He then began explaining things to them, "It is necessary that the Son of Man proceed to an ordeal of suffering, be tried, and found guilty by the elders, high priests, and religion scholars, be killed, and after three days rise up alive." He said this simply and clearly so they couldn't miss it.

But Peter grabbed him in protest. Turning and seeing his disciples wavering, wondering what to believe, Jesus confronted Peter. "Peter, get out of my way! Satan, get lost! You have no idea how God works!"

Calling the crowd to join the disciples, he said, "Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering, embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. Self Help is no help at all. Self Sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?

If any of you are embarrassed over me and the way I'm leading you when you get around your fickle and unfocused friends, know that you'll be an ever greater embarrassment to the Son of Man when he arrives in all the splendor of God, his Father, with an army of the holy angels."

The more familiar translation of Jesus' pertinent words goes something like this, "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel will save it." This has never been an easy lesson to learn. Nevertheless, real life dishes up these kinds of lessons routinely. Early on, we must shed the pampered life of infancy to walk and talk our way to childhood, adolescence, and then into adulthood and maturity. Along the way, expectations change quite abruptly. The world of "right now" becomes the world of "once was." We have a lot of "lives" to shed along the way. Most of the time, there are favored things about those old lives that we don't want to give up. Letting go of the "binky" or well-loved security blanket is just a first step in a long line of disappointments.

Sermon:

Counselor and writer M. Scott Peck thinks that this giving up is at the very root of what we call "depression." For most people "depression" is a healthy emotion that lets us know that there's something in our lives that we're continuing to hold on to - even perhaps after we know it's something already gone to us. This "letting-go" can be quite sad. But, he says, for people who have long bouts with this type of depression, even to a degree, he says some of the pathological types of depression have roots in what he would call a "giving-up neurosis." (Peck, The Road Less Traveled, p.70) If a person has a point in his or her life where things were taken abruptly away, and that person's security mechanisms were stressed to an unnatural point - of course, giving up would carry with it the double meaning that giving up those things at someone else's hand means also giving up a joyful and productive life when those kinds of decisions arise later in life.

Jesus makes a point that following in his way means doing a lot of giving up of the first order. If we follow Jesus, it will be depressing. It will cause suffering. We cannot remain as infants, children, or adolescents. We must continue to grow as adults - not through self-help but through the more difficult path of self-sacrifice. We all know those people who, as adults, have not put aside their childish ways. It may be said with more finesse and sophistication, but the two-year-old rant of , "mine, Mine, MINE" comes through even in adult language. The four-year-old, independent, "I'll do it MYSELF" is also unproductive much beyond that life stage. That preoccupation with self is ingrained into the human psyche, but as the human spirit gets larger, that same sense of self must diminish.

Take a moment to imagine those leaders who seem bigger than life in a spiritual way. For me, I think of Mother Teresa, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela - the kind of people who always seem to put others first. Very few of them get much more than quiet credit. With spiritual maturity comes self-sacrifice, the kind of self that gets only low levels of recognition and is far away from the glitter of the limelight. Again, Scott Peck speaks of spiritual maturity as an ability to withstand a lifetime of suffering and depression without giving up on the idea that one has something to offer. He says, "Spiritually evolved people, by virtue of their discipline, mastery and love, are people of extraordinary competence, and in their competence they are called on to serve the world, and in their love they answer the call. They are inevitably, therefore, people of great power, although the world may generally behold them as quite ordinary people, since more often than not they will exercise their power in quiet or even hidden ways. Nonetheless, exercise power they do, and in this exercise they suffer greatly, even dreadfully. For to exercise power is to make decisions, and the process of making decisions with total awareness is often infinitely more painful than making decisions with limited or blunted awareness." (Peck, 75)

I've found Peck's judgment on this matter to be quite persuasive and ultimately true. In comparing Jesus' wisdom with Peck's observations, one can see that it was no secret to Jesus that the path to a spiritual life would be the road less traveled and Peck acknowledges that the true secret of religion tells us that death is what ultimately gives life its meaning. (Peck, 72) In the Western world in which we live, though, death is imagined as the worst kind of insult to humanity, God's ultimate cosmic joke. Even after thousands, millions of years of experience that has told us otherwise, we get to an age in which medicine improves dramatically, and all of a sudden conquering death seems achievable. In tandem with that realization, the previous century brought so much change at such a rapid rate that change itself has become a demon. So instead of seeing death and all the changes of the human condition as a part of life, we begin to see the specters of change and death as opposition to the cause of human freedom.

But what, again, is Jesus' teaching on this subject? Jesus tells us that it is through death that we will gain such freedom; it is in losing the self-obsessed life that we gain a spiritual life. In giving up "looks," we can see true beauty. In giving up youth, we can learn wisdom. In giving up wealth, we can find the riches of the kingdom. In giving up control, we can find harmony. In giving up our children, our parents, our friends to God, we discover that God has a plan for each of us, and we cannot make anyone else bend to our control. Only God can do that.

The catch phrase that ends up on Christian nick-knacks and tea towels is true: if you do "Let go, and let God," it makes a spiritual difference in one's attitude and ultimately in one's relationship with Jesus Christ and with those who have to deal with us as individuals in the day to day decision-making of living the life of faith. The attitude adjustment that most of us need from time to time is to begin to welcome and embrace change rather than fighting it tooth and nail. For those of us in the Presbyterian world still do believe, or at the very least claim, that God is in control -- in spite of how much we might rather blame someone else for the times we get depressed and succumb to the "giving up" neurosis. It's easy to point at changes we don't like and blame it on the political party we find most distasteful, or on the teenagers of today, or on corporate giants like Microsoft. What isn't easy to develop the eyes to see is God at work in all things everywhere, for then we might have to welcome the death that leads to new life.

Like Peter, we don''t want to believe that the road less traveled is paved with all kinds of persecution, suffering, and in the end -- death. We want to take the shiny, sunny path of least resistance most of the time. We want change to come over us slowly and without consequence, but Jesus won't let us be tempted by the sweet candy of our adversaries. Satan's path, the path of turning away from God, is laced with all kinds of goodies -- the kinds of goodies that stroke our egos and let us wallow in pleasing ourselves. These are the kinds of delights that beguile us away from our true selves and give us false hopes that we can be secure in our own desires forevermore. But Jesus tells us the truth: life changes, and we will die a thousand deaths in order to prepare for the physical death of our bodies and the release of our spirits. Accepting this truth will bring our paths closer to the true path along our spiritual journey.

So pray for God to direct you toward the changes you are supposed to welcome. Pray for God to help you die to yourself and find the real you. Pray that you will be able to lose everything if it means that you will know your own soul. It will not be easy. You'll get depressed. You won't be having fun all the time. But I'll leave you with one other thing that Peck points out for those of faith who journey along the road less traveled. He acknowledges the tremendous suffering of the spiritually great -- but he also acknowledges that the spiritually great are also people who have found real joy. When have you seen a picture of Mother Teresa, or Jimmy Carter, or Nelson Mandela that they weren't smiling from ear to ear? It's rare. But Peck's observation is to notice something peculiar in the comparison of faiths -- Buddhists are inclined to forget Buddha's suffering, but Christians are inclined to forget Christ's joy. (Peck, 76) Yes, Jesus talks about a life of suffering where he will be turned over to the authorities, tried, tortured, and killed -- but the irony is that most of his ministry was spent bringing joy and new life to those who were down-hearted or depressed. To be spiritually filled is to really know and welcome both suffering and joy. Amen.