In each of our lives there are moments – both positive and negative – that have defined who we are. You never forget them – they remain with you for the rest of your life. You can look back at them and know – this was the point when life might have gone one way or another. You made a decision – for good or for bad – that has affected the rest of your life.

Story #1 – Guitar or Gun?

He’s name is Forrest Bobo and he worked in a hardware store that is still owned by members of a church I once served in Mississippi. One Saturday afternoon a mother and a little boy who was about 11 years old came in to buy his Christmas gift for that year. He has decided he wants to buy a 22-caliber rifle but his mother is not exited by the idea and has decided that a guitar would be a better gifts. Forrest hands the guitar to the boy, which the he plays with for some time.

They are very poor people. The guitar is $7.75 plus 2% sales tax, which is more than the little boy has been able to save up working small jobs for neighbors. Finally his mother says, “Son, I will make up the difference if you take the guitar instead of the rifle.” No one would have ever known it – but the purchase of that $7.75 guitar would stir up a racket that would last for decades. And that 11 year old boy? His name is Elvis Presley, of course, and that guitar he purchased Christmas time, 1946 was a defiing moment when Elvis started down the road to be Elvis. But it could have turned out differently.

Story #2 – Meeting Marla

A friend calls me up and says he is going to a party at the home of a woman friend of his at church. He wants to know if I want to join him. The place is just packed full of people – crammed in the tiny garden apartment and flowing out into a nice courtyard. We walk back to the kitchen and there stands a beautiful petite woman in an attractive sundress. She is busy talking to other friends. My friend tells me this is her condo and then introduces me to her. She says “hi – glad you are here” the drinks are outside. And that is the end of our conversation.

Three years go by. The same friend calls me up again and asks if I want to go to another party with him at someone's house. I have nothing better to do and find myself in a room with no one I know. But there she is again and my heart skips up beat as I get up the nerve to strike up a conversation – which to my surprise and delight goes remarkable well. She has a camera with her and I take the camera and we put our heads next to each other and I snap the shot. About two weeks later I get a letter on hotel stationary that has been mailed from England with that picture in it and a little note and a phone number, signed Marla Beck. The rest is history. It was a defining moment – a moment that might not have happened but because it did, I found the love of my life and now have the joy of two children that I would not have had – had it not been for that moment.

Your Life?

Think about your own life – what were those times – those events that forever have affected the course of your life?

Scripture: A Defining Moment for Jesus and the Disciples

You may not have noticed it – but our Gospel reading in Mark is a defining moment in the life of Jesus and the disciples.

“Who Do People Say that I Am?”

This moment begins when one day Jesus ask his disciples a very simple question: “Who do people say that I am?” “You know what everyone is saying about me – now tell me what you hear.” And they say, “Some say you are John the Baptist come back alive again. Some say you are the return of the great prophet Elijah. Others say you are one of the other great prophets come back alive.”

“Who Do You Say that I Am?”

Ok, that is fine and good, “but who do you say that I am?” (pause) It is time to make a decision – it is time for each of you to define who I am and to understand what I am about. And Peter speaks up. Now when ever you hear Peter talked about in the bible – you do well to recognize that it now is actually a code word. It is not just Peter who is about to speak but any of us in the church who claim to follow Peter. And Peter takes a deep breath and says it: “You are the Christ, the Messiah” – the one we have all been waiting for all these generations.

“The Son of Man Must Suffer Many Things…”

But it is not enough to know that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God. You must also know what sort of Messiah Jesus is. And so Jesus begins to tell them something that is very, very hard for them to hear: the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected and finally be crucified. And Peter (remember – he is speaking for the church) – Peter rebuked Jesus: “God forbid that this ever happen to you!” And Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me Satan! For you are not on the side of God but the side of people!”

Allusion: “It is time for you to grow up!”

I have a friend who was going to a spiritual director for sometime and one day she was going on and on about this and that – describing the same old issues and the spiritual director is sitting across the room listening and there is this long silence and she says, “Teresa, it is time for you to grow up!” It was a defining moment.

Time to Grow Up!

In the same way, Jesus is saying to Peter, to the disciples, to all of us – it is time to grow up. This may not look like it – but it is one of the more loving moments in the gospels – Jesus cares enough for his disciples to level with them and tries to help them understand exactly what they are getting themselves into. He wants them AND us to know exactly what the cost are to following him.

• Following Jesus is not just about having a good, safe environment where people’s needs are met! It is about living in such a different way in this world, that there might actually be people who will reject you – even kill you for it.

• This way of life is not just about being loved and cared for, it is about growing up and daring to live your life in a way that will truly make a difference.

• It is about living a life of consequence – a life that is not always easy – but one that matters.

The Scripture: “If anyone would follow after me, let him deny himself”

“If anyone would follow after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and come and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and who ever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s sake will gain his life.” Jesus creates a defining moment for his disciples.

A Life that Matters

The Lenten Journey is an invitation to recognize a defining moment…

In this Lenten season we are given an invitation to recognize that this could be a defining moment in our lives. When the Jesus challenges us to pick up our crosses and follow him, when he tells us that losing our life is the way we gain it, he is asking us to consider what we are living our lives for. We all receive one chance to live this life – ONE CHANCE – is what we are living our lives for worth of that one chance? What is it we need to let go of? What do we need to do in order to fully live?

A Life Worth Living = a Life Worth Giving

Jesus says that the life worth living is defined by a life worth giving. It is only in the giving of ourselves that we discover the joy of gaining a life that is worth living. It is not in holding back – living in a protective, guarded way that brings life – It is in the act of sharing, reaching out, letting go with others that life is gained.

Illustration: Grocery Story Clerk

The writer Frederick Buechner and his wife were in the grocery story shopping together. He was on one side of he store and she was on the other, and over a shelf of breakfast cereal and cake mix he said, “Don’t forget the ice cream,” and she said, “All right, but don’t you forget you’re trying to lose weight,” and he said, “Oh well, you only live once.” And then it happened – one of those moments you might miss on any other day but on this day – Fredrick Buechner heard it. The store was nearly empty so that the woman at the checkout counter had no trouble hearing their conversation. It was a hot, muggy afternoon, and she had been working hard all day and looked flushed and hectic there behind her cash register and the racks of Life Savers, chewing gum and TV guides. When he said, “Oh, well, you only live once,” she broke into their conversation, and said, “Don’t you think once is enough?” That was it.

It was mildly funny and he laughed a bit and so did the boy carrying up some empty cartoons from the cellar, but it was not just a jest because Fredrick had a feeling that what by some rare chance he had happened to hear a human being say, she was just surviving – enduring this life – making the best just to get through it.

Killing Time – Getting By

This world is full of people who in one way or another are merely “getting through their lives,” they are “killing time.” A horrible phrase isn’t it? “Killing time,” because it is your own time you are killing and you have only so little time in this life. We only have one life to live – one life to do something with. When Jesus tells us to pick up our crosses and follow him – when he invites us to deny ourselves that we may gain life – he is inviting us to do something other than “get through” or “kill time.” We are being invited to decide what we are willing to die for – or to say it another way: what is it worth living our lives for so much that we would be willing to die for it. Jesus’ words are a gracious invitation to meaningful life.

Millard Fuller: A Life Lived Well

I had the good fortune of getting to know someone famous once. A native of Alabama he rose from humble beginnings to become a young, self-made millionaire. He and a college friend began a marketing firm while still in school, “but as his business prospered, his health, integrity and marriage suffered.” All this caused him to re-evaluate his values and direction. It was – a defining moment. He was reconciled to his wife and renewed his commitment to follow Christ.

They sold all their possessions, gave money to the poor and began searching for a new direction. They founded Koinonia Farm, a Christian community near Americus, Ga. Together with others they founded a new ministry that built modest homes on a no-interest, nonprofit basis and made them affordable to low-income families. Over 1.5 million people in over 3000 communities have decent housing because of a defining moment in this man's life.

And the name of the person whose defining moment change the world: Millard Fuller and Habitat for Humanity. It all began with a decisive moment in his and his wife’s life.

Millard died on February 3 of this year. But I wonder – does anyone here think he had any regrets? His was a life worth living.

Other Ways of a Life Worth Living

In so many small ways, quite, unnoticed ways, people respond to the call of Christ to follow him and discover a “life worth living.”

• The neighbor who with out fail goes over to the elderly next-door neighbor first thing in the morning and then at night to be sure she is doing well.

• The sister who uses her vacation time to travel across the country every weekend to see her younger brother who is going through painful chemo and has no one to be with her.

• The family who sacrifices useful monthly income to support a poor child and her family in Guatemala because they know just how blessed they are and cannot stand the fact that there is a child anywhere in this world who goes with out.

You really have a choice on how you are going to use this short life you have been given. You can just make it through – looking after yourself and your kind. Or you can hear the call of Christ to come and follow – to die to self – but to gain a real life. And if you can hear that call – this is your defining moment.

Rev. Allen Mothershed, First Congregational Church, Moline, March 8, 2009

Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark, The Killing of Time, p. 71-72.

Ibid, p. 73.

CNN.com, “Habitat for Humanities Founder Dies,” February 3, 2009.