If you do not live a gospel that calls you to a life of sacrifice and service, you are living a shallow, selfish, shoddy substitute that promises much and demands little.

This week's texts give off both green lights and red lights: the hopeful green lights of salvation and redemption (in Hebrews) and the ominous red lights of sacrifice and service (in Mark and Isaiah). The ongoing challenge of discipleship is to acknowledge both these colors as we encounter them, not abandoning or avoiding atonement theology in our rush toward creation theology, responding appropriately to green signals and red ones.

One obvious color-coded signal emerging in society is the new sensitivity to "green issues:" ecologically minded, environmentally sensitive issues. Accelerated by Earth Day II, "Clean and Green" has become the color of some of the hottest topics for both consumers and companies.

One can see the formation of this new green movement not just in the increasing number of attempts at putting in green spaces, green ways and green belts (see the journal Green Perspectives), green taxes (California's "Big Green"), green shopping (there is now even a "Ten Commandments of Green Shopping" and The Green Consumer Supermarket Shopping Guide), green stocks ("Green Growth" is an investment group for socially responsible portfolios), even green memories.

As wonderful and welcome as the Greening of America (by Charles A. Reich [1970]) and the Greening of Science (by Rupert Sheldrake [1991]) would be, there is no green without red. Just as the concern of so many of today's "green" organizations is to sound a "red" alert, the "green" light/good news of redemption and salvation exists only because of Christ's unhesitating encounter with the painful "red" lights that blocked his road to the Father. There is no resurrection without atonement, no success without sacrifice, no liberation without suffering. The colors of the dream must include blood red if we are to achieve garden green.

Martin Amis is one of the great young novelists writing today. His London Fields (New York: Harmony Books, 1989) was nominated for many of the world's major literary prizes. In an interview on "Nightwatch," Amis was asked what it was like to have for a father (Kingsley Amis) a famous novelist known for his rather quirky and old-fashioned views about life and women. The son responded that he expected people to "read at red alert" when they approached his writings. He too frequently found himself "reading at red alert" about those issues that he cared deeply about.

The church needs more disciples who will live at red alert and minister at red alert. Indeed this sermon should call your people to form a "red party" in the church, with two levels of meaning to living at red alert.

First, red signals danger. Part of living at red alert is seeing the danger signals that are all around us, taking them seriously, getting a rise from them as a red rag gets a rise from a bull, and doing something about them, even charging them.

Second, living at red alert means the willingness to embody a discipleship of sacrifice and suffering, the openness to living out of a cross frame of reference and an attitude of service.

Both of these meanings to living at red alert are captured and encapsulated by a 14-year-old girl being interviewed just before the election of Pope John Paul II. A CBS newscaster roamed up and down the streets of Vatican City posing this question to people in the crowd: "What would you like to do if you were the Pope?" When he came to this 14-year-old girl, she replied: "I'd cover the communion wafers with chocolate."

That is precisely our problem. We already have. We already have in the sweet talk leadership we offer the world. We already have in the sweet tooth discipleship we display in our churches. The wrapper we have put around the gospel makes the Bible look like a box of spiritual chocolates. The results are deadly. Helge Rubenstein, cookbook author, has a chapter entitled "Death by Chocolate." It is a fitting title for the effect on the church of our preference not for plain but for chocolate-covered communion wafers.

When Jesus called disciples to follow him, he required them to take up the cross of suffering. "Cross" is not a nice word. It's a harsh word. It's a splintery wood. The church no longer clings to an old rugged cross. We prefer clinging to slick, silvery, sliver-less crosses that leave no splinters.

Sacrifice and suffering are not options of discipleship. Sacrifice is not an extra given to a few ecclesiastics. It is at the very heart of what it means to follow Christ: "For even Christ pleased not himself" (Romans 15:3). Philippians 3:10 even refers to "the fellowship of his sufferings." Romans 8:17-18 could not be more explicit: we "share in his sufferings" that we might "share in his glory." Mark 10:42-45 calls attention to an essential difference between Gentiles and Christians by identifying lowliness and servitude as the path of choice for those who would be followers of Christ.

Perhaps a good way of getting your people to see the seductions of "chocolate-covered communion wafer" and the need for a red party in the church is to look at the dominant spirituality in America today, what might be called a Sesame Street spirituality that is more preoccupied with the self than the soul.

Fourteen million people watch "Sesame Street" regularly. This includes five million adults, two million of whom watch without children. It is not just our children who have fallen theologically in love with a Sesame Street spirituality. Who doesn't like Cookie Monster or Big Bird?

What is the motto of the Cookie Monster? "Me want cookie; me take cookie." A college student was perpetually late in getting her papers to her professor. When asked why, she confessed she was working two jobs. Knowing that she already had a full scholarship, the professor asked why she was working so hard. "I'm buying a mink coat." "A mink coat?" her teacher asked incredulously. "Do you need a mink coat?" She replied: "I want a mink coat, therefore I need a mink coat."

This confusion of needs and wants has created a culture of needs, a culture least interested in making a life, less interested in making a living than in making a killing. We are living in a state of "hand-to-mouth luxury," novelist Peter DeVries calls it. Little wonder, then, the prevailing "if-you-can't-make-it, take-it" mentality.

There is no such thing as one cookie. A person went into an airport shop, bought a book to read and a package of cookies to eat while waiting to board the plane. The passenger then took a seat in the terminal and opened the book. Immediately the person sitting two seats to her right distracted her from her reading because, incredibly, the man actually was fumbling to open the package of cookies on the seat between them. When he put his hand into the package, extracted a cookie, and ate it, she couldn't believe her eyes. She was so shocked to see a total stranger nonchalantly eating her cookies she didn't know what to do - she didn't want to create a scene, but she wanted her cookies. So she reached over and removed a cookie from the package and ate it. "No way is he going to eat all my cookies! I'll show him." Whereupon the man reached out for a second cookie, and ate it. "I'll really show him," she told herself again, as she reached in and ate a second cookie. The man then ate a third cookie and she did likewise. By this time you would have thought the message would have gotten through to this cookie monster, but he still continued eating the cookies and she persisted in eating one for one until all the cookies were gone. As they boarded the plane, the guerilla warfare continued as each glared at the other with fire blazing in their eyes. Then she took her seat, reached into her purse for a tissue, and there found her still unopened package of cookies!

A Stanford student was asked about studying non-Western trends such as Islamic fundamentalism and Japanese capitalism. He responded: "Who gives a [hoot] about those things? I want to study myself." (Quoted in The New Republic, 18 February 1991, 40). When we were growing up, we learned a poem that was an indictment and mockery of this kind of selfishness:

I like me, I love me,
My self I do adore;
And every day, in every way,
I love me more and more.

Today our kids learn the song Big Bird sings:

I can do whatever I want to do
I can be whatever I want to be
I like me.

Self-esteem and self-abuse are not the only alternatives for the believer in Jesus Christ. There is a God-centered selflove that comes from loving God. When we love God, we love what God loves. And God loves us. But the movement of faith is from a self-centered existence, to a centered-in-self existence, to a God-centered existence. We become what we love - and when we love ourselves first rather than because God first loved us, we become like self rather than become like Christ.

Is it any wonder a generation of kids listens to gurus who tell it to "Follow Your Bliss" (Joseph Campbell), "I love what you do for me" (Toyota), "Just do it," (Nike), "Be all that you can be" ((US Army), "You deserve a break today" (McDonald's), "You're Worth It" (Loreal), "Feel Good About Yourself." Is it any wonder the Sinatra Doctrine ("I did it my way") reigns supreme? Is it any wonder the modern western self, with its estrangement from nature, its egotism, its pursuit of excess, is sick and infesting this whole planet with a virus that kills all living things?

People are tailoring their religions and customizing their beliefs to meet their needs. Not surprisingly this religion does little to change behavior or attitudes. In its Christian version, it is either a form of decaffeinated Christianity - it won't keep you awake at night; no need to fear loss of sleep about our troubled world. Or it is a form of "Christaholism," a word Calvin Miller uses to describe those who seek highs and happiness and follow Christ as long as it suits their needs and purposes (The Taste of Joy [Downers Grove, III.: Intervarsity Press, 1983]). The church needs disciples, not Christaholics. And disciples are cross-bearers and servants. They seek and follow Christ wherever he leads.

A study was done not too long ago of a major songbook used in many churches across America today. It found that only one percent of the hymns contain references to the cross. The church is losing sight of the centrality of the cross. "If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it." In our hymnals the doctrine of the atonement is becoming as rare as Christmas cookies for carolers. It is time to bring back to the church a cross frame of reference, a red party in the church.