Fellow Redeemed,

We are in the midst of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Do you have passion? I have heard passion defined as “unrestrained effort”. That is the truth when it comes to the passion of Jesus. He would be unrestrained from attaining his goal of saving you from your sins, and going to the cross to die for them. Unrestrained, unrelenting and untiring are all adjectives used to describe a person of passion.

The French Foreign Legion had a saying, “If I fall, push me. If I stumble, pick me up. If I retreat, shoot me.” Now that is extreme passion, don’t you think? Passion does, passion tries, passion fires and then aims, passion is the engine that drives success. What is your passion? Do you have one? You should probably have three things about which you are passionate. How often do we find people with no passion at all? Listen to the Apostle Paul and see if he has passion. Philippians 3:12-14 “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ.”

What Paul is saying is a risky endeavor, here on earth. If we measure ourselves based on success or failure, well we are going to fall short every time, I mean, we are sinful. But, if success is passion and the desire to remain faithful to our calling, well then, we are willing to risk it all. And that is what passion is at the end of the day. Passion is the desire to risk it all for the kingdom of God. One of my favorite bands ever is the Irish rock group, U2. They had just come off a hugely successful album called the Joshua Tree, in the late 80s. The album was such a huge hit that they, as a band, questioned their ability to even try to top it. They were at a crossroads, professionally, and as artists. Bono, the lead singer of the group spoke of that moment. “In order to move from one expression of the band to another, we had to risk it all, and in between there was nothing.” Wow, what a scary place to be. The safe bet was just to put out a mediocre album. People would have understood. The passion of the band would not allow it. During the recording of the song “Mysterious Ways”, the Edge (U2’s guitarist) tried out a bridge with the chord progression Am, D5, F, G. Everyone in the room was taken back by the way that chord progression grabbed them. If you strum those four chords on a guitar, you will recognize the song “One”, which became their biggest hit ever. Passion drove them to keep trying and not to settle.

Jesus Christ does not settle. His passion drove him to the cross. There he saved us from our sins. If we have faith, then we have passion. If we have passion then we remain faithful and faithfulness is the desire to move from one expression of ourselves to another. As we make this move, we realize that it is fraught with danger, because we could fail at any point. But, true failure is to refuse to have passion, to refuse to try, to refuse to pursue failure. Ahh, there’s the rub. Success only comes when we step out in faith, which could be seen as a pursuit of failure. Then and only then do we realize true success, remaining faithful.

Amen!

Rev. Scott Burmeister