Ever hear of a baby born wearing diapers? Of course not! Ever hear of a person being born again wearing nothing but a cross? This happened to St. Francis of Assisi. When Francis decided to be a priest; his father disinherited him and brought him to trial before a bishop. Peter Bernardone demanded that his son give back all the money he took from him for the church and the poor. Francis threw a bag of money at his father's feet. Francis shuddered when he saw how his father clung to the money. Francis called to the bishop, "Wait a minute!" Then he stepped behind a screen, took off all his clothes, and appeared before a crowded courtroom stark naked with his clothes on his arm, Francis dropped them at his father's feet, saying: "You're getting my clothes, too. Here I am the way I was born. Now we are even!"

As Francis began a new life in Christ, he did what Paul talks about in today's Second Lesson: "Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse ..." The past is gladly given up as worthless. We sing, "So I'll cherish the old rugged cross, till my trophies at last I lay down." As Christians we say, "Good riddance" to past trophies and we look forward to a whole new life in Christ. In today's first lesson, God urges us to do just this: "Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing." Today's Gospel tells us that, in the past, God's prophets were killed one by one and even his Son will be killed. But, out of this tragic past will come something greater: "The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner."

Baptism is the time when a person is born again of God. The candidate renounces the Devil and all his personal evil past. He begins a new life in Christ under the mark of the cross. He takes off his clothes of the past and stands stark naked before God, to begin a new life. "Nothing in my hand I bring ... naked, come to thee for dress." While making the sign of the cross on the forehead of the candidate, the minister says, "Receive the sign of the Holy Cross, in token that henceforth thou shalt know the Lord, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings". The newborn Christian begins a new life living under the sign of the cross with the purpose of imitating Christ.

Get to Know Him

Free from the filthy clothes of the past, a Christian starts out with the goal of knowing Jesus. In our text Paul says, "that I may know him." To "know" him is more than knowing about him: where he was born, who his parents were, what works he did, how he suffered, died, and rose again. In the Bible, the word to "know" means a warm, intimate, and personal relationship with another person based on trust.

As a Christian, you know Jesus as the highest and best who ever lived or ever will live on earth. For a Christian, Jesus is all the world. Jesus is absolutely preeminent in all things. He is tops. He is greater than the greatest. if you ever get to Philadelphia, you want to notice that, in the downtown area, there are no towering skyscrapers. The highest point is the head of William Penn. Years ago the city fathers decreed that, in honor of Philadelphia's founder, no building should be built higher than the statue of Penn. That is the way it is for a Christian with Jesus. No one towers above him.

Because of Jesus' supremacy in all things, it is the ambition of a Christian to match him as far as possible. When Kagawa became a Christian, his first prayer was, "God, make me like Christ." In the days when boys were hero worshipers, a young lad went into a public building and saw in a mosaic on the ceiling a figure of Teddy Roosevelt seated on his horse. Overcome with admiration, the boy took off his cap, held it by his side, and said, "I want to be like him." As a Christian looks to Jesus, he says that he, too, wants to be just like him.

Knowing Jesus means living with Jesus every hour of the day. A Christian is a Christ-centered and a Christ-saturated person. Christ never gets out of his thinking or doing. He lives with Christ night and day. He lives with Christ and is aware of Christ's presence at all times. That is why the Christian sings, "He walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own." Non-Christians may have difficulty understanding this. They do not see Jesus or feel his nearness. Last summer I was in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, for a weekend preaching mission. One day I walked down the main street which was lined with one souvenir store after the other. The sidewalks were crowded with tourists. One of the popular items with children was a dog leash with a harness on the end of it. It seemed as though the leash were starched because it was stiff. The child could hold it as though the harness were on a dog. When I first saw it, I thought I was seeing things or that I was out of my mind. Here were boys and girls walking with a leash and harness as though they had a dog. Yet, the child acted as though there really were a dog in the harness. To adults this was a comical and crazy thing, but the presence of the dog was a reality in the child's imagination. In a similar way, the outside world thinks we are crazy to say we have Christ with us at all times. His presence, though unseen by the unbeliever, is not the product of our imagination. He is a reality in our lives.

To know Jesus also means to live for him. To know Jesus is to love him and to live for him. Our lives are dedicated to his service. It is an honor and a privilege to do something for Jesus. We adore him, we love him, we worship him, we would do anything for him, even die for him, if necessary. At the time when attempts were made on President Ford's life, a reporter called attention to the fact that Richard Keiser, head of the Secret Service, looked very much like the president. When he was asked whether he thought he could ever be shot by mistake, he replied, "I hope so." If a man could do this for a fellow-man, for his secular master, how much more will a Christian die in the place of the Master of all men! Moreover, whatever we do for others is done for Jesus. We give to the poor, we love our enemies, we lend a helping hand to them not because they are worthy of any help. Christians do it because, as Jesus said, it is done for him. That is why we share without asking for returns. We do not ask whether the recipients are worthy. These things do not matter. We are not doing these good things for them. We are doing them for Jesus.

Knowing Jesus means that he is key to all we think, believe, and say. Christian prayer is different from all other prayers, because the prayer is offered through Christ or in the name or spirit of Christ. Jesus told us that no man comes to the Father but by him. He is our intercessor at the throne of God, and he takes our petitions to the Father who answers them for Jesus' sake. Also, Jesus is the key to our being accepted by God. Jesus is the mediator between God and man. God will forgive you and me because of what Christ has done for us. Our only claim to getting into heaven is knowing Jesus who died for us in love. There is no other name by which a person may be saved, preached the Apostles. One religion is not as good as another. It is not a case of one God over another. The fact is there is only one true God, and Jesus is the only Son of the God. Thus, Paul cries, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." Christians don't even love like other people. On the night he instituted the Lord's Supper, Jesus gave a new commandment, "Love one another as I have loved you." Christians are to love as Jesus loved. And how did he love? - Like no other: He died on a cross for the sins of mankind. This makes a Christian a Christ-centered and Christ-dominated person. The Christian gets this way because his goal in life is to "know him."

Share the Suffering

A Christian faces the future, forsaking his past, not only by making his aim to know Jesus but to share in his sufferings even to the point of death. In our text Paul continues, "... may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death."

To be a Christian is to be a cross bearer. One time Jesus said, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." A cross is not one that deals with your own needs, burdens, or problems. Jesus did not bear his own cross in the sense that he was suffering and dying for his sins, for he was sinless. He died not for sin, but for our sins. To bear a cross means to bear the burdens of others.

This means that a Christian is expected to be and do more than other persons. If a man strikes you on the cheek, says Jesus, turn the other also. If a man makes you go one mile, go a second mile. Jesus asked, "What do you do more than others?" Do you love those who love you? Non-Christians do that. Christians are not to be ordinary persons, but extraordinary persons. We are not to be merely men, but supermen. One time Jesus told a parable about inviting people to dinner. He said that we should not invite people who could invite us back, but invite the poor and outcast who had no homes or money to invite us to their homes for dinner.

This means we can never be satisfied with doing the ordinary things of life. To be a Christian is not keeping up with those around us in the world. To be like Christ is to bear a cross for others. To love when others hate, to give when others save, to hold steady when others go to pieces, to wait for God while others lose patience, to hold fast to the truth when others adopt worldly ideas - that is the life style of a true Christian. The Christian way is the way of the cross, the way of sacrifice, the entering into the sufferings and death of Christ. A young couple were looking forward to their first baby. When the father was called to the hospital nursery to look at his new born baby boy, he was full of excitement, but when he looked he was shocked. The child was born without ears. It took some time for the parents to get reconciled to the handicap, but they decided to make the best of it. They treated their son as though nothing were wrong. He was a bright child who took honors at college. He became a worker for the State Department. One day the young man received a phone call from his father asking him if he could get off to come home for an operation, The doctor found a donor of ears and he wanted to make the transplant. The son asked who the donor was, but his father said the doctor considered it a confidential matter. The operation was a success and the son returned to his work. Later he was promoted as ambassador to a foreign nation. Then he received another call from his father to come, for his mother had died. He went back for the funeral and on the night before the funeral, the father asked his son to come to the casket. He wanted to show him something. He pushed aside his wife's silvery hair from her ears, and then the son realized who gave him his ears.

Rise with Him

Beyond the cross is the Resurrection. And a Christian wants to share in this, too. Thus Paul says, "... and the power of his resurrection." The power of the Resurrection is the power of victory. The Resurrection means that Christ and the belIever have power to overcome sin, death, and the Devil. The Christiàifs life in the future, contrasted with his past, is one of victory.

Victory means joy and celebration. How happy are football players when a teammate makes a touchdown! They run to him, hug him, and pat him on the head. When the Cincinnati Reds won the World Series in 1975, TV showed the winning team in the locker room hugging each other, laughing, crying with joy, and pouring champagne on each others' heads.

Because of this victory Christians share with Jesus, Christians ought to be the happiest people in the world. A Gallup Poll in 1975 found half of U.S. adults considered their lives dull and petty routine. Some think that a Christian must have a somber, severe, and serious face. A cartoon showed heaven filled with sour-looking angels on clouds strumming harps with vacant, bored expressions. The newcomer to heaven was shocked, looked around, and said, "For this, I kept the Ten Commandments?"

This joy is in the victory of the Resurrection. This has the power to enable us believers to transcend the world, with all of its problems, burdens, and death. In our liturgy we sing, "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation." We are happy because God has saved us, delivered us from the perils of life. We can live victoriously each day because God is with and for us.

Nothing, no evil power, can get us down, for God will deliver us from the depths. Happy is the man who puts his trust in God.

Even if we are afflicted, we are a happy people. If we suffer, we share the experience with Jesus. For the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross. When the Apostles suffered for the faith, they "counted it a joy to be able to suffer for Jesus." At the very beginning of his letter, James says, "Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials." One winter day, St. Francis was explaining to his brothers what joy was, as they walked to a village and suffered from the bitter cold. He said that perfect joy was neither in living an example of holiness, nor in performing miracles, nor in knowledge of all things, nor in ability to preach so well that unbelievers would be converted. They asked him, then, wherein was joy. He said, "When we get to the monastery, cold and wet, and they call us thieves and won't let us in, and we have to stay out all night in the freezing weather. If, then, you suffer patiently with love and gladness, you have perfect joy. If you think of the agony of Christ and endure all the pain patiently and joyously, you have perfect joy. Joy is in overcoming self in love for Christ."

Joy comes, too, from the victory over one's self. When we have Christ, we die to self and live for Christ in serving him. Service is the secret of happiness. A greeting card caught the truth when it said, "May you always be as happy as you make others." There is a formula for happiness in the little word, joy. It is an old and maybe outworn device, but it always works: Jesus first, Others second, Yourself last. Joy is in this threefold service and in that order: Jesus, others, self. Try it and you will find it is true. It works and you will reap happiness.

A Christian is characterized by a certain radiance that shines through because of a deep happiness in Christ. A true Christian is not one who moans and groans as though he has lost his last friend. He is cheerful and hopeful, always looking for and expecting God to do great things for him. He has in him the power of the Resurrection to overcome every disappointment and obstacle. Even if he tried to hide this joy, he could not do it, because it is part of his nature as a Christian. The Anaconda Mining Company began when a group of prospectors set out for Bannock, Montana, in search of gold. They were attacked by Indians who took their horses. As they slowly worked their way back home, one of them picked up a stone from a creek bed and it turned out to be gold. They decided they would tell no one and went back to equip themselves with food and tools. When they were ready to go back, three hundred followed them. No one told them about the find, but a reporter remarked, "Their beaming faces betrayed the secret."

It takes a long time for one born naked with a cross to grow into the manhood of Christ. This becoming a Christian is not a once-in-a-lifetime proposition. In our text Paul says, "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on ..." Luther confirmed this: "This life, therefore, is not righteousness but growth in righteousness, not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not yet finished, but it is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road. All does not gleam in glory, but all is being purified."

This means ever forgetting the sinful past and pushing on to new ventures with life in Christ. We never have it made, but we are being made into Christians. This calls for repeated renewal and rededication to Christ until the day we have reached the goal of oneness in Christ. One morning a servant found David Livingston kneeling beside his bed, dead. He died praying. On the bed was his diary and his last entry was: "My Jesus, my Savior, my life, my all, anew I dedicate myself to Thee". To our dying day this is what we all need to do.