God Remembers: (Good Sunday Meditations)

This is by the Rev. Bob Arbogast at Olentangy Christian Reformed Church:
(For some reason the formatting is being grievous! I apologize and have tried to fix it as much as I can.)

I have a bad memory. I’ve admitted that I don’t know how many times. Or if not a

bad memory, then a strange memory. I can remember a license plate number from the

mid-1970s: P64 519. But I can’t remember a speech I gave at high school graduation. I

can remember a phone number from Grand Rapids in the mid-1980s: 454-8830. But I

can’t remember most of my seminary classmates. I see them at synod sometimes, and I

don’t know who they are. I can remember the priest turning on a cheap Sony cassette

player at my father’s funeral in 1997. But I can’t remember standing by my father’s

open grave.

There are lots of times I wish I had a better memory. But I don’t think there’s much

of anything I can do about it. When I go to Kroger, I make a list. That doesn’t help my

memory. It just compensates for it. When Jan gets off the phone after talking with Katie,

she can give me a detailed account of the conversation. When I get off the phone after

talking with Kristi, I can only give Jan a general outline of what we talked about. I feel

like a failure, like a bad person. I don’t like this forgetting. But I wonder if that’s even the right

word. Am I forgetting something if I haven’t remembered it at least for a little while to begin

with?

NONE OF US LIKE FORGETTING. That’s one of the things that worries us about

Alzheimer’s. If we get Alzheimer’s, we’re going to forget who we are and we’re going

to forget the people we love. And we know that if we forget those things, then there

won’t be much of us left. Not enough of what matters. That’s what scares us. We’ve

seen people, people we love, hollowed out by Alzheimer’s. We don’t want to go there.

None of us do.

But here’s what I think. Worse than forgetting is being forgotten. None of us wants

to be forgotten. Not unless we’re in the witness protection program. And even then we

don’t really want it. It’s a hard thing to be forgotten, to be lost to all you’ve known and

loved. But in that kind of situation, there’s no choice.To be forgotten by the woman you

pledged your life to twelve years ago, forgotten when she runs off with another man? That

hurts. To be forgotten by your son, the son you made so many sacrifices for, and now he

won’t even pick up his iPhone to give you a call? That hurts.

We watched the movie Precious the other night. Precious Jones is forgotten. Her

mother and father have forgotten she’s their child, their flesh and blood. They treat her

like a pest or a toy. When she finds out she’s HIV-positive, courtesy of her father,

Precious writes in her journal, Why me? At that moment, with a story like hers, Precious

feels forgotten by the universe. And who wouldn’t? The filmmakers don’t address the

obvious next question. But has God forgotten her? Has God forgotten?

THAT’S THE QUESTION THAT HANGS OVER this world every day. When a fifteen year

old girl is sexually assaulted by her father while her mother looks the other way, has

God forgotten? When people rising up to protest an oppressive government are

bombed and burned into submission, has God forgotten? When Haiti, the poorest

country in the western hemisphere, is devastated by an earthquake and a hurricane, has God

forgotten? When a traveler responds to the call of the Gospel to take risks to be servant and

winds up being assaulted by the hitchhiker he picked up, has God forgotten? When

Palestinian Christians are caught in the middle between Muslims and Israelis and the

whole world has forgotten their plight, has God forgotten too? When the Christian

community in Iraq and in Egypt and in Nigeria is under constant threat, has God

forgotten?

That’s the question, the aching, agonizing question, that hangs over this world every

day. And that was the question hanging over the world in the first century, hanging

over Judea and Samaria and Galilee. When Jews have returned from Babylon, when

they’ve rebuilt Jerusalem and the Temple, but they have no king and the divine

presence is missing, has God forgotten? Has God forgotten? That’s the question, then

and now. Has God forgotten?

ONE OF THE BIBLE’S BIG CONCERNS, ALL THE WAY THROUGH, is to show that God

remembers. Take the rainbow. We know that the rainbow is a covenant sign. It’s

connected with a promise God makes, a promise God makes to every living creature on

the earth, a promise that the waters of chaos won’t win. We know that the rainbow is a

sign of that promise. And we usually think that the rainbow is a sign so we can

remember the promise. But the rainbow is not so we can remember; it’s so God can

remember. God says, I will see the bow and I will remember. I will remember my promise. I

don’t know for sure, but I imagine there’s always a rainbow somewhere in this world. That

means God remembers. Always God remembers.

When the family of Israel is enslaved in Egypt, God remembers his promise to

Abraham and sets Israel free. Later, when Israel is beset by enemies, God remembers his

promise to David and turns the enemies aside. God remembers. That’s a foundation

stone of biblical faith.

When the psalmist prays to the LORD, it’s a prayer about remembering. LORD, don’t

remember the mess I am and the mess I’ve made. LORD, instead of remembering who I

am,remember who you are. Remember compassion. Remember faithfulness. Remember love. And

that’s what God does. God remembers. Always God remembers.

OUR COVENANT SIGN IS BAPTISM. It’s a sign we can hardly see when it’s on us. It’s not

like the ashes of Ash Wednesday that even when they’re removed leave a smudge. No,

with baptism in no time our skin is dry and the sign is invisible. But not to God. God

sees. And God remembers. God remembers the promises. I am your God. You are my

people. God remembers.

I told you I remember strange things. But it’s not so strange, not really. You see, I

have a habit of rehearsing those strange things. I’ve been telling people for years about

that old license plate number. Every time I tell someone, the number gets fixed more

firmly in my memory. I imagine that’s how it is with God and our baptism. God sees the

sign, the invisible sign, of our baptism and God remembers. Again and again God sees.

Again and again God remembers. God remembers and there is no forgetting.

GOD REMEMBERS. THAT’S THE BEGINNING of the Gospel. As Mark tells the story, Jesus

begins his work by saying, The time is fulfilled. In other words, There has been no forgetting.

This is where the story has been leading. It’s time, time at last, time for the kingdom! Jesus comes

as the embodiment of God’s memory. God has not forgotten the promises. God is as good as

his word. God remembers a world in torment. God remembers a world fractured by abuse

and injustice, by disease and despair. God remembers and sends his Son to save the world

from slavery to fear and death. He does it by facing the fear. He does it by dying a

horrible death. He does it by remembering. Jesus, his companion on the next cross said

to him, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus told him, Today

you will be with me in paradise. In other words, I will remember. I will remember you. You will

suffer. You will die. But you will not be forgotten. I will remember you. That’s the heart of the

Gospel.

Certainly we’re longing for and waiting for a world in which girls aren’t abused and

kind travelers aren’t assaulted. We have our eyes set on a world where peace and justice

reign and tyrants have been sent packing. And while we wait, we look to Jesus, to his cross,

to his suffering, to what he was not spared. We look to our own calling to suffer with him. And

we know that God remembers. God remembers. Always God remembers. I may forget a lot

of things. There may be a lot of things that never once take root in my memory. But God

remembers. Always God remembers. And that will be so even if I forget.

✠

In the name of the Father

and of the Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

✠

God Wants Us All To Flourish

Reprinted With Permission From the Reverend Robert Arbogast

 

Something was not right with twenty-four year old Joshua Edwards. His family and friends were
sure of it. Those who treated him at the OSU Medical Center last summer had clinical evidence of it.
Something was not right with Joshua Edwards. Denis Hoover found that out two weeks ago, when
he answered a late-night knock and saw Edwards standing on his front porch naked. Something was
not right with Joshua Edwards, who lost his job and his health insurance after his hospitalization and
could not afford to pay for his medications. We all heard about it after Edwards’ body was found the
next day.

In a Columbus Dispatch commentary, Joe Blundo wondered about what kind of city we have
made. A city in which a man who is mentally ill can die, untreated, naked, shivering, and alone, in a
garden shed — that’s worth some sober reflection.

I’m sure you remember Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats. It’s a parable about
the justice by which human communities are measured. How does a community act toward hungry
people standing in line at soup kitchens? toward immigrants who haven’t melted in yet? toward sick
people who don’t have the means to look after their own care? toward repeat offenders on the street
or still behind bars? and, yes, toward people who stand naked on our front porches? How does a
community act? That’s the question. And it’s a question of justice. Justice in the sense of a
community doing what’s right. And justice in the sense of a community being condemned for failing
to do what’s right.

Whatever the details, whatever the chains of causation, too much in Joshua Edwards’ story is just
not right. That upsets us. It makes us angry. It stirs up a hunger and a thirst within us, a hunger and a
thirst that have never been satisfied, a hunger and a thirst for justice, for what’s right in place of
what’s wrong.

Jesus said, “Those who are hungering and thirsting for what’s right are blessed” (Matthew 5:6). It’s a holy hunger that churns in our gut, when we hear Joshua Edwards’ story or when we hear other stories, right here in Columbus, of people homeless, hungry, cold, sick, out of work, and with nowhere to turn. We know in our souls that God has something better in  mind. We know that God wants all the people of our city to flourish, not just the people in the suburbs. We know that God wants the rules to be fair, that God wants everyone to have a fighting chance at a decent life.

And deep in our gut, we hunger for a city that fits with God’s vision. A city in which children are
always loved and given every opportunity to thrive. A city in which old people can live out their years
in dignity, without fear of poverty or violence or substandard care in an overcrowded nursing home.
A city in which all the people can make a life for themselves and their loved ones by honest work.
That’s what we yearn for, instead of a city of failing schools, crippled neighborhoods, and
shrunken dreams. And that’s a proper yearning. God always wants his people to seek the welfare of
the city where they live. And it’s a yearning that one day will be satisfied. Jesus said, “Those who are
hungering and thirsting for what’s right are blessed, because they will be satisfied.”

That’s the future God has planned, the future God has promised, a future in which
everything, at last, is right. There’s a picture of it in the book of Revelation. In chapter 21, John
recounts his vision of the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God
and resting upon the earth. The city he sees is perfection itself, perfect in all its dimensions,
complete in all its appointments, the home of light and of life that flourishes forever.

The book of Revelation up to that point is filled with so much wrong: with beasts and blood,
with disasters and destruction, with plagues and with death. But the future, the future that the saints
of God hunger for and pray for, that future has been guarded, has been protected from all the
turmoil, has been kept whole in heaven. And in the end that future comes down from heaven to
earth, and the deepest longing of the children of God is satisfied. Everyone who hungers and thirsts
for what’s right will be satisfied, because in a great and final act of divine justice, everything wrong
will be supplanted by everything right.

And now? What happens in the time between the present and the final future? Our country’s
conservative movement helps us here. For years now, “conservatives” have chided “liberals” for
having a vision of equality and prosperity that they keep talking about, while they wait for someone
else to make it happen.

“Liberals” expect the government to create jobs and prosperity. And they expect rich people to
be robbed to take care of poor people who can’t manage to take care of themselves. “Conservatives,”
on the other hand, promote an ethic of energetic responsibility. Don’t pine away for a better day,
wringing your hands while you wait for someone else to make it happen. Be proactive. Be an
entrepreneur. Be a mover and a shaker. Be a creator, a producer. Be an actor on the social, political,
and economic stage.

When it comes to justice, when it comes to a community doing what’s right, that “conservative”
approach is on target. Justice is not something for us to wish for, something for us to wait for,
something for us to pine away for. Justice is something for us to take action for, to be proactive
about, to be movers and shakers toward, to be creators of.

Listen to the prophet Micah. “This is what the LORD requires of you: To do what’s right and to
love what’s kind and to be careful to walk with your God” (Micah 6:8).

The problem in Micah’s time was that the community of Israel was doing the exact opposite.
God had always shown kindness to them.  But they disregarded the plight of the needy, counting them only when making cost-benefit calculations. God had always done right by them. But they exploited the poor and the vulnerable. They were liars in business, champions of crooked deals, experts at taking advantage of every situation.And as far as being careful to walk with God, they had made a mess of that, too. They had reduced piety from a change of attitude and action to an attempt to buy off God’s anger and to get out from under God’s judgment, whether it cost pools of blood, rivers of oil, or even the life of a firstborn child!

But it’s all of a piece. Religious practice cannot be separated from the attitudes and actions of a
community, especially toward the vulnerable, especially toward people who don’t get to write the
rules, but only to feel their weight.

So here we are in Columbus. Here we are in a city where public school officials remove kids
from school with too little concern about where those kids end up. Here we are in a city where
community leaders can’t seem to muster the moral resources to deal with abandoned properties.
Here we are in a city where a drug court can hardly gain traction, while the road to prison gets
resurfaced every year.

Now, we can sit back and wish for things to change. We can hope and pray for things to get
better. We can pine away for a city that will look like the new Jerusalem. But the conservative
movement has a better way. If you want to see justice, then do justice. If you want your community
to do what’s right, then take action to make that happen, to change business as usual. Be proactive.
Be movers and shakers. Be entrepreneurs of justice.

Here’s the bottom line. Justice is not an option. Justice is a priority with God. Justice is central
to Christian faith. People who hunger and thirst for justice, for what’s right, are blessed. Blessed
because, in the end, they will see all that they have yearned for finally realized in the perfect city of
God. But blessed also along the way through a partnership with God, a careful walking with God, by
doing what’s right and loving what’s kind. Of which there is no better example than our Lord
himself, who not only announced the kingdom, but acted to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, and to
put right what had been wrong for so long.

When we take action to do what’s right, it may not prevent another Joshua Edwards from dying
naked, cold, and alone. But then again, maybe it will. And we at least have to try, don’t we? — try in
the name of the one who came to announce and to embody good news for the poor, freedom for
captives, healing for the sick, and so much more.

On Gratitude and Duty ~ Robert Arbogast

Meditation by Robert Arbogast. Minister at Olentangy Christian Reformed Church ~ Columbus, Ohio


Who of us doesn’t like to be appreciated? To get a pat on the back, to get an “attaboy” — that
makes us feel good inside. It can validate our passions and commitments. It can encourage us to
keep going, even when the going is tough.Good leaders know how to motivate people, how to get them going and keep them going. To do this, good leaders have different motivational tools at their disposal. Wise leaders know the right time to use each tool. And there certainly is a time to say an “attaboy,” to say, “Well done!” Because we all like to be appreciated. And being appreciated motivates us, keeps us going. Jesus acknowledges the importance of this kind of appreciation. According to one of his parables, about the most wonderful thing to hear is, “Well done, good and trustworthy servant” (Matthew25:21). “Well done.” The hope of hearing that from Jesus himself is a real motivation for the Christian. But there is a flip side to this picture. Luke 17 takes us there. Appreciation may be a wonderful thing. But Jesus says, “Don’t expect a big ‘Thank you’ just for doing your duty.” We’ve going the other way in our culture: On 9/11, nine years ago yesterday, 343 members of the fire department, sixty police officers, and eight private paramedics died at the World Trade Center in New York City. Our leaders were quick to label them “heroes.” We all agreed. Since October 2001, US military personnel have been engaged in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Once again, our leaders have labeled them “heroes.” Our little village of Sunbury is the home of the “Ohio Fallen Heroes Memorial,” in honor of many sacrifices made by our military in those conflicts. When he successfully ditched US Airways flight 1549 in the Hudson River in January 2009 with no loss of life, Captain Chesley Sullenberger was hailed as a “hero.” Who could disagree? When giant African pouched rats were trained to detect live land mines — land mines that make vast stretches of land in dozens of African countries useless — they, the rats, were given a brand name: Hero Rats.

Two common threads are clearly visible in all these cases. First, a sincere desire to express
appreciation for what has been done, and to acknowledge its significance. Rightly so. Second, in each case, those involved were doing their duty, doing what they had signed up for (okay, maybe not the rats!), doing what they had been trained to do. My understanding is that most people labeled “heroes” don’t themselves think the label fits.Again and again, they say they were just doing their duty, just doing what they had been trained for, what they had prepared for. For that reason, they don’t consider themselves heroes. People like thatare modest models for the followers of Jesus.

They teach us an important lesson. The Kingdom of God requires a lot from us. Certain duties are imposed upon us: We have a duty to be a watchful, wide awake people, faithful in worship, diligent in prayer, not fitting worship and prayer into our schedules, but building our schedules around worship and prayer. We have a duty to be culturally aware and, where necessary, culturally resistant, not surfing uncritically on political waves, not buying conventional wisdom about “the good life” and how to get there. We have a duty to seek first God’s kingdom and its justice, not worrying so much about me getting mine, but about everyone flourishing, letting a kingdom-first perspective shape my life, shaping, to take one example, my spending and giving habits, recognizing that my paycheck or investment dividend is not mine, it’s God’s, all of it, to be used for God’s purposes, which have more than my comfort in mind.

When we do these sorts of things and more, when we live this way, our Lord tells us not to
imagine that we’re doing anything special or heroic. We’re just doing our duty. It’s what we signed up for through faith. It’s what discipleship trains us to do. “Don’t expect to be thanked,” Jesus says. Actually it runs just the other way around. It’s no accident that the following story in Luke 17 is about the ten lepers. A key issue in that story is gratitude. But notice the way it runs. It runs from the lepers, one of them anyway, to Jesus. That one leper had things right. He came back, fell before Jesus, and poured out his gratitude. And he had reason for gratitude.

In our day we try to be sensitive. We try not to define or identify someone by a disease or
disability. But those ten men were defined by “leprosy,” by a skin disorder, or something worse, that marked them. They were set apart from other people, but not as heroes. They were at best victims, at worst objects of scorn.But on their way to the local religious officials, the ones who certified diseases and cures, who
decided matters of exclusion and inclusion — on the way, they were healed. In other words, they
were re-defined, and the world was about to be re-opened to them. And one of them, a Samaritan
— who, according to common wisdom, should not have known better — one of them came back to say, “Thank you,” to show gratitude to Jesus for a new life. That’s the direction of Christian discipleship. Disciples don’t expect Jesus to say, “Thanks so much. You’ve really been pitching in lately.” Not at all. As a matter of fact, it’s just the other way around. All of discipleship, every task, every duty, every commitment, is our way of saying, “Thank you,” to Jesus.

Our Heidelberg Catechism asks, What do I need to know to live and to die in the joy of the
comfort of belonging to Jesus? The answer is in three parts, and this is the third: How I am to thank God, how I am to show gratitude, for the new life I have in Christ (cp. QA 2). That’s our motivation, gratitude. And how can we not be grateful? The story of the lepers makes the point. Those ten lepers live in a world apart. It’s a restricted world defined by brokenness. It’s a world of alienation, of separation. And it’s a world that will go on and on, because the rules and definitions are fixed.

Then Jesus turns things upside down. He creates a new world and welcomes those ten men into it. It’s a world of connection and communion. It’s a world of wholeness. It’s a world they had only dreamed of. One of them enters that world most fully — most fully, because he went back to its source, went back overwhelmed and overflowing with gratitude. Here’s the Gospel. The old world was a dark world of brokenness and alienation, a world scarred by sin and ruled by death, a world of misery, injustice, abandonment. But Jesus broke the back of that old world. Sin and death exhausted themselves on him. They are spent forces, flailing about still, but on the road to extinction. And so they could not hold him. And he rose, giving birth to a new world, a new world that gathers in broken and ruined people, a new world that by God’s grace we have begun to taste and see. We haven’t seen it all, not by any stretch. But we’ve seen enough. And we do get our tastes. And we have faith in Jesus, faith by which we are sure of what we hope for and certain of what we don’t see (Hebrews 11:1). And so we are grateful. Because a new world is born, and by God’s grace we are born (again) into it!

Some people would give anything to see the future. We do see the future in Jesus Christ. And
that future is, and always will be, our home. So, for us, life is all about saying, “Thank you,” to God.Otherwise, it is no life at all.So go ahead. Call Chesley Sullenberger a hero. Call fallen soldiers heroes. Call first respondersheroes. Call mine-detecting rats heroes, if you want. But as a disciple of Jesus Christ, don’t expect to be called a hero yourself, and don’t expect Jesus to say, “Thank you.” As faithful disciples, we’re only doing our duty, our grateful duty.

Who Do You Say I Am? Making A Trade

Here is part of a sermon my husband, Shawn Graves, gave last year (he is not a pastor, but has those gifts).

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Not a mere prophet, mind you. Not even a mere great prophet. Rather, the Christ, the Messiah, the very Son of the Living God.)

It was Peter who said it.

Peter confessed, and he was blessed. Profoundly.

Jesus wholeheartedly affirmed Peter’s daringly bold and flat-out counter-cultural confession, citing its divine origins. And then Jesus said something like this to him: “Peter, upon you I will build my church.” Or, in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke: “Kefa, upon kefa I will build my church.” Sure, it’s still Jesus’ church, still Jesus’ kingdom people, and sure, it’s still Jesus who is doing the building, gathering all of the people into the kingdom. But still—still!—it would be through Peter’s leadership and Peter’s authority that this would all be done! He would be Jesus’ Right Hand Man (Right?), and, consequently, at least have a share in Jesus the King’s Glory (Right?). Jesus himself had just said so (didn’t he?).

That was all a few weeks ago.

And then things got weird. Bizarre, really. Unacceptably bizarre.

Jesus started talking about suffering. And death.

But not just any kind of suffering! Not just any kind of death! Not, for example, the suffering that comes with a natural disease and not the death associated with that disease.

No. Jesus’ suffering and dying from natural causes would be bad enough. But this was worse: Jesus started talking incessantly about being tortured and even murdered! By the current authorities, the religious establishment, no less!

In short: Jesus started talking a lot about losing. And losing badly.

This kind of talk had to stop now. And it was Peter—the just-days-ago-promised-Right-Hand-Man-share-in-the-Beautiful-Glory-of-the-Conquering-King-Jesus—Peter who would see to it that it stopped.

So Jesus had to be confronted. Or maybe counseled? It wasn’t clear—maybe Jesus had just lost his nerve, his edge, his faith in his Father. Or maybe Jesus simply forgot how winsome he could be (when he wanted to be), how easily he had accumulated thousands of followers (and fed them!), folks who would chase him all over the region.

Whatever the case may be, Jesus had to stop talking this way. Someone had to stand in the way of Jesus’ newfound drive toward suffering, death, and defeat. And Peter—Kefa, the Rock—would be the one to do it.

“Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” (Peter the Rock probably took this to be his first act as Jesus the King’s new Right Hand Man: a bold reprimand/talking to in order to get the ship back on course.)

Just weeks ago, things were great, remarkable, glorious even!

Then things got weird, bizarre, unacceptably bizarre. A reprimand/confrontation seemed in order.

And now—post-reprimand/confrontation—things get positively turned upside down for Peter.

Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."

Jesus had a message for Peter:

Peter, who just weeks ago had divinely-inspired confessions about Jesus coming from his lips, now speaks the very words of Satan.

Peter, who just weeks ago put out of his mind mans’ conceptions of Jesus as mere prophet ready for the Prophet Hall of Fame, now has in mind the things of men.

Peter, who just weeks ago was proclaimed to be the very rock upon which Jesus would build his church, now is proclaimed to be the rock that Jesus trips over while on his mission. (Just weeks ago Jesus had said “Kefa, upon this kefa I will build my church.” Now Jesus says “Kefa, you are the kefa I trip over.”)

But Jesus didn’t just have a message for Peter. He had a message for all of his followers, too. In fact, he had a message for anyone even thinking about being his follower. And my guess is that all of us fall somewhere into those categories. So Jesus has a message for us. For me. And for you.

That message is about that tragic, soul-killing, all-too-ordinary trade we heard about earlier:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?

What indeed? What can a man, woman, teenager, or child give in exchange for his or her soul? As it turns out, just about anything. Peter here may have been looking to trade his soul away for the shot at being the Right-Hand-Man-of-the-Government-Squashing-King-Jesus. Soul for Glory, Sweet Glory. We, on the other hand, trade away our souls so that the “right” people like us, so that we make it in with the “right” crowd, whether it’s classmates or the boss or the woman down the street. We trade away our souls to feed that bitterness and anger we have toward that parent, that ex-friend, that neighbor, that colleague. We trade away our souls to stoke the fire of pride and arrogance, to adopt that stance of superiority over that smelly, lonely kid who sits by himself at lunch, that socially awkward, not-too-bright classmate, that family member or neighbor with “all those problems”. We trade away our souls for just about anything: and that’s the tragic, soul-killing, all-too-ordinary trade that just never seems to make the headlines.

So what are we to do? Stop making any trades at all? Keep our souls to ourselves, so to speak? No, that’s not the way. In fact, that’s not even possible. Trades are inevitable, forced. We all must trade away our souls for something.

No, what we must do is make the right trade. We must give away our soul for the right thing. And what is that right thing? What are we to trade away our souls for?

Quite simply: An electric chair and a spot behind Jesus.

Recall what Jesus said:

If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

I know, Jesus didn’t say anything about an electric chair here, but he might as well have. That’s basically what the cross is: one way—a brutal, sickening way—of carrying out the death penalty. And so is the electric chair. (Instead of a cross on the wall behind me, imagine instead an electric chair.) Jesus is telling would-be-followers to strap on their electric chairs, because if you’re going to follow Him, you need to die. You need to get out of the way. You and your plans, goals, visions, wants, rights, life-saving techniques, strategies—all of it needs to go. Scratch that—all of it needs to die.

But there’s a problem. All of those things have a not-so-funny way of coming back to life. And quickly. “I thought I got rid of that bitterness and anger. Why do I feel it again?” “What am I doing feeling smug and arrogant, like I’m better than that kid?” Sure, they can all be killed. But they can all come back to life again. One death is not enough. This is why we read in Luke 9: 23:

Then Jesus said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

Daily. We need to climb into our electric chairs daily. Getting into our electric chairs needs to be an ordinary thing for us. It needs to be routine. We are to be dead men walking.

So get your electric chair. And get behind Jesus. Not in front of him, face to face with him, confronting him, reprimanding him, as Peter did. That’s not the posture of a follower. Get behind him.

So that’s the trade we are all to make. That’s the trade Jesus would have for us: souls for electric chairs and a spot behind Jesus.

But there’s another problem here: Far from sounding like the right trade for us to make—souls for electric chairs and a spot behind Jesus—this sounds like just another tragic trade, not much different from those soul-killing, all-too-ordinary-trades Jesus warned us about. They all end in death!

Right?

But that’s just it! While trading our souls away for bitterness, anger, arrogance, superiority, status, popularity, and the rest does end in death, trading our souls away for electric chairs and a spot behind Jesus doesn’t.

Recall what Jesus said to you:

Whoever loses his life for me will find it.

Finding your life. Did you hear that? Finding your life. That’s what trading your soul for an electric chair and a spot behind Jesus results in: life. No wonder Jesus said, speaking of his followers:

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10)

No wonder Jesus could say to Martha while they both grieved the death of their loved one, Lazarus, who was a Jesus follower:

I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? (John 11:25-26)

That question was for Martha—but it’s still for us today. Do you believe this? Enough of those tragic, soul-killing trades we so easily make each day. May we all make that truly life-giving trade. May we all trade away our souls today for an electric chair and a spot behind Jesus.