Dying to live

Passover in Wollongong, 2024

This week marks a year since our move from Wollongong to live in Tapitallee. That last week a year ago was marked by many goodbyes, celebrations of the past, some trepidation about the future, acknowledgement of the many people and activities I would miss. There were pangs of grief as I realized how far I’d be from my some of my precious family. There was also excitement about what was ahead and a deep sense of God’s movement in my life. One of the last events in those final weeks was celebrating Passover in my daughter’s home with our church community. It marked one of the last gatherings with people we’d travelled with for over 18 years as a church community, the last Easter we’d spend together, remembering the death and resurrection of Jesus. So many mixed feelings and experiences.

As I reflect now on this week leading up to Easter, focusing on Jesus’s death on the cross and the celebration of His resurrection I’m reminded that His sacrifice meant not only the suffering and humiliation of the cross, the devastating anticipation of being separated from His Father, but also the grief of knowing He would spend only a few more days with His disciples and His family on this earth. He loved them. He would miss their company. And He was saddened because they were not understanding so much of what He’d tried to teach them. They did not take in His warnings about His death or His promise of resurrection.

“He took the twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to Him. ‘We are going up to Jerusalem’, he said, ‘and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.’ Mark 10:32-34

This was too much for them to take in and when the time came they would abandon Him, be confused, run away, deny Him. Even though Jesus knew He was doing His Father’s will He was aware that it would cost Him dearly and it would also cost his disciples much. His losses were multiple, His pain inexpressible and in His grief He asked God for another way through. He knew there would be glorious resurrection, but for resurrection there had to be death. For redemption for God’s children there had to be sacrifice. For God’s plan of eternity with His beloved children to be realised Jesus had to pay this enormous price.

In His time with the disciples Jesus’s call to them was to follow Him. They loved Him, they wanted to follow Him, but at the point of death it seemed all their resolve disappeared. In this week leading up to the cross, it became too hard, too confusing, too painful. When Jesus said He was going to die, that He would no longer be with them, that everything was going to change, their fear and disillusionment overtook them. They were not ready to move on into their new life until they saw the resurrected Jesus.

Jesus’s death and resurrection changed everything for the disciples and also for us who are now His disciples. He calls us to follow Him just as He called them. He asks us to take up our cross and follow Him.

Whoever what to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Mark 8:34

I wonder how much we really understand that. Jesus’s death and resurrection was a once and for all act on His behalf. He did it for us, to secure eternity with Him for us. But His call for us to follow Him begins in this life and that means we should understand, just as the disciples had to understand, that in His death and resurrection He showed us that the meaning of true life is death and resurrection. And it can happen to us many times. Death is not just physical dying but giving ourselves over and over again for the sake of the Kingdom, sometimes hitting rock bottom, going the distance beyond where we are in control, sacrificing things we’d rather hold onto, letting go of what hinders our walk with Him, accepting the loss of precious people, treasured activities and capacities. There are degrees of dying and many deaths and losses in our lives. But it’s also true throughout our lives that resurrection follows death, new life comes out of death, new beginnings come from endings.

Jesus tried to teach His disciples this, and so it is for us.

“Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds onto life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal. If any of you wants to serve me, then follow me. John 12:24-26

The Apostle Paul certainly understood this and experienced it.

“We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so His life may also be revealed in our mortal body.” 2 Cor 4:10-12

Since you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Colossians 3: 1-4

Therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – His good, pleasing and perfect will”. Romans 12:1-2

These are hard teachings but this Easter, as we contemplate the great sacrifice Jesus made for us perhaps we can take time to reflect on what it means for us to follow Him, to have the abundant life He wants for us.

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10

Any dying, loss or sacrifice is painful and like the disciples, it’s very human to resist it, to run from it, but many have recognised the value of a willingness to take hold of the future, in spite of the cost. I am deeply grateful for the new life I have found, for the sense of God’s leading and provision and for His presence and affirmation when I become aware of the cost. I have come to know at a deeper level that if we want to journey into newness with God, we must be willing to leave old lands behind. As the children of Israel found, it takes courage to start on a new journey, leaving the familiar behind. Sometimes it involves being a while in the desert or the wilderness. There may be a dark and silent day between death and resurrection, even a sense as Jesus had, that his Father had abandoned Him.

Sometimes we choose willingly to make a new start, to respond to a sense of God’s calling, willing to bear the cost. Sometimes the losses or changes are unwanted; a move, a failure, a change of position, loss of capacity or of relationship and the pain is intense. New life, new experience, deeper relationship with Jesus, following Him, will inevitably cost us. We may have to spend some time in darkness, emptiness. But darkness is often the home of recreation, the crucible wherein lie the seeds of new life, the place where the still small voice will be heard before the light shines again on our path.

We have to let go of the life we thought we’d have in order to

have the life that’s waiting for us.

Joseph Campbell

The Apostile Paul had to be flattened and blinded (Acts 9). Jonah needed to be shipwrecked and spend time in the depths of darkness (Jonah 1) Elijah was chased and threatened, and had to spend time in a dark cave (1 Kings 19) Moses needed a burning bush and eventually had to sacrifice this entry to the new land. In our own experiences we know that if we want to go to another country we must pay the price, must be willing to get into a boat or a plane. We must be ready to leave the ground we are on, to be out of sight of any land at all, and to trust that another will hold us up and take us in the right direction. If we want a certain career we must be ready to study, to work hard, to sacrifice. If we want to make a relationship healthy and happy we must be prepared to give and take, to invest ourselves.

There are so many examples in the world around us of the cost of new life: wine is made of crushed grapes, gold from fired metal, bread from ground wheat, so many beautiful trees and plants come from seeds buried in the dark ground, some only being renewed after being burnt.

Jesus has shown us the meaning of life, the way to live, and He calls us to abundant life.

“Anyone who holds onto life just as it is, destroys that life. If you let it go, you’ll have real life, forever.” Resurrection isn’t simply coming out of the tomb – it’s being unbound – out of the grave clothes that keep us from moving on.

This Easter we can give thanks for the sacrifice of Jesus for us. We can celebrate His resurrection. We can also commit ourselves at this time to follow Him, to take up our crosses and trust Him for our resurrections. There is new life beginning everywhere – in the earth around us and if we will, in our lives, in our souls. Both must be cultivated, which may involve clearing away something that stands in the way. It’s an exercise in ‘yes, yes to life again’. Coming out of the tomb of Lent into something new and bright with promise. It can be the rediscovery of possibility again. Christ is risen, may He be risen again in us too.