Luke 9:23 (ESV)
Take Up Your Cross and Follow Jesus
23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
Dear Friends in Christ,
You’ve probably never heard of this fellow before, but his name is Dan Mazur. He’s one of the many people who have tried to tackle one of the greatest challenges human beings have ever attempted. And that is to climb to the top of the world’s highest mountain, Mt. Everest. Well, the time came when Dan found himself just 2 hours or 1000 feet away from realizing this lifelong dream. He was in what climbers call the Dead Zone where blinding snowstorms, icy conditions, and the oxygen-thin air have claimed their share of lives over the years. But on May 25, 2006, at 7:30 in the morning, the sky was clear, Dan’s hopes were high, his energy level was high, and all he needed was a thousand more feet to reach his goal. That’s when he saw some color out of the corner of his eye. At first he thought it was a tent that someone had abandoned. But then it moved and he realized it was a person. He and his 2 companions inched their way closer to this climber and saw that the man had removed his gloves and hat and unzipped his coat. He sat there bare-chested, precariously perched on the edge of an 8000 foot drop.
Apparently the thin oxygen had caused this man to lose it mentally. In fact, so much so that he thought he was on a sailboat. Hence the bare hands, bare head, and bare chest. So Dan and his friends called out to him and asked him if he knew his name. He told them his name was Lincoln Hall. Dan right away recognized that name as the one he had heard 12 hours earlier in a radio transmission when someone had said that Lincoln Hall was dead on the summit and his team was going to have to leave his body there. But it was obvious to Dan that Lincoln Hall was not dead. He may have been hallucinating. He may not have understood where he was. But he was alive, though barely, because he had spent the night on that mountain alone in temperatures that had reached 20 below.
So Dan Mazur knew that as he stood face to face with Lincoln Hall, he stood face to face with a miracle. But he also knew that he stood face to face with a decision: Do I help this climber, or do I finish my climb? He couldn’t do both. He had to choose. “Do I help Lincoln Hall descend, or do I ascend and achieve my lifelong dream?”
The decision was complicated by the fact that Lincoln Hall was nearly dead. And the odds of getting him down from the mountain alive were pretty slim. Not only that, any descent from the world’s highest mountain was already dangerous enough. But add to that the weight of a helpless man or possibly a dead man and the danger level would increase significantly. So what do you do?
Well, Dan Mazur and his 2 companions made their decision. They abandoned their dream of making it to the top of Everest and helped Lincoln Hall make it to the bottom. In the process they saved his life. And their decision gives us the chance to ask a great question this morning: Would you do the same? Or better yet, do you do the same?
Every day we are given the opportunity to make very subtle, yet very significant decisions, maybe not as dramatic as a Mt. Everest rescue, but decisions in which we have to answer the question: Who’s more important, him or me? Her or me? When a parent passes up a career advancing transfer so that their child can finish out high school in the town she’s lived all her life; when a young person in school sits at the lunch table with the neglected or unpopular kid instead of hanging out with the cool ones; when the adult daughter of an aging mother gives up her summer vacation and days off so she can spend time with her mom in the nursing home – anytime anyone turns their back on an Everest opportunity for the sake of someone in need, they are doing what Jesus calls in our text “denying themselves.” Listen once again to the words of our Savior: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Two weeks ago we looked at what it means to take up our cross for Jesus. This morning we’re going to examine what it means to deny ourselves. And what I’m hoping you’ll discover is that self-denial is one of the chief ways to attain what most people are looking for today, but not finding. And that is happiness and true fulfillment in life.
Now we would assume just the opposite, right? We would assume that great days grow out of the soil of self-indulgence or self-promotion or self-absorption. At least that’s what the world constantly tells us, doesn’t it? Pamper yourself, indulge yourself, promote yourself. In fact, I would challenge you this week to scour as many secular magazines and newspapers as you can get your hands on and try to locate just one ad that encourages you to deny yourself. You’re not going to find it.
And yet in Jesus’ economy, the least are the greatest, the last will be first, and the seat of honor is the one we should avoid the most. He urges us to try to outdo one another not in the cars we drive or the homes we live in or the bank accounts we have, but in the areas of humility and service. He encourages us to consider other people more important than ourselves, to turn the other cheek, to give away our coat, and how about this one, from which our theme for today is taken: to walk the second mile. In his Sermon on the Mount he says: “If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”
Now I have a feeling those words struck a raw nerve in the minds of Jesus’ Jewish audience because at that time they found themselves living under the tyranny of the Roman Empire. High taxes, non-Jewish laws, and brutal oppression were the order of the day for them. Now some of the Jews responded by selling out to the Romans, like the tax collectors who actually worked for Rome. Others opted to escape the system by imposing a voluntary exile on themselves. You’ve heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Well, they were written by a group of Jewish separatists called the Essenes who had done just that. They had removed themselves from society and Rome’s oppressive rule and had established a commune for themselves out in the middle of the desert. Still others chose a third option. Rather than acquiesce to Rome or run from Rome, they decided to fight Rome. They were called the zealots, one of whom by the name of Simon is listed as one of Jesus’ 12 disciples.
So these were the 3 options that most Jews typically chose back then when it came to dealing with Rome. But then Jesus comes along and he comes up with option #4. That option could be summed up with one word: SERVE. If your enemy strikes you on the cheek, offer him your other one. If he asks for your cloak, give him your tunic too. If he asks you to go one mile, go two. Seek to serve, not to be served. Retaliate not in kind, but in kindness.
So Jesus created what I’ve called in my sermon title “The Society of the Second Mile.” From what I understand, Romans could legally coerce or force a Jewish citizen to carry their load for one mile. Wouldn’t you just love that? Here you are working in your field or your shop when a soldier comes by and you feel the point of his spear in the middle of your back. He says, “Come on. I want you to carry this for me.” So according to Roman law you have to stop what you’re doing and carry it one mile and then walk the mile back to where you started from. Talk about inconvenient! But Jesus’ suggested response sounds even more inconvenient. For he basically says, “Carry that load one mile. And then when you get to the end of that mile, turn to the soldier and say, ‘Do you mind if I carry this for you another mile?’” In other words, shock the sandals right off the guy and let him see a society of people that he’s probably never seen before, people who think more of others than they think of themselves, people who go above and beyond the call of duty, people who are willing to go the extra mile when it comes to helping and serving their fellow man.
Now it would have been one thing for Jesus to make a suggestion like that and expect everyone to do it, but that’s not what he did. Instead, he set the standard. He did what Kevin Costner did in a movie I saw some time ago entitled “The Guardian.” Kevin Costner played a pretty hard-nosed instructor of individuals who were being trained to carry out rescue missions of people trapped in boats that were caught in rough seas. And in one scene he was trying to help them see what it’s like to spend time in frigid waters, so he filled this pool with water and ice. But instead of having only his students go into that pool, he jumped in too and experienced it right along with them.
Well, that’s what Jesus did when he established the Society of the Second Mile. He left his throne in heaven behind and jumped right in to this cold cruel world and into what we call “the human experience.” He became one of us and exposed himself to the absolute worst that this world could inflict upon him. And while he was here, he lived out in his own life what he wants us to live out in our lives.
For example, remember when he met with his disciples in that upper room in Jerusalem the night before he was to hang on a cross and die? Luke tells us in his Gospel that a dispute arose among the disciples as to which one of them was the greatest. You see, they hadn’t become full-fledged members of the Society of the Second Mile yet. They hadn’t caught on to what Jesus had been trying to teach them for the past 3 years. So what did Jesus do? Well, he did what none of them was willing to do. You see, there was a custom back in those days that whenever guests came into a house, the lowest slave in the house would wash their feet. But since there was no slave present that night in the upper room, I am convinced that that’s what prompted this discussion among the disciples as to which one of them was the greatest. None of them was about to stoop before the others and wash their dirty smelly feet. So Jesus sets the standard. In John 13:4-5 it says: “…he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” When he finished, he seized this teachable moment and said: “Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me `Teacher’ and `Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”
So Jesus didn’t just establish the Society of the Second Mile; he modeled it in how he lived. And, I might add, he modeled it in how he died. For on the cross he offered himself as the supreme sacrifice for all mankind, not just for those who loved him, but even for those who would hate him and never want to have anything to do with him. Like Paul says in Romans 5:6-8: “Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
So I want to invite you this morning, my friends, to become a member of the Society of the Second Mile, to start putting other people first, to become less focused on yourself and more focused on others. I want to caution you that this is something that you’ll have to be intentional about because it will be so easy to slip back into the self-centered lifestyle that has become all too commonplace in our culture today. But if you’ll follow this one very simple formula that I’m going to put on the screen right now – Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself last – you will find what so many people are lacking in their lives these days. You will find J-O-Y unlike any you’ve ever known before because Jesus hit the nail on the head when he said that it really is more blessed to give of ourselves to others than to only receive from them. Amen.