The Ultimate Donor

The Call to Come and Die God can do something with our sin-sick hearts. And what God does is remove them and transplant them with the heart of Christ. This allows us to experience a second birth and new life. But this requires that our sin-sick heart be removed and that our old life become a thing of the past. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ...we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise godfearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. Isn’t it amazing that Jesus never tricked his followers into believing that following him would be easy? Jesus didn’t use slick advertising to deceive people into following him. He never gave an altar call. Instead, he gave a cross call. A call to die. Those who heard his message understood very well that following him would be dangerous. It would be life-changing and was, literally, life-threatening. As Bonhoeffer stated, the cross is not waiting for followers at the end of their journey with Christ – it stands for them at the beginning. Following Christ remains life-changing for we must yield our sin-sick hearts and old lives to God so that we can begin anew. If we are to experience new life and a new beginning, we must issue our old life a death certificate. “I’ll Give You a Message!” Jesus never beat people into submission either. Growing up in Montana, Eugene Peterson (translator of The Message), tells a childhood story of a school bully named Garrison. Garrison picked on Eugene almost daily. He would beat him up, call him a “Jesus sissy” and humiliate him. Eugene’s mother informed him that Christians have always been persecuted and he’d “better get used to it.” To help cope with the pain of persecution, he familiarized himself with Bible verses about forgiveness and cheek turning. One day, after about seven months of daily persecutions, Garrison started, once again, picking on young Eugene. But that day brought with it something very different. It must have been like a scene from a Christian Crusade version of the Christmas film, A Christmas Story. I’ll let Eugene Peterson tell you: That’s when it happened. Totally uncalculated. Totally out of character. Something snapped within me. For just a moment the bible verses disappeared from my consciousness and I grabbed Garrison. To my surprise, and his, I realized that I was stronger than he was. I wrestled him to the ground, sat on his chest, and pinned his arms to the ground with my knees….It was too good to be true. I hit him in the face with my fists. It felt good, and I hit him again – blood spurted from his nose, a lovely crimson on the snow. By this time all the other children were cheering, egging me on….I said to Garrison, “Say Uncle.’” He wouldn’t say it. I hit him again. More blood. More cheering…And then my Christian training reasserted itself. I said, “Say, ‘I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.’” He wouldn’t say it. I hit him again. More blood. I tried again, “Say ‘I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.’” And he said it. Garrison Johns was my first Christian convert. As tempting as it might be, this is not the way believers’ old lives are supposed to end. It is a decision one makes on their own; not because of an evangelical beat down (even if it is Eugene Peterson with a message and holy fists of fury). New Life To receive new life we accept Christ’s bidding to come and die. We offer our oriented selves to God, become disoriented from our old lives and become newly oriented in Christ. By doing so we experience a new birth and new life in Christ. Writing to the congregation in Corinth, the Apostle Paul stated, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” Many people can’t wait to rid themselves of their old lives. They are long for a new start, new life and new heart. Later in his life (after forsaking beatdown conversions), loving pastor, Eugene Peterson tells about a long-haul truck driver named Calvin. On one trip through Tennessee, the language on the CB radio disgusted him. He turned off his radio and prayed, “God, save me. Give me a clean life. I can’t live like this any longer.” Calvin was ready to accept his grim diagnosis. He was ready for a new heart and life. After months of waiting for a donor, one was finally found for Kyle Garlett. He knew that in order for him to live a new life he had to undergo a life-changing/heart-changing procedure – a heart transplant. Reflecting on the hours leading up to his transplant he wrote, “This night represented an exciting new beginning. The cracking of my sternum wasn’t quite the carbon copy of a broken bottle of champagne to christen the maiden voyage of the SS New Life, but the adventure waiting on the path extended before me was very much the same.” Kyle Garlett compared his new life to the maiden voyage of a new ship. Every January people all over the world grab on to the idea of a new start. We call them “New Year’s Resolutions.” New diet. New exercise schedule (or an exercise schedule). No more smoking, cheating, drugs, etc., I think you get the idea. There is a desire to different. There is a longing for new life. “Can you do something with this heart?” is the question. “God can!”, is the answer. That’s right. It is as Patrick Downey states, that even though we have dead hearts: Nevertheless, the Christian believes that dead hearts of stone can become alive again, become hearts of flesh and blood, and beat with a genuine desire for goodness and truth.