Frederick Buechner, one of my favorite writers, in Listening to Your Life, asks a series of questions designed to help us think about where we have been and where we are going. I have mulled these questions over, and I pass them on to you, hoping that one or more will spur your thinking.
When you look at your face in the mirror,
what do you see in it that you most like and
what do you see in it that you most deplore?
If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be,
in twenty-five words or less?
Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember?
Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for?
If this were the last day of your life,
what would you do with it?
Frederick Buechner goes on to say: To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business, all in all, but if sack cloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end."
These questions have been so helpful to me that I wish I could repeat them and give you time right during this show to mull them over. To hear myself try to answer these questions has taught me a thing or two about where I've been and where I want to go, what I've been and what I feel called to become. For example, when I mulled over what I would most like to undo, I concluded it was those things that I did out of fear, fear that I wasn't good enough, smart enough, attractive enough, you name it. I tried to compensate for my perceived failings by doing things I would later regret, and still regret.
On the other hand, the things I've done that give me the most pleasure to remember are things I did to make life better, happier, easier for someone else, odd things, little things, like being able to help my mother fix her hair, because I was better with my hands than she was. When I mulled over how to spend my last hours, I concluded that I would like to give ~ give thanks to the people who are dear to me and to God for the gift of being alive. When I mulled over whether I would give my life for a person or cause, I began to consider what I really care about: there is no lip service when you picture your life on the line.
Over and over again, these questions, approaching the subject of my life from all different angles, reveal to me the practical truth that it is by losing my life that I find it, by giving that I receive. It is good for me to move away from being self-centered, which is destructive, and move towards loving others as Jesus did. There it is. If you mull over these questions, I suspect you may come to similar conclusions.
Now, many times in our lives, giving of ourselves is easy. We are like children at Christmas who can't wait for Mom or Dad to open our present: "Open mine next. You'll never guess what I got you." Sometimes the joy of giving is pure pleasure.
Other times, of course, giving of ourselves is anything but easy. Yet, we are called by God to give, even when it is a sacrifice: when it is at great personal cost or almost beyond our means….
… In this week’s Gospel lesson, we find Jesus teaching the disciples that sacrifice: denying oneself, taking up one's cross, and following him, even through pain and suffering, is an essential part of our growing in faith. The disciples do not want to hear this news, and we can sympathize with Peter who is affronted by such talk…
Jesus teaches that sacrifice is voluntary. As the disciples could have turned back, so can we turn away from following Jesus. Taking up our cross is voluntary.
Jesus teaches that we are called to take up the cross for the sake of others. Sacrifice is not some penance or plea for pity or praise. The cross is something we take up to make life better for someone else and to please God.
Finally, Jesus tells us that it is only by such sacrificial living that we will find our lives, that we will become the human beings God intends us to be, the kind of human beings we, in our heart of hearts, want to be.
Jesus not only tells us about the sacrifice he and we are called to give, he lives it out… And he calls us to follow him on this path, the only path that leads to joy and fullness of life.
Philip Yancey in his book “The Jesus I Never Knew”, writes about this joy.
He says that his career as a journalist afforded him opportunities to interview famous people, "stars", including NFL football greats, authors, politicians and so on. These are the people who dominate the media, folks whose lives seem overflowing with blessings. Instead, he found a group of people tormented by self-doubt and worse.
He also spent time among the people he calls "servants." Doctors and nurses who work among the outcast, an Ivy League graduate who runs a hotel for homeless in Chicago, relief workers in Somalia, and ordinary folks who devote themselves to caring for one another. He said he was prepared to honor and admire the "servants", to hold them up as inspiring examples. He was not, however, prepared to envy them. But he did. He found the "servants" possessed qualities of depth and richness and even joy that he had not found elsewhere. Servants work for low pay, long hours, and no applause, often "wasting" their talents and skills on the poor and uneducated. Somehow, though, in the process of losing their lives they find them. And so will we.
Adapted from “Living, Loving and Giving”, The Rev. Winifred Collin
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Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful
and kindle in them the fire of your love.
Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created,
and you shall renew the face of the earth.
MAY GOD’S BLESSING ABOUND ALL THE MORE – IN 2024!
May God Bless you and yours as we journey in this Pentecost Season…
May God’s Spirit empower us to
“expect great things from God and to attempt great things for God”… and
May God Continue to Bless Union Church!
-Pastor Mark
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