Title: The Cross of Commitment… the Paradox of Following Christ.
Text: John 12:20-33
Thesis: Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who despise their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
Introduction
It is always an interesting question: If you could choose five people you would like to meet, who would you choose?
I looked into how others have answered that question. They are all mostly random but curious choices. One chose Ghandi, Jesus, Hitler, Leonardo DaVinci and Paris Hilton. Another’s list exclaimed, “That’s easy! Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Meryl Streep.” I don’t quite see how Meryl Streep fits in there but… One humorist listed, “the Animals from the Muppets, Jessica Biel, Dwight Shrute, Cosmo Kramer and Juan Valdez.”
I think my favorite list was a list of dead people. He wrote that he would like to hang with a caveman from about 10,000 years ago so he could get a glimpse into what it would be like to be a caveman; Leonardo DiVinci so he could ask him who posed for the Mona Lisa; Mark Twain because of his wit; Marco Polo who would probably have a lot of interesting travel stories to tell; and Shakespeare so he could find out if he really did write all that stuff.
Though tempted to give you my list of people I would like to meet, it would probably make you question my curiosity so I probably has better simply defer to our text. It is a story about some people who wanted to meet Jesus.
Of all the people you might like to meet, who wouldn’t like to meet Jesus?
I. Who Wouldn’t Want to Meet Jesus?
Some Greeks who had come to Jerusalem to attend the Passover paid a visit to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee. They said, “Sir, we want to meet Jesus.” Philip told Andrew about it, and they went together to ask Jesus. John 12:20-22
It seems some people from Greece had traveled to Jerusalem to attend the Passover. It is possible that they were proselytes to Judaism. It is more likely that they were just being good Greeks. The Greek people were a curious and philosophical people. They were said to spend all their time discussing the latest ideas. They were known travelers… Barclay said they traveled “to find things out.” So they may have been in Jerusalem to experience the Passover like we might go to New Orleans to experience Mardi Gras.
For whatever reason, some Greeks were in Jerusalem and they may or may not have seen Jesus driving the vendors and money changers out of the temple. But they had heard about Jesus and they wanted to meet him. So they approached Philip and asked for an audience with Jesus. The bible says Philip told Andrew and together they went to ask Jesus if he would like to meet some Greek folks.
When I was growing up my Dad loved to watch Hee Haw so we all watched it. I am still amused when I think of Junior Samples Used Car pitch about being as honest as the day is long just before he offers some outrageous false advertisement. And then he would say, “If you’d like to buy a car call BR-549.” On one occasion the sheriff came to verify the ownership of a car on his lot. The sheriff asked Junior if he could see his pink slip and Junior said, “I’m not wearin’ one and even if I was I wouldn’t show it to you.”
Another skit that comes to mind was Junior and another Hee Haw character dressed as Greeks. One is wearing torn bib overalls. He takes hold of his torn overalls and asks, “Euripides?” And the other Greek answered, “No Euripidem!”
I don’t know if Jesus and the Greeks exchanged pleasantries as in, “Hello, I’m Euripides.” And Jesus said, “Pleased to meet you, I’m Jesus.”
But the teaching that followed was a teaching before a crowd of people. A lot of people, in fact crowds of people wanted to meet Jesus. Who wouldn’t want to meet him? Jesus had developed quite a reputation. Wherever he went he healed sick people. On one occasion he fed 5,000 people with some small loaves of bread and a few fish. It was being rumored that he was in fact the Messiah. He had walked on water. Just days earlier he had raised his friend Lazarus, who had been dead and buried for four days, back to life. And Jesus he had just ridden into town as “The King who comes in the Name of the Lord.”
As celebrities go, Jesus was one and people wanted to meet him.
But as he gave his teaching on that day one would have to wonder, “Why would you want to meet Jesus?”
II. Why Would You Want to Meet Jesus?
Jesus said, “The time has come for the Son of Man to enter into his glory. The truth is, a kernel of wheat must be planted in the soil. Unless it dies it will be alone – a single seed. But its death will produce many new kernels – a plentiful harvest of new lives.” John 12:23-24
“Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who despise their life will keep it for eternal life. All those who want to be my disciples must come and follow me, because my servants must be where I am. And if they follow me, the Father will honor them.” John 12:25-26
You’ve heard of the old bait and switch game. Bait-and-switch is a form of fraud, most commonly used in retail sales but also applicable to other contexts. First, customers are "baited" by advertising for a product or service at a low price; second, the customers discover that the advertised good is not available and are "switched" to a costlier product. Employers are known to use bait-and-switch tactics by advertising a job opening in a way that gives a misleading impression of likely working conditions or compensation packages.
A classic bait and switch in the Old Testament is the story of Jacob and Esau, after Jacob had conned his brother out of his inheritance he fled to his uncle’s home several hundred miles away so his brother couldn’t find him and kill him to get even. When he arrived at Uncle Laban’s house he fell in love with Rachel, one of Laban’s daughters. He agreed to work seven years for Uncle Laban in exchange for Rachel’s hand in marriage. So on the wedding night Laban brought his daughter to Jacob’s tent wherein, the next morning Jacob discovered that he had not married Rachel but Rachel’s older and less comely sister Leah. Sneaky old Uncle Laban had pulled a classic bait and switch. So Jacob had to work another seven years in order to win the hand of his first love.
Everyone who was listening to Jesus was expecting glory. In fact, in our text Jesus said, “The time has come for the Son of Man to enter into his glory.” And then Jesus promptly began to talk about a kernel of wheat being sown in the ground where it dies in order to bear fruit.
And then if that was not enough, Jesus went on to talk about loving your life and losing it and despising your life and saving it for eternal life. Who wants to hear that kind of stuff and what did it mean?
I know we all pick our poison, so to speak, but I’m kind of into the idea that living well and living long probably has something to do with living safely. We are cautioned to lock our doors and security companies are fond of telling you that there has been a rash of break-ins in our neighborhood and now would be a good time to purchase a security system. We make sure we are insured against everything insurable. We wear seatbelts. We eat balanced diets but just to make sure we are safe we take some extra fish oil and Glucosamine Chondroitin and some Vitamin C and drink tea that has been infused with gingko bilboa. We read labels to make sure we are getting a bale of hays worth of fiber in every serving. We avoid hotdogs because people who eat hotdogs have an 18% greater risk of dying than those who do not. We go to church because church going people live longer than those who do not. We wash our hands religiously. We avoid contact with sickies. We avoid ground beef with ammonia treated pink-slime filler. We try not to hit trees while skiing or provoke an angry avalanche. We avoid terrorists and make sure we get a colonoscopy.
Generally we conclude that if we live right we will live well and longer and if we do not we will likely have a diminished quality of life and die sooner rather than later. But occasionally a person who lives right dies prematurely and a person who abuses their body lives forever.
The oldest woman on record, Jeanne Calment, died at the age of 122. But she stopped smoking at 117 because her eyesight was so bad she could no longer see clearly enough to light her cigarettes ….
Author, Richard Dahlstrom points out, “The safety-first posture is wrong on several levels. First, and most significantly, the good life is never defined by Jesus in terms of either length or comfort. To the contrary, Jesus says that those who seek to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their lives, spilling them out generously in service to others because of love for God and humanity, will find them.”(Richard Dahlstrom, The Colors of Hope (Baker Books, 2011), pp. 128-128)
So this is the paradox: Jesus said, if you try to save your life you will lose it but if you lose your life you will save it. Who would want to meet a guy, much less follow a guy who wants you to volunteer for a suicide mission in order to gain eternal life?
Following Christ in life is not about self preservation… it is about extending and expending your life for God and others. Jesus hung with people that prompted those of acceptable society to question his judgment and choice of associations. Jesus took time to chat be with and bless children. Jesus stopped along the way to encourage and care for the sick. Jesus touched people with infectious diseases. Jesus crossed socio-economic and socio-political barriers. Jesus crossed barriers of race and ethnicity. Jesus crossed gender barriers. And when questioned Jesus said, “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to give his life as a ransom for many.”
One of the earliest observations I made as a Christian was that the more Christian I became the fewer non-Christians I knew. When you grow up in a church and/or begin going to church and when you become a follower of Christ your acquaintances and relationships and friendships gradually become increasing Christian… and generally less messy.
If Jesus is our model, we do not withdraw from the world and the people of the world and the messiness of it all.
Who would want to follow Jesus?
III. Who Would Want to Follow Jesus?
“Die?” asked the crowd. “We understood from Scripture that the Messiah would live forever: Why are you saying the Son of Man will die?” John 12:34
The people who had gathered around Jesus were alarmed by his death talk. “Die?” asked the crowd, “We understood from Scripture that the Messiah would live forever. Why are you saying the Son of Man must die?”
The people were well-versed in their hope. They knew the Old Testament well. They knew that the Son of Man would come and establish his eternal kingdom and they were not buying into Jesus talking about his death ... much less their deaths.
In the Old Testament Book of Daniel is a story of a prophetic dream about the coming of the Messiah. While Daniel was serving in the court of King Belshazzar, who was then King of Babylon, he had a vision while sleeping. He then got up and wrote down the details of his vision.
This vision was of four beasts rising up out of water during a terrible storm. The first beast was like a lion with eagle’s wings. The second looked like a bear. It had three ribs in its mouth and was instructed to “Get up! Devour many people!” The third beast looked like a leopard with four bird wings and was given great authority. And the fourth beast was terrifying, dreadful and very strong. This beast crushed and devoured its victims with huge teeth and trampled what was left beneath its feet.
If you want and example of a contemporary example of a beastly and cruel government there are plenty from which to choose or you can just think “The Capital” in The Hunger Games.
It is a scene of death and destruction and is understood to represent the earthly kingdoms of men.
A. The Earthly Kingdoms of Men (Daniel 7:1-12)
Earthly kingdoms are depicted as being beastly and cruel!
Daniel explained the beasts as representing four kingdoms that would rise to power and govern the world. The Israelite people had known little other than the beastly, cruel and oppressive rule of occupying nations. But they dreamed of the day when all that would end. They dreamed of the day when God would judge the kingdoms of earth and put an end to it all. And their dream was not without basis because they knew the prophecy of Daniel. In his vision he saw God, the Ancient One, sitting on a fiery throne and God judged the beasts, ending their rule.
But that was only half of Daniel’s vision.
So the vision changes from that of earthly kingdoms that are beastly and cruel to the eternal kingdom of the Messiah which is peaceful and humane.
B. The Eternal Kingdom of the Son of Man
“As my vision continued that night, I saw someone who looked like a man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient One and was let into his presence. He was given authority, honor, and royal power over all the nations of the world, so that people of every race and language would obey him. His rule is eternal – it will never end. His kingdom will never be destroyed.” Daniel 7:13-14
Peaceful and Humane
We can neither fully appreciate the prophetic hope of the nation of Israel nor the longing for peace and the restoration of humanity for a people living in a war torn land. Apart from Pearl Harbor and 9/11, none of us have a clue as to what it would be like to be occupied by a foreign army or have a war fought on our soil. None of us have a clue as to what it would be like to have battles fought in our fields and farms and cities and neighborhoods. None of us can imagine having IEDs explode in our streets and highways. That happens somewhere else. 9/11 was shocking to us because we cannot imagine actually living with insurgents and terrorists who are setting off car bombs on the streets of LoDo. Massacres happen at My Lai and Kandahar. Drones strike in remote tribal regions in Pakistan. Living in world like that, who would not long for a government that was peaceful and humane?
Who would want to follow Jesus? People who long for a day when men do not live like beasts but rather live peacefully and humanely together under the sovereign rule of a gracious and benevolent King Jesus?
They were a people weary of beastly cruelty and they longed for the Messiah to come and change all of that. So a dead Jesus was hardly the answer to their immediate dilemma.
They did not have the benefit of understanding prophecy and the benefit of retrospect that we have. We get it. We get that Jesus understood that first and foremost the kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of the heart that invites us to follow Jesus. They did not understand that the hope they hoped is yet to come and that one day the bible teaches us that the Jesus will come in the clouds and one day Jesus will establish his kingdom on earth.
CBS airs an interesting series called Undercover Boss. Bonnie and I enjoy watching as senior executive officers of corporations like Oriental Trading Company in Omaha, NE, Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen, American Sea Food and southern fast food franchises like Checkers and Rallys go undercover. The go undercover and work various jobs in their own companies to see how the company really works and to identify how it can be improved. At the end of an episode the undercover boss introduces himself or herself to the people they have been working with and listening to. Almost always there are words of encouragement and rewards. But occasionally there are employees whose attitudes and actions are totally contrary to what the boss wishes for the company and that isn’t pretty.
You could say that Jesus came as something of an undercover boss and one day he is coming back…
The day will come when Daniel’s vision will take place and the Son of Man will come with the clouds of heaven and he will be given authority and honor and royal power over all the nations of the world so that the people of every race and nation and language will obey him. His rule is eternal and it will never end. His kingdom will never be destroyed. Daniel 7:13-14
The bible says of Jesus, “So dying a criminals death on a cross, God raised him up to the heights of heaven and gave him a name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:8-11
Daniel’s vision and the hope of the Christian is both now and not yet! So we live in a world of beastly cruelty and look forward to a world of peace and humaneness...
Conclusion
The cross Jesus carried was a cross of commitment. It was cross that called him to do the extraordinary thing of dying now in order that others may live then. Following Christ is a paradox. It is an invitation to lose one’s life now in order to secure one’s life then.
Jesus said, “Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who despise their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. All who want to be my disciples must come and follow me.
Stuart Briscoe tells of a conversation he had with a young professional woman about this very text. Her response was one of incredulity. She asked, “Are you trying to tell me that Jesus says that if I hold onto my life, I will waste my life?” “No,” he answered, “I’m trying to tell you that in God’s economy when you invest your life in this life you are investing in eternity.” Her initial response was, “No way! I am going to live my life in this life and worry about the next later.”
She later called Stuart and confessed, "I'm not afraid to ride my motorcycle at ninety-five miles an hour without a helmet. I’ve never been afraid of anything, but now I'm utterly petrified to commit my life to Christ.” But she was more petrified of the thought of having wasted her life. She was afraid to commit herself to the cross of Christ but to do otherwise would be to waste of her life now the loss of eternal life then.(Stuart Briscoe, "Ordinary Folks Make Great Disciples," Preaching Today, Tape No. 47).
Following Christ is a commitment to live now with then in mind… Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who despise their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
Following Christ is a commitment to live and give your life for God and others.
