Matthew 16:21-28<\/p>\n\n\n\n
August 29, 1999<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You have never met this creature before. That\u2019s because it\u2019s a microorganism. You can\u2019t see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also because the only place it lives is in environments where the temperature is at least 170 degree Fahrenheit with an optimum temperature of over 215 degrees. Water boils at 212.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Its name is \u201cPyrococcus Furiosis.\u201d Let\u2019s do this again. \u201cPy-ro-coc-cus Fur-i-o-sus.\u201d Good!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pyro is only one of many microorganisms attracting the attention of scientists today. Biotechnologists are learning a lot from organisms living way out there, in dangerous places, on the edge. They call these microbes \u201cextremophiles\u201d\u2014a name that means \u201cextreme-lovers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Extremophiles are microorganisms that thrive in hot springs, polar ice caps, salty lakes, and acidic fields. Not the kinds of places you\u2019d want to be vacationing this summer! They simply love to live in conditions that would kill humans and most of the plants and animals we have come to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But according to The Futurist <\/em>magazine, \u201cExtremophile microbes are also busy industrialists producing enzymes that are enormously useful in food, chemical, pharmaceutical, waste treatment, and other industries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Take our little friend Pyro. Pyro lives in the scalding geothermal springs of Yellowstone National Park. As an alternative for chlorine used in the paper whitening process, Pyrococcus Furiosus can be used as a friendly enzyme to the environment. It\u2019s amazing how these tiny little microbes found in extreme conditions can do for us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have heard of extremophiles before. Perhaps we just didn\u2019t realize it. Today\u2019s Bible lesson identifies the Greatest Extremophile of All Time\u2014Jesus Christ. Jesus reveals himself to be an extremophile, showing his disciples that<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201che must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the<\/p>\n\n\n\n elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 be raised\u201d (Matthew 16:21).<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was the most scandalous thing that Jesus ever said to his followers. Everything that the disciples were taught growing up in Israel was that one day, there will be a Messiah. This Messiah is to be a powerful figure, a king, a priest or a prophet, designated by God to perform heroic things. Not to suffer or be betrayed. The idea of a \u201cMessiah\u201d who would live as an \u201cextremophile,\u201d suffer and die, was an alien thought. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Peter couldn\u2019t believe his ears. It\u2019s something like having me standing behind this podium giving a sermon. And you didn\u2019t like what I was saying. So, Roger our head Deacon comes up here and says, \u201cDon, let\u2019s step over here. I have something to say to you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Peter objected to Jesus\u2019 extremely painful prediction. \u201cPeter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, \u201cGod forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.\u201d Jesus reels around and says, \u201cGet behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on the divine things but on human things.\u201d Only five verses earlier recorded in Matthew 16, Jesus declared that Peter was the solid rock upon which the church will be built. Suddenly, Peter crumbles into a lesser kind of stone\u2014a stumbling block.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Peter was unable to stand the thought that Jesus would suffer and die. Peter wanted to take the easy way out. He wanted to put a stumbling block in front of Jesus\u2019 path so that Jesus wouldn\u2019t have to suffer and die. But to pursue his destiny, Jesus must put all thoughts of safety and easy conclusions to his life behind him. Jesus sets his mind on his Father\u2019s divine plan for him and not Peter\u2019s human easy way out<\/p>\n\n\n\n He then calls his disciples to join him in being one who lives in extreme environments. \u201cIf any want to become my followers,\u201d says Jesus, \u201clet them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it\u201d (Matthew 16:24-25).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following the strange logic of extremophilic microbes, disciples are to do enormously useful work while living in environments that would kill most people. Disciples are to experience suffering, self-denial, and even loss of life, but in the process serve others, and ultimately find their real selves. The divine irony of the gospel is that losing for Christ\u2019s sake leads to heavenly gain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s say that we are \u201cFCBC extremophilic Christians.\u201d How well is our discipleship doing in today\u2019s extreme environments?<\/p>\n\n\n\n First of all, life in a challenging and changing environment can make us stronger, wiser, and more trusting. It was no accident that the ancient Israelites got stronger through their period of exile in Egypt.\u00a0 Exodus tells us that the Egyptians set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and under the whip the Israelites built cities for Pharaoh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites\u201d (Ex. 1:11-12).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a very modest way, we are in exile from our church building on Waverly. And maybe as we minister out from the Lau school, from CEC, from the Y, all these changing environments, that we may begin to ask some tough questions about mission in Chinatown and throughout the Bay Area. Perhaps, we too, like the Israelites, will get stronger, multiply and spread out. Maybe our extremophilic discipleship of doing enormously useful and effective ministry will amaze and shock everyone around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And personally in my life and in yours, sometimes life breaks us, but then we become stronger in the broken places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes challenges overwhelm us, but then we acquire wisdom that helps us to meet and overcome those challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes we lose our faith in people and in the world around us, but then our faith in God becomes more secure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An extremophile is not a person who hates the world, but instead a person who discovers that the world does not contain her salvation. Strength and wisdom and faith are always to be found on the edges of the world\u2019s comfort, in challenging places where God resides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You have heard me say before that Chinatown is an extreme environment. No parking! Few open spaces! A lot of trash! Firecrackers and funeral marches blaring into our worship time! Steep hills! Mysterious smells! Lots and lots of people everywhere! Chinatown is a challenging extreme environment on the edges of the world\u2019s comfort. And it is exactly in this place of danger and extreme conditions that God resides! God lives and has an address in Chinatown!<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not saying that an extremophile is an extremist. Christians who live on the edge are not people who go looking for oppression or suffering or martyrdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s a St. Peter\u2019s joke:<\/p>\n\n\n\n A man arrives at the pearly gates, and St. Peter looks up his record and says, \u201dWell, you didn\u2019t do anything particularly good, but neither did you do anything particularly bad. I\u2019ll tell you what: If you can tell me of one really good deed you\u2019ve done, I\u2019ll let you stay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the man says, \u201cWell, once I saw some bikers menacing a young woman. I stopped my car. I took out my tire iron. I walked up to their leader, a huge, hairy, ugly man, full of tattoos. He had a nose ring. I ripped it right out of his nose, and I said, \u201cYou leave this girl alone, you hear?\u201d I stared at all of them, and I said, \u201cNow get out of here, or you\u2019ll have to answer to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 St. Peter was impressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen did this happen? he asked the man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAbout two minutes ago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be an extremophile is not to be like 24 year old Julia Butterfly Hill either. Hill spent a year living in a tree she calls Luna. This forest activist was protesting the logging of ancient redwoods in California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPeople ask me what it will take for me to come down,\u201d she says. \u201cI want to come down to a world where there is no more clear-cutting, no more herbicides sprayed on our trees, and the remaining 3 percent of our ancient forests are protected forever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While we may admire Julia Hill for going to great lengths to take a stand for her beliefs\u2014perching as a lightning rod 180 feet above ground in a giant redwood\u2014many would question the effectiveness of making ultimatums from extremist positions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Christian extremophiles take stands not in timber tops, but at the timberline\u2014in the rough-and-tumble engagements with other people, down where people live, right in extreme places like Chinatown!<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is where people live that extremophiles take a stand. They can be found in the marginal and transitional worlds of Egyptians and Israelites, Jesus\u2019 disciples and the elders, chief priests, and scribes, rich and poor, urban dwellers and suburbanites, youth and retirees. Extremophiles take a stand where people live. It is in the midst of real-life joys and pains that they lose their lives for the sake of Christ, and in this process discover a life that is radically real and extremely worthwhile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this real-life world, we FCBC extremophilic Christians are extremely compassionate, extremely humble, extremely hospitable, extremely patient, extremely long-suffering, extremely forgiving, extremely loving, extremely faithful. We are extremely committed to Chinatown in that we are donating as much as $1 million dollars to stay here because God resides here on the edge of a challenging extreme environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We do all this enormously worthwhile work because it gives us great joy. Remember times when you have given everything you had like<\/p>\n\n\n\n running in a race<\/p>\n\n\n\n or working all day and night on a school project<\/p>\n\n\n\n or completing a house project that your wife said you should call a professional<\/p>\n\n\n\n or working on a new product in your company until you it is marketed<\/p>\n\n\n\n or practicing a song until you can sing it perfectly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we achieve something enormously worthwhile, we sense a joy in our hearts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we do this enormously worthwhile work of being a committed and faithful church, it gives us this deep sense of satisfaction and a rush of pleasure that can never be found by punching a clock and drawing a paycheck.\u00a0 When we are extremophilic Christians, we discover this joy of being a part of God\u2019s divine plan in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spending a $1 Million dollar is a bit extreme, some might say. It\u2019s like winning the California lottery. Rather than spending this money on entertainment or a vacation or something new for our house or even perhaps a new church where there\u2019s no extreme conditions like Chinatown. \u201cNo,\u201d we say and we affirmed together that we will spend this money on something totally and extremely illogical according to human terms but faithfully and obediently according to God\u2019s divine plan!<\/p>\n\n\n\n God has not promised us safety insurance at no risk to us. But rather, God invites us to participate in an adventure called the \u201cX-treme game of being his kingdom on earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Jesus told his disciples, he is telling us today that if we want to play this extreme game of God’s Kingdom, we are to “take up our cross and follow him.\u201d \u201cFor those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are a bit like extremophilic microbes\u2014tiny and small compared to the big world out there. But with Jesus Christ as our leader, we are on an extremophilic journey that challenges us to do enormously useful work while living in situations that would terrify most people, way out there, in dangerous places, on the edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let us pray.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Dear Lord, call us to live an extreme life of discipleship where our words, deeds, and hopes are making a difference in the world that you loved so much. Continue to show us how to deny the things that may hold us back and to take up the cross and follow you. For only in that extremophilic discipleship in you will we find life. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Matthew 16:21-28 August 29, 1999 Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco. You have never met this creature before. That\u2019s because it\u2019sJesus\u2014Greatest Extremophile of All Time<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
The Cross and Self-Denial<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
Not Extremist<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
FCBC Extremophiles<\/h6>\n\n\n\n