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On this, of all days, we followers of Jesus should be fully aware of the great cost of our discipleship. Being obedient to the will of God will cost you your life. It certainly did for Jesus – tortured and crucified without committing a crime. The Apostle Paul tells the gospel story to us this way: Jesus “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross” (Phil 2:7-8). Jesus was fully obedient to the will of God, and it cost him his life, just like he told his disciples it would.
Yet, before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s just have a quick refresher on the events leading up to tonight’s reading from the Gospel according to John. - Jesus arrested in the garden; the authorities balk once when he doesn’t put up a fight; Peter cuts off an ear and is chastised; Caiaphas and Jewish authorities are worried about Jesus but agree that it’s “better for one to die…” for the good of the whole.
- Peter denies Jesus once while Jesus is taken for questioning;
- Jesus is questioned by Annas and then the High Priest, Caiaphas;
- Peter denies twice more, as Jesus foretold.
- Took Jesus to Pilate in early morning – didn’t want to defile themselves so they didn’t enter Pilate’s headquarters; “we’re not permitted to put anyone to death” ? – traitor and threat to Caesar
- Pilate and Jesus – tries to get out of it 4 times; “my kingdom’s not of this world…”; Trade for Barabbas; Jesus flogged and crown and purple and mocking; “no case against him”; “crucify him!”; he denies, they say he must;
- Accused of claiming to be the “son of God”; Pilate scared; Jesus makes no defense; power is from above, not from violent humans; Pilate washes hands and sends Jesus to be crucified, while the Jewish authorities say, “we have no king but the emperor”
- Jesus carries the cross alone; crucified with two others
As Pastor Jay pointed out so well in Monday’s noon worship service, following Jesus most likely cost Lazarus his life. Just a chapter after John tells us that Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead – Hallelujah! – he tells us that “9When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 10So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, 11since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus” (Jn 12:9-11).
Follow Jesus’ example of obedience to God will cost you your life: just look at the disciple whom Jesus loved. As Jesus is hanging on the cross, he looks down on his mother and the “disciple whom he loved” and told them, “Woman, here is your son,” and “Here is your mother” (Jn19:26). And from then on, that disciple took Jesus’ mother into his home, treating her as his mother and, presumably, taking care of her until she died. In following Jesus, especially in this moment, that beloved disciple gave up his life for Jesus by taking in his mother. Anyone who has been the caretaker of another knows how difficult and consuming it can be. And we can be sure that at some point taking care of his own mother, plus Jesus’ mother, would have felt completely consuming.
Being obedient to God and following Jesus will cost you your life. Beyond Jesus himself, we see this most clearly in today’s text in the man named Joseph from Arimathea. John tells us that up to this point Joseph had been a secret disciple of Jesus “because of his fear of the [Jewish authorities]” (Jn19:38). But when he saw that Jesus had died, he boldly went to Pilate requesting permission to take away the body.
Now, it doesn’t say, but it’s quite likely that Joseph was a Jew, just like Jesus, just like all his first disciples. Thus, coming from Arimathea – which may have been as much as 20 miles away – Joseph was in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover by offering sacrifices at the Temple. He knew the customs, the law, and the teachings. He knew that celebrating the Passover was one of the pivotal events in the life of every child of Israel: it’s what formed them together as a people. Further, he knew that you have to be ritually clean in order to worship and offer sacrifices with the people, and that, according to the Torah, coming in contact with a corpse meant you were ritually unclean for seven days. And yet, when Jesus dies, Joseph jumps in to take care of his mangled, tortured body.
This makes him ritually unclean. If you’re a 1st Century Jew, you don’t mess with a dead body hours before the Passover and still participate. In doing this, Joseph makes himself an outcast; he places himself outside the community at the most important time of the season. What’s more, if he doesn’t go through the specific steps of ritual purification on the third and seventh days, he’s to be “cut of from Israel” completely (Num 19:11-13). By taking care of Jesus’ body, Joseph willing takes himself out of the community that has given him his identity: he loses his life; he would have been as good as dead to the Jewish authorities and his own community. Being obedient to God and following Jesus finally cost him his life – his community of faith, his identity, everything he knew. How’s that for a cross?
Obedience to God through the way of Jesus will cost us our lives too. What ways has following Jesus completely changed and altered your life, altered the way you operate, think, and live? Has it cost you more and more of your money as you give, work toward tithing, and then beyond? Has it cost you friends or family, because they just couldn’t understand your commitment to Jesus? I have a friend for whom this is especially true and painful: when God called her to follow Jesus, her Hindu father cut her out of the family. What about missionaries giving their whole lives, or those of you who give up vacation time to go on mission trips? Following Jesus is costing you your lives, one PTO at a time. And for all of us “normal, average” people, Jesus has still given us a mission to share God’s love with all we meet, and this can be tough at times, it can cost us. You’ll probably be known at the office as that weird one who can’t hang out on Sundays or some weekday nights because of worship commitments; the one who doesn’t drink, or the one who will have no more than one or two, while the others party; the one who won’t gamble or smoke because both exploit the poor for the benefit of the wealthy and perpetuate brokenness. These things are life for others around us, so in their eyes, being obedient to God by following Jesus has cost you your life.
Today, it is clearer than at any other time that the way of Jesus will quite possibly get you killed if you’re faithful and obedient to God, as he was. Certainly, following Jesus in obedience to God will cost you your life, but here’s the odd thing: it’s totally worth it. Yet, this makes it sound like a cost-benefit analysis, which it’s not. It’s just that, God created us to live such lives of obedience and worship. God gives us our lives so that we can give them back to God in glory, thanksgiving, service, and praise. Jesus showed us this, which is why we can stand here, facing a cross – an instrument of cruel capital punishment – and call this day “Good.” In the cross of Christ, we see God’s wisdom and power, precisely because we see creation exactly as God intended her to be – obedient, worshipful, humble, forgiving, and self-giving.
And this is good news. We know that Jesus’ death and burial in a tomb isn’t the end of the story. We know about Easter Day and the joyous cries, “He is risen! Hallelujah!” Jesus’ death is a real death. He died. He died for the sins of the world. But in his death, he took on every bit of the human experience: death, yes, but also mockery, torture, abuse, suffering, and false conviction. It’s not just that God became human in Jesus. That’s nice. But Jesus took on all of the human experience, all the brokenness, all the junk: he bore it all. And because he bore it all, all of it, all of us, our entire selves are raised with him in his Resurrection.
And that is good news – that two days from now, we’ll celebrate our share in his Resurrection, but not before his call costs us our lives, as our sin cost him his. And faced with this night we’re left sharing in the pain of the awful truth that the light came into the world and we rejected it.
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