Zechariah12:8-10, 13:1

Psalm 63:1-8

Galatians 3:23-29

LUKE 9:18-24

Where do our compasses point?

Sometimes I am amazed that Christianity became a world-wide faith with over a billion adherents (at least on paper). Sometimes I’m amazed that I’m one of them, and I wonder how committed I – or many others of our one billion plus brothers and sisters in Christ – really are to our Savior when I read what he says in today’s Gospel.

After explaining to his closest followers that being the Christ means undergoing great suffering, dying painfully and only then being raised to new life, Jesus declares, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.”

Uh, Jesus, isn’t there some sort of “associate membership” in your Body the Church that I could apply for?

Let us “deny ourselves,” Christ says. We live in a world, and in a country, in which there are many, vast, multi-billion dollar industries working 24/7 to encourage us to indulge ourselves, not to deny ourselves. “Do you have the very latest tech gadget? Don’t get left behind! Buy it here – today! And let us send you e-mails about its replacement when it goes from being “essential” to being obsolete in, oh, another few months or so.” “Buy a time share in our new luxury oceanfront condominium complex today – don’t be left out.” “There are only a few left of our 2007 model Envymobiles -- lease one today!” And on and on and on. If we resist 95% of these ads we can feel pretty virtuous. But does that mean we’re really denying ourselves, or simply that we’re in touch with our own personal budgetary realities?

Self-denial and self-sacrifice are rarely popular. Winston Churchill helped to save Western Civilization in 1940 when he told the British people, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat,” but the Brits could see that the only other alternative was knuckling under to Nazi Germany. Five years of enormous and heroic effort followed that speech, and rationing lasted far longer, but heroism is exhausting even if successful and is very difficult to sustain for long. Is this what Jesus is calling us to, without any peace and joy in this life?

“Take up their cross daily.” When Jesus said, that the cross was not an item of decorative jewelry, but a gruesome method of execution. “Take up their cross” was not a metaphor for putting up with one’s most onerous responsibility, it was a willingness to die for the faith, as many besides Jesus have. “Daily”: not just thinking about this once a year, or through a spiritually disciplined Lent, but daily. Is Jesus calling us to perpetual masochism?

“For those who want to save their life will lose it.” There are also vast industries dedicated to helping us to “save our lives”, including safety industries, insurance industries, health care and financial planning, to name a few. Is Jesus urging us to reject all prudence and self-care and become reckless beggars?

“And those who lose their life for my sake will save it,” Jesus concludes. Are we supposed to go on suicide missions for the Savior?

No, I don’t believe Jesus wants us all to become pacifist kamikazes, reckless beggars, lifetime masochists or to deny ourselves so much we become anorexics. After all, this is the same guy who said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

I do think Jesus is speaking in deliberately dramatic, confrontational hyperbole to get his disciples – and us, and all others who call themselves his followers – to realize and remember how radically different his principles and priorities are from worldly ones. Christ did not come to earth to make worldly, self-centered people 5% nicer; he came to convert, to transform them – and us – and to change the direction we would otherwise take with our lives if left to our natural instincts.

Each human being is born, as it were, with a compass that points towards himself or herself. That’s what’s called Original Sin: our human choice to embrace the “default setting” from the “factory” for human beings, namely “me first, me second, and me third…and God, other people and the rest of Creation when, as and if I feel like it.” It’s no wonder that two of the first words babies learn are “no” and “mine”; but deep – or maybe not so deep – within every person those primal responses still lurk.

God designed us so that we would only serve God and others as volunteers, not as conscripts (or worse, as robots knowing no other option but obedience). Serving God and others means accepting God’s invitation to reprogram our personal compasses so that they would point toward God. If they do, and we follow those compasses toward God, we will be “treating others as we would want to be treated” and beginning to “love our neighbors as ourselves,” because those are the things that people who love God do.

And along the way, we may find that our needs are met more fully than they would be if all when ever thought of was our needs. Journeying toward God, after all, means accepting God as our personal “life coach”, and since God is both the source of life and the One toward whom all life ultimately flows, this has to be good for us. Good – but not necessarily easy or fun all the time! But hey – life can be hard and painful anyway, whether we seek and follow God or not.

Even if we do everything we can to save our lives and to indulge ourselves we are not guaranteed either safety or pleasure, and even those who get both for a while also die.

And if they only live for themselves, they will die by themselves…and may be alone forever.

Self-denial is always hard at the beginning, and there are always temptations. Denying ourselves and following Christ involves concrete commitments with our calendars and our checkbooks. The fact that you all are here early on a Sunday morning on a glorious summer weekend represents a certain amount of self-denial! If we are frequent worshipers, have disciplines of prayer and Bible reading at home, pledge seriously to church and to at least one other charity, dedicate time to the service of others – and if we evaluate all our hours and our spending while asking, “Is this part of my journey toward God or is it luring me away from God?”, we have made a good start.

Self-care can definitely be part of our Christian commitment. God loves us and wants us to be healthy and well in every respect – mind, body, soul, relationships. We are not called to be masochists and only a few are called to a certain degree of asceticism. But we need to resist the ‘siren song” of the advertisers who want us to bathe ourselves in oceans of self-care while ignoring service and self-sacrifice.

Daily we need to ask ourselves, “What are we doing as servants of Christ?” It may be things as simple as listening to an acquaintance suddenly “spill her guts” because she needs a listening ear, or being extra courteous to some person who spends all day long dealing with “the public” and probably gets plenty hassled by some people along the way. What difference does it make in our everyday life and behavior that we are Christians?

And, in a world in which so many forces conspire to consume as much of the world’s resources as fast as possible while leaving so many people without bare necessities, what are we doing individually and collectively to conserve and to share? Those who shout “no” and “mine” are very powerful.

A week ago, a parishioner asked those who came to her little girls’ birthday party to bring gifts for the residents of the women’s shelters. Those gifts fill several boxes in the Welcoming Area. Yesterday, a parishioner who is moving decided not simply to leave her unwanted furniture on the sidewalk but to hire a truck. Three more Christians helped to load the truck and take it to Trenton for a family which was sleeping on the floor of its new apartment because they had no furniture. All this was facilitated by an organization called “Homeless to Independence”. The name says it all.

And I am grateful to the many people who made contributions to Episcopal Relief and Development in celebration of the 25^th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood last month. Episcopal Relief and Development does a number of worthwhile things, including fight malaria in 18 African countries.

According to the July, 2007 National Geographic magazine, “3,000 children die of malaria each day in Africa, one every 30 seconds.” [Pause.] According to Episcopal Relief and Development, $12 will protect a mother and two children from malaria for five years, including specially-treated anti-malarial nets for them to sleep under, training in their use, and other anti-malaria efforts in their village. Twelve dollars. Why hasn’t this been done long since for every child in Africa – and in the world? Too many peoples’ compasses are pointed only toward themselves, and when we only look at ourselves we don’t see the children who die during the night from mosquito bites, or the formerly homeless family with no furniture, or the women and children in the shelters for survivors or domestic violence who do not even have toothbrushes. If our compasses are pointed towards God, we will see them. And we will do something. And the world begins to change.

What would the world be like if the personal compasses of every Christian were really pointed toward God? What would it be like if others lined up to join us because of our model of self-sacrifice, love for others and love for God?

Let us, all of us, check our personal compasses daily, point them towards Christ daily, and follow him. There is a lot we will see, and do. We will spread life, and receive it abundantly.

The Rev. Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Monmouth Junction, New Jersey