"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it."

 

         Jesus issues a call: "Follow me."

So today we want to ask, "What does it mean to follow Jesus?" The disciples may have wondered why they were being called to follow Jesus. After all, they had been with him for three years. Surely that was following him. But there seems to be something more here.

         There is a famous quotation that comes from the sports world, attributed to an English soccer coach named Bill Shankly. He said, "Football is not a matter of life and death – it is much more serious than that." Perhaps if we could substitute the word "discipleship" for "football" we would be on the right track in understanding what Jesus is saying here: "Discipleship is not a matter of life and death. It is much more serious than that." Jesus seems to be talking about something more serious than life and death. This "following" has something to do with losing and gaining one's soul.

         Following Jesus must mean more than casually observing his life or agreeing with his moral teaching. This "following" of Jesus is something that requires personal faith, trust, a relationship with Jesus. And he indicates that in following him, we will lose something.

         Jesus says that whoever wants to save his life will lose it. There is a solemn reality at the beginning of the faith journey. The one we follow lost his life. The cross is the symbol of our faith. We do not escape loss when we follow Jesus. Today that might take the form of the Christian church in India that is under such severe persecution, where Christians are losing their lives. It might mean the loss of a prosperous future by young people in our country who are choosing to follow the call of Christ in some particular form of mission or service. We think of those who devote their lives to helping people in Africa with AIDS, or who care for orphans in Haiti, or work for clean water or adequate food for people in other poor parts of the world. They too give their lives; they lose something, for the sake of following Jesus. Whenever we follow, we will lose something that seems valuable to us, whether that is money or prestige or ease or even life itself.

         Jesus explains this loss with a play on the word that can be translated as "life" or "soul." This is the Greek word that sounds like "psyche," and forms words like "psychology." We can speak of "life" as mere physical existence, the opposite of being dead. Or we can speak of "real life," that which transcends death, what we often call "soul." This true life or soul life is very valuable, and is gained by losing or giving up a life focused completely on self-preservation or self-interest.

         The story of Moses helps us to understand what Jesus is talking about here. Moses grew up the child of privilege in the Egyptian palace, with all its benefits, wealth, education and pleasures. But as a young man he murdered an Egyptian guard one day, when he saw that guard abusing a Hebrew slave. His deed was seen, and so he had to flee.

         We find him next, now married to the daughter of a Midianite priest, tending his flock on the far side of the desert. (I have wondered if this is where Gary Larsen found the name for his comic strip "The Far Side.") That is where Moses is living. We know marriage in those times was never a matter of meeting someone by chance and falling in love. Marriages were carefully arranged, and so Jethro the priest saw something in this stranger, or knew something, and was sure to bring him close to his family, give him a new identity and a new job and send him where he could not cause any trouble. Moses gains a new life that is protected and hidden. It is a life of security and safety. He now has a wife and family and a new religion and work to do and some measure of peace. In many ways we could say that he gained the world. But what about his soul?

         That is when God speaks to him. That is the moment of encounter. So we are given this picture of Moses looking into the fire, and as he looks he is able to see what God sees, the despair of his people in Egypt. So Moses is sent into the work that is in God's heart. This is a "follow me" moment.

         He must feel the loss keenly. In his return to Egypt he is no longer safe on the Far Side; he is no longer peaceful in his isolation from the brutality of slavery. He no longer has his good, steady job of shepherding. He loses his family identity. Now Moses is very vulnerable, a man wanted for murder back in his country. He experiences the loss that following the call of God brings.

         But the second point about following is that following God brings great gain. In following we find that God saves our souls, that we become part of something much greater, much more life giving than we had imagined. Moving out of our safety places us into God's provision.

         For Moses it meant that he moved out of the isolation of the Far Side into a community. Whenever we look into the fire and see what God sees, we are moved into a community of redemption. For Moses it also meant a move beyond the concerns of his family into the concerns of God's family. To follow Jesus is to see beyond the realities of my church to the vision of God's church. To follow Jesus is to lift my focus from my work, like watching sheep on the far side of the desert, to focus on God's work of redeeming lost people.

Moses also found healing in his own soul. The Hebrew slave who grew up Egyptian royalty and came into a Midianite spirituality, this fractured personality, became one unified person whose soul was tuned to God alone. God healed him. God saved his soul. God invited him into his redemptive work.

         So Jesus talks about life that is more than physical existence. It is soul life; it is a relationship with God. The one who gave his life on the cross was also raised to life on the third day. By following him we come to experience in our souls the gift of life after life, a life that is more than mere existence.

There is a prayer in the collection by Phyllis Tickle that I would like to share with you:

         "Lord Jesus Christ, by your death you took away the sting of death: Grant me to so follow in faith where you have led the way, that I may at length fall asleep peacefully in you and wake in your likeness."

         Communion is an act of following Jesus. We eat the bread and drink the cup in remembrance of Jesus. That means we do remember the cross, which in our human nature we otherwise would tend to forget or avoid. But in the bread and cup, the cross of Jesus is present to us, and so we experience the forgiveness of sin.

         We also remember the resurrection so that our hope is present to us, and our souls come alive. For we in our human nature tend towards discouragement and hopelessness, but in this celebration we are called in hope to follow the one who is coming again. So by taking the bread and cup today, we are saying "yes" to Christ, who calls us to follow him to life.

         Amen.