No Easy Button

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.”

Mark 8:34

How many of you remember the “easy button?”  A few years ago Staples Office Supplies used these in their commercials.  The idea is that if you find yourself in a difficult situation you just push the easy button and it gives you an easy way out.  There was one commercial where a large ferocious army is riding down to attack and destroy a much smaller army.  Just in the nick of time, the general of the smaller army pushed his easy button.  Out of nowhere a great large wall appears cutting off the larger army and protecting the small one.   Don’t you wish you could have an easy button for life?

I think that is what Peter thought Jesus was going to be that for him.  Jesus has just spoken some hard words to his disciples about his mission.  He would have to “suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed,”   Peter went ballistic.  Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.  “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”  In other words, “You can’t go to the cross.  You are supposed to be my easy button, my short route to an easier life.”

I think sometimes that we too want our Christian faith to be an easy button that gives us an easy way out.  We want a low commitment Christianity, that doesn’t expect too much of us.  We want our two hours on Sunday to make us feel good about ourselves, not challenge us to be different.  We want to have a faith we can keep locked away at church, not one we have to live out there every day.  People might not like us.  That might affect our jobs. We want to know enough about God to get us into heaven, but don’t expect us to read our Bibles or go to a Bible Class.  When confronted with our daily sins, our sinful habits and addictions, we want a faith that comforts us with the thought, “That’s okay.  Don’t worry.  God will forgive you anyway.”  We don’t want a faith that expects those things to change.  That’s unreasonable.  Its okay to ask for a few dollars in the plate or to give up something for Lent, but don’t ask us to change our lives.  We want to know God is there when we need Him – when our jobs are on the line, when our marriage is on the rocks, when a family member has cancer, when someone dies…that whenever we find ourselves in a difficult situation we can pray to Him and He’ll fix it.   But don’t expect us to talk to you every day.  We want an easy button. 

The problem with such easier ways is that they are deceptive.  That General pushes the easy button and saves his army.  He however is on the wrong side of the wall and now finds himself alone with that huge army charging down on him.  The Proverbs warn us about this easier way.  There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.  Jesus gives the same warning,  “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it… ^

That’s why Jesus chose the way of the cross.  That’s why He told them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected… and that he must be killed.  He was offered an easy button.  That’s what Peter was offering him.  “You don’t have to go to the cross.  Here is an easier way.”  But it was a lie.  Jesus is not fooled.  “Get behind me, Satan!” he said to Peter. “You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”  Jesus knew there is no easy button for what he came to do.  He had been sent by the father to be despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.  His was to be no jeweled crown, only one with thorns.  He was to have no golden throne but only the hard wood of the cross.  The only way that would lead to life was the hard way.  The Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected and then he must be killed, and after three days rise again.  Only by going to the cross could the price for our sins be paid.  Only the cross, the hard way, could lead to Easter.  There would be no Easy button for Him.

That’s why Jesus gives us a cross to bear, not an easy button to push.  “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  This is not a call to make a few resolutions, to give up a luxury for Lent, to overcome a bad habit.  He must deny himself.” Jesus says to us.  Our sin is not a matter of a few mistakes.  The old sinful self in you and me must be put to death – every day!  Luther writes that it should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die.  Why?  Because daily God wants bring forth in you and me a new man to live and serve before him.  I must daily be crucified with Christ so that it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me.  Then Jesus adds, He must take up his cross.”  The purpose of our cross is not to pay for our sins.  Jesus already did that.  Your cross is any burden you bear, any wrong you suffer from others, any sacrifice you make because you belong to Jesus.  When people make fun or you or shun you because you give witness to your faith, that’s a cross.  If your friends reject you… if you lose your job… if, like the Coptic Christians at the hands of Isis, you lose your head because of your witness to Christ that is a cross.  Why would you do that?  Because your friends and family are living an easy button life that leads to death and you know the Easter way that leads to life. I read a story once about an unbeliever who was assigned to bunk with a committed Christian.  That Christian kept telling this man about Jesus… until the man became so irritated that he punched the Christian.  The Christian fell, hit his head on the corner of a table.  He lay there bleeding.  “Now will you leave me alone?”  “No,” came the reply.  Holding up his hand, covered in blood, “Jesus loved me enough to bleed for me.  How can I love you any less?    Finally Jesus says of us, He must follow me.”  Called to the cross you can not simply go back and live your life as you please.  God has given you a new self, with a new burden to bear, with a new purpose to live for.  He died for you that you might no longer live for yourself but for Him who died for you and rose again.  Leave your easy buttons behind.   You have something better.   You have His promise that whoever wants to save his life  will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.  You have in Jesus the only path that leads to Easter!  Amen.