The room is silent with anticipation. This moment has been months in the making. The curtain is drawn open. The lights blast on. Every eye is on the stage. The silence breaks with the clickity-clack, clickity-clack of ten small (adorable) five-year-olds fitted with shiny black tap shoes. Now proudly standing (slightly off-center) before a crowd of proud parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and babysitters.
3…2…1…it’s show time.
As I sat in that school theatre, looking at my five-year-old daughter, there was nothing she could have done in the next three minutes to earn my love. As she stood on that stage ready to tap her little heart out, I already loved her.
And this is not just a mushy, gooey feeling, but it showed itself in the weekly drives to the dance studio, the Thursday afternoons shuffling through a messy house in search of that dreaded “other” tap shoe that I could have sworn was right next to the half-eaten bagel from that morning.
This love was displayed in the twenty-dollar bouquet of flowers that were settled on my lap as a small way to show this little girl just a sliver of my love for her. None of these pieces of evidence were contingent on her performance. All of them flowed from my love for her.
Now, I put myself in those shoes (yes, the shiny black tappy ones). Not literally, but figuratively. I am standing on a stage; the lights are on, and who is before me? My family. My friends. My children. And up in the back corner…There He is—Jesus himself.
I am convinced that all of my tapping, jazz hands, and amazing twirls (sorry for the visual) will win the crowd over. The more I do, the more they will love me. The more I achieve, the louder they will clap. If I just ‘break a leg,’ as they say, then I have reached the climax of who I am. Maybe now I have achieved what I have been striving for all along.
Except that is not the case. I fall. I stumble. My timing is off. And to be honest, my shoes aren’t shiny at all. My performance fails me yet again.
Thankfully, I can’t tap, twirl, or jazz-hand my way into being loved by Jesus and neither can you. In fact, He was never scoring our lousy attempts in the first place.
In Mark chapter 8, Jesus invites us to drop the performance and hold on to something better.
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”
– Mark 8:34-37
According to Jesus, becoming one of His followers does not require a list of completed accomplishments, but an act of self-denial. You want to discover your true identity? Lose yourself.
This kind of self-denial is easier said than done. We tend, from a young age, to perform as a way to feel fulfilled. As a child, it’s the rush of scoring a goal or the A+ in bright red on top of a paper. As an adult, it’s seeing the diploma on the wall, the well-deserved raise, the wedding band, or the new truck in the driveway.
And if we are honest, we bring that same scorecard into our relationship with God. Our faith can become performance-based as well. Our church attendance, Bible App streak, or number of good deeds for the month. All of this in an attempt to find an identity.
But what happens when these fail or fall apart? The job is lost. The marriage is rocky. Or the truck breaks down. We miss a Sunday or our Bible Streak dwindles. What then becomes of our identity?
Jesus’ words in Mark 8 call us to a different identity. Specifically, an identity that is rooted in the gospel. Jesus says, “but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.” When our life is built on Christ’s love, things become what they should be. Whole. In the gospel story, Jesus loses His identity so we can find ours.
When the love of the gospel is the absolute center of who we are, the pressure to perform dissipates. It is no longer about what we can or can’t do. The work has already been done on the cross. And by carrying that cross, we are no longer the culmination of what we do, but a person who is marked by the love of the Savior.
C.S. Lewis says it this way…
The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become…our real selves are all waiting for us in Him.
So I am stepping off of the stage, hanging up the tap shoes (thank goodness) and walking directly into the arms of Jesus. No longer bowing for an audience of empty applause, but bowing at the feet of the One who gave His life. This is the better way. This is the way of the cross.
Mikey Sackrider
Mikey is a part of our Christ’s Church family and serves as a Creative Programmer at our Impact ministry partner, Christ In Youth. He serves as a host in our gatherings and guest services.
Mikey is pictured here with his wife, Tara, and children, Olivia, Owen, and Ellie.
