The Popular Cross

So I started showing him. “1 foot (at knee), two feet (at waist, quickly realizing I am running out of room, I start making the feet smaller), 10 feet (as I reach the top of my head). See!

Totally fooled them.

That was Kindergarten. True story.

First grade: “Yeah, I totally know Karate.”

“Oh yeah, prove it. Show me your Karate, go karate kick Robbie.”

Robbie is actually 6 foot… in the first grade. For the reals (pretty sure).

So I did. I went full karate kid on Robbie. No actual content, just chased him around while ninja kicking like a crazy person.

Totally fooled them.

Have you ever said something maybe… less than true… in order to impress someone else?

Have you ever pretended to know Karate to impress your friends?

Keep your hands up. We have all been there.

Popular. We want to be popular.

Popular - to be liked, enjoyed or admired by many people.

Of COURSE you want to be liked. Enjoyed. Admired.

And for you it may not be “all the peoples”… but in very specific crowds or with very specific people… that’s where you want to be popular.

This is natural, human, we are social creatures! It is natural for us to want our friends, our family, our parents, our kids, our co-workers to like us.

It is less natural for us to want random Internet strangers to like us… but that works too.

For some definition of popular, we all want it.

Popular Jesus

Was Jesus popular?

I’m going to say something crazy… Jesus wanted people to like him.

It’s a guess, it is reading between the lines quite a bit. But Jesus was fully human and we can expect that he felt many and most and maybe all the same feelings and impulses we have.

And Jesus knows how to be popular.

Remember this story from John 6. “Jesus feeds the Five Thousand.” Teaching to a HUGE crowd, Jesus miraculously multiplies the five loaves and two fish… and there’s food for all, with 12 baskets left over.

People heard a good word.

People ate good food.

People saw a good miracle.

Even here, Jesus was so subtle, he did it all through the hands of the 12. Still, the people were so excited they were going to make him King!

I bet that part felt pretty good…

John 6:15 ESV

Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

He fled from the popularity… what’s going on here?

Still in the same chapter.

Disciples go across the sea.

Jesus jogs across the water and freaks them all out.

Then on the other side the crowd follows and he teaches again. This time he teaches them about the bread of life. Moses gave Manna - which means “what is it?” Jesus is the answer to the question. I am.

John 6:54–55 ESV

54 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. 55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.

Translation: “EAAAAT MEEEEEE!!!!”

And they freak out… because that’s such a weird thing to say.

John 666 (woah, easy to remember)

John 6:66 ESV

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.

What’s going on here?

Jesus rejects popularity. By fleeing when necessary. It wasn’t his time to be King.

Then by preaching and bringing the hard truth, saying the hard thing, maybe even in a harder to understand way then necessary.

In both cases: absolutely obedient to what he was to be and do and say, without consideration to what people would think or do in response.

I imagine myself in this moment. I had a church of 5000+ minutes ago. Now I’m down to a dozen. I think Jesus felt that loss...

and he asks:

John 6:67 ESV

So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?”

Peter is so sweet, he almost saves the moment.

John 6:68–69 ESV

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

But I think Jesus is feeling all the things.

John 6:70–71 ESV

Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him.

Even of those precious few who are going to stick with him… he knows one of those is going to betray him.

And does he know yet that the rest will abandon him?

It doesn’t hurt less because he is Jesus. Likely it hurts more… because he loves them perfectly. Well and truly and honestly and fully.

Wayne said this to me last week, and I thought it was profound, so I’m stealing it now.

When Jesus prayed, sweating blood to His Father in the Garden: “take this cup from me.”

It wasn’t just the physical pain of the cross. Not even just the humiliation and the mockery. The weight of all sin and death, absolutely.

But also, intimately, the rejection of the people he so loved. The betrayal with a kiss of a man he loved, heart and soul, walked with and taught for 3 years.

The abandonment and denial of all the rest.

It doesn’t hurt less because he is Jesus.

And yet… “not my will but yours be done.”

It is possible to be Jesus-centered, Christ-centered, but not cross-centered.

Remember that?

In particular, this week, we see the way Jesus carried his cross, obedient on the road to the cross, long before he climbed the hill of Calvary.

Everytime he rejected popularity, the power and prestige, the adulation that comes with it, he rejected popularity with people to be popular with His Father alone.

He embraced the cross.

And he says to us: take up your cross and follow me.

“But isn’t Christianity just believing the right things inside your head?” Mental assent

Contrast that with all the “disciples” who

John 12:42–43 (ESV)

Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue;

Why?

for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.

Doesn’t that say it all?

Why did I lie to my Kindergarten class?

I loved the glory.

Why did I pretend to know Karate?

For the glory.

And was it really glorious? It’s never as glorious as we hope it will be, is it? Even when it is wildly successful, the most famous, the richest, the most popular, the absolute best, loved by all, acclaimed by all…

How many headlines do we need of people who were impossibly “popular” but empty and despairing.

From Cleopatra to Marilyn Monroe. Robin Williams to Elvis Presley.

That isn’t life and life abundant. That isn’t discipleship at all.

Jesus denounced every activity meant to impress men. Jesus taught his disciples to give secretly, to pray humbly and quietly, to fast secretly.

Paul called it out this way:

Galatians 1:10 ESV

For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Maybe it’s a vague “they” for you. The crowds, the likes, the tweets and retweets, the followers.

Maybe, like me, “they” is a small group. What will my parents think. My kids? My wife? My friends? My church family?

What will Wayne think if I say that… or don’t say that?

What will Camille think if I don’t do this well?

What will Kelly think if I don’t get that done on time?

How do I make Karen like me, think I’m a good husband. How did I trick her into thinking that?

Crucify that!

Then, it isn’t that you don’t care what other people think and feel. In fact, you are free to pay attention to that because you aren’t so worried about what they think about you!

You aren’t trying to manipulate what they think about you.

There is a world of difference between

“I love Karen, how can I do something to celebrate her, appreciate her, bring her joy?”

and

“How do I impress her? Make her like me?”

They could result in the exact same actions… but one is selfless love and the other is really selfish manipulation.

How do we actually do that?

Reject Popularity

Be “popular” with me

How do we do this?

How do we crucify the “what they think of me?” in us?

Just feel really guilty about your self-absorbed needy obsession with what other people think of you, come back and get your next dose of guilt next week.

NO!!! Gross! Not the point!

This is where it helps me to see Jesus and look to the cross.

I think Jesus felt the desire and even temptation to be liked and loved by the people. In fact Satan explicitly tempted him with this: “bow down to me and I will give all this authority ‘and their glory’...” of all the kingdoms of the world.

Take that feeling, that temptation, recognize it in prayer, and then “not my will but yours be done...” take up your cross.

So, I am deciding what to preach on. In prayer, listening to God, in conversation with God, in silence and solitude before God so I can hear Him, bringing my thoughts and my emotions before Him… I recognize “God, I want to impress them all with my sermon this week. I kind of want them to think I am funny and great and wise. That’s gross. Crucify that in me… and let me preach only what you would have me say.”

That’s not a one-and-done prayer. That’s an every day take up my cross and follow. Every day recognize my own mixed motives, asking God to help me sort it all out.

Living for the Audience of One. God, I want to impress my co-workers… what would impress you in this moment? In this meeting? In this conversation?

It may be what you don’t say or do. Am I staying silent about my own preferences or needs because I’m afraid what others will think of me? Or better yet, stay silent about what Jesus is doing in me. God is nudging me to speak… but I don’t want to make things awkward or weird by saying “Jesus” out loud in the wrong context.

Reorienting ourselves, one prayer at a time, one action, one word at a time, to live for the Audience of One.

That is the Way of the Cross. That is the Crucified Christ.

And here is the most beautiful thing. That doesn’t make you an uncaring jerk who just “says what he wants” and who cares what anyone thinks. (People who say they think that are SUPER concerned that you believe that’s who they are).

Freed from an obsession with what others think, living in light of what God alone thinks, what does He tell us? Love God. Love Others.

And you are now free to fully and truly love others. Not to manipulate your reflected self-image… but to see them, know them, and love them.

I live for the One, then I can love like the One.

I profess to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified.

I boast in nothing except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

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