Maybe seated.
So have you ever been in a conversation and you're retelling a story, and the story seems to be getting better than it was to begin with.
I do that a lot.
Or you wake up, you wake up tomorrow morning and you feel like if you were only a little bit better.
If you were just a little bit better, then you would feel whole.
You would feel fulfilled.
Or have you ever felt like if you if you just could get it all together?
If you could just get your act all together, then finally, finally, finally, finally, you could be at rest.
Well, there's this thing, this way of thinking and living that exists in us.
It's in us, it's uh it's in the church, it's in the world.
It's called a theology of glory.
It's a way of glory, a life of glory.
It's this idea that if and when I get that better thing, then I will be fulfilled, I will be satisfied.
It's the idea that all things should endlessly get better.
It's the idea that I should endlessly get better, and if I'm not getting better, then there's no possible way that I could be healed or whole or fulfilled or satisfied or accepted before God, valued as a human being or deemed righteous.
And it's easy to think this way.
But Jesus teaches that faith is about losing your life, that you might find it.
And maybe that's new to you, maybe you're new to church, and that's new to you.
Oh wow, what does that even mean?
Or maybe you've heard that so many times, so many times it can feel old.
Well, he's saying that life is not in the glory.
He's saying that it's actually in sacrifice, is actually in facing sacrifices, in honestly coming before your weakness and your shame and your guilt and your hurt and your sin and all your stuff, that that's actually where life is found.
That if you lose your life, you'll find it.
Joy and freedom, joy and freedom are found in that process, not in pretending it's not there.
So if there's a bear in your kitchen going through your fridge, if you pretend like the bear's not in your kitchen going through the fridge, it doesn't mean there's not a bear in your kitchen going through your fridge.
You see what I'm saying?
If you pretend like the brokenness and shame and hurt and the reality of so much of our inner lives is not there, if you just pretend like it's not, it doesn't mean it goes away.
It's still there.
And for many of us, I think the greatest thing that could happen to us, the greatest thing could be for us to finally get the glory.
I think it could be so great because if you could finally get the job and get the raise and get the house and get the friends and get the girlfriend, the boyfriend, get the spouse, and get the kids and get all the kids behaving just right, and finally get all of it, because you know what?
You might have a teacher.
At that point, the way of glory may teach you.
And what it would teach you is it would teach you that the way of sacrifice is actually the way to life, because you'll realize that the way of glory actually does not bring it.
So three years ago, 30 of us sat in this room, and we sat in a circle, as we could.
There's 30, maybe 20 of us, I don't know, we didn't count.
Uh in a circle.
And we talked about what might be for us.
And one of the things we talked about that morning was we invited, we gave permission for each other to leave.
That was important to us.
Not that you actually need permission to leave a church, you don't.
If you're in a church that needs permission, then you just need to leave immediately.
You don't need permission to leave, but it was very important to us then, and it's important now, for us to have an open community, to have a place where it's open for people to leave.
Meaning, we need a place that's open, a community that's open not just to growing, but also to failing.
And still be whole and valued and loved and accepted.
I know it sounds crazy, but see, if we're not open to this, then we're not free from the way of glory.
Unless we're open to that, then we're not free from needing more people and more buildings and more glory, more glory, and more glory.
So our text this morning is Matthew 16, 24 through 26.
Then Jesus told his disciples, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
Forever, for whoever would save his life will lose it.
But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?
Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
So there's a word that's repeated in verse 25 and 26.
In verse 25, it shows up as life, and verse 26 it shows up as soul, and it's this word suko in the Greek.
It's the word we get psyche from it.
It's the core of who you are, your essence that differs from your body.
It's the you that's not the accumulation of your actions or your behaviors or the accumulation of your stuff or the accumulation of your organs and bones, and yet you're there, and yet you're you're you.
And that part of us, that part of us wants something.
You ever been driving down the road?
You're sitting on your porch, or your head hits the pillow, and you sort of hit this moment, like the accumulation of all this stuff and my behaviors, all of this, it's not adding up to bringing life.
Like the attempt to keep trying to get yourself better and better and more approved and thinner and richer and all that, it's just making you more tired.
It's because you're on a pursuit, you're on a pursuit for life.
And Jesus is saying, hey, like if you stick on that route by your own work and your own merit, you're gonna lose it.
You won't ever find it.
But if you lose your life, you'll save it, you'll find it.
This word save me, it means to be saved, it means to be safe or rescued, to be healed and whole.
Listen, it's so good this word.
It means to be free from judgment.
That judgment of am I in or out before God?
Am I secure or insecure as a person?
Am I righteous or unrighteous?
That that daily predicament, where do I stand, you can be free from that judgment.
But you have to lose your life in order to be free from that judgment.
Colossians 1 verse 20 says this, and through him, through Jesus, to reconcile to himself all things that would be also be you, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
So crosses are everywhere.
Some of you probably have probably have earrings on or necklaces.
I mean, they're on buildings, tattoos, probably some of you have tattoos with crosses.
Crosses are everywhere, and it's an execution method.
It's an execution method, right?
And yet it's a symbol of hope.
It's because at the cross we find the humility and love of God to us.
This abstract idea that can seem so philosophical that God loves me unconditionally.
It becomes concrete at the cross.
It can be known, it can be seen in humanity.
We can know that God wants you reconciled to Him and for you to be secure.
So Jesus says here, if you're trying to do that on your own, if you're trying to do that by your work and your effort and your resume and your scorecard or escaping, you're gonna lose it.
You'll never find it.
So two points this morning.
Point number one, we can lose the same thing we want.
We can lose the same thing we want.
We want life, but in a theology of glory, a way of glory, rather than a theology or way of the cross, we refuse to face reality.
And when we do that, we'll lose the thing we want.
That's point number one.
Point number two, we must lose the pursuit to work or escape out of the imperfection we feel and know.
And you could replace imperfection with sin, and it would say, we must lose the pursuit to work or escape out of the sin or the shame we feel and know.
This is what it means to lose your life, to gain it, to lose your work, to attempt your own healing and wholeness out of that judgment and the burden to get into forgiveness and acceptance, to finally be in a position where you're at the cross, and the only position at the cross is to receive.
So when I was in college, I bought a pretty nice camera.
It was back in the day of film.
You'd go to Walmart and buy film or Echor Drugs, always Echo Drug Store.
And so you go and you'd buy film.
Remember, you'd load it in the back and you close the cover and you had to hook the little things on the little edges, you'd hook it, you close it, and it would make that noise until it caught, that little noise.
And I would I just started to shoot pictures.
I wasn't like a photographer, I just it gave me something to do when I went hiking or camping, or I was with my family somewhere.
And so I had this little camera and I'd buy film and I'd go and I'd shoot these pictures.
So one summer we were on a vacation, my family, and I took my little camera and I had my film.
I think I had like three rolls of film.
And remember, every picture was a huge debate.
You remember you remember this?
You didn't take multiples.
You weren't shooting like eight pictures and then deleting them and looking and checking it out and filtering them, posting them.
You weren't doing anything.
Like every picture was a huge debate.
Do I take it?
Because I only got 24.
You know, you know, I got 13 left, and I don't know if I want to take this picture, and you took it, you didn't take any more.
It was a huge debate.
And so every picture meant so much, that film meant so much, you didn't know if they were any good until like two weeks later when you pick the film up.
I mean, it was a whole process.
So every picture meant everything.
So I'm shooting these pictures, we're stopping at a couple stop sites and taking some pictures, kind of entertaining myself on family vacation.
We get back in the car and I'm putting the camera up on the up on the roof.
Anybody?
Anybody lost anything off the roof?
I've done it several times.
Well, a couple things have actually stayed up there, which is a miracle.
I the camera didn't stay up there.
We get to the next site, and I realize I realize what happened, and I get out, oh, we get back in the car, we drive straight back, we're looking along the road, we get back to, I'm looking where we were, I'm looking all over it, camera's gone, I'm all those pictures, I never even knew if they were any good, and my camera's gone, and it's just it's just heartache, right?
It was gone.
It was it was lost, right?
You've lost things.
Right?
It's gone.
When it's lost, it's gone.
It may bother you, you may remember it, it may affect you, but it's no longer a part of your actual life.
This is what it means to lose something.
It's no longer a part of your actual life.
It's over, it's finished.
How long will you keep picking up the work of redemption when the work has already been finished by Jesus?
The way of the cross is where you live in that perfect security with the grace of God known in Jesus, that you don't have to keep adding to it.
That you can lose your life, you can lose your merit-based system in this world and before God to create value, to be accepted before God.
It's only known at the cross, it's only known in the theology of the cross.
So we embrace confession and repentance, we embrace rest and surrender.
So that's personal, right?
A lot of that's really personal.
Hopefully, it's freeing, but it's also communal.
Next week we're going into a new building.
Don't come here, we're not gonna be here.
Don't come here.
We're not gonna set up these maroon chairs that fold funky, and nobody we we would invite more people to fold the chairs up, and nobody can figure out how to fold them.
I don't know if you've ever tried to fold them.
It's a horrible.
We won't be here.
We're gonna be in a new building, and it this building's new building's quirky, and it's beautiful, and it's a converted warehouse.
It's a big step for a young church.
And there's a lot of glory in it.
And God's been faithful and God has been good, and we will say that.
We're gonna say that Wednesday night at our worship and prayer, we're gonna say that next Sunday.
God's faithful, he's been good.
But you know what?
God is faithful today and he's been good.
And six months ago, and a year and a half ago when we didn't own the building, God was faithful and good.
See, as a church, it's so easy, so easy to begin to think.
If we do this, if we become this, if we can get here, if we can convert that warehouse into a beautiful building, then it'll be so great.
It'll be so awesome then, but we have to see that it's awesome now.
We have to see that it was awesome in the dentist office, and we have to see that it would be awesome if we were in the dentist office again.
Because glory theology does not define us as individuals, nor can it define us as a church.
It will let us down.
Gerhard Forday, who's a professor and minister theologian, who's also a pretty good baker, in case you're wondering, he wrote a book on baking as well as theology.
Here's a quote by him I ran into this week.
In short, a theologian of the cross sees the cross as the end where we die to our sin with Christ and are raised a new creation with Christ.
The work is truly finished, as Christ promised.
And there is no moving on from his cross.
So maybe things are a bit theological, maybe you're not quite sure what that means for your life.
It's not over your head.
What it means is we don't use the cross as a means to get somewhere else.
Life does not come into the cross and keep moving onward.
And then we move onward and we just keep meriting and working harder and improving ourselves just like we were doing on some other path.
The cross is actually a different way of life, and the path stops there.
It's the place we lose our life and we lose the need of having to fight for acceptance and value and forgiveness and position.
It's the place where we can rest.
The fight is to rest.
The fight is to remember to stay at the cross.
That's the fight.
It's the way of the cross, it's a theology of the cross, of knowing his unconditional love that secures us the redemption by the cross.
That all of our sin, all the shame is put upon him, and his righteousness is put upon us.
You've been watching the Olympics?
You're getting into it.
Is anybody in it?
You're just so in it like four hours last night.
Anybody watch all like four hours?
Nobody?
Three?
Anybody, did you go three?
Trey, you went three, four?
I watched all of it.
You went for it.
All right, so the balance beam, right?
I mean, oh my gosh.
So nerve-wracking, right?
They're doing these flips and backwards stuff and a sideway flip and back handspring, right?
It's so it's nerve-wracking.
Like, are they gonna fall?
And they showed you that little video vignette before.
And so you're pulling for this little girl.
Like, I mean, you are for her because she overcame her family and her dad died, and then she was walking eight miles each way to the gym and the snow, and you are, I mean, you are so for this girl or this guy who overcame whatever.
I mean, they show you this video, right?
You know what I'm talking about, and then all of a sudden you care about this sport of what you've never cared about in your life.
And you are for her, and she's flipping her body all over the place on this beam, and you just please don't fall, please don't fall.
Unless, you know, a Russian or you're like, please, please fall.
Just that's a little nationalism coming out of me.
If you're from Russia, we can talk afterward.
I apologize.
Alright, so all the glory is on the beam.
Right?
All the glory is on the beam.
All the glory is staying on the beam.
That's where the glory's at.
It's just so insecure.
It's just so fragile.
It's so exhausting.
You know where all the security, all the security is.
It's in the thing we don't want to do.
It's in losing.
It's in stepping off.
All the security is on the ground.
When you lose your attempt.
That's where all the security is, right?
It's dangerous to constantly work in all things to keep that fragile self together.
Rather than willing to go into that darkness and face that bear in the kitchen, right?
It's already there.
Whether you pretend it's not there, it's still there.
Naming the imperfections, the sin and the shame, naming those wrongful pursuits and the things done, then you see, then you see that it's only the way of the cross that can bring you life.
Because you need God's grace to you.
You need his righteousness earned for you on the cross, and it's finished and it's secure, and you can be at rest.
So, my brothers and sisters, may this good news be a breath of fresh air to you.
You don't have to live in the way of glory.
May you continually lose your life that you might find true life in the way of the cross.
Let's pray together.
God, thank you that we do not have to live by a theology of glory.
As individuals, we do not have to, and as a community, we do not have to.
That we do fail.
Even when we have our acts together, there's motives we're not even aware of.
And for these things, we come before you and say, we are deeply in sorrow.
That we are not as we should be, but we are so grateful that you love us as we are, and that Jesus is enough.
And we don't have to live by the way of glory, but we can live by the way of the cross, and we can rest our hearts and our souls at the cross.
Help us, help us to learn what it means to fight, to live at the cross.
In a position of humility and receiving open heart and open hands, needing a righteousness from outside of us.
Help us as a community as we move forward to be a community that's about the way of the cross and not the way of glory.
In Jesus' name, we pray all things.
Amen.