Philippians 2:1-13                                          5th Sunday of Lent

 There’s a good old Southern Baptist hymn, (singing) “All to Jesus I surrender, all to him I freely give. I will ever love and trust him. In his presence daily live. I surrender all.
I surrender all. All to Thee, my precious Savior, I surrender.”

 Jesus surrendered all, but I’m not sure what I’ve surrendered. Let me take stock. How is my life any different from anyone else? I put my trust in Christ. That was a big decision. But what have I given up? Oh, sure I have some concept that my life is not my own, but the question persists: Have I really sacrificed anything? I live comfortably. My faith has never put me in danger. No real sacrifice.

 I’m kind of like the boy whose parents gave him two dollars as they were leaving for church – one for God, to go in the offering and one for a chocolate bar or drink from the vending machine. When they got to church, he had lost one of the dollars and said to himself, “Oops, I lost God’s dollar.” Lost of Christians are losing God’s dollar and God’s hour. Oops I’m running short on time, energy, and money. Couldn’t possibly sacrifice the little I have.

 Have we really appreciated the radical nature of being a Christian, of seeking to be like Christ, or have we domesticated Christ’s message such that it is stripped of its authentic message? A lot of people have left the church or are ignoring the church because the church’s message has been so tame, so lukewarm. Churches are majoring in the minors so much that the church seems an irrelevant, unnecessary community.

 The passage we are reading today is at the heart of the Christian message. It is probably the oldest hymn of the first century church, the middle section of our scripture, the part in italics on your bulletin cover. I hope we can hear it with fresh ears, that its truth will pierce our souls and call us to a new way of life.
 

  ^NRS Philippians 2:1  If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy,  ² make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.  ³ Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.   ⁴ Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.   ⁵ Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,  ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, ⁷ but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, ⁸ he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross.  ⁹ Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹ and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
¹² Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; ¹³ for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
 

 This man with the beard  (image on screen) gave up his professional job as a manager over a group of computer programmers and devoted his whole life to encouraging the leaders of our country to start loving the children of Darfur, as he has tatooed on his foreheard in the shape of a cross. Is he the crazy one for being such a radical or am I – for not taking the message of Christ seriously enough? Where is the true church? It is the one that worships rightly – or the one that loves and serves rightly? Our worship, whether traditonal or contemporary, should lead us out to service. The love we have for God should issue in love for others. Worship and mission. Celebration and service. They cannot be separated.

 “Deny yourselves. Take up your cross and follow me. Whoever wishes to save his or her life will lose it and the one who loses life, will save it.” With those words from the Gospels, Jesus shows us the way to live. He teaches his disciples and us that the way to live is to live for others, not ourselves.

In our heart of hearts we know this to be true. We are inspired by stories of heroes who gave their lives to save another. Remember in the movie Titanic, Jack slipping into the ice cold water and protecting Rose, insisting that she must live. Remember Forrest Gump carrying Lt. Dan out of the battle, saving him even when he insisted that he wanted to die. Think of the young female doctor in Patch Adams, who lost her own life because she was so determined to help a severely ill man. In Blood Diamond, we see a beautiful though tragic story of the transformation of a selfish character into a life-sacrificing character in Sierra Leone. Think of the selfless devotion of servant Hassan, to his friend, Amir, in The Kite Runner, saying, “For you, Amir, a thousand times.”

 Think of countless parents who have given their lives protecting their children. Think of your own parents, the time and energy they gave to raising you. There was a saintly elderly lady named Ethel in the Faison Presbyterian Church, who lost one of her daughters to cancer and was watching the other struggling mightily with Parkinson’s. She looked at me one day and said, “I wish I could trade places.” Think of that poor mother of the autistic boy who drowned, who would give her own life to have his back. Think of Oscar Romero, killed while serving communion, because he took a stand for human dignity in the name of God. He said, “The world dies until citizens begin to pay the price to save it.” He paid the price.

 We recognize that kind of sacrifice as love. We are inspired by it. It is Christ-like love. We have been given it by Christ and we are called to it, but it doesn’t come naturally, except in the parent-child relationship. So the typical church not striving toward sacrificial love but for self-aggrandizement, looks no different than a social club, which gathers regularly for a feel-good message and then goes home no different. And there seems to be little opposition to our growing culture of self-absorption, greed, and callousness toward the needs of people around the world. When we did not know so well the problems of children in war-torn regions of the world, it was easier. But now we know. We know that there are treatable diseases that could be cured if we got behind it, we know that clean water is a still luxury in many parts of the world, and we know that if some of us could live more simply, others could simply live. But it takes sacrifice. Will we rise to the occasion?

 I believe the Church is beginning to hear the message of sacrifice again. Here’s a little congregation, without land, without a building, more concerned to take care of farmworkers and their families at Mission Beth-El and homeless families through Family Promise than hurrying to build, so we can argue over the color of the church carpet. We’ll have land when God wants us to have it. The people who make up this church could be sleeping in this morning, could be sitting down in comfortable pews in larger churches and having little burden of responsibility. But instead, you have chosen to work out your salvation, to do the challenging work of new church development because you believe that it is worth the extra effort to be a church making a difference in the world for peace – taking time to care for people in a deeper way, giving of your resources sacrificially because you know this church needs your money to do good works.

 You are risk-takers. You are here because you know the greater sacrifice is worth it. There’s power and hope and love in the sacrifice. Jesus showed us the way and we are called to follow in living sacrificially for the sake of others. Not being doormats for the selfish, but sacrificing, like Christ, in ways that give life to others. Giving up a luxury item so someone else can have the basics of shelter, food, and education.

 This kind of surrender to Christ’s way of life is not an overnight process. It doesn’t happen easily. It is a journey with many paths along the way. Choosing surrender and sacrifice over success and self interest, looks like foolishness to many. But it is the life. Jesus’ death on a cross looked like failure. But it is the power of love.

 So we cannot be a church with people asking “What’s in it for me?” We are called to be a church of sacrificial love. Our prayers are never for ourselves alone. I am called to give up the time I want because you need it. We are called to give up money we want because they need it. We are called to give up the right to have the last word or to lose our temper sacrifice our need to be right for your need to have respect.

 I challenge you to risk the awkwardness of talking about your faith and your church to others because you believe that sacrificial love changes lives and that God’s love is worth the call to surrender, to sacrifice. Tell them to come, not for spiritual entertainment, not for the impressive church benefits package. Come because here we can serve, here we can make a difference, because we can build relationships of accountability. Here at Peace, we will try to be as radical as Christ in giving to one another and to the world.

 Jesus Christ demonstrates perfect humanity by living with more concern for others than himself. He took that surrender all the way to his death on the cross. He was God and could have claimed self-importance but he did not. When we become less self-centered and more Christ-like, then our worship is not about a good feeling for ourselves but about a deepening concern for all God’s children. Worship is not a retreat from the world, but leads us into deeper concern for the suffering people in the world.

 I challenge you to consider how you might grow in your surrender to the way of Christ? Maybe for you it begins with accepting Jesus Christ’s love more intentionally, acknowledging the wonder of God’s great love and being grateful for it, and taking that first step in turning your life over to the Lord. Or perhaps for you it is building a more serious life of devotion to God, by putting Christ’s way of life first, making a commitment to be seriously involved in the life and mission of this church. Real Christianity is not a spectator sport. (Brian Clark) For some of you, who are certain of your commitment to Jesus as Lord, who are heavily involved in the life of this church, the call is to consider the areas of your life you have not given to the Lord. Have you surrendered all? Are you living sacrificially or selfishly in your significantly relationships? Are you living sacrificially or selfishly in your allocation of the enormous wealth God has given you, relative to the other 80% of the world? Are you living sacrificially or selfishly in your allocation of time, in your willingness to serve others and not just yourself?

 The good life is not the life devoted to satisfying self, but the life surrendered to doing all the good you can do for others, just as Christ did. His love was so great in sacrifice that it became the supreme act of making peace, wrapping up all of us in the loving embrace of God. The Spirit of Christ is in you, loving you completely and nudging you to choose a life of loving sacrifice.