Question #3  What Can You Give in Return for Your Life?  Read Mark 8:34-37

In verse 35 “life” is translated from the Greek word psyche¸ meaning one’s very being, true self.  So verse 37 is, “What can people give in exchange for their true, authentic self?”

Jesus seems to know two things:  1) People have already lost their lives; and 2) People want their lives back

When have you had the sense that the person God created you to be seems to have been buried under several layers of selves that have somehow been piled on top of the real you?  Or perhaps circumstances have torn away something vital to your sense of self.  You experience something like the woman with the twelve year flow of blood:  I want my husband back;  I want my wife back;  I want my child back;  I want my job, my house, my health back.  I want my life back.

Last fall wine maker Chateau Ste. Michelle fired up a Facebook campaign asking women to customize an equation to sum up what makes them want a glass. “Me + a glass of wine - juice boxes + quiet time for 15 minutes = My Chateau.”  The tagline: “It’s where you become you again”. 

But that begs the question – When the glass is empty do you lose yourself?”  Fifteen minutes after the wine is gone and the kids are crying and the laundry is still not clean and you have 10 new emails to answer from work and your car still doesn’t run right, are you right back to saying, “I want my life back?”  Is there wine that does not run out?

“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” 

What if losing ourselves for the right things is exactly what fulfills life and offers meaning and purpose within which I am my most true self – the person God created me to be?

Your true self cannot be taken from you.  You might lose it; you might misplace it; you might be buried under a pile of demands and expectations that you become someone other than the person God made you to be.  You might even want or try to be someone else

You may find an expression of yourself with in a relationship.  And if that relationship is lost, a true part of you will have been lost.  Even still, your life cannot be taken away from you.

You may find an expression of your true self within your job.  And if that job is lost, a true part of you will have been lost.  Even still, your life cannot be taken away from you.

Maybe Chateau Ste. Michelle is just tapping into a trend that began among God’s people long ago.  We call it “Word and Sacrament”.  Receive the Word.  Receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ.  Let Him pull your true self out from under everything that has been piled on top of you.

Sixty minutes of Word and wine and you remember who (and whose) who you are.