LAYING DOWN YOUR LIFE

John 10:11-18; I John 3:16-24

May 3, 2009 – Rev. Jerry Duggins

“We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” In this short sentence, John lays out the challenge of Christian living and its great mystery at the same time. If Jesus set an example for his followers, the laying down of his life must lie at the center of what disciples are called to imitate. “I am the good shepherd,” he says, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

Laying down one’s life is what the disciple of Christ does… daily. And yet, to say what this looks like in any one follower’s life, may be impossible. I have struggled this past week wondering what it might look like in my own life. And I can’t say that I have any answers. I know that to follow Jesus is to lay down my life, but I don’t know precisely what that means.

I’ve been working my way through Taylor Branch’s three volume history of the Civil Rights movement during the King years, and I have been impressed by the courage of many people who put their lives on the line to end the injustices of segregation, to secure voting rights for African Americans, and to establish a more level playing field in the arena of economic opportunity. Many did in fact die in the struggle. And many of those understood their efforts in the context of living out their faith in Christ Jesus.

There is a passion for justice rooted in faith in Christ, and I have little doubt that the world would be better if more Christians felt it more of the time. I usually feel like I’m in a good place when I feel it; but I don’t feel it all the time. And I certainly have never thought my life in jeopardy those few times that I did act for justice.

I like how Martin Luther King Jr. puts it in a sermon on the Good Samaritan. I’ve edited his words to be more inclusive. “The ultimate measure of a [person],” he says, “is not where [one] stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where [one] stands at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk… position… prestige and even… life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he [or she] will lift some bruised and beaten brother [or sister] to a higher and more noble life.” (p.31, “On Being a Good Neighbor”).

I have such respect for those who literally put their lives on the line and have no doubt that they are living out this call to lay down one’s life; but this hardly exhausts the meaning of the call. There are still other ways of laying down one’s life. Not all are called to martyrdom.

I met a pastor while we were at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico who was born in South Africa. He was there during the struggle against apartheid and he certainly experienced danger while he was there, but in the end he decided to leave South Africa because he felt that his efforts would not bring the victory. As a white South African, I think he felt that he was not risking his life so much as wasting it. As I listened to him relate other stories of his ministry in this country, I believe he continued to lay down his life for others even though he’d moved away from the more immediate danger.

The truth is that most of us will not lay down our lives as martyrs to the cause of Christ, or to any other cause for that matter. We may lay down prestige or privilege, but not our very lives, not in the literal and physical sense. So what does it mean?

I thought about “self-sacrifice.” You know, the people we sometimes refer to as “selfless.” People engaged in ministries of compassion, investing time in helping others, the Mother Teresas of the world. But then I thought about all the unhealthy ways people have done this: the women who in devotion to their husband, soak up physical and verbal abuse. This is not the kind of laying down one’s life that Jesus calls us to. Certainly we’re called to give up selfishness, but not in a way that reduces us to self-less-ness. The disciple operates from a very strong sense of self. We are not called to waste our lives by being invisible, by never tending our own spirits. Jesus never condones the kind of giving that reduces us to nothing. Giving for Jesus always results in receiving back. Giving is always a win-win. In this same passage where Jesus talks about laying his life down for the sheep, he says emphatically that he has power to take up his life again.

The courage that moved civil rights leaders was never a courage without hope. Their lives were on the line in hope of new life and resurrection. The feminist movement may have taught some women to be “selfish,” but that was never its intent. It was not about taking away from men, but about women finding their strength so that both men and women could be better for it. Martin Luther King always talked about the struggle for justice as a struggle to free both white and black.

Again he writes, “In a real sense, all life is interrelated. All… are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.” (p.70, “The Man who was a Fool”).

Daniel Day Williams gives this interpersonal way of putting it in a social context when he writes; “Whatever it has been in past centuries, love takes form in our century as participation in shaping a new world order. Self-giving means to witness and labour where the lives of innumerable human beings are at stake” (p.202). A few pages later he writes of self-giving as “the growth of love through discovering its claims, its demands, and its fulfillment in the spirit of participation rather than possession” (p.209).

“… inescapable network of mutuality… the spirit of participation,” these two phrases speak volumes about what it means to lay down one’s life for another. It means investing in that view of the world that sees us each person connected to every other person. We read in the book of Hebrews, “Let mutual love continue.” Paul writes that we ought to consider the interests of others above our own, not that our interests are unimportant. Jesus and numerous others sum up the law as loving God and loving neighbor. Again Paul describes the church as the body of Christ, speaking eloquently of our ties to one another. “Laying down one’s life” means recognizing that we are together in the words of MLK “a single garment of destiny.” Laying down one’s life means recognizing in the words of Thomas Merton, that “no one is an island.” We are in fact not sacrificing our lives when we lay them down for one another, but instead restoring our lives, making them new, recreating them.

But what this looks like in any one life, I cannot say. Good marriages and partnerships are built on the presumption that each is meant for the other. Laying down one’s life for the other is essential in a healthy relationship. But again, what that looks like in any given partnership, I can’t say. I know that it’s a kind of giving that strengthens both. I know that it means letting your partner have an equal place in your world.

Perhaps the Greek gives us the best clue for what it looks like in general, or at least offers an image that can flesh it out in your life. In both the gospel and the letter of John, “to lay down one’s life” could be translated as “to put in one’s mind.”

In the struggle for justice, we are trying to put into the minds of the powerful those who are oppressed; and we can do so only because we have put them into our mind first. Healthy relationships depend on holding the other in one’s mind. Of course, they can’t stay in the mind. Their need must be met, their welfare sought. As we read in the letter of John: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses to help?”

Here is at least one description of “laying down one’s life.” But there are others, some we hold in common, but others as unique as the individuals involved. Laying down one’s life may be as visible to the world as martyrdom or as invisible as a random act of kindness. It’s hard to say what it looks like in any one life, but a few things are clear. It does lie at the center of Christian living, of following Jesus. It begins by letting others occupy your mind. It enriches the life of the giver as well as the recipient.

“We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.” May God grant us the strength and the wisdom and the knowledge that each of us needs to follow Christ in this way. Amen.

Resources:

Williams, Daniel Day. The Spirit and the Forms of Love. London: University Press of America. 1981.

King Jr. Martin Luther. Strength to Love. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. 1963.