiness. People want to be part of an adventure. People want to be part of a project greater than their lives.”
That’s what the disciples had signed up for – an adventure. After all, its not everyday that somebody calls out to you to leave your ordinary lives behind and follow them. The disciples were ordinary enough, they were fishermen & tax collectors, young and old, single and married – they were ordinary people with ordinary hopes and dreams for their lives. But Jesus called them to leave their ordinary selves behind – and they did. He gave them little more information than “I am going to make you fishers of men” – although they may not have known what that meant. But though they didn’t fully understand his words, they couldn’t mistake his power. He spoke with power. He acted with power. And it didn’t take long for other people to start noticing, too. Pretty soon lots of people were following Jesus. The disciples became big shots because they were so close to Him. So many people began hanging around Jesus, in fact, that He often had to get away with the Twelve Disciples to have some quiet time to teach them. On this day, they learned that when they signed up for this adventure, they signed up for a whole lot more than they originally bargained for.
“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 and for the gospel will save it.” Whoa – back up a minute there, Jesus. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Save your life by losing it. What is that supposed to mean?
In these words, we find, surprise(!), that God’s definition of ‘a successful life’ is different from our own. In order for your life to be a success by God’s standards, I have three words for you (and they are not my own, by the way) – they are LOSE, PAY and STAY.
First of all, LOSE. Nobody likes to lose – especially me. I get it honest, though. I can actually remember as a child playing old Atari games against my Dad. My Dad never played, so I would usually beat up on him at the start of the game. But after I got a big lead, I would start feeling sorry for my dad (after all he did take time out to play with me), and I would let up, not play as hard, and before you know it he would come back and beat me – and then I would cry. The funny thing is that I would feel all sorry for my Dad when I was beating him, but he never felt sorry for me when he beat me. Maybe he figured that losing built character. Or maybe he was just glad to win. I don’t know. But in order to win in God’s game, we have to lose – we have to LOSE SELF-GLORY.
This is why I think the disciples were so shocked at Jesus’ message. They were probably getting used to all the attention they were receiving. After all, Jesus was a pretty popular guy. Then rumors started getting out, and you know the disciples must be wondering it, too – that this guy is… the King! And not just any King, the long anticipated Messiah-King who would restore Israel to power and issue in a new era of wealth and prosperity! And guess who would be right there in the middle of it all! That’s right, those disciples. That’s why it comes to a pretty big shock for those disciples when Jesus tells them that he is going to be rejected, suffer, and die at the hands of those who hate him.
Jesus didn’t come to make the world an easier place to live. He didn’t come to give those disciples something to feel good about themselves for. He didn’t set up some nice noble project for us to occupy our time with. Jesus came to obey His Father, not for human glory – at least not in the way you and I think of human glory. Jesus said the first thing we must do if we are to follow him is to “deny ourselves.”
Denying ourselves means so many different things. First of all, it means admitting that we don’t have it all together. None of us do. None of us are right all of the time. All of us make mistakes. All of us believe this – but why do we act like we don’t? Why do we play games and try to live up to someone else’s standards and be someone who we really are not?
Jesus would have been fired as a football coach when he says that the first thing you must do to be successful is to lose. But the good coach knows that there has to be a lot of losing before there can be a win. The players must lose their bad attitude. They must give up their own selfishness and desire for self-glory for the good of the team (there is no “I” in team). They’ve got to lose their independence – and fall in line and follow orders just like everybody else – or they shouldn’t be able to play. Jesus is asking for team players on the field of life. For the disciples, this is going to cost them a whole lot more than they expected.
The second word of the day is PAY. Its another word we don’t like. We love to get stuff, but don’t like to have to pay for it. Jesus is telling us that if we’re going to be successful we’re going to have to PAY THE PRICE. And it seems like the more we give to Him, the more He seems to be asking for.
What is Jesus asking for this time? He is asking for it all. He is willing to give it –and he asks no less from you. We dream of lives of comfort and ease – where everything comes naturally, where we can always see the end of road ahead, where everything is “safe.” But that isn’t the Christian life. That isn’t the life that stirs the soul. That isn’t what got those college kids from Duke out of their seats and down to the front of the class to fight over those brochures.
When I was in college we had a similar experience one week during a Campus Crusade meeting at Auburn. We had a group from Student Venture come in (they were the high school wing of Campus Crusade) and they began talking about their ministry in high schools. At the end of their presentation the showed a powerful video entitled “The Harvest” which was about a family who lost their father, but had help from all their friends to bring in the harvest. It was a moving piece, but it had an especially powerful effect on Pete Newman, who was the M.C. for the Crusade meetings and probably was about the coolest guy on Auburn’s campus. But he was fired up after that meeting, and he began yelling at us, in tears, “… I am sick and tired of mediocre Christians who won’t take a stand… I had a youth try to commit suicide last week… who will stand with me?!” I was a little bit offended, not prone to emotional outbursts – but everybody in that room stood up that day. And I can tell you of some people who wound up going into the ministry, inspired by what happened that day (one of them was my sister).
But let me tell you, my friends, you can’t make a difference if you aren’t willing to pay the price. And it doesn’t take long to find out who is willing and who isn’t. As I get older, I see that the commitments that I made as a younger man don’t become easier to keep – they get more difficult. Because there is more out there to be distracted by – there are more responsibilities, thinking about a family, a house, a car – additional demands on our time and our money, and it is oh so easy to cut back on what matters the most. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his own soul.” Its easy to turn back, especially when we get tired or we’re burned out and we face failure time and time again. We tell ourselves “It’s been a waste – it’ll never work – it’s too hard” – all lies straight from hell, right where Jesus identified it from Peter’s mouth. When you take up the cross to follow Jesus, there is no looking back. Its not going to get lighter. Its not going to get easier to carry.
The third and final point of the three may be the most difficult of all – STAY. STAY FOCUSED ON THE GOAL. The goal is simply to follow Jesus – but that is much easier said than done. We all have short attention spans (whether or not you’ve been diagnosed with ADD). We like to go and do, and then when we’re bored we complain there is nothing to do (there is always plenty to do, I am so sick of hearing that – try growing up in a small town where there is nothing to do but ride around town) We are always focused on the Savior, and as we stay focused on Him, He is perpetually leading us to new and previously un-navigated places along the journey. But before we can go, we must first learn what it means to stay.
(Share the inspiring story from 9/11...) FDNY Captain Jay Jonas and five other firefighters from Ladder 6 responded immediately to the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11. When they entered the lobby of the north tower, the south tower was hit. Carrying 100 pounds of gear, they began to ascend the stairwell of the south tower. When they reached the 27th floor, the building began to shake. Jonas ordered his men to evacuate. When they reached the 20th floor they saw a woman, Josephine Harris, standing in the doorway who was paralyzed in fear, crying. Instead of leaving her, they decided to carry her down. When they reached the 4th floor, the bldg caved in around them. They survived because they were still in the stairwell. Ironically, their lives were saved because they risked their lives for another, “whoever wants to save his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”
Jesus takes our ideas of success and turns them totally upside down. Success, it turns out, is not about comforting ourselves, it is about expending ourselves. Success is not about gaining, it is about giving. Success is about pushing ourselves beyond what we thought capable for a greater cause. Teddy Roosevelt said “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly… who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known victory nor defeat.”
