The insurrection of love
The following video transcript has been lightly edited
Have you ever seen the movie Inception? The concept behind it is that if you can get deep enough into someone's consciousness and plant an idea that it grows up and becomes their own. If you do it too soon or too sort of early in the consciousness, your consciousness actually fights it because it recognizes that it's not your idea.
What I love about the movie is it's a great illustration of I think how change really works. While we live in a world in which we're always sort of hoping for a hack, change that lasts has to start deep within us. It has to sort of come from the inside out, and that kind of transformation can really last.
We're traveling through Lent, and Lent is a chance for us to reflect and pray and fast around the need for God to come and save the world. And that Jesus life, death, and resurrection really does transform it. And so Lent is preparing for Easter. What I want to talk about today is what we see in Jesus life, death, and resurrection is Jesus entering into the world to transform it from within.
In Mark chapter 8, Jesus is teaching that he has to be rejected by the religious leaders of the day that he has to suffer and ultimately be killed. And Peter, of course, responds to that. His disciple, his, over anxious and eager disciple responds like, and pulls Jesus aside and rebukes him.
And then Jesus says, no, no, you have your mind in the wrong place. Get behind me, Satan. And from there, Jesus turns, including the disciples, as well as the other followers, and says, Hey, if you want to follow me, you have to deny yourself, pick up your cross, and come after me. And that if you want to save your life, you have to lose it.
And so what we see is God's call to walk in God's kingdom is one of the of self denial, of sacrifice, and really of giving. That the way we get is we, we give. And each of these ideas teaches us about change. So the way that God defeats rejection and suffering and death is by entering into them himself.
That's the incredible good news. That Jesus has come fully God, fully human, and lives as a human being. And so Jesus ultimately transforms death and suffering and rejection by taking them on and proving that they are not capable of overcoming love, of overcoming God. And so that transformation and that change happens within.
And that's a lesson for us. We often want to avoid suffering, rejection, loss, and rightfully so, they can be horribly painful. And yet, they are also a reality in this world. And so what do we do with them when we meet them? And I think what we learn is that our willingness to get inside of them, to walk through them, can transform them.
The incredible message of Christ overcoming rejection, suffering, and death is that they don't have the permanent word in our life, and so that is true for us too. And so whether it's a health issue, or a job loss, or the death of someone we love, or a broken relationship, these things, which are painful and horrible, can still be transformed from the inside.
If we're willing to greet them a little bit differently. We can learn from them. We can grow as people. We can expand our capacity to love. We can experience the love of God and others in the midst of it. And so that change, to take place, we have to get inside of it versus try to handle it from the outside.
The lesson that I see for us in Peter's response to Jesus is this reminder to us as human beings that while we often have good intentions, our perception of what should occur, can always be a little bit off. You know, Peter was basically like, hey Jesus, we think you're the Son of God. We think you're the one.
The way you go about this is not to be killed. We want you to conquer. And Jesus just says to Peter, hey, you don't know what you're talking about. And this is a reminder to us that often the things that we think are the way that we will experience or achieve life are going to get us there. And so the lesson we learned here is that we want to confess our inability.
We want to confess that we have a misperception of what to do. And then often as human beings, our mind is not on things of love and mercy and grace. It's on things like safety, comfort and power and control. And so what we want to do is we just want to confess that. Because what we see in Christ is that Christ's love transforms that from the inside out.
In which our confession of these things removes their power. They no longer dominate us, and they free us to get to this place where our confession of this inability actually increases our capability. And so what's it for you? What is the thing that is an inability for you that you have a misperception of, how to operate in this world?
I'd encourage you to confess it. Confess it to the people you live with. Confess it to the people you work with. Here's the funny thing is they won't entirely be surprised by it because let me tell you, they probably know what it is. But it'll be refreshing to them because they will see that you are engaging honestly.
And it'll also be encouraging to you because what you'll discover is that despite this confession, they'll continue to love you. And you'll be able to, now that you have it out in the open, grow through it, allowing it to change you and grow.
The final lesson for us is this idea that if we want to save our life, we have to lose it. See, God is transforming the world from the inside out, and God invites us to transform it, too. In order for that to happen, we have to transform ourselves. Now we prefer a hack. There's gotta be like three ways that we can do a thing, and if I can just do these three things, then everything else will work out.
Transformation doesn't work like that. You know, it's like a weight loss fad. You can do it for a bit, and you might lose some weight, but it won't really transform the way that you relate to food. And so that weight will just come back. It takes the hard work of transformation to really renew you.
And this is what Jesus says to us about participating in God's kingdom, that he's in the business of transformation. And that there's no hack to growing in love, to learning to forgive our enemies, to walking with humility. It's just the hard work of changing how we think about ourselves and how we relate to God and to the world around us.
But the transformation we desire for ourselves and the transformation we desire for the world is going to come through sacrifice and humility and through giving ourselves away. And so what we want to do is we want to figure out what is it, what is the next step for us?
What's that next step of transformation?
What's that next piece of us growing in our capacity of grace and mercy and truth and hope? I don't know what it is for you, but if you engage it and allow it to change slowly and transform within you, you'll find that as you give that away, you will experience freedom and grace and God's love in the midst of it all.
In order for change to happen, it has to start small and transform from the inside out. God has accomplished this in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. And that reality empowers our ability to live the same way.
Hey, I hope as you travel through this season of Lent, that you experience God. and reminded of the grace and goodness that has been revealed in Christ.
Have a great week. I'll see you soon.
