The Sermon for Sunday, June 22nd, 2025, the First Sunday after Trinity
The Lessons: Psalm 63; Zechariah 12:8-10, 13:1; St. Luke 9:18-24
The Text: Luke 9:23-24
INTRODUCTION
A man once appeared at a pastor’s office door asking for some quick points on Christianity to help make sense of the dinner conversations he was having with his wife, a recent convert. He made it clear that he was very busy and very successful and he didn’t have time to study her beliefs – just bullet points, if you please.
Though it would have been easy for the pastor to hand him a book or a pamphlet, he said instead, “I can see you are a very busy and very successful person, so I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Why?” he asked, frustrated.
The pastor replied, “Because if I were to give you the bullet points and you were to really understand them, they might work in you so significantly that your life could really get messed up. You would have to rethink the meaning of success, of time, of family – of everything, really. I don’t think you really want to do that, do you?”
It was an effort to raise his thirst, not to give him answers. In his case it worked.
– Mark Labberton, “Pastor of Desperation,” Leadership (Winter 2006)[1]
In Psalm 63, the Psalmist shows a thirst for God when he utters these words:
“O God, Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.”
(Psalm 63:1, p. 414, Book of Common Prayer, 1928)
For the Psalmist, seeking God early is the top priority of the early morning. It is a special priority in “a barren and dry land” (Psalm 63:2, Book of Common Prayer, 1928), which represents any spiritually arid condition in which a believer may find himself. The Holy Spirit is the Water of Life (John 7:37-39), and we must eagerly come to him and drink of his life. The Psalmist expresses the human being’s need for God in his own words about his soul thirsting for God and his flesh longing after God. There are many physical and material things that people long for, but this is a deep, spiritual longing. In the beatitudes, Jesus speaks of this longing for God in the words, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3, KJV), and “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6, KJV). In Psalm 63:1-9, the Psalmist realizes that the way to experience the life and the presence of God is by praising and worshipping God (Psalm 63:4-6). Praising God reminds the believer of how dependent he is on the love, strength, grace, and provision of God.
Our First Lesson today is a prophecy of a time when the nations of the world will attack Jerusalem, and God will fight for Israel and for Jerusalem, but it does not refer to Israel at the present time, since together with this prediction of war against Jerusalem comes the prediction of God’s outpouring of his Holy Spirit on Israel resulting in their mourning for “Me whom they have pierced” (Zechariah 12:10, KJV), a reference to the crucified Lord Jesus Christ, and by mourning for him, will realize that He is the Messiah, the Christ, whom God sent to redeem the world. Once they acknowledge Jesus as the Christ, then, in that day, the fountain of salvation, the fountain of life, the water of the Holy Spirit, is given to them too. This all agrees with Romans 11:25-36, in which St. Paul writes of how when the fullness of the nations of the world has come to salvation, then Israel will be saved. But the same theme of longing for God, for Christ, runs through our First Lesson as it runs through Psalm 63.
In the Gospel, the longing for Christ becomes the imperative Christ issues to his disciples in Luke 9:23-24 (KJV):
And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.
The Psalmist’s priority for the morning becomes the Christian’s duty. To follow Christ means to take up one’s cross daily, and follow Jesus. To do so, one must deny oneself. One cannot live merely for the sake of pleasure. The cross is a symbol of shame, and of misunderstanding, rejection, opposition from unbelievers. For each of us the cross will be different, but carrying it means we suffer for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ in some way or other. It might even mean being misunderstood by our fellow Christians if they do not accept our cross as something Christ calls us to bear, but think of it as something we deserve because of our folly or our sin.
The point our Lord is really making is that the test of our loyalty to Him is whether we will follow where He leads, bear what He has called us to bear, and endure what He has called us to endure. Or is our loyalty to Christ only skin deep, or are we like the seed that fell on rocky ground that grew for a while and then withered in the hot sun, because it had no deep roots? Our faith must be characterized by such a deep love for God that we can carry the cross daily that he calls us to carry.
This difficult saying about carrying one’s cross daily is followed by a paradox which is to be understood in the light of carrying one’s cross daily: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it” (Luke 9:24, KJV). Saving one’s life in the first part of the paradox means doing everything one can to have a successful life, for example, deliberately choosing a career that generates great wealth, or making material success essential to one’s goals. This leads to losing it, either losing the joy of life lived in fellowship with Christ, or losing one’s life eternally. On the other hand, the person who, for the sake of Christ, gives up many things that make for a successful life in worldly terms, shall save his life eternally. It is not a matter of choosing poverty for poverty’s sake. There were ancient Greek philosophers who did that, such as the Cynics, who rejected popular desires for power, fame, and wealth. But Christ’s call is to give up whatever we must give up in order to obey God’s will by following him.
CONCLUSION
Have you come to the point in your life where you have yielded yourself completely to Christ’s will by taking up your cross daily, whatever it is, and following him?
[1] Quoted on p.341, Craig Brian Larson & Phyllis Ten Elshof (General Editors): 1001 Illustrations that Connect. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, Christianity Today International, 2008.