Matthew 26:40-41 “Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. ‘Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?’ he asked Peter. ‘Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ He went away a second time and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.’”

Was it so much to ask, to sacrifice just a little sleep for the love of the Savior who was about to suffer what no other person has ever suffered, who was about to bring all history to its climax and save a fallen world? Jesus had been teaching them for three years. He had spoken to them for several hours this very night about the things that were about to happen.

Did they still have no sense of the importance of this night or of the sacrifice it would require of him? Did they have no sense of their friend and Master’s burden? Keep watch for Jesus? They needed to watch and pray for themselves and their own weakness. Their loveless neglect only made Jesus’ heavy load heavier, his sorrow deeper, his prayer more difficult.

What is our great sin against Jesus, his suffering, and his sacrifice? Is it not our own failure to appreciate the magnitude of what he did, our own neglect of the centerpiece of his saving love? We don’t fall asleep, at least not usually. It’s worse. Jesus’ suffering and death bores us. We get all excited about a bunch of grown men chasing a ball around a field or across a court. Our heart rate soars, we scream, we cheer. We will watch for hours and hours. Our attention is riveted to the news when people are senselessly or tragically killed in the latest crime, war, or natural catastrophe. The news anchors can give the same five-minutes worth of details hour after hour, and yet it’s hard to pull away from the TV. Perversions of God’s good gifts of sex and beauty are like magnets that would pull our eyes right out of their sockets if they weren’t attached.

But when the eternal God makes himself a mortal man, and he stands in our place, and he lets himself be abused by the very people he came to save, and he submits himself to outrageous indignity and injustice, and for me he lets himself be nailed to a cross, and for me the blood pours from his body, and for me he endures wages of my sin, and for me he breathes his last, we yawn. It’s an old story. It’s a familiar story. “Tell me something new, something upbeat with a little more action.” No, watch and pray. Don’t let the temptation to find this all common and ordinary lead us to miss the greatest gift and deepest love we have ever been given.

The urgency and obedience of Jesus’ own prayer stands in stark contrast. “He went away a second time and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.’” “May your will be done.” That makes Jesus’ prayer a true prayer, prayed in faith–not an attempt to push God off his throne, not an attempt to change the changeless God, not an attempt to dictate terms to the Almighty, but a prayer. True prayer trusts God’s will, and accepts that God’s will is better than my own even though it may mean pain, discomfort, disappointment and apparent defeat.

There are worse things than suffering. God often does his best work through suffering, maybe even usually does his best work through suffering. “We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope,” Paul wrote the Romans. Jesus’ suffering was the salvation of the world. “May your will be done.”

Jesus was a man of prayer. He prayed to be spared the agony of the cross, but mostly he prayed his Father’s will. And so he came to the cross. Three of his seven statements from that cross were prayers. And now he lives to pray for us, prayers that are heard, because he carried and buried our sin’s heavy load.

1 Corinthians 3:11 “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

Nothing is more important than the foundation in a building project. You see commercials for foundation repair. Sometimes the damage is so severe, there is no saving the building. Structure and foundation must all be removed and replaced. You’re familiar with the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy? Big foundation problems.

So Paul warns us not to build on false foundations. Some Christians try to build on fervent, passionate feelings towards Jesus. Everything is based how humans respond. Now don’t get me wrong. I hope that Jesus inspires powerful emotions in you. I hope that your heart is broken by the things that break God’s heart. I want you to know joy in God’s grace to you. But can you build the faith of people or a church on something so uncertain and shifting as emotions? Isn’t that going to turn out like a bad marriage in which two people were married because of their infatuation, without ever really getting to know each other?

Others try to build on moral lives. They fill their preaching and teaching, their reading and learning, with practical instruction. The applications extend to the finest points of Christian living. Again, don’t misunderstand me. I want you to practice good morals. As a pastor I may even get on someone’s case if they don’t! But without a healthy dose of Jesus’ love, all this morality teaching will eventually lead away from God to self-righteousness or despair.

Some churches try to build on such a spectacular presentation of music and pictures, lights and drama, that they could rival or even surpass the best theaters. One that I know even advertises itself as the “fun church.” I am not suggesting that there is any virtue in making church boring. But entertainment alone cannot feed the soul. It only distracts the mind and dulls the soul.

If we build with God, there is only one foundation on which we can build, and that is Jesus himself. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is not going to shift on us. He will not change his mind about his love for us. I know that he loves me and forgives me whether I feel it or not.

And he does not base my relationship with him on my performance. He bases it upon his performance in his perfect life of love and his innocent death for our sins on the cross. He established that relationship by calling me to faith at my baptism. He maintains that relationship by sending me love letter after love letter in his word, and by inviting me to sit down with him and share an intimate meal of forgiveness with him in his Supper. That not only supports my faith. It supports a life that loves to serve him, that wants to serve him, in all I do.

Is it hard to find Jesus’ life of love and sacrifice for us interesting, compelling, captivating? Tell me the story again and again! Here is where I want to build my faith and life. Here is the place that I can confidently set the faith and future of my friends and neighbors. When we build with God, Jesus himself is the only foundation on which we build.

John 8:34-36 “Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

There are few things worse than living in a state of denial. Not only do you have the harm and damage caused by some problem in your life. You have the additional obstacle of not being able to see it. You can’t start to fix it until you recognize it.

For example, the “bump” you feel keeps getting bigger and more painful. Maybe there’s even more than one now. But cancer isn’t an option, and you won’t see the doctor.

You insist that you only drink to relax a little. It’s not really that much, and you can stop any time you like. But you can’t imagine a day, much less a life, without it, and the empty bottles are overflowing your dumpster on trash pick-up day.

Do you sin? Every hand has to go up. If we think we are free, then why don’t we just stop? Sometimes people may muster all their strength and courage and manage to put a stop to one sin in their life. They will get past their addictions, clean up their language, stop sleeping around, or put a stop to some other vice. Then pride grows in place of their vice–I mean the ugly arrogance that is full of oneself. Love may still be lacking by and large. Sin runs deeper than the bad behaviors we see on the surface.

Some people will even redefine sin in order to avoid Jesus’ diagnosis. A visitor to a Bible insisted that she had stopped sinning years ago. A little exploration of the subject made clear that she was not willing to consider any bad thoughts or attitudes as sins. Anything we might classify sexual sin was “just some people’s interpretation.” It’s hard to lose the game when you get to change the rules as you go along.

If we are honest, we can’t duck Jesus’ diagnosis: we are slaves to sin by nature. Don’t we find ourselves in the same struggle as the Apostle Paul, “The good that I want to do, I don’t do. The evil that I don’t want to do, that is what I keep on doing.” People speak of “free will,” but it would be better to say we are “self-willed.” Our “self” has been twisted and bent by sin. We are all inclined in a certain direction. That’s not real freedom anymore.

Here’s the problem with our slavery: “Now a slave has no permanent place in the family.” What is Jesus’ saying? What does it mean to lose your place in the family of God? It’s the same as losing your place in heaven. It’s Jesus’ gentle way of saying, “Your sin has earned you a place in hell.”

Thankfully, there is more to the story. Jesus promises: “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Earlier, Jesus promised this freedom through the truth he teaches. Sometimes people say “The truth will set you free” as an encouragement not to lie. Everyone knows how one lie has to be covered by another. Soon you can’t remember exactly how your own story goes. Each new lie adds a bar to the cage you have built around yourself. But the truth, however painful, will set you free. This observation may be true, but that’s not what Jesus is means in this case.

The truth Jesus has in mind teaches about where we stand with God. It starts with the truth that we sin, and we are slaves to sin. But it is so much more than that.

Jesus teaches us the truth about God’s grace. Even more, “…if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Jesus makes grace possible. He made our freedom happen. Mere months after he spoke these words, he was going to return to Jerusalem. The city would welcome as a King, but in less than a week they condemned him as a criminal. They crucified an innocent man whose only crime was that he loved them enough to tell them the truth.

On the cross, he loved us still more. He carried our crimes with him and the sins and crimes of the whole world. He let his heavenly Father forsake him, as though he was the one who needed to be banished from the family for his sin. He let death take him there as though he was the world’s one and only sinner. By his suffering and death, he satisfied all the debt we owed because of our sin.

That means we are no longer spiritual prisoners sitting on the devil’s death row. We are restored sons in God’s everlasting family. Here is Jesus’ truth: the Son has set us free.

Luke 6:22-23 “Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets.”

If you had lived in Jesus’ day, would you have sided with the conservatives or the liberals?

On the conservative side were the Pharisees. They were the ones concerned about upholding the whole Bible. They were concerned about promoting good morals. They worked hard at teaching people how to live a godly lifestyle.

On the liberal side were the Sadducees. They were the ones who were progressive in their thinking. They were in tune with the culture. They had a vision for a better society through creative thinking and an acceptance of people and ideas from other cultures.

Does it surprise us that Jesus didn’t become cozy with either one? To be sure, Jesus once said of the Pharisees, “The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything tell you.” But in the next breath he continues, “But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them” (Matthew 23:2-4). The Pharisees may have gotten the moral issues right much of the time, but theirs was a burdensome and graceless religion. It lacked the power to help people do the right thing. It was devoid of love—either God’s love for us, or true love for one another.

Jesus insisted on sticking with the truth, even if that meant that he was taking a very lonely position. It made him unpopular with the major movements of his day. Eventually, it led to his crucifixion.

Those who follow Jesus still find that sticking to the truth can put one in a very lonely position. More and more, confessing what the Bible has to say brings the disapproval of those around us.

When Bonnie Witherall was murdered in Lebanon for her missionary work fifteen years ago, even fellow Christians criticized her for evangelizing. One Christian leader compared her to a terrorist, complaining, “She was in the habit of gathering the Muslim children of the quarter and preaching Christianity to them while dispensing food and toys and social assistance” (Christianity Today, Feb. 2003).

Is telling people that Jesus is the Way to heaven a form of terrorism? The churchman quoted wasn’t alone in his evaluation. Similarly, the book titled When Religion Becomes Evil lists five signs that religion has become corrupt. Among the five signs: “absolute truth claims.” Apparently the one who said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” and “If you hold to my teaching you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth…” was starting a corrupt religion.

We should not be surprised if faithfulness to our Savior’s words meets with the same kind of disapproval. Jesus warned that those who disturb the peace by defending the truth of the gospel would be unpopular. But then, he promises that those who do so enjoy some fine company. “That is how their fathers treated the prophets.” That’s how they treated Jesus, too.

Ephesians 5:8 “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.”

Every proud parent has high expectations for his offspring. In the Disney movie The Lion King there is that scene in which the hero Simba is confronted by the ghost of his father Mufasa. Mufasa tells him that he is disappointed in him, because “You are more than what you have become.” The point is: Simba is living his life as a goof-off instead of assuming the responsibilities he should be performing as the rightful king.

Perhaps your parents played on a sense of family-pride to get you to live up to their expectations. “A Jones doesn’t give up when things don’t go your way.” Or maybe you’ve seen parents try to blame the other side of the family tree when Junior started showing character flaws.

Our Lord also has high expectations of us when we become his children and members of his family by faith. But he doesn’t rely on New Age psychology, or guilt trips, or family pride to encourage us to reach toward his goals. He takes us back to his grace. He helps us understand who we are, what he has made us.

At one time you were darkness. For the Christians in the city of Ephesus, people who grew up Gentiles worshiping the ancient Greek and Roman gods, this had been their condition for the majority of their lives. They grew up worshiping the wrong god. They grew up learning to excuse or accept behaviors that were sinful and destructive. They grew up in fear, never certain that their gods cared for them now, or where they were going when they died.

For some of us, our time in darkness may have been relatively short. But all of us were once darkness, if only from birth to Baptism. Even now, the darkness lurks within. And so today, things that should be condemned and fill people with disgust or horror are insisted upon as rights. Filthy talk is called a sense of humor. Greed is called healthy ambition or a good work ethic. Self-righteous, self-promoting busybodies are described as pious or devout. God condemns it all as darkness.

And that is what we were. But now, Paul says, you are light in the Lord. Now the light of God’s love, and the light of God’s truth, is shining on us and shining in us. The light of God’s word has shown us that God is not some moody, vicious monster we must constantly pay off to make him like us. He is the God who freely gives. He freely gave his own Son in payment for our sins. He freely gives forgiveness no matter how great the sin, no matter how poor the sinner. He freely makes us his own children. He freely invites us to receive and enjoy all the blessings of our home with him. The light of such love and truth change the way everything looks to us. That light pierces into our own hearts, making them the home of our Savior and his light by faith.

That truth has highest importance for eternity. It means that after we die, we will rise again to live with God forever. We will ever bask in the beautiful, warming, joy-giving light of his love in heaven.

But it also means something for us right now, which is more to Paul’s point in these verses. You are light in the Lord. That light of God’s love and truth, light which showed you how all your sins were taken away and why God considers you holy and precious, that light also lives in you. You have something new that you didn’t have before. You have the power of God’s love in Christ living in you, a new source of life and strength, so that you can live as children of the light, starting today.

Deuteronomy 1:29-31 “Then I said to you, “Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.”

Moses spoke these words to Israel when God led them to the Promised Land the first time. They were afraid to go in and take it because the people who lived there looked like giants to them. So long as we are fixated on the giants in our way we will be afraid to move forward. But following our God is not a reason to be afraid. It is a reason to trust his promises.

God’s first promise in these words is one we may not recognize at first. It looks more like a command. “Do not be terrified; do not be afraid…” Those words are meant to do more than confront us. They are meant to reassure us. They say more than “Stop that!” They say, “You don’t have to be afraid. The Lord is on your side. He is going to take care of you. He has good things in mind for you.” He goes on to explain what those good things are.

“The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did in Egypt…” Did Israel think that they had gotten out of Egypt because of their own ingenuity? Was it the overwhelming force of Israel’s armies that persuaded the Pharaoh to let them go? Wasn’t Israel rather practically passive while the Lord sent the Ten Plagues, divided the waters of the Red Sea, and then drowned the armies of Egypt?

When in history have God’s People ever succeeded because of their own great strength? God’s power gave Abraham’s little company of servants victory over the combined armies of five kings. Gideon’s band of 300 achieved victory over 100,000 Midianites only because of God’s help. Only the Lord’s intervention made it possible for Hezekiah’s little group of defenders to break Assyria’s siege of Jerusalem.

When the Lord wanted to give us victory over sin, death, and Satan, he didn’t send us into battle by ourselves and tell us, “Go get ‘em.” He didn’t involve us in the battle at all. He made himself as weak as possible. He burdened himself with full responsibility for our guilt. He died in our place. Yet by his death he crushed Satan, completely obliterated all record of our sin, and then shattered death by rising to life once again.

It doesn’t work differently for us today just because a couple thousand years have passed. We can follow him confidently because we can still trust his promises to fight for us today. Jesus promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against his church. Church history is a demonstration of this truth. Our personal histories are as well.  

The future will bear this out, too. His gospel, not our efforts, will be the power of salvation for everyone who believes. His Word, not our cleverness, will accomplish what he desires and achieve the purpose for which he sent it. So long as we continue to take the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, out of its sheath and let it speak; so long as we will not be ashamed of his Word, but preach and teach the whole counsel of God and let it do its work, our God will not be behind us cheering us on. He will go before us. He will fight for us. He will lead us as we carry his salvation to our world. We have every reason to trust his promises.

Matthew 11:25-30  “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

When something makes us very happy, we often have to show it with mouth or body. Maybe you have seen commercials for lottery tickets. The people in those commercials are dancing around because they are so happy they won. Maybe you have heard songs on the radio with lines like, “You make me want to shout,” or “You make me feel like dancing.” Sometimes people even say, “I’m so happy I could cry.”

Jesus tells us that people learning and believing God’s word makes him so happy he has to worship! That’s what he says in these words from Matthew’s gospel. You and I make Jesus praise the Lord, because we know things hidden from the wise, we know our heavenly Father, and we know Jesus’ rest.

During our school years we want to master mathematics, reading, history, grammar, and science, among other subjects. Those serve us well in adult life, though we may question the practical importance of some. But none of those things teaches us the most important thing we need to learn in our youth.

Many students have learned those lessons well across the years. It helped them become very successful in their careers. Some made lots of money. Some were considered very smart. But some thought they were so smart that they were smarter than God himself. They didn’t think they needed to listen to what God has to say anymore. They imagined they could make up their own ideas about right and wrong, where we come from, and where we are going when we die. God didn’t hide the truth from them. They heard about it, even read it for themselves. But the truth was so simple, so pure, and so clear that they wouldn’t believe it. It wasn’t “smart” enough for them. And God was not going to change the truth just because they thought they were too smart to believe it. It was hidden from them only because they refused to believe it.

I can’t think of any sin as dangerous as thinking that we are smarter than God. Once we think we are smarter than him about one thing, what’s to prevent us from thinking that we are smarter than him about everything else? Then we stop believing in him. Still, that’s what we do every time we sin. We think that we are so smart because we don’t believe what God has to say about some behavior, and we do what we want to do. That’s a good way to lose your faith.

God has kept us from falling so far in his grace. At church or reading our Bibles, we still hear him speaking to us in his word. Then we are the children to whom the Father reveals these things. Jesus praised the Lord because simple Christians like us know things from God’s word that have been hidden from the wise.

But what is it that we know? Jesus goes on to say, “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

 Do you understand what he is saying? If we listen to what he tells us, then we will know our heavenly Father. Even more, that is the only way we can know him. Jesus must introduce us to him.

Knowing the Father doesn’t mean we will know about him like we know about great men of history. He doesn’t mean that we will learn about him like we learn how algebra works, or what makes igneous rocks different from sedimentary rocks.

When we know God as our Father, when we pray to him as “Our Father who art in heaven,” then we know him like we know our parents, siblings, or best friend. We know him personally, intimately in a way that has nothing to do with how smart we are. Even little children who know God this way know more than many wise and learned people. Knowing God so makes us praise him just as Jesus praises him here.

When we know God so personally, we also know that Jesus gives us rest. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

 Learning to know God in the Bible, learning to know Jesus, can involve hard work: studying, pondering, memorizing. But Jesus doesn’t invite us to know him to pour more work on us. He intends to lift something from us. He takes away the burden of our sins and our guilt. He shows us that God loved us so much he spent thousands of years making a way for us to be saved and go to heaven. Jesus did all the work for our sins to be forgiven with his perfect life and his death on the cross. In one way or another, everything we hear, learn, or memorize from the Bible helps us know and understand this better. We know that Jesus gives us rest, rest for our souls, and that is an easy “burden” to carry.

Knowing God this way is so simple that even a child can do it. It fills our hearts with his blessing, and Jesus’ heart with praise.

Mark 10:41-45 “When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John. Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus does not want his church on earth to be a rudderless ship. It needs leaders. He gives it leaders, like these 12 men he chose as apostles. In the book of Hebrews we are even urged to obey our spiritual leaders and submit to their authority.

That does not mean he wants us to take our model for leadership in his kingdom from the world around us. “The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them.” The disciples understood this all too well from personal experience. They lived under the rule of the Gentile Romans, who did not ask the Jews whether they wanted to be governed. They didn’t work to win their trust or prove their capable and efficient administration. They simply invaded and took over because of their superior military might. It was purely a matter of who had the greater power, who had the ability to force others to submit to their will.

 Our world sees that as a kind of “greatness,” doesn’t it? When Jesus says, “their high officials exercise authority over them,” literally, “high officials” is “their great ones.” Think about the names of world leaders who have had “the great” added to their names: Alexander the Great, Herod the Great, Charlemagne (which is Charles the Great), Peter the Great. Generally, these were men of blood and war who expanded their influence by forcing their will on others. Their greatness came by way of power.

“Not so with you.” Greatness with God’s people is not about having the power to force your will and get your way. The Church throughout the ages has suffered far too much from such a caricature of godly leadership, and those of us who lead should repent for the times that we have tried to use our positions that way. But if not by one’s own force or power, then by what?

“Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.” Do you want to be great in God’s eyes, playing a key role in God’s plan to save people, being an important part of the work of his kingdom? Then be a slave to all, someone who has completely given up one’s own will, who has stopped thinking about what is best for me and makes me happy, to take care of the needs of others. This does not remove all authority or a godly chain of command from the church. But it does remove the self-seeking spirit of the sinful nature from that work. It follows the path to truly godly greatness, which comes not by power, but by service.

Doing so is following Jesus himself. “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus is the very Son of God. Yet when he came into our world he did not throw his weight around. He didn’t use his divine power to control everything that everyone else was doing. He didn’t force people to agree with him or become his disciples. He didn’t expect people to wait on him hand and foot.

He served. He healed. He taught. He pleaded. He loved. He went without sleep. He went without food. He gave away much of the money he received. He won our trust. He proved his love.

Then he gave his life as a ransom for many. Just because God’s view of greatness is such a foreign concept to us, just because I want to bend everyone’s else’s life in service to myself, just because I am so obsessed with the respect and honor I believe are due to me, just because the one area of my life that truly deserves the adjective “great” has to do with my sin, Jesus traded places with you and me. His life given at the cross became the ransom, the price that pays for our sins and sets us free from them.

When we follow Jesus, we can follow him through serving other people. We can follow him in suffering for what we believe. But when we come to his cross, he stops us. “This is as far as you go,” he says. “In order for you to get up there, I will have to trade places with you. Give me your sins and your guilt. I will carry them up on the cross with me. That is the last you or anyone else will ever see them.”  

Then they are gone, forgiven, completely taken away. When God looks down on us from heaven, it looks to him like we have finally achieved greatness, because Jesus gave his life as a ransom for many.

Mark 10:38-40 “‘Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?’ ‘We can,’ they answered. Jesus said to them, ‘You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.’”

Jesus’ picture of drinking the cup and being baptized with his baptism are obvious pictures of suffering persecution for your faith. He reminds us that he was no stranger to that kind of suffering. You remember that in the Garden of Gethsemane he begged his Father to take the cup of his suffering and death away from him, if possible.

The difference between Jesus’ two pictures illustrates different features of the suffering and persecution we experience for our faith. Drinking a cup of something is an act in which we are active and willing. We take the cup and drink it. In the same way Jesus wants us to be willing to accept the persecution that comes our way when we faithfully hold to our beliefs and practice our faith. We feel the temptation to compromise, to make concessions, and in this way to avoid the ridicule and abuse our faith and Christian life invite. But there can be no godly greatness for those who try to win the world’s acceptance at the expense of Jesus’ word.

Baptism is a passive picture. It isn’t something we do. It is something that happens to us. So it is that we don’t have to go looking for persecution and abuse. If we live lives as Christians, if we give a clear and faithful witness, generous helpings of the world’s hatred and ridicule will find us without our help.

This is what James and John found as apostles of Jesus. The places at Jesus’ right and left hand were not open for them. But they did end up living lives of godly greatness as servants in Jesus’ kingdom. James was the very first of the twelve disciples to give his life for his faith. King Herod put him to death by the sword. John was the last of the disciples to die, but during his long life he was imprisoned at least three times, scourged, and exiled. According to legend, he survived one attempted poisoning.

Today these men are heroes of faith because they followed Jesus to godly greatness. Jesus suffered and died to win our salvation on the cross. These two brothers suffered and died to bring that salvation to the world Jesus came to save.  

Not every Christian will face the extreme persecution James and John suffered. But drinking Jesus’ cup of suffering and receiving his baptism of suffering are unavoidable features of following him. We don’t have to seek them. They will come to us. But we endure them as they did for Jesus’ sake, because they come with the saving grace only he provides.