Dying to Self

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio today.]

John 12:20-33
When I was growing up, the school day ended at 3:30. It took about a half-hour for me to walk home and dinner usually happened at our house at 5:00.

For the hour that passed between my getting home and dinner being on the table, my parents had a rule: No after-school snacking. They had a simple reason for this edict. “It’ll spoil your dinner,” they told me.

Whether this was true or not, it seems that both my body and mind have bought into the idea. To this day, I crack people up because, even though my mom and dad aren’t around to tell me “No,” I try to avoid any snacking before we sit down for dinner. “You want a cookie?” my mother-in-law will ask me a half hour before we’re to go out to eat. “No,” I’ll tell her, “it’ll spoil my dinner.”

But you know what? This little bit of self-denial seems to work for me. Even though I have a spare tire around my middle, I think I’d be a lot bigger if I snacked before dinnertime.

There are times when we may have to give up short-term pleasure in order to realize long-term gains. The student who puts in an extra half-hour to make certain that he understands the geometry law is likely to do well on the test. The athlete who runs another mile or spends a little more time in the weight room will probably perform better on the field, the court, or the track. The person of faith who takes a few more minutes each day to read the Scripture or pray gains greater peace and more guidance from God and is also sure to bring God’s power to bear on more concerns.

Self-discipline of any kind is rare because it’s so hard and it’s so hard because we’re confused about the meaning of freedom.

Ask the average person what freedom is and they’ll tell you something like, “Freedom is being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want.”

But let’s think about that definition for a moment. Let’s imagine a teenage boy whose hormones are popping. He might think that freedom consists of being able to have sex with any girl he wants, any time he wants. But if he exercises that kind of “freedom,” it won’t be long before he becomes a kind of monster, a sexist creep who thinks that members of the opposite sex exist only for his own pleasure. Should he cause a young woman to become pregnant, he’s unlikely to want to take any responsibility for it; after all, he may reason, he was just having fun, exercising his “freedom.” Then, of course, there’s the danger he poses to himself. There are the obvious things like STDs (sexually transmitted diseases): AIDS, venereal disease, and so on. There are even psychological dangers that result from two people who treat an intimate sharing of self, which is what God intends for marriage, as if it were a momentary joyride. Freedom isn’t being able to do what one wants any time one wants to do it.

Real freedom resides in being so free of the shallow values of this dying world that we’re able to reach toward our God-given potential as human beings!

Real freedom allows us to live as God designed us to live and to choose that freedom each day.

Real freedom means understanding that life in this world is a fleeting thing that can be gone in a flash. Freedom belongs to those who understand that this life is a short prelude to the life for which we were really designed, eternal life.

And each of us is presented with a choice. We can live as though this life is all there is, grabbing for every reward this dying planet can offer. Or, we can choose to use this life God’s way. The Bible says some interesting things about this choice:

In the Old Testament, Joshua, Moses’ successor as earthly leader of the Jews, says: choose this day whom you will serve, whether the [false] gods [of] your ancestors...but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. [Joshua 24:15]

In the New Testament book of First Corinthians, we’re reminded: If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. [First Corinthians 15:19]

And speaking of the many times he suffered—from stoning to shipwreck, from beatings to imprisonments—that he had endured because of his faith in Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul, who would give his life for Christ, writes in the New Testament book of Romans: I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. [Romans 8:18]

Living with the God we know through Jesus, gaining the freedom to be the people God created us to be, is such an incredible and undeserved blessing that God calls us to be absolutely willing to turn away from this world’s dead-end ways in order to hold onto the life that Jesus offers to us.

Jesus knew all about this choice of God versus the world and how hard it can be for us. On the night before His death on a cross, He prayed in a place called the garden of Gethsemane and He told God the Father: Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me [in other words, if You will it, make My suffering, cross, and death go away]; [and then Jesus said] yet not My will but Yours be done! [Luke 22:42]

Jesus was willing to die to Himself in order to fulfill His purpose in life: dying for our sins on the cross.

Dying to self is what Jesus is talking about in our Gospel lesson this morning. Let me read some of his words as translated in The Message by Eugene Peterson: “Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds onto life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal...”

Jesus, the Savior Who left behind the perfect pleasures of paradise in order to be the perfect sacrifice for our sin on the cross, is calling us to die to selfishness and self-will so that we can take the offer of free, full, and everlasting life that He gives to all with faith in Him! As one preacher, Michael Foss says, "Living right means dying right."

Now, if the discipline of dying to ourselves and letting God call the shots in our lives seems grim and uninviting, consider some information that comes from a think tank called the Alban Institute:

"Weekly church attendance is associated with a reduction in the incidence of hypertension, increased longevity (on the average up to three years longer) and increased...resistance to infection. [In one study] a consistent pattern of lower systolic and diastolic blood pressures was identified among frequent church-attenders, independent of effects of age, obesity, smoking or social class...The National Institutes of Health have now developed five protective factors against coronary artery disease, the leading one being weekly church attendance...A Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Survey of the Values of the American People…reflected that the single most important variable in health-promoting life-styles was religious affiliation."

When we die to ourselves, we live better here and we live forever with God! What’s not to like about that deal?

A young man approached a friend of his who had been telling him all about Jesus Christ. “If I follow Jesus,” he wondered, “will I have to give up the things I love?” “No,” the friend replied, “but if you follow Jesus Christ, God will change the things you love.” Are you engaged in the daily discipline of letting God change the things you love so that you can daily move toward becoming who God made you to be?

Dying to self in order to follow Jesus will change our priorities. We love the things God loves. We love the people God loves. Our new servanthood team has met twice and I’m excited by what the people of the team are willing to do and what they’re certain you’re willing to do to bring help and relief to people battered by the current economic recession. They’re sure, for example, that a large number of you will be willing to give up chunks of your Saturdays, time you could be spending on your own priorities, in order to give priority to Jesus and His call to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Every bag of donated food we collect will be an offering to the Savior Who was lifted up on a cross to give us life. It makes me so happy to see the food offerings you make to help the CHAP emergency food bank every month. I’m proud to be the pastor of people who love God and love their neighbors that much.

C.S. Lewis once said, “There are two kinds of people: those who say to God ‘Thy will be done’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right then, have it your way.’”

You and I have been given an awesome freedom by God. We can live for ourselves in this moment and die forever. God gives us that freedom. Or we can die to this world’s claims on us, live for Jesus Christ alone, and so, live with God forever.

You know the choice that our gracious, loving God wants us to make. I hope and pray it’s the choice we always make, as a congregation and as individuals each and every day!