How Much are You Worth?
What price do you think you could get on eBay for your life?
$447,216.00. That’s what Ian Usher discovered his life was worth after putting it up for sale on eBay. Mr. Usher had been divorced and wanted to make a new start so he decided he’d sell to the highest bidder his three-bedroom home and everything in it, including his Mazda, jet ski, motorcycle, and parachuting gear. As part of the deal he also offered to the buyer his job as sales assistant at a rug shop, as well as some quality time with his friends. “It’s time to let it all go,” he explained, “and move on to the next big adventure life has to offer.”1
What price do you think you could get on eBay for your life – or at least your worldly possessions, your job and time with your friends? Or maybe you’re not at a point where you’d be willing to let it go like Ian Usher did, even for a half million dollars.
Jesus helps us reconsider the value of our life and the price we can expect for it if we’re willing to let it go. “What good is it for a person to gain the whole world, yet forfeit one’s soul” (Mark 8:36)? The whole world is the most significant human thing, and the soul is the most significant God thing. If winning the most significant human thing means losing the most significant God thing, Jesus asks, how does that help you?
The reason Jesus’ twelve disciples needed to hear this is that they were doing what they could to avoid the cross. They wanted a Jesus who miraculously multiplies meals and heals sickness and tells nice stories, not a Jesus who suffers and dies and certainly not a Jesus who asks them to suffer and die. They wanted the good life, and it showed in their behavior as Jesus journeyed ever more closely to the cross. When a woman anointed Jesus with expensive perfume (as if preparing him for death and burial), the disciples murmured, “Why this waste” (Matthew 26:8)? In Gethsemane when the intensity of suffering mounted for Jesus in the shadow of the cross, the disciples tried to avoid it first by sleep, and later by sword. Finally, when Jesus was arrested, “All the disciples forsook him and fled” (Matthew 26:56).
What are you worth, then, to Jesus? You’re worth more to him than his own comfort, more than his own image or popularity or feelings, more than the whole world in his hands. We see that on the cross, but even before that when he talked about the cross, we listen to his words notice that for Jesus the cross was no aberration or accident. No mistake. No frustration of his bigger and better plans. Jesus walked toward the cross, not away from it. He pursued the cross. He willed his death with his whole heart. You are worth that to Jesus.
One survey of 10,000 employees from the 1,000 largest companies indicated that 40% of workers who left their jobs cited “lack of recognition” as a primary factor for leaving.2 Why, then, would we leave Jesus? What good life is waiting for us when Jesus has recognized our value by giving us himself? Therefore, when he asks us to give something to him or go without a blessing for a time or wait for the answer to prayer we’d like, we don’t need to look elsewhere.
PRAYER: Savior Jesus, thank you for making me worth so much more than I could ever make myself. Amen.
1 Article posted on http://www.vnunet.com/, June 25, 2008.
2 “Made to stick: Why companies should pave the way to praise.” Fast Company, September 17, 2008. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/129/made-to-stick-i-love-you-now-what.html
(Both facts featured in Homiletics magazine, published by Communication Resources)