self-sacrifice
Wisdom Has the Last Laugh
By Linda Rex
September 12, 2021, PROPER 19—The earth turns slowly on its axis while wobbling through space. Along with its celestial brothers and sisters, it spins around the sun, traveling about in a rhythmic dance with the moon. Because of this, we step out of the house at dawn and watch the sun rise over the horizon. As night approaches, we watch the sun set in glorious array. We don’t sense any movement ourselves, but day by day, we experience the consequences of this movement.
In Psalm 19, King David wrote that the sun rising and setting each day, the magnificent heavenly bodies glittering in the night sky, and the wonders in heaven and on earth are all consequences of the actions of our God. His actions have led to life—life in a myriad of shapes and forms on this earth, in outer space, and in the vast oceans of the earth. God’s heart of love and grace are expressed in a real and powerful way in all he has made, and are a visible demonstration of his glory, his generosity and wisdom.
King David’s son Solomon wrote that wisdom, personified as a woman, speaks to us constantly, calling to each and every person to listen to her and to do what she directs. Why do you want to be ignorant and naïve, she asks, and suffer the consequences of foolish choices and decisions? “Turn to my reproof,” she warns, “Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you; I will make my words known to you.” Then she says she will laugh in the day when the foolish experience the consequences of their refusal to listen to the voice of wisdom—she did her part but they turned away and chose to take their own path (Proverbs 1:20–33 NASB).
Wisdom, in this passage, involves a knowledge and understanding of God’s ways, his glory and his goodness. We were made in the image of God, after his likeness, to be reflections of his Triune nature of love. If this is our identity as human beings, what does it look like when we live it out? It looks a lot like Jesus.
Wisdom is available at all times—like the air we breathe and the sun coming up each morning and setting each night—it’s a part of our universe, constantly pointing out the reality that there is a better way of living, that there’s more to life than just this. God gave his wisdom in the creation of all things, in the revelation of himself to Israel, and in the giving of the law to his people. But going way beyond that, God has given us his profound wisdom in the person of Jesus Christ. He sent his Son, who took on our human flesh and lived the life we were meant to live. The law of God lived out in a human person, fully dependent upon the Father, in obedience to him by the Spirit, even to the point of giving up his life at the hands of others—this is what it looks like to be truly human and to be the wisdom of God present in this cosmos.
So often we ignore the wisdom God gives us. He tells us the best way to live and we ignore him, choosing our own way, our own path, to decide for ourselves what is right or wrong. And then we become angry when we begin to experience the consequences of our choices. But there are consequences to choosing to ignore true wisdom, especially the true wisdom given to us in the person of Jesus Christ and his presence here in this world right now by the Holy Spirit.
God has always wanted us to experience the consequences of obedience to him—the benefits which involve life, a life lived now and forever in union and communion with him in the Spirit. God wants the harvest of our lives to be faith, hope, and love—a joyful experience of union and communion with him and our brothers and sisters, now and forever. He does not want us to, and has never wanted us to, experience the consequence of death. He always and ever wanted us to have life, true abundant life as he has always experienced it in the unity and harmony of the Father and Son in the Spirit.
True wisdom calls to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Come—this is the way you were created to live—in loving, faithful obedience to the Father by the Spirit expressed in loving care and concern for God and others. While the world around us and our broken flesh calls us to the pleasures of this life and to self-centered ways of living and being, Jesus calls us to a better way—a way of self-sacrificial service and humility. “If anyone wishes to come after Me,” he said, “he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.” The consequence of following Jesus may, in the immediate sense, require sacrifice, suffering, and/or death, but in the end, it will result in eternal life—life in intimate relationship with God through Jesus in the Spirit and in joyful life with others both now and forever as brothers and sisters in God’s kingdom.
The world around me is constantly encouraging me to believe that I am able to do whatever I want without any cost associated with my decisions. I am free, I am told. No one can tell me what to do. But just what is true freedom? Doesn’t true freedom require that we be willing to pay whatever price is necessary for that freedom to exist? Doesn’t true freedom involve other-centered love, limiting oneself for the sake of God and others?
What price are we willing to pay for the choices we are making today? Do we realize the full extent of what we are giving up in our current pursuit of self-absorbed living and self-centered pleasure-seeking? Do we realize the price we are going to pay if we continue to refuse to listen to the voice of Wisdom which is constantly calling out to us to turn from ourselves and to turn to Christ? Are we hearing even now the laughter of Wisdom as the consequences of our stubborn resistance to her are beginning to show themselves in our world and in our lives?
All of us make decisions while ignoring the consequences of those decisions. All of us stubbornly and willfully choose to go our own way at times, even though we know better, and know that it will cost us. Jesus, the wisdom of God present by the Holy Spirit, calls us to come to him, to find our rest in him. He calls us to turn from ourselves and the things of this world and turn to him, finding our true life in him instead. We may, in the short term, have to sacrifice or give up some things we value, but in the view of eternity, they are nothing compared with the glory God has planned for us as we share in his life and love as glorified human beings in the new heavens and new earth.
Dear Lord, everything you have made has been done with great love and abundance of wisdom. Thank you for giving your Son, your wisdom in human flesh, to be the true reflection of your glory and goodness we are to follow and obey. Thank you for planting your wisdom in human hearts by your Holy Spirit. Grant us the grace to listen to and obey Wisdom as she calls to us day by day, through Jesus our Lord. Amen.
“Jesus went out, along with His disciples, to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way He questioned His disciples, saying to them, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ They told Him, saying, ‘John the Baptist; and others say Elijah; but others, one of the prophets.’ And He continued by questioning them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered and said to Him, ‘You are the Christ.’ And He warned them to tell no one about Him. And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And He was stating the matter plainly. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. But turning around and seeing His disciples, He rebuked Peter and said, Get behind Me, Satan; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.’ And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.’” Mark 8:27–38 NASB
Making the Choice to Follow
By Linda Rex
PROPER 8—I did not write a blog last week as I was in Charlotte, North Carolina, attending the GCI Southeast Regional Conference. I attended this event with fellow pastors Jan Taylor and Mike Gass, as well as our outreach ministry leader, Pat Brazier. We joined with fellow pastors in learning about what it means to be a healthy leader and a healthy church, and how GCI (Grace Communion International) is obeying Christ’s call to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God and to follow wherever he leads.
In the gospel passage for this Sunday, the narrator Luke tells how Jesus responded to different people who sought to be his disciples. When one person said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go,” Jesus told him that unlike the foxes and birds, the Messiah did not have a place to rest his head. The price of discipleship often includes the loss of physical places we count on for comfort and personal safety.
Jesus said to another person, “Follow me.” Jesus had given this same command to Matthew as he was sitting at his desk collecting taxes and Matthew had left behind all his financial abundance and job security to follow Christ. When Jesus told the fishermen to follow him, they left their boats and families behind and simply followed Jesus. They left behind all that was comfortable and known in order to follow him.
But here, this man asked if he could first bury his father. In that day according to social expectations, it was the duty of a man to bury his father and give him an honorable burial a year after his death. This man, if he was the firstborn, may have been expecting a double inheritance, so he may have wanted to protect his future expectations. Either way, he wanted to wait till these personal and financial responsibilities were resolved before following Jesus. But neither of these reasons were sufficient to disobey Jesus’ simple command, “Follow me.”
Jesus replied by telling him to “allow the dead to bury their own dead.” He was being invited to truly live—to be in intimate relationship with Jesus. By dying to his past life and following Christ, he would begin a new life—a new path of discipleship. And Jesus’ instructions to him were, “Go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.” The king of the kingdom was present in Jesus and this man’s calling was to let everyone know right away that this was so, not to wait until he had all his personal affairs in order before he did so. (Luke 9:51–62)
His calling is not any different than God’s calling to us today as believers. And it is God’s calling to the members of GCI. We are called to radical discipleship—to leaving behind what was before and embracing what God through Christ in the Spirit is leading us toward. We are to proclaim the kingdom of God, no matter the cost, even if it means leaving behind those places and practices we count on for comfort and personal safety. In following Christ, we cease our dependence upon our physical abilities and future expectations, and trust in the provision and future God has for us and is leading us into by his Holy Spirit.
To often we are like the man who told Jesus, “I will follow you, Lord, but first permit me to say good-bye to those at home.” We find a lot of reasons not to simply do what Jesus by the Spirit tells us to do. It is easy to allow the things of this life, our comfortable relationships, our social obligations, to distract us from simply following Jesus and proclaiming the good news of his kingdom.
Family relationships are important and should not be neglected. We are to love God wholeheartedly and to love one another. But the kingdom life Jesus inaugurated in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension is a radical shift from self-centered living into a Christ-centered existence in which our choice is moment-by-moment to follow Jesus wherever he goes, no matter the cost. Radical discipleship includes changing the way we think, talk, and live.
And radical discipleship also includes sometimes changing the way we do church and the way we act as spiritual leaders within the church. The way we do church can become so comfortable that we cease to grow and change or allow new people the opportunity to grow and change with us. Members of our churches and denominations may begin to so resemble the culture in which we live they lose their distinction as followers of Christ. Leadership can become about prestige, financial abundance, power, and authority rather than about Jesus’ simple path of humble service and self-sacrifice. Churches can become social clubs, exclusive and untouchable, or they can become so gracious and free-spirited that no one ever hears the truth about Jesus and his costly path of discipleship.
As GCI follows the lead of the Holy Spirit and continues in its growth of Christ-likeness, we will continue to be called down the road of discipleship where we must make the choice to follow Jesus in new and challenging ways. We may need to leave behind those comfortable, easy ways of doing church and embrace new, transformational ways of embracing our church communities and the people we encounter there. We will be called to quit hiding and stop running away from our responsibilities to share the good news of the kingdom of God everywhere we go.
This is the call to discipleship—a discipleship in which we were meant to call others into the same radical discipleship we were called into as Jesus said to us, “Follow me.” What that calling is for us individually and as a church is unique—we listen to and obey the Spirit as he moves in our midst and within our communities. We join Jesus in his daily work to let all people know the good news of God’s amazing love expressed to us in him. And we enjoy the journey, for we are caught within the love and life of Abba, Jesus, and the Spirit.
Thank you, Jesus, for calling us to follow you. Give us the courage and faith to do so, no matter the cost and no matter what the future may bring. Enable us by your Spirit to embrace all the new you are doing while holding fast to what you have taught us in your life, death, resurrection and ascension. Grow us up into all that you are. By your Spirit and for Abba’s glory, make your body, your churches, specifically our GCI churches, into places of life, healing, and renewal. Make us all a clear reflection of your glory and grace. In your Name we pray, amen.
“And He said to another, ‘Follow Me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.’ But He said to him, ‘Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.’” Luke 9:59-60 NASB
Our Life in the Trinity 