Something To Live For
Pastor Mathew Magera – 5/14/17 – Sermon 229
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Long-time professor of
Princeton Seminary, Donald MacLeod always asked one of his students to open his
classes with prayer. One day he asked one of his Chinese students to do so and
the young man stunned everyone as he prayed, "O God, give us something to
die for, for if we do not have something to die for, we have nothing to live
for."
We talk a lot about things
that we live for. When we're young and we have plans for college or a career we
have something to live for. We talk about living for other people or for
vacations or other opportunities. The things we live for are those that
influence everything we do. The things we live for are at the center of our
lives. When we say we have something to live for we mean that we will stand up
against all odds and adversaries in our way. We mean that we will achieve that
for which we have set our eyes, hearts and minds on.
When I go into the hospital
to see someone who is losing hope I ask them, "what do you have that you
can look forward to? What is it that you can see on your horizon that you can
focus on? Something attainable? Something tangible?” Life is lived differently
when we have something to live for. Unfortunately, life is not always better
when we have something to live for. In some cases, living for something creates
more struggle than we would have ever imagined.
Our story in Acts this
morning is a tragic tale but is it a tale of someone who had something to die
for or something to live for? Stephen is known mostly for being the first
Christian martyr, the first identified Christian who was put to death simply by
being a Christian. Not much else is known about him and as a result it is easy
to think that his sole purpose of being mentioned, perhaps his sole purpose of
existence, was so that he could be killed off. Wouldn't that be a downer? To
learn that the only reason you were put on this planet was to die. Stephen was
appointed to working with the original apostles, Jesus' closest followers, and
ministering to the people in Jerusalem. His tactics were outgoing, his wisdom
was unmatchable and the Spirit thrived within him. Nobody could argue with him,
nobody could resist or even contradict him causing the Jewish leaders to assume
he was not telling the truth. But, even when being accused of blasphemy and
slandering Moses, Stephen still makes a convincing argument and his accusers
have no leg to stand on and they don't like it. They just couldn't drown him
out. They could not get rid of him. So they were forced to do the only thing
they could think of doing and Stephen was killed for what he stood up for.
After this, Christianity
quickly began to spread. It wasn't a motivational sermon that did it. It wasn't
an invitation to go out two by two that did it. It wasn't concern for the well
being of their neighbor that did it. It was struggle. Struggle was the fuel
that spread the very faith that we have taken as our own. The reason
Christianity spread was because of its own struggle to survive.
If we go back to Acts chapter
1 we find one of my favorite verses. Jesus' last words before he ascended into
Heaven are in Acts 1:8 where he tells his disciples, "and you will be my
witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the
earth." I love that verse as a prophecy for the worldwide spread of the
faith. But, fast forward here to Acts 7 and this hasn't happened yet. They're
still in Jerusalem. I don't know exactly what it is they were waiting for but
their time was up and they needed to make a decision. The entire future of
Christianity was about to thrive or take a fatally deep dive. The next verse
after the end of the story in chapter seven is Acts 8:1, ironically a reversal
of the numbers of Acts 1:8 but it says, "on that day a great persecution
broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were
scattered throughout Judea and Samaria." There it is. That is the
fulfillment of Jesus' last words. He said the church would spread first into
these areas but did you think it would come about in this way, through the
persecution and threats toward the church? I pictured something a little more
joyous and Easter-like. The reality was far worse. Christianity began to
fulfill the last words of Jesus because of struggle, not joy and promise.
It makes you start to wonder
if being a Christian is worth it. It doesn’t seem like something worth living
for if it struggles so much. When we’re baptized it is as if we are just marked
as another target. Everything around us seeks to destroy our faith, if not with
physical death, a spiritual struggle is always a threat. Kids are tempted with
popularity that throws faith out the door. Parents, the very leaders in the
household are overburdened with schedules, work, appointments, sports, driving
kids here or there it is nearly impossible for faith to grow if there is no
time for God and we become spiritually strangled. If we are fortunate enough to
take time to gather as the body of Christ or study God's Word we are surely
moving something else out of the way in order to do it whether it be another
activity or simply getting rest. Being a Christian just seems to be more of a
burden than a release, bringing less balance to our lives and more struggle,
that receiving the sign of the cross in our baptism is just a cruel display of
irony as our lives slowly unravel in the struggles rise up around us sealing
our death sentence.
To that I say if being a
Christian had no worth, the faith would have died with Stephen. It would have
died with Jesus. If our faith had no legs, no meaning, no context, no hope, it
would have died before it thrived. If it were not worth it, the church would
have given up years ago. It would have made our lives easier so that we could
schedule school activities over church youth events and we could have slept in
on Sundays. If faith were not worth it, it would not have survived this long.
Having this struggle, this pull against the grain of our lives then becomes not
something to groan about but something to engage. The fact that we are still
pulled toward faith in even the small ways reminds us how worth it that faith
is. The fact that you even consider waking up early on a Sunday morning to come
to church shows the reality of that struggle. The fact that after Stephen was
stoned that the Christian witnesses felt they needed to escape with the Gospel
in hand in lieu of throwing up the white flag showed a struggle that was worth
it, that Jesus’ resurrection was worth it.
As long as that struggle is
still there, faith is still alive. It means we haven't given up. It means we
are still fighting. It means we have something to live for. We are not given
the sign of the cross to bring balance but to throw us off balance, not to take
away struggle but to provide it. If there was no struggle we would be hopeless
sinners with no means of being redeemed. The early church struggled. But
because it struggled, it grew. It grew in size and in faith.
When that seminary student
prayed that we might be given something to die for, I imagine them praying for
a struggle, a risk. Not for balance. No wonder it shocked the rest of the
class. But, it’s true. We should want something to struggle with that inner sinner.
I want you to think about something so simple right now to understand what I
mean. Walking. We do it all the time and don't really think about it. Standing
still on two feet, we are much more balanced than if we were to stand on one
foot. Yet, when we walk, more than half the time we are only on one foot,
placing that very balance at risk. In our stride, with one foot in front of the
other, in order to move forward that back foot needs to move, it needs to leave
the ground behind, the very ground that gives it the balance it so desperately
desires. When we walk we are putting our balance at risk by picking up that
back foot and moving forward.
We want balance. The thing
is, if we have balance, we likely aren't moving anywhere, we aren’t being
changed. That very struggle to engage our faith over and through the world
around us puts that balance at risk as we lift that back foot up as if we are
risking falling in order to pursue something greater. It is then that we HAVE
found something to die for, if we can put that balance, that comfy sinner, at
risk as we move forward in faith. Lord, give us something to die for, something
to challenge that inner sinner with, give us something so good that you move us
forward, because only then do we discover that we are not chasing something to
die for but rather leaving that death behind us as we risk that balance in
pursuing something to live for. God did give us something to live for. He gave
us Jesus, for you, for me. Someone worth sacrificing the balance of a sinful
life.
I want you to risk that
balance. I want you to be willing to be thrown off balance by Jesus who threw
everything off balance for you by providing hope for a hopeless world. Stephen
worked to throw things out of balance using that message of Jesus. But, people
could not handle it. This devoted follower of Jesus aimed to uproot the status
quo and throw everything off balance so that the sinner in us could struggle
with that grace of God that seeks to take sin’s place within us. He said and
did things to make you think and it’s possible you wouldn’t have liked it
because of that struggle it created. The Jewish leaders pulled him aside saying
you can’t say these things, it’s not appropriate and is offensive to God and to
Moses and then they literally destroyed him. Those faith leaders couldn’t
handle the struggle.
Jesus doesn’t promise there
won’t be struggle. In fact, the struggle may be greater for a believer than for
any other. But, Jesus promises that the struggle is worth it. Jesus promises
the rewards far outweigh the risk. Jesus promises that life overcomes death. If
you don't believe him, look at all the other people that did and still do. The
stoning of Stephen didn’t stop the church, it fueled it. That struggle was
alive. Embrace the struggle, the struggle to believe, the struggle to serve,
the struggle to be a disciple, and in that struggle you will find a part of you
that knows that being a baptized disciple of Jesus Christ is worth it, that it
is something to risk putting to death that sinner inside us, that it is something
to live for, that the sign of the cross is not a sentence to death but a
promise of life. To God be the glory, now and always. Amen.