Giving up my life

This is an excerpt from my sermon last Sunday, with a bit more detail added in:

Matthew 10:39 Jesus said, "Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."

I read about a certain man in my Runner’s magazine. He seems to be on a quest for something that will make his life click. He wants to FIND his life, as Jesus said! He’s an Olympian middle-distance runner, usually running the 1500 meters, and by all accounts he’s a spiritual person, searching pretty much everywhere to help make his life make sense. One night, late at night, he decided to go for a run. No big deal, but this run happened to be up Mammoth Mountain in Oregon. He finished that run, came home, the next morning ran 15 more miles with his teammates. That afternoon, he ran another 12 miles, because he wanted something that he couldn’t name. His body, of course, got injured from this effort. Then, he decided that he was going to ride a bike to Brazil. From California. Crazy, right? But he just knew that if he took that journey, he would find SOMETHING that would be the key to pull his whole life together! Well, he took the journey all right. He got dysentery three times, and the last time went into liver failure and almost died. His parents had to come get him and he spent weeks recovering at their home, right where he started. But this guy is STILL searching everywhere for the thing that will make him whole, that will give him life. He’s trying to find his life, but he nearly lost it in the process. And as far as I know, he hasn’t found it yet.

The same magazine also detailed another similar journey…one where three or four friends decided that they would run in California, stopping to sleep each night in hotels, for several days. They took one change of clothes, a credit card, water and snacks. They didn’t have an agenda, just wanted to spend time with each other and enjoy the journey. So they took off running, and all of them said that it was just about the best vacation they ever took! They left everything behind, just like the other runner, but they weren’t searching so desperately for something that they forgot to just enjoy each day as it happened. In a way, they just sort of got rid of their lives for a few days, and they found life more abundantly in community with each other and on the journey.

In the same way, I just got back from being a counselor at a Lutheran camp called AFFIRM. You might wonder why I would take a week “off” to go there. I have my kids and family, I preach here, I take care of things at home. But I took a week out of my life, as did about eighty other staff members, to go to this camp and be a leader for more than a week. None of us get paid, and I don’t think the camp would work as well if we did. All of us, including me, basically left our lives behind for eight days. I “lost my life” in so many ways. You barely sleep, you sleep in college dorms, and not the new ones either. You eat bad food, and I mean, pretty bad. You are constantly on call for your kids and your group, on duty 24 hours a day. You lead small groups, take kids to the nurse, listen to confessions of all types, discipline the kids who need it, and many, many, other things. Your life goes away.

But here’s the thing…I gave up my week because I have been there before, and I know that the reward is just incredible. The reward, in this case, is kids saying to you that they understand Jesus for the very first time. The reward is being in worship that is youth-designed and youth-led, every day. The reward is hearing seventh graders thank you for being there for them when they were having a crisis, whether that be a crisis of abuse or a crisis of being left out by their friends. I got back more abundantly than I could have possibly imagined. I laughed harder than I have in years with other hilarious, grace-filled pastors and leaders, and felt God’s presence in a way that happens very rarely in everyday life. And those two alone are worth it.

The kids who came had also given up their lives, if only for a week. They gave up a week of another kind of camp, of being in a comfortable place with friends, of knowing what to expect. But as far as I could tell, they got back way more abundantly than they gave up. Some of them were in a safe place, with safe adults, which is an unusual thing in their worlds. Some of them felt forgiven for the first time, although they might have known what it was before. Some of them just felt, like I did, that it was one of the only places where a real Christian community existed, if only for a week. We worshipped every day, we read scripture, we prayed, we ate the bad food, TOGETHER. Giving up some things made it easier to receive so much more.

It doesn’t seem to make sense! Some of my fellow leaders who aren’t pastors who came to the camp had a hard time getting a week off, because their bosses and co-workers don’t understand why they would lose their life, and not get paid for it. It doesn’t make any sense if you think about it how the world usually thinks.

But if you think about it in Jesus logic, it makes all kinds of sense. Jesus sees the big picture, and Jesus knows that it will make us immeasurably happier…not just saved, but HAPPIER…to do those things that take us out of our selves and out of our lives to do the things that God has created us to do—serve others, worship, talk about Jesus. He’s pretty clear too that it won’t be easy…that people WILL think we’re crazy, and might even call us bad names. That maybe even our own families won’t understand, and that Jesus himself sees it as more important that we follow him, painful as it is. That for Jesus, everything is nothing compared to the value of being God’s child, of giving up your life, even to the point of death on a cross, so that you will gain life, forever, and abundantly. Amen.