Mark 8: 34-37; Romans 4: 23-25

The things we hold on to and the things we let go

What do think of when you say the word “sacrifice?”  Feeling kind of uncomfortable, are you?  Is it because we are not comfortable with the idea of sacrificing anymore?  Maybe we’re just uncomfortable with anything uncomfortable. Or do we think more of animals being sacrificed in certain religious practices?  Or are we too aware of the eagerness hyper-religious suicide bombers and rebel fighters give up their lives in the belief that they will be rewarded for their sacrifice in the afterlife, even though they murdered hundreds of innocent people?  Or maybe we are a little too psychologically savvy these days. In movies and tv shows and in the lives of our own family perhaps we have heard too many people cry out how much they sacrificed for others.  We are wary of it because it smells of manipulation, doesn’t it? But then it has to do with war, doesn’t it?  We are still fighting a lot of wars as a country, but what has changed is that we live in a time of real time media and savvy weapons when we are never really able to win a war anymore.  So things are always fuzzy.  This issue plays in the whole debate about the Movie “American Sniper.”  One part of America hails the real life character Chris Kyle as a hero who sacrificed his happiness for his country’s safety and the other part calls for a more careful examination of his life.  It deals with the question of how many of the sniper’s bullets sacrifice the innocent and how his life too is sacrificed. 

Friends, there are so many conflicts around the world.  We don’t see eye to eye with Russia on Ukraine.  We are surprised how many Russians agree with Vladimir Putin.  We see freedom being sacrificed and democracy and national sovereignty.  But behind it lurks always some story of sacrifice past it seems.  The Russians see the Western Ukrainians as fascists and friends of the Nazis and they talk about the sacrifice of the ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine and how they were sacrificed by an evil West when the Soviet Union broke apart.  Iranians talk of the evil Iraqi Sunnis when they remember the brutal Iran-Iraq war.  And Iraqi Sunnis talk about the evil Shias from Iran.  There is always story of sacrifice.

But, friends, is this really the sacrifice Jesus and Paul are talking about?  Jesus reminds His audience that those willing to give up their lives will gain it and those holding on to it will suffer loss.  Paul writes to the congregation in Rome that Abraham has sacrificed and this will be remembered and that through the sacrifice of Christ we have hope and a life that never ends.  It all seems to be about that sacrifice we are so uncomfortable with.  But what we are missing perhaps is that the message may be more about attachment.  Let me explain.  Recently Hach shared a story of four chaplains on a warship called the Dorchester, during World War II I think.  There were four chaplains with life vests about to leave the sinking ship, a Catholic priest, a rabbi and two Protestant ministers.  Just that moment four sailors emerged, frantic and confused.  You can imagine the chaplains’ heart sink perhaps, but all four handed their vest to the sailors and the chaplains went down with the ship.  They sacrificed, but they did so because they were more attached to their duty than they were to their survival.  Yes, people still do that these days.  Sometimes our lives are too much about holding on: to things, to reputation, to ego, and most of all to grudges.  We hold on to things for dear life.  Literally and by doing so, we waste our lives and disrupt the lives of others.  Jesus and Paul remind us that Jesus was attached to eternal things, not earthly things.   Our attachment is that problem.  So the question today is not so much whether we would give away our life vest on a sinking World War II warship, but what keeps us attached to things we should not be attached to.  Gail Cullerton is leading our Lenten study about letting go of BAD, namely bad things: Bad, b for bitterness, a for apathy and d for discouragement.  The three are related:  how easy it for people to become bitter, it’s a kind of sourness that hangs over hem as a result of the grudges they can’t let go of;  bitterness can lead to giving up, to apathy. Apathy in turn will lead to discouragement and ultimately to despair.  So this leads to a good question for us to think about it in this reflective period of lent: what do we hold on to in our lives that keep us from growing spiritually and what are the things we should let go?  At the heart of sacrifice lies the question of what we are attached to, what we value above all.  May God give us wisdom and insight in this time as we ponder Christ’s journey of sacrifice.