Grouches, Take Up Your Cross

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

June 23, 2013

Luke 9:23

Take Up Your Cross

In the name of Jesus.

Why are there grouchy old people? Why do young and middle-aged people stare at little screens all day long? You might not think that these two problems are related, but they are.

Old grouches are grouchy because they spent years and decades of their life doing what they wanted, when they wanted to do it. And now they are old. They don't get to do what they want to do anymore. Their kids tell them what to do or their nurse does.

Grouches are grouchy because they spent their life devoted to their career or to their family, but now they've been forced to retire and their kids moved away. They're too old to play golf and they can't run the Bix anymore. So they're grouchy.

They now can't avoid seeing the truth that's always been there: we aren't God. But the grouches spent their whole life dedicated to worshiping themselves. They worshiped by doing what they wanted, when they wanted to.

The iPhone or Pad that you might be staring into later today (hopefully not now) makes loving yourself easy to such a degree that televisions are green with envy.

I go to the Eisenhower playground and I see a mom and dad absorbed with their smartphone, while their kids are playing. Are they working? Is it Facebook? Doesn't really matter—the underlying evil is the same. They love themselves. They're the most important thing going and they need to be happy.

For some happiness is found in constant stimulation from a variety of sources. For others happiness is found in a routine that never changes.

For still others happiness is found in being left alone and leaving others alone, something that's easier than ever in our convenience culture. A father at another playground told me casually that his 12-year old daughter never gets up before noon during the summer. He made it clear that he was not going to be the one to make her grouchy. Let her sleep and thus be happy. At the risk of sounding like a grouch, that stinks.

Take up your cross and follow Me. Jesus tells us that this means doing hard things, and the hardest thing of all is denying self. For those playground parents glued to their cheap plastic battery, denying self means putting it away and getting up and engaging with your kids. Don't watch it; watch them. For that other dad, denying self means making it clear to your little girl that she is not a grown-up and not letting act her like one.

Don't get me wrong. This isn't about getting kids up by 8 during the holidays or destroying tech. I am amused by the rap-making app on the iPad and I like listening to my kids' Patty-Patty Cake, Baker's Man get turned into a mild suburban rap.

The point is: I'm not God. Jesus is. And He calls on us to follow Him by denying our desire to worship ourselves.

How do you follow Him? Start by saying His name. Say His name today. Say His name tomorrow. Worship Him at home. Set up a special place for Jesus in your home and let Him speak to you from the Bible. Read a section from the Small Catechism out loud. Make Jesus visible to yourself and family by reading His promises aloud in your house. Pray at home. That is a radical idea. Do it.

Dr. David Scaer writes: “The Gospel is at work through one person in the home, and the best missionaries are a believing mother or father whose life is a preaching of salvation for their spouses and children... The best missionaries are parents who bring their children to church for baptism and those who are patient with their unbelieving spouses.”

Be patient also with your unbelieving children. We have lost our next generation, our grown children. Most have moved away and sadly some refuse to eat and drink at their nearby Lutheran church. Denying yourself means being patient with these children. Every day speak their names to Christ and call on His mercy and ask Him to send His Word into their lives so that their stubborn self-imposed starvation is brought to an end. And then be a voice in their lives that urges them to church. Be the answer to your own prayer in the name of Christ.

But being patient doesn't mean excusing their apathy towards church, the very place where they receive the promises of Jesus. Giving college kids and grown children a pass when it comes to their indifference to Christ is a way in which we worship ourselves and deny Him.

Being patient means that we—especially parents, pastors, and elders—take time to engage these souls who are starving themselves. Picking up our crosses means that when someone refuses the spiritual care that is available to them here at Gethsemane or in their new town, we recognize that fact.

Not going to church is a sin because it is spiritual suicide (John 15). It's time to stop denying this fact and follow Jesus at all costs. Bearing your cross means having your children or your members think that you are a grouch, a jerk, and worse.

Who do people say I am? The Christ of God, who will be rejected and be killed and be raised on the third day.

Who am you? A wretched old grouch who belongs to Him through water, word, and wine, Baptism, Preaching, and Communion.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, forgive our grouchiness, which comes from how much we love ourselves. Crush our worship of self and turn our hearts to You.

In the name of the Father and of the † Son and of the Holy Spirit.