"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?"
-Mark 8:34b-36

As I sit down to write this, it's with a rather heavy heart. Truth to tell, I've been putting it off all day. As many of you know, a young man from Tempe First United Methodist Church was killed in a motorcycle accident last night. Another member of our group lost her dad this morning. It's hard to know what to say about faith, about God's grace, on a day like today.

God is present with us, but that's not a guarantee that we'll always be healthy and strong. God loves us more deeply than we know, but that doesn't mean that our lives will be without pain. Jesus knew this better than anyone: he knew what it meant to be weak, to be frightened, to be lonely, to be frustrated, to be angry. I really believe that, through the experience of Jesus, God is able to feel our pain even more deeply than we do.

I think it's because Jesus knew all of this that he said what he did in this week's reading from Mark. Jesus knew that life is a precious, precious gift. He knew as well as anyone that life is fragile, and that for too many people it ends before it should. Jesus understood that each day matters, that each day is a gift from God. That's why he reminds us not to forfeit our lives by seeking only our own best interests. At the end of the day, it's not enough to serve ourselves. Because life is short, because life is precious, we ought to spend our lives loving God and one another.

Jesus wasn't saying that you have to die young in order to be faithful. We're not all asked to be martyrs. Indeed, I believe that God desires us to have the blessings of long and faithful lives. But our lives shouldn't be taken for granted. I believe that Jesus wanted us to remember that, every day, we have to make a choice about who we are and who we serve. We're never done with that choice. It's easier to think about ourselves, but we're called to orient our lives around God's kingdom, and not our own concerns.

Bob Dylan wrote a song he called "You Gotta Serve Somebody." Like most of Dylan's songs, it's rather lengthy, so I won't reprint all the verses here. But the chorus goes like this:

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed,
you're gonna have to serve somebody.
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
but you're gonna have to serve somebody.

It's true. Our life is a gift, and we decide how you use it. But we will be serving someone, no matter who we are. So we're all left with the question: who will it be? Jesus' words ring clear: what will it gain us to gain the world and forfeit our lives? There are a lot of people, a lot of ideas, a lot of false gods (money, whatever) that we can follow, serve, and use to order our lives.

But life is precious, and fragile, and a blessing God intends us to enjoy. Every day, we're invited to make the choice: will we love God? Will we love our neighbor? It is in answering yes that we discover our truest selves, that we know who God intended us to be. As Jesus puts it, this is how we save our lives.