Last updated on April 20, 2023
(This is the message I recently gave to Voltage, the high school ministry at Life Covenant Church in Helena, MT.)
Welcome back. Hope you had a great time off last week. Thanks, Sam for allowing me to speak tonight, and thank you all for being here. Let’s pray. Lord let my words be worthy, so I can be your spokesman. Amen.
So Sam asked if I would give today’s message months ago. Something about just getting back from Guatemala, too tired, too busy, blah blah blah. And oh by the way, he said, it’s also Easter week. You know, Easter, where Jesus died and rose from the dead; the very foundation of the Christian faith and eternal salvation. The students’ future hangs in the balance, Sean! No pressure or nothin’.
So, I’m thinking and struggling to come up with ideas. And then, I saw this:
(The video at this link is almost 5 minutes long total. If you want to skip to the relevant clips I used, watch from 0:00 to 1:12, and from 3:35 to 4:35)
There’s a number of reasons why this scene from Avengers Endgame is powerful. It’s about way more than the Avengers victory and Thanos losing. More than the culmination of over a decade of Marvel films. More than the climax of the final battle scene between, like, every Marvel character ever and the universe’s biggest, baddest, most purplest villain.
The biggest reason why this is a powerful scene, and how this relates to Easter, is Tony Stark’s self-sacrifice. He knew, as a mere human, using the infinity stones – those colorful things on his glove when he snaps his fingers – would kill him. They nearly took out Thanos and the Hulk.
And he had been told by Doctor Strange that out of 14 million scenarios, the only one where the Avengers and humanity win is where Tony dies. He knew what he was getting into, what it meant for him personally, and he chose to do it anyway.
Today we are going to talk about sacrificial love. This Friday, Christians everywhere commemorate the sacrifice Jesus made when he was crucified, and how that was not the end of the story because on Easter Sunday, he came back from the dead. We’re going to dig into this concept of sacrificial love – what it is, why God developed it, and what it means for us.
If you notice, there are reminders of Christ’s sacrifice everywhere, even in non-Christian stories and films, and in real life. So if we go back to the Avengers, one of the reasons Tony Stark’s death is so gut wrenching is that back when Thanos used the infinity stones to wipe out half the human race, Tony’s wife and daughter survived, and for five years, he resisted anything that would put his family in jeopardy. But in the end, he chose to die for their benefit, and everyone’s benefit, so they could live. To him, they were worth the sacrifice.
However, Tony Stark is not the only one who makes a self-sacrifice in that movie. Black Widow hurls herself off a cliff, in fact she fights off Hawkeye for the right to die, to just obtain one infinity stone. Without it, the other stones would be useless.
Not familiar with that movie? How about a little series from back in the 1970’s that maybe you’ve heard of: Star Wars.
In the original Star Wars film, Obi Wan Kenobi allows himself to be killed so he can help Luke Skywalker in the long term.
In Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader sacrifices himself to save Luke from being killed.
In the more recent Rise of Skywalker movie, Kylo Ren does the same thing and sacrifices himself to save Rey and defeat the emperor.
Not a Marvel or Star Wars fan? No problem. How about a romantic movie, one of the highest grossing films of all time – Titanic? After the ship sinks, Jack chooses to hang on to the edge of some floating debris in the icy water, so Rose can be on top of it and out of the water. Jack eventually succumbs to the cold, and drifts below the surface while Rose survives.
Not a movie fan? How about a real-life example? On September 11, 2001, after highjacked planes had already struck the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the passengers of Flight 93 chose to sacrifice themselves, and turn the tables on the hijackers to prevent further loss of innocent life. The plane went down in a Pennsylvania field with no survivors.
Or what about examples of everyday people. People choosing, sometimes instinctively, to put themselves in potentially mortal danger to rescue someone they don’t even know. Like running into burning buildings, or into raging floodwaters, or walking out on to an icy pond where someone has fallen through.
Self-sacrifice resonates with us on a deep level, whether as part of a fictional story or through real-life stories. Because it represents the ultimate sacrifice. One life is extinguished so another one can survive. It taps into this primal fear of death we all have. It also makes us wonder deep down if we could do it in the same situation, or if someone would do it for us.
Sacrificing oneself is the ultimate expression of love. The apostle John says, “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13, NLT). Because love is not just a feeling, it’s a choice. A choice to put someone else’s needs and wants and life before their own, and then choosing to carry out the necessary actions.
That’s what Jesus Christ did, for you and for me. He chose to die so we could live for eternity in heaven with him because he thinks we are worth it. Which was how God designed it.
A quick Biblical summary: thanks to Adam and Eve disobeying God in the Garden of Eden, every person since then has been plagued by sin, also known as disobedience to God, which results in separation from God.
And so to be right with God and restore a person’s relationship with him, and allow for forgiveness of sins, God asked for offerings, for sacrifices. However, a person did not have to hurl themselves off a cliff and plummet to their death. No. God laid out a plan that said you had to give up an animal that was part of your herd or flock, or part of your crops as a substitution for you.
The idea was the offering had to be the best of what you had, a perfect animal without any blemishes or sickness, or the first harvesting or cutting of your crop; the type of things that would make you think hard about what you were doing and why, because it would cost you financially. So your offering demonstrated your faith that God would provide for you, and make up for what you gave up, since you were giving away part of your livelihood.
But ultimately, sacrifices of this kind were symbolic, and we, being the humans that we are, screwed this up anyway. We messed up God’s offering system by half-heartedly giving something less than our best as an offering, like a lame animal we were going to get rid of anyway, or crops on the verge of rotting anyway.
Our hearts were not in it. We wanted more control over our stuff and our lives. We made sacrifices because we had to, not because we wanted to, and therefore, we didn’t actually mean it. We were just going through the motions.
And so, God decided to make one final sacrifice, so once and for all, we could be right with him, if we chose to. So he sent his perfect, sinless son Jesus to die in our place for our sins. No more symbolic animals or crops.
All we have to do is believe that his sacrifice was worth it because he thought we were worth it, you are worth it, despite all our screws up, and rejection of him, and sin. We are still all precious to him no matter what we’ve done, or our background, or social status, or even whether we believe in him or not.
That’s why Jesus is the embodiment of sacrificial love. Again, the apostle John says, “This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.” (1 John 4:9-10, MSG).
So to connect the dots, when we see or read about someone who sacrifices themselves, it resonates with us because God wired us that way. He gave us this spiritual radar so we could pick up on this message no matter where it comes from, whether fiction or non-fiction.
So we can relate to what he is trying to tell us.
So we can have some idea about how much we mean to him.
So we might understand that we are worth the sacrifice.
Do you believe you’re worth it?
Because he does.
Let’s step back from the ultimate sacrifice for a minute, and think of this in non-lethal terms. True love requires sacrifice – not just dying for someone, but a sacrifice of your time, your comfort, convenience, talents, money, and more – for the benefit of someone else. You’ve got to give something up to show someone you love them. Like going to a type of movie you don’t like because the person you’re dating does. There has to be some cost for both people involved. If there isn’t, that is not love.
Forcing someone to conform to your will or your way of doing things all the time is not love. My-way-or-the-highway is not love. That’s a dictatorship and it’s unhealthy. That’s why God gives us a choice – it’s the only way to show we truly love him.
God did his part by sending Jesus. Now it’s up to you to do your part.
A little personal application. When you chose to do something for someone else, not in a grudging I-have-to-do-this sort of way, but with an I-get-to-do-this sort of way, that’s an offering of love. And that offering typically involves three main aspects: your time, your treasure and your talent.
First, when you can think of twenty other things you’d rather be doing instead of serving someone or helping someone out, you are offering your time. Like your adult leaders that are here voluntarily every week. Or those of you who gave up a Friday night to help at the Bishop Eluidi banquet. Or those of you who gave up spring break to serve the people of Santa Apolonia. Or you visit your grandparents in assisted living. Or help your parents make dinner. Or drive your younger siblings somewhere. Or when you help at Vacation Bible School (VBS), as Deanna will ask you to do soon.
Second. When you buy something for someone or donate to a cause, and do not expect anything in return, that’s offering your money, or treasure. I realize that as high-school students, you don’t have a lot of treasure right now, but you will.
Third. If you create something and could’ve been making money by selling it, but you give it away, or when you volunteer to do something you’re good at, like dealing with kids, or teaching, or playing music, or helping out with a group, and don’t get paid for it, that’s an offering of your talents.
For these examples, and many, many more, you choose to give a part of yourself away. You offer it as a service for others.
Again, this is actually following the pattern that God laid out in Old Testament times as a way for people to demonstrate they loved him, wanted to be closer to him, and had faith in him. Offering your time and treasure and talent nowadays is a way of saying thank-you to God for the sacrifice Jesus made for you on the cross.
A way of showing him his sacrifice was worth it.
So before you spend excessive time mindlessly scrolling through social media or on Tik-Tok, stop, and ask yourself, is that really what Jesus died for?
Thankfully, his crucifixion is not the end of the story. I mentioned early on tonight that one of the reasons seeing and reading about someone’s self-sacrifice resonates with us is our fear of death. Well, with Jesus’ sacrifice came the resurrection on Easter. He conquered death.
His resurrection points to eternal life in heaven. So, this world is not all there is. If we believe in him and believe his sacrifice was worth it, there is so much more than just this life to live for. Jesus died so we could spend eternity with him.
Let’s close with this. In the movie, A Quiet Place, the world has been taken over by aliens that are blind, but have exceptional hearing. So the surviving humans must adapt and live in near total silence. There is very little dialog in the movie, and it helps ratchet up the tension. The movie follows one family, that includes a teenage daughter, who happens to be deaf, so there is a lot of sign language used to communicate and for safety reasons.
And life is carrying on even with the aliens lurking around, including this friction, this tension, between the daughter and her father that runs throughout the film. She thinks he has never forgiven her for the death of her youngest brother, since she was the one who gave him a noisy toy to play with, despite her father saying not to, which drew the aliens in. She thinks her relationship with her father is broken beyond repair.
In the closing scene, the kids are trapped in a truck and being attacked by an alien, and the father, played by John Krasinski, makes a decision to save them, to sacrifice himself by drawing the alien’s attention away from the kids, so they can escape.
But not before he lets his daughter know this:
If I could sum up every sacrificial act and offering, fiction and non-fiction, super heroes and ordinary joes, and Christ on the cross, they all spring from this: love.
A loving choice, and the necessary actions, to put someone else’s well-being and joy and happiness and needs, and sometimes life, ahead of your own.
Even though we may think God has a problem with us, and we manufacture our own friction and tension with God over something we did or didn’t do, or we think we’re not good enough, Jesus sacrificed himself for you, for all of us, so we could be right with God and not worry about death, because he believes you are worth it.
He loves you.
He has always loved you.
Before we head to small group, we going to pray. If this message resonated with you, if you have that tugging in your spirit, and want to say thank you for Jesus’ self-sacrifice for you, pray along with me silently.
Let’s pray. Heavenly father, thank you for all the reminders around us about your sacrificial love, so we can be constantly reminded how much you love us, how you have always loved us. Thank you for believing that I am worth your sacrifice.
Lord, we are all sinners. But I believe that Jesus is your son, and he stood in my place, and sacrificed His life for mine, and then rose from the dead, so I can be right with you. Lord, please forgive me. I’m looking to you so I can truly live, and be in your presence, forever and ever. Amen.
If you prayed that prayer for the first time, congratulations! Today is the start of something awesome in your life. Please make the time before your leave tonight to speak with Sam or one of us adult leaders to learn more about what it means, and what some next steps for you should be.
Thanks for listening. Let’s head to our small groups.