This sermon was preached on Sunday 17th March 2024 at St Peter and St Paul Church, Langham.

Those who love their life will lose it. And those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Well, that sounds depressing. Welcome to church.

We are one week out from Holy Week which we begin next Sunday on Palm Sunday. Then over the course of Holy Week, we follow the story of Jesus’ Passion: his journey up to the cross. Over the last few weeks, our readings have been foreshadowing and referring to what Jesus is going to do on the cross. How he is going to give up his life to save us. And over the last few weeks, our gospel readings have been inviting us to follow Jesus’ same pattern. We are called to deny ourselves, to take up our cross and follow him. We are told that we must hate our lives. We are told that if we die, we bear much fruit. 

Come on Jesus. What is with all this dying to self and hating ourselves? It puts a bit of a downer on things. That doesn’t add up. Surely, we are to love ourselves and be true to ourselves. Don’t you know that this is what life is all about? Well, that is what our world tells us, that is the belief of this cultural moment in the West. Now there is some truth in this belief, and it does yield some good. Loving ourselves is important because it recognises the intrinsic value we have. It remembers that we are created by God, and we are loved by him, not for anything we do, but because of who we are. Our God is the Father in heaven who loves his children simply because they are his children, not for anything that they do. I know many of you have had kids and can testify that kids, especially babies, don’t do a lot. But you don’t care about that (for the most part) because you don’t need them to do anything in order to love them. You love them for who they are.

And the call to be true to yourself is an important call. We should be true to ourselves, true to our created selves by God. We should be true to who God created us to be. The problem is instead of being true to who God created us and called us to be, we use this mantra of ‘be true to yourself’ to justify the desires of our own hearts, even when they go against God’s call for our lives. Because the way of God, the way of being his people, his children, is not the way of the heart or the feelings, but it’s the way of the cross. But the way of the cross is the way of self-denial, not self-gratification. It’s about putting the way of Jesus, God’s way above our own way.  

I was at my parents’ yesterday because it was Dad’s birthday, and it was lovely to spend some time with him, Mum and the family. My mum is currently writing a wedding sermon for a couple at church who are getting married in May (in Switzerland as well), and whilst she had me and my uncle who is a lay reader with her, she tried out her sermon on us. A lot of Mum’s focus in her wedding sermon was on the marriage passage from Ephesians 5. Now this passage can become uncomfortable because of the language of ‘submission’ to the other. ‘Submission’ has become a tainted word for many reasons, and though the word often needs unpacking, it cannot be ignored that marriage is about submission to the other. It’s a theme that I make a point to talk about in every wedding sermon I do. Marriage is about submitting to the other, or in softer words, it means putting the other person first. It requires denying your own feelings, desires and wants as your priority and placing the other person as your priority. The husband does this for the wife, and the wife does this for the husband. And so you are equal in this. To clarify, this does not mean that your wants and desires do not matter in a marriage. On the contrary, this model of submission gives greater value to what you need and want because you have your spouse there putting you first, your needs and desires, your care and wellbeing. Submission brings out the best in us and the best in a relationship. 

You might think, well that is lovely, but this isn’t a wedding sermon Shakeel, it’s the Sunday morning 10.30am. The reason I mention this stuff about marriage is because of the way that God uses marriage as an image of our relationship with God. In our Jeremiah reading today, God says how he was the husband to his people Israel, but they were an unfaithful bride and broke their marriage vows with God, they broke their covenant. They would be God’s people, and God would be their God. It’s the story of the whole Bible, the core aim of what God is trying to do on every page. God wants to be united with his people. He will be there like a husband and wife are called to be husband and wife to one another. God will fully give himself to love us, and in return, we are to fully give ourselves in love to him. This is submission to one another. But this is not debilitating or weakening in any way. Rather this way strengthens us in our lives as we live deeper into our calling to be human beings united with God living life to the full with him. 

It is on this basis that I say that to ‘be true yourself’ is unhelpful because it takes us away from submitting to God, it takes us away from us giving our whole lives to him. Jesus says that we must deny ourselves and that we must hate our lives in order to gain eternal life because Jesus saw how much our own desires push against the way of God and how God created us to be. 

Do you remember about a decade ago when people used to say YOLO? For those who don’t know, YOLO stands for You Only Live Once. It was a philosophy that justified doing whatever we wanted, regardless of the cost and detriment to us, because we only live once so let’s do whatever we want otherwise we will never get to do it. I agree that we should carpé diem and seize the day and other opportunities that come our way. But we use it to justify stupid behaviour saying that it doesn’t matter because we only live once. But I would say that because we only live once, it makes how we live matter all the more. It sounds stupid to say we only live once so we should eat whatever we want, even if it is junk food. Instead, we say, you only have one body, so look after it because it matters for the bigger picture of life. Our diet requires a little bit of self-denial in order to choose the better and healthy way. Yet when it comes to choosing between going our own way and God’s way, we forget everything about the value of self-denial and choosing the better way. 

Denying ourselves and hating our lives, or should I say hating the parts of our lives that turn us away from God, are difficult. It’s a tough thing to do. It’s never been easy. Even Jesus found it hard. When he was in the Garden of Gethsemane only 12 hours away from being hung on the cross, he desperately wanted to run away from it all. He was ready to say, ‘This isn’t for me, this isn’t putting myself first or being true to what I want.’ But Jesus denied his own wants and desires, and then what did he say to God? Jesus said not my will, but your will be done. And it was in his self-denial and giving up his life to follow God’s way that we see this single grain of Jesus’ death on the cross and his subsequent resurrection bringing the fruit of salvation to the whole world. Jesus put his love of God and his love of us first ahead of himself. And I’m grateful beyond words every day of my life that Jesus made that choice for me. 

Jesus said, ‘Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.’^[1] To give our lives to Jesus requires following Jesus and his same path of self-denial and submission which ultimately took him to the cross. But this is the path that brings us to God instead of turning us further away from him. It is a costly life to follow Jesus, to be his disciples. There is a reason why there are many Christians in the world but few disciples of Christ. Many people can cope with the believing step of faith, but the following step is much harder.  But it is in following God’s way that we are united to him and see the great fruit of his hands at work in our world. When I was recommended for the priesthood, the one place I didn’t want to go was to the countryside. Now if I had stuck by that want, I would have never discovered the great joy that Cecily and I have had being here in Langham and Rutland. I’m sure there are examples in your own life when you might see that actually following God’s way turned out to be the better path, that it brought fruit to your life that you would have never had without submitting your life to God and giving it over to his will. To say to God, not my will but yours be done. 

Those are powerful words of a powerful prayer. Not my will be your will be done. We pray ‘your will be done’ every week, often multiple times a week. We will pray it today as we come to the Lord’s table. But if we are honest, half the time we don’t really mean it. We say we want God’s will to be done in our lives, but we add the caveat of ‘God, may your will be done in my life as long as it fits in with what I want.’ But that isn’t how Jesus prayed, and that isn’t how he called us to pray. 

We are called to deny ourselves and put God and his ways as our priority in life. However, that isn’t to say God doesn’t care about our wants and desires. Psalm 37:4 says ‘Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.’^[2] Remember God sees our hearts and loves to give good gifts to his children. In the sermon of the Mount Jesus says: 

 ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!^[3]

God wants to give us the best for our lives. We often forget that. We also forgot that God knows us better than we know ourselves. We forget that God sees our every need and desire and wants to give us the best things for our lives. Sure, things don’t always turn out how we hoped, and following God can be hard and confusing. But it is when we give our lives to God and his way, when we seek his will above our own, it is then we are saved and given eternal life with God that doesn’t start when we die and go to heaven but starts today. It’s life to the full with God side by side the whole way. That is being true to ourselves, true to the love and the unity with God that he has for us, in the same deep love that a husband and wife have for each other in a marriage. When we put God first, we find ourselves swept away in the joy of his love and his goodness, and I cannot think of anything better.  

‘Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.’ Let us pray together, ‘Lord, let not my will by yours be done,’ and see the greatest and most truest joy for us as children of God to be with God and in this loving relationship with him. Who are you going to make your number one priority today? God or yourself? It’s your choice. Where do you want to be? With God or turned away from God?  

Amen.  

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^[1] John 12:26 [NRSV].

^[2] Psalm 37:4 [ESV].

^[3] Matthew 7:7-11 [NRSV].