Die to Live

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon
Sunday, May 1, 2011

[Video] “The people of Me live their lives in one way until a certain young man showed up one day. ‘That’s not right,’ the young man said. ‘Success is not measured by that which is had.’ ‘That’s upside down talk,’ the people all cried. ‘Money and things, houses and cars, love and respect, all that should be ours.’ ‘Turn from these things, your wants and your ways.’ He said, ‘Come follow me and your life will be saved.’”

The upside down teaching of Jesus today that I want you to know, the one nugget that I want you to take with you, if you forget everything else, just this one little fact that I want you to walk out those doors with is this: Don’t be fooled by the bunny. I’m serious. Don’t be fooled by the bunny. The bunny’s enticing. Oh yeah, oh yeah, he promises lots but he cannot deliver. I know. I once was fooled by the bunny. So do not be fooled by the bunny.

Perhaps I should explain. Last week was Easter. Easter always takes me back to my childhood and remembering the things that were surrounding that. When I was just a wee little guy, my mother used to always make me an Easter basket. I looked forward to them every year and she made them up herself and she always put in there all the favorite goodies that I liked. They were fine. They were great. But in those last couple of years where you’re not sure that you want this anymore, all of a sudden, I started looking longingly at the prepackaged baskets, you know, the huge ones in the store with the different colored cellophane that were around them.

Packed inside were all kinds of interesting goodies there, but perched at the top was this huge white chocolate bunny, much larger than my mother would ever put in one of my baskets. It was glorious. It was just ginormous, this white chocolate bunny. And I thought to myself, “Man, if I could get the bunny, that would just be outstanding. That would make my day, my week, my month, perhaps my year.”

So I started giving subtle hints to my mother, saying, “You know, Mom, your schedule is so hectic and you do so much for me already, perhaps this year it would be alright to just buy a prepackaged sort of basket for me.” After four or five or fifteen times of saying this, I broke the woman and she bought the basket.

So I looked forward to Easter. I couldn’t wait for Easter to be here, not because of Jesus unfortunately but because of the bunny. So Easter morning came but she said, “No, no, no. You can’t have it until after church.” So I made it through church and then after church, I’m ready to dive in but she changed the rules on me. She said, “Not until after lunch.” Fine. I had some ham. I had some mashed potatoes but now, it was mine, this succulent sweetness I was about to unwrap.

As I held it in my hands, I thought I’d be the envy of all my friends. I thought, “Certainly, this will last months, perhaps until next Easter even. It is so large.” I carefully unwrapped the bunny and then I sank my teeth into it, and it shattered. It was empty! It was hollow! It was a hollow bunny! I’d been gypped! “This rabbit won’t last the afternoon in my hands.” All that time, I’d been looking forward to it. I thought this was going to bring such great satisfaction, such great joy in my life. But it couldn’t deliver.

Essentially, that’s Jesus’ teaching for us today. Perhaps He puts it slightly differently, but that’s His teaching. Listen to what He says, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it; whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” He’s basically saying, “Don’t chase after, don’t be fooled by the hollow bunny.” He says, “Don’t go after the things of this world that promise so much but deliver so little. Don’t stake your identity, your personhood in the stuff of this world. You have to die to that way of thinking if you’re going to live to a new way of thinking, live to a new identity.” So the upside down teaching is you have to die to live. Or in my way of putting it, don’t be fooled by the bunny.

Jesus wants to invite us into a true life, a real life. But let’s dig into this passage just a little bit more because I find it fascinating. So Jesus says, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it; whoever loses his life for me will save it.” Now when He says “life,” what’s your first reaction to that? My first reaction is biological life, physical life. Do I have a pulse? That’s life.

But actually, in Greek, the original language of the New Testament, there are several words that we translate just with the one word of English, “life.” It’s interesting that Jesus very carefully chose a word for “life” here. The word that He chose was “psyche.” It’s where we get the word “psychology” from. So when Jesus says, “That for whoever wants to save his life,” He’s not talking about your physical life, your biological life, whether you have a pulse or not. He says, “If you want to save your psyche,” that is, “if you want to save your identity, your selfhood, what defines you, what is your uniqueness,” He says, “well, then you have to lose that.”

So He uses this very unusual word “psyche.” Now listen to it again. Understanding psyche means identity, it means selfhood, what defines us, our self worth, all those things kind of wrapped up into us, who we are, the essence of that, alright, so listen. “For whoever wants to save his psyche will lose it; whoever loses his psyche for me and for the gospel will save it,” but then going on, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his,” it says “soul” but it’s exactly the same word, “so what good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his psyche,” or “what can a man give in exchange for his psyche?” “What can you give in exchange for identity, for what defines you, for the essence of who you are?”

So what Jesus is teaching us here, He says we have to do away with the old way of thinking in having our self identity, our worth, our definition by the things of this world and find a new identity, find a new self worth, something else that defines us of who we are. Jesus understands that by nature, we will identify with the things of this world. That’s what will sort of define us.

So when you ask yourself the question, “What’s the one thing you need in your life that if you didn’t have it, you’d really consider yourself a failure?” If you didn’t at least have this, in essence, you’d be a nobody. If you hadn’t done at least this one thing, you’d kind of consider yourself a loser. It’s different for each one of us, and it’s different according to our age. In the next service, we’ll have forty young people up here, 13 and 14yearolds. And so what’s important to them, more than likely, is different than what’s important to you and me.

So for some of them, whether they have a boyfriend or a girlfriend determines whether they’re a loser or not. If they have one, if that’s important to them, then okay, then they’ve made it. But if they don’t, then somehow, there’s something wrong with them. But not all of them. For some of them, it will be sports, if they made the team or didn’t make the team. For others, it will be music. Did they make it into Show Choir? Did they not? Are they part of the one circle of friends that seem to be so popular and if they’re not, then they must be a loser or they must not have any self worth. They’re putting their identity into finding themselves by things of this world.

Now you and I look back at them and we go, “Oh, children, we now know, as mature adults, that’s really not important.” Who do you think they learned it from? We’ve just grown up and we’ve just changed the things. What defines you? Where do you find your identify? I bet you for most of us, at least a lot of us, it’s our career, either the career right now or the one that you’re retired from. So in conversation, when you start talking about yourself, that will eventually come out. “Well, I was in banking.” Or, “I was in business.” Or, “I was in education.” Somehow we derive our identity from that. That sort of defines us, but not for everyone.

For some people, it’s your financial situation. I’m not talking about greed here. I’m just saying that you set out for yourself, “If I achieve this certain level, then I would consider myself a success, I was worth something.” Others, just the respect of your peers. You really don’t care about how much money you make, but you want to be in a chosen profession that you have respect of the people around you.

For some of you, it’s your children. Are your children well behaved when they’re small? Are they successful when they grow up? And somehow we’ve tied our own self worth into what our children do. For some people, it’s where they live. For some people, it’s what they drive. For others, it’s what they wear.

But all of it has this in common: We’re defining ourselves, we’re saying our identity, in my opinion, is a hollow bunny. It promises a lot, but it can’t deliver.

So when you set out to achieve that thing, whether it was a career, whether it was financial status, whether it was a relationship, whether it was prestige, when you set out to achieve that, you thought that would be great. But once you got there, it wasn’t quite what it was cracked up to be.

So when we graduated from college and we said, “You know, if I could ever get to this spot, I’d have it made.” And then you make it to this spot and then you say, “Really? There must be something more. I must be missing something.” We can spend our entire lives chasing after one hollow bunny after another hollow bunny after another hollow bunny, looking for some sort of self worth, looking for something that defines us, that says we’ve been successful, that we have significance in our life, that there’s meaning to our lives. But we’ll never find it. It offers a lot, but it can’t deliver.

The real danger? The real danger is if we connect our identity with the things of this world, whether it’s a relationship, a career, whether it’s finance, whether it’s prestige. Whatever those things are, what happens when they go south? What happens when the career ends? What happens when the relationship breaks apart? What happens when you don’t have respect? What happens when the bank account hit’s a certain level? Our lives fall apart. We have so much connected our identity to these things and our self worth and they’re unpredictable. They don’t have staying power so when they go south, our lives fall apart.

That’s why Jesus says there’s a different way. This upside down way of thinking is counterintuitive. He says, “You have to die to that if you truly want to live.” He says, “You have to die to the idea of defining yourself and having your identity in anything that’s connected to this world, and you need to find a new identity, something new that defines you.” In other words, He’s saying, “Don’t fall for hollow bunny. Be convinced by the empty tomb.”

Be convinced by the empty tomb of your new identity because your new identity is in Christ. Let’s look once again at Jesus’ word. There’s a lot packed into this. So He says, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life,” now pay attention to this, “for me and for the gospel will save it.” Why did He link that together? Why didn’t He just say, “Whoever loses His life for me?” But He says, “No, no, no, no. Whoever loses his life for me and the gospel,” so whoever loses his psyche, that is, puts away the identity of the world and says, “No, no, no, I want a new identity. I want something new to define me,” but He wraps it up and He says, “In me and in the gospel.”

We have to ask ourselves the question, “What is the gospel?” And you’re going to say, “Well, I know what the gospel is. We use it all the time.” Right? Pastor Phil just said, “Let’s all stand and honor recognition of the gospel.” The first four books of the New Testament, those are the gospel. Or we talk about spreading the gospel. We talk about preaching the gospel. We talk about the gospel message, but what is the gospel?

A literal translation is “joy-filled news.” Alright, we probably knew that, too. Gospel means good news. Ah, but in Jesus’ day, it had special import to it. You didn’t just talk about gospel for any kind of good news. It had to have a special significance for it to be called gospel good news. In other words, a gospel, that joy-filled news, had to refer back to a point in history that would change the life of the recipient of that news.

An example: There are early writings around the same time of Jesus that talk about the war between Greeks and Persians. And so the Greeks invade Persia. They win two significant battles and they send out messengers, which they call “evangelists,” to take the good news, the gospel, to the villages in the town and the gospel, the joy-filled news for them was, “We have fought for you. We have won for you. You are now free. You are no longer slaves.” You see, the gospel that the evangelists delivered was from historical events that would change the recipient’s status in life forever.

So when Jesus says, “Your new identity will be in me and in the gospel,” He’s talking about a piece of joy-filled news. He’s talking about an historical event which would change the status of the recipients forever. We can’t bypass this. This distinguishes Christianity from every other religion on the planet because Christianity is about good news. It’s not about advice.

Let me explain. Every other religion is about advice, that is, it’s all about performance. You have to do certain things if you’re going to connect with God, or the higher power, however they define it. And so the writings of those religions are simply advice given to you. “You need to do Steps 1 through 5 and now you’re connected to God.” Depending upon which religion it is, those steps are different but essentially it’s the same. What is it that you’re going to do so you can connect to God?

Christianity isn’t advice. It’s good news. It isn’t what you can do or what you have to do. It’s what God has already done. It’s about an historical event that has changed your status forever. Jesus fought for you. He won for you and He released you. You are no longer slaves.

He fought for you on Good Friday on the cross. He declared His victory for you in the empty tomb. And now He declares you free, free from sin and free from condemnation. He has given you a new identity. So Jesus says, “Your new identity is in me and in the gospel, that is, the historical event that I accomplished for you.”

So what exactly did Jesus do for us? What did He give up for us? Another fascinating passage, this time we’ll go to the writer Matthew 20, Jesus says, “Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.” Do you want to make any guesses on which word Jesus chose for “life” there? Psyche. Isn’t that interesting? I always read that He’s going to give up His life, His physical life. He did. He gave up His physical life on the cross. We know that He died, but this goes deeper. He says, “I’m going to give up my psyche for you. I’m going to give up my identity for you. I’m going to give up what defines me for you.” That’s deeper than just giving up His physical life for us. He emptied Himself for us. He gave up His identity as the Son of God and took on our identity as sinners so He could give you His identity as a child of God.

That’s the historical event that has changed our status forever. He gave up His identity so we could have a new identity, an identity in Christ. Why would someone do that? Only because of love, the perfect love. Perfect love.

Perfect love is an unconditional love. Perfect love is a love that gives but does not expect nor want anything in return. It doesn’t say, “I’m going to love but you better love me in return.” Perfect love just holds nothing back. Perfect love just gives it all. Perfect love sacrifices everything. Perfect love finds joy only in the other person’s joy. All of us want and need that kind of love. Every single one of us here. God has made us that way. We want and desire that kind of unconditional, perfect love for us.

The problem is we can’t give it. We want it, but we can’t give it. We search for it and so we will love other people with the expectation that they will love us in return. But it always comes up short. It’s not really manipulative but sometimes it is. “I’ll be nice to you as long as you’re nice to me.” “I’ll be your friend as long as you’re my friend.” But what we’re searching for is this unconditional, perfect love.

That’s why we chase after the hollow bunny. We want to show ourselves to have some self worth. We want to have some sort of definition of ourselves that says we are worth that kind of love, but we can never find it. What Jesus says is, “You are now the recipient of a perfect love, a love that doesn’t expect or demand anything in return, a love that isn’t based upon you or what you’ve done or what you’ve said.” It’s simply a love that is given. Why would Jesus die for us? It’s not because we deserved it. It’s not because He’s going to demand something from us afterwards. It’s based on love, perfect love.

Let that penetrate your heart for a moment because that’s the gospel. That’s the joy-filled news that changes us forever. All of a sudden, now, our identity is in Christ because if He gave up His psyche for us, what does that say about you? What does that say about your value and your worth? How does that define you? It’s life-changing.

Small example: I’ll call her Lisa. She wrote this, Identity in Christ, “So the major issue in my life has been people pleasing. I needed approval to be liked and admired and accepted. But for the first time, I was able to see how important it was that I identified with Christ. His love has enabled me to set up emotional boundaries with people I never could before. This has enabled me to love my friends and family for who they are and not seek more from them because I can find whatever is lacking in Christ.”

Do you see what she was saying? She was being emotionally beat up because she was a people pleaser. She would go out of her way. She would say yes to anything and to everything so that she could somehow receive that love she craved and she needed. But it always came up short and, also, the love she was giving, it wasn’t a genuine love. It was a love that in one sense was a fake love because she needed something so badly. She says, “But now everything that’s lacking from all the other relationships, I find in Christ.” And so now the love that she gives is true and genuine because it’s not seeking anything more than what that person can give. That’s finding your identity in Jesus and the gospel.

That’s the upside down thinking. You have to die to live. You have to die to this old identity and find a new identity in Christ. Don’t fall for the hollow bunny. Be convinced by the empty tomb. Amen.