Flow - Day 2: Courage

When you think about courage, about someone who is courageous who first pops into your mind? I think of like Superheroes first, but then I think about people who stood up for what was right. People who put their lives on the line when it counts to make some sort of difference in the world, ya know.

People like Harriet Tubman or Martin Luther King Jr. You know, people who really made a difference in the world by helping people at the possibility of great harm to themselves. There are moments in time where ordinary people are put in circumstances to do extraordinary things right. And honestly, I bet that none of them set out to do something extraordinary. And yet fate kind of found them and there they were. Making history.

Harriet Tubman helped get slaves to freedom. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke up about the injustices of segregation and racism. Countless thousands of other people throughout history have stood up for what is right and made a real difference in our world. And I think about those people, and I can get overwhelmed because I think “what if I couldn’t do that?” “What if I couldn’t be the one who had the courage to stand up and do what is right?”

Maybe I don’t give myself enough credit, or maybe I’m really kind of looking at it the wrong way when I ask myself those questions. Because courage, I think, doesn’t always mean that we do something historic or incredible that everyone remembers forever and ever. Honestly courage is a practice that we bring into our lives by just making simple decisions every day to do the next right thing.

For a lot of people courage looks like just getting out of bed every day and showing up for life. Walking through the doors of school or work and doing what you’ve got to do for the day. Sometimes it looks like being there for a friend or listening to someone who’s just had a rough day, or is really going through something tough.

For me, right now, courage looks a lot like being there for my family. And I haven’t really told you a whole bunch about my family. But I think you should meet them!

So I have a wife, and she is super awesome. Her name is Lexi. Here’s a picture of us.

and we have some pets. This is our oldest. His name is Finn. And he’s awesome.

Then this is our dog. His name is Snoopy. He’s very fully.

And this is our other cat. Her name is Lana and shes a sweetheart.

But that picture I showed you of my wife was from a while ago. Here’s what she looks like right now.

Yeah shes super pregnant. We are going to have a baby boy next month! Isn’t that wild! His name is Ezra and I’m really excited but also starting to get a little bit terrified because I don’t know what life is going to be like. So I’m gonna be for sure needing some courage in the weeks, months and years to come.

But like I said, courage is more about the little decisions that we make each day. Like when we discover that Jesus has called us like we talked about yesterday, When we realize this, we kind of have a decision to make. We have to take a look at that decision and weigh it against the alternatives.

Last night I told you that Jesus calling Peter meant that Peter was going to have a lot to lose if he followed Jesus. And Today in small groups you talked about how much courage it took for Peter to step out of that boat and walk on the water with Jesus.

But I’ll tell you, one of the most courageous things that Peter ever did, was actually just something that he said. But before we get into it, I’m going to tell you something. I went to college, and I majored in Bible and Theology, before I ever even went to seminary. Which is a nice way of saying that I’ve been a Bible nerd for a pretty long time. And I had a class, which was probably one of my favorite classes that I ever took in my whole life. The class was called “The Revelation of Christ” and it was honestly just a class about Jesus.

And one of the things that I learned from that class was that I thought that I loved Jesus, but I had no idea how much more I could come to love Jesus by learning more about him. But that’s not the point of this particular story. So on the first day of class, the professor stood up, his name was Dr. B, and he was a very tall man. He towered over us, and he simply said “In this course you will learn a lot of things, but most importantly you will discover for yourself the answer to the most important question you will ever be asked.” And then he went to the board and he wrote “Who do you say that Jesus Christ is?”

And he left it at that. And what is stunning about this question, is that the answer to it, our answer to it, tends to dictate the course of the rest of our lives. And answering this question truthfully can be one of the most courageous things that we do as individuals, because sometimes the answer isn’t well received.

So keeping that in mind, let’s take a journey shall we? I told you we’d be hanging with our buddy Pete all week, so that’s where we are gonna go next. So in the boat story, Jesus tells Peter to get up on outta that boat, which takes courage. Like a lot of courage. But there’s another story where Peter has quite a bit of courage too, and it’s not always talked about as if it takes courage. But I think it’s really awesome.

So Jesus is out doing his thing, healing people and whatnot, and he and his disciples go on to have a little alone time. And this is in Mark Chapter 8.

The New Revised Standard Version Peter’s Declaration about Jesus

27 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28 And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” 29 He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.”

This doesn’t seem all that courageous honestly. At least not in the way that we often talk about courage. But this was a really big deal, because this word Messiah meant A LOT. We kind of throw is around casually as Christians who our whole worldview is built around Jesus being the Messiah. But for Jesus’s people, the Jewish people, the word Messiah wasn’t used very casually.

In Hebrew it means “savior” and the coming of the messiah is an idea that is talked about and hoped for by God’s people for years and years. So to understand this, I could talk more about it, or we could watch a little video. I think we’ll watch a video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dEh25pduQ8

Big shoes to fill. To claim that someone was the Messiah was not small thing. It was risky, because this means that Jesus had authority. Authority over the religious center of Israel, as well as the Political center. It would be like if Someone claimed that someone today was both the legitimate President of the US and the Pope at the same time.

But Peter, he just gets right in there. Yeah other people say these things about you, but I think you are the Messiah, the son of God, the savior of the world. Pretty courageous if you ask me.

Peter has also answered that most important question: Who do you say that Jesus Christ is? He hits the nail on the head, and here’s what what I love about Peter… what he does next. Check this out in the next few verses.

The New Revised Standard Version Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection

31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Peter’s got a big mouth, that’s what I love about him. He just says what he’s thinking.

So Jesus is like hey yeah man you got it right, I’m the Messiah, and this is what it means. I, me, Jesus, aka. the Son of Man (which is this weird name Jesus calls himself that is really important — it means that he’s the ruler of the world which is from a book of the Bible called Daniel) I’m gonna die.

And Peter’s like hey, um, bro, can we chat? No you’re not. The Messiah doesn’t die… the Messiah frees Israel. The Messiah crushes the snake remember?

He doesn’t get it. And Jesus seems kinda harsh he’s like “get behind me Satan”

Which is weird, but the word Satan can simply mean “one who opposes you.” Or maybe he’s calling Peter Satan. Either way the point is less in the name and more in the place that Jesus tells him to go. Behind him, or check it out… following him.

See even though Peter had the courage to follow Jesus and then the courage to make the admission that Jesus was the Messiah, he’s still trying to run the show by telling Jesus what is supposed to happen. That’s all kind of secondary, but its super related, because look at this very next verse that’s going to tie this all together for us and tell us something about both our call and the courage we need to have to answer it.

The New Revised Standard Version Chapter 9

34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

This is what courage really looks like. And I don’t think that Jesus is saying just that you’ve got to make some sacrifices to follow him. I think that it means that we’ve got to have the courage to let go of what we think is supposed to happen, what we think our life is supposed to look like, and what we think Jesus is supposed to do for us. Instead we have got to just trust that what Jesus has for us in this life is good and have the courage to follow where ever that takes us. And for Jesus, for almost all of the disciples, and many of the early Christians, it literally meant the cross. It meant that they would die for following Jesus. For us now, it means that we live with the consequences of following Jesus. Our cross might not be physical, but there is risk involved with following Jesus and having the courage to say that Jesus is the Lord of your life.

People might mock you, or not take you seriously. People might project onto you all of the hurt that they have because the Church and Christians in general haven’t always been on the right side of history. We haven’t always done the best job of loving our neighbors, and we certainly haven’t done all that we can do to reflect the person of Jesus into the world.

So yeah dude, following Jesus is risky. It’s risky to say out loud “Jesus is the Messiah” because it means that we might not be comfortable. But Jesus says, get behind me. Follow me.

There was a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was a pastor in Germany back before World War II. During this time, some really bad people began to rise to power called the Nazis. They were lead by a man named Adolf Hitler and they had some really awful views and even worse plans. Most notably they wanted to get rid of all of the Jewish people.

As these people gained power, they got control of the churches. And they began to teach that it was the obligation of the church to help get rid of all of the Jewish people, and a lot of people began to accept this teaching, whether it was out of belief in it or out of fear of what would happen to them if they resisted it.

But Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw how evil this was. He saw the injustices, and he saw the way that things were going to go for the Jewish people in Germany. So he started a network of Christians who pledged their allegiance to Jesus rather than to Germany or Hitler. They began to sneak information about what was going on in Germany out to other churches in the world, alerting everyone to the nature and widespread evil of what we now call the holocaust.

He was involved in a bunch of activities that helped save the lives of Jewish people, and when he was found out, he was arrested and gave his life. That takes a lot of courage. But it was not that he set out to die for saving the lives of Jewish people.

Dietrich set out simply to do the right thing. To make sure that the church in Germany did not elevate Hitler or the Nazi party above their allegiance to Jesus Christ.

What unfolded, because of his unwavering loyalty to the call that God had placed on his life, was a series of courageous acts that truly followed in the footsteps of Jesus. He made it his life’s mission to save his fellow humans.

Now, I hope that none of us have this kind of sacrifice to make in order to follow Jesus, but I do know that it’s going to take some courage for any of us to truly follow Jesus. And that courage begins with having the courage to say “Jesus is the Messiah” and then making our every day decisions based on that fact.

Because it takes courage to be kind. It takes courage to reach out your hand to someone who is sick, or who is suffering. It takes courage to sit with the lonely kid at lunch or to tell someone that they are loved, that they are valuable, and that they aren’t alone. But these are all things that Jesus did. These are all things that Jesus would have us do if we are going to follow him.

So how are you going to act courageously from now on. If Jesus has called you, Jesus has given you all that you need to be courageous. Peter didn’t walk on water for that split second because Peter was capable of walking on water. Peter walked on water because Jesus gave him the ability to walk on water.

Jesus empowers us to live extraordinary lives that change the world. They might not ever make into a history book, but the way that we live will impact the lives of the people around us in ways that we can only begin to comprehend. All it takes is a little courage. Will you step out of the boat?