Back in my teenage years I did volunteer work with the Harris County Emergency Corps. I rode and drove ambulances and that kind of thing. Though it was a volunteer group, working with them had its perks. As part of our needed fund-raising efforts, we staffed the first aid station at various events in and around the Houston area, including Rice Stadium. The Corps doesn’t exist anymore so I have no idea who does the first aid station at Rice these days.
Most of the time the Rice Stadium work wasn’t a big deal. The stadium at least used to be the largest stadium in Houston and for Rice football games was almost completely empty. If you were a Rice fan there really wasn’t much to cheer about as they got beat by everybody. The thing people came to the games for was to see what kind of nonsense the Marching Owl Band, better known as the MOB came up with for its half-time show. This band practiced at clowning and being terrible.
The real perk to the Emergency Corps gig came January 13, 1974 when, for the first time, Houston hosted the Super Bowl, at Rice Stadium and the Emergency Corps had the first aid station. It meant I got to go to the Super Bowl and didn’t have to pay for a ticket.
That day was also my first exposure to something going on right now as next week’s Super Bowl rapidly approaches, ticket scalping. I had a man come up to me and a friend and offered us $200 apiece for our stadium passes. We wouldn’t take it. We were interested in getting into the game for free. Even had we been interested, at least as I remember it, you had to have your pass AND be in uniform. While that guy might have fit into my clothes six months ago, he wasn’t getting into them in those days.
$200 doesn’t sound like much and by today’s ticket prices, it isn’t. My theory on that is, he saw a couple of teenagers and thought he could get the best of us because he just had to get in to see the game. I have no idea if he ever found anyone to do business with or not.
Many of us, in our society are like that. When preparing this week for this message I ran across a brief story from The Denver Post. Tobey Maguire of Spiderman fame wanted to see the, at the time, new Star Wars movie The Return of the Sith so badly, that he gave three people $1,500 each for their $12 tickets to the movie on May 18, 2005.
That is wanting to see a movie pretty badly. Generally when Cindy and I go to the movie we are trying to get into the first show of the day because I don’t even want to pay $12 for admission. I can’t imagine willingly paying $1500 just to see a movie. I can wait for it to come out on DVD.
But, that is one of the things in our society. We want things and we want them now. When we see something we want, we can’t manage to deny ourselves. We can’t manage to delay our gratification. We think, “if only I have this, then I will be truly happy.” So, we go out and get whatever the latest “this” is in the great hope that in it we will find satisfaction. And, it works, for a little while. It works until the new wears off, until the next latest, greatest thing comes out that we just have to have.
I got my first iPad THE day they were first released. Actually, Cindy gave it to me for my birthday. Still, I had it the first day it was available. I loved my new iPad. I thought it was just about the greatest thing ever. Until what seemed like only 2 weeks later and Apple came out with the iPad 2 (I know it was longer than that but it only seemed like 2 weeks). While I never got an iPad 2, that didn’t mean I didn’t want one. The new one was lighter and faster than my old one AND it had not one but two cameras built in. Time has passed now and I did upgrade my iPad to an iPad Air which is even lighter and faster than the iPad 2. It has better graphics and it has two better cameras. And, do you know what? I still have not taken the first picture with my iPad Air.
It just seems to be the way we are. We think our things, our stuff will make us happy and yet it seems to fall just short of complete satisfaction.
This morning we are continuing our series on the Radical Sayings of Jesus. We began this series three weeks ago talking about, being anxious for nothing. So many people in our world, me included, seem to worry over every little detail in life. We worry about how we will get the bills paid. We worry about how the kids are going to turn out. Some worry about a keeping a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs and where the next meal is going to come from. Jesus tells us not to worry. God takes care of the birds and animals and we are much more important than they, God will take care of us too. There is no need to worry.
Two weeks ago I proposed the question, what you would do if you knew God was telling you to sell all you had and give the money to the poor. There were a variety of answers but it all boils down to, do I have enough faith in God to trust that whatever God has given to me isn’t mine to start with and God will take care of me again.
Last week, Jesus told the disciples and us, that if we wanted to be first we had to be last of all and servant of all. The disciples were debating among themselves about who was the greatest. That argument prompted Jesus to tell them the last would be first and the first would be last. If we want to be great, Kingdom great, we are called to be a servant, God’s servant in this world today.
Today our focus is back on our stuff but not really as much on our stuff as on our ability to put first things first and the less important further back. When we think about the “stuff” we all too often believe will make us happy, we fall short of real happiness because our focus isn’t on the source of real happiness, our focus is on our stuff, on the things we think will make us happy.
Folks, here is the deal. You own nothing that cannot be taken away from you except for what you carry in your heart. We can say, “It’s mine” all we want but our stuff can be gone in a flash. It can get torn or broken and its gone. It can get stolen, and its gone. Then, if you placed your happiness in it and it is gone, your happiness is gone right along with your stuff.
The thing is, we have to learn to be happy beyond our stuff, our tangible stuff. That is because, if you aren’t happy without your stuff, you won’t really be happy with it either. We all just need to let our stuff be our stuff and find real happiness elsewhere, in what God has for us.
What that just might mean for all of us is, somehow, we need to find the will power to deny ourselves. We need to find within us the ability to pull the plug on instant gratification. We need to deny ourselves the things that we think will make us happy in favor of the things God knows will make us happy.
Our lesson today begins with Jesus asking the disciples who he is. Peter’s response is that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. The Jesus tells them to keep it a secret. Then Jesus begins to talk about, in essence, how he was going to deny himself and take up his cross. Jesus talks about facing rejection, suffering and even death itself.
Peter, of course, being the kind of guy he was, wanted to hear none of that and tried to correct Jesus. Jesus, in his response, was anything but kind. “Get behind me Satan,” were Jesus’ words.
Finally, Jesus turns to what is truly our subject matter for today. Jesus tells the Peter, the disciples, everyone else assembled, and us, if you want to follow Jesus, you have to say no to yourself, take up your cross, and follow him. Did you get that? Did we get that? I am right there with you. If you want to be with Jesus you have to say “NO” to yourself. You have to deny yourself.
Those are tough words. They are words we, who live in a completely consumer society, just don’t want to hear. The business side of us doesn’t want to hear anything about people denying themselves. For we who live in lumber country, we don’t want to hear of people denying themselves of new houses or new furniture. People who live in Detroit and other car manufacturing centers don’t want to hear about people denying themselves that new car. After all, when they deny themselves, they deny us too. They deny us dollars in our wallets and bank accounts which of course, out of necessity makes us deny ourselves and others and on and on and who wants that anyway? It’s not good for the economy.
Another part of us doesn’t want to deny ourselves because we want our stuff. We love our toys. We love accumulating more and more of what we really don’t need. We love living out the bumper sticker doctrine that says, “He who dies with the most toys wins.”
There is another part of that, “He who dies with the most toys, still dies.” And, if we hope to follow Jesus from this life into the next, we somehow have to find it within ourselves to at least some of the time, deny ourselves and truly follow Jesus.
We are rapidly approaching the season of Lent. Historically, lent has been a season where people do practice at least a little bit of self-denial. It may be self-denial for six weeks, for forty days plus Sundays, but it is some form of self-denial we can demonstrate to ourselves and to the world.
Also historically, our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters have done a far better job of this than we Protestants manage to do. I think we have all heard of “Giving something up for Lent.” Some of us do it, some of us don’t. I believe lent is a good place to start the discipline of self-denial. I am going to ask you to start praying now, with just over a month to go before the beginning of lent, to ask God where to start in denying yourself.
I am also not going to leave you without any ideas on a direction to go. For some time now I have been feeling a nudge from God that we need to take a bit more seriously the stewardship and care of the bodies God has blessed us with. See, when I said the word stewardship you thought I was going to talk about money. I’m not. Stewardship is more than just money. All too many of us are overweight. We don’t eat right. We don’t sleep right. We don’t get enough exercise. Until relatively recently, I have been one who falls into that category. This is not who or what God calls us to be. God placed each of us on this planet, calling us to do something that benefits the Kingdom of God. Yet we fall short of our call because we neglect our self-care, all too often, to the point we are unable to live out our callings in the world.
Over the years of my ministry I have tried to hold Sunday night worship during Lent. We are going to do that during this Lenten season but the focus of our evening Lenten worship is going to be on the idea of self-denial of the things we enjoy but make us unhealthy.
As I said, I have been feeling a nudge from God. This week it became more of a shove as I had something almost literally fall into my lap. I had my laptop in my lap when I discovered, “The Daniel Plan.” I have not finished reading the book as yet but I have read enough of the book to know it is what many of us need. This plan incorporates faith, fitness, food, focus and friends into something that can transform our bodies and our lives. It is a study by Rev. Rick Warren who is most famous for his study, “The Purpose Driven Life” and “The Purpose Driven Church.” It is my understanding that in the past you participated in “40 Days of Purpose.”
In addition to Sunday nights, I am going to lead small groups of people who want to work this plan. One possibility is to meet on Sunday mornings during the Sunday school hour, another is to meet on Sunday evenings before worship, still another would be to meet in the evenings during the week. If there is interest I would also consider another during the week, during the day. I am also considering trying to do a meeting of people online but I still have to work on that one.
I know some of you are probably thinking, “Keith the only reason you are doing this is because of the weight you have lost and now you want everyone else to get on the band wagon.” I won’t deny that some of those feelings may be present in my thoughts but I truly believe God is calling us to do this. While I do not have all the logistics quite worked out yet I believe God will open the necessary doors.
Additionally, I want to open this to the community, both churched and unchurched folks. I have already mentioned it to the SMACUM group. I would hope you would invite others as well. I am not trying to take people away from their churches but this could be a door to bring unchurched people into our congregation. The purpose of this is to better enable God’s people, in our membership and beyond, to get themselves into a better position to serve God as God calls. It is my hope and prayer you will be a part of this journey.
Jesus calls us. Jesus calls us in many ways. To my way of thinking, if we are going to respond to the call of Jesus Christ, it begins with his words from our lesson this morning. We must deny ourselves so we can follow Him.
Will you join me?
