Embracing Sacrifice: The Zelinski Test of Commitment

today i want to talk to you about the zielinski test there's a journalist i think his name is john harris and he was writing as many have about where the attention of our world is focused right now what is happening in ukraine the suffering that is going on there and the remarkable inspiration that's coming from president zielinski how uh when leaders in the west uh offered him an opportunity to escape so that he could set up a government in exile which lots of leaders would do he refused to do that and he famously said i don't need a right i need ammunition and he said i said to several leaders of the west at a few different times this may be the last time that you ever see me because he's very aware of the fact that uh his life is at risk and untold other people in ukraine are also putting their lives at risk and this is a very sobering challenge harris writes for those of us who cheer from a safe distance and the question that it raises the test that it poses is how much are you willing to sacrifice for your beliefs what am i what are we willing to suffer for our ideals for what we say we are deeply committed to [00:25:27]

dallas willard as we're walking through lent which is a good time to think about sacrifice lent is a reminder that our life is not about the avoidance of suffering it's about the pursuit of love it's about the service of love that's where meaning is and suffering and sacrifice are somehow deeply woven into that dallas writes when he speaks about love we know love by this that jesus laid down his life for us that's from the letter that john wrote first john chapter 3 verse 16 and then dallas says all other loves are to be measured by this standard by the fact that as paul says greater love has nobody than this that someone is willing to not just sacrifice but actually lay down their life so that's the zelinski test don't be too quick to answer it [00:117:02]

one of the most famous stories in the new testament that is also sobering but also heartening is the story of peter and when jesus poses this test for him what would you be willing to suffer and says you're all going to run away from me peter said no no not me everybody else might leave you but i will stand with you i'm ready for the test i'm up to the challenge and of course he was not but that was not the end of his story sometimes it takes a while to get to that place [00:169:12]

philip yancey has written a wonderful article about what's going on in ukraine he was there i think in 2018 and he writes about how many of the monuments in ukraine are actually expressions of remembrance of suffering because often suffering produces a capacity to endure and to commit in our lives that might be hard to come by otherwise so in the 1930s the soviets came and took over many many farms and took a lot of the crops and uh philip writes hundreds of thousands of people starved in the ukraine during that era and then the nazis came during world war ii and uh they lined up on the first day of executions 22 000 jews stripped them naked stood them on the side of a cliff and killed them with machine guns and then the next day 12 000 more ultimately hundreds of thousands including several relatives of president zelensky that's part of why when uh russian leadership uses the language of wanting to de-nazify the ukraine that is such painful and egregious language [00:199:04]

and then after world war ii there was the soviet takeover and then what looked like an opportunity for ukraine to be free in 2004 there was an election and a leader who would have led into greater independence greater democracy greater freedom ran but because of very clear fraud was denied the election and then an amazing thing happened this is uh philippines he writes about this sometimes called the orange revolution when newscasters were uh telling about the election of a pro-russian basically puppet government what they didn't think about was the fact that in the lower right-hand screen of the televised news there was someone who was relaying the news for people who were hearing impaired and what she signed no kidding was i want to address the deaf people of ukraine because i am ashamed to repeat these lies they are not true you must not believe them there has been fraud this man is not our president and the deaf people in ukraine began to email and text their friends and the news began to spread and other journalists took courage from this it began to write about what really happened and eventually crowds gathered up to a million people strong mostly wearing orange because that was the uh campaign color of the democratically elected leader and eventually the courts ordered another election and he won that sometimes called the orange revolution [00:274:00]

and all of this poses for you and me this great test it is an irony that sometimes living in a more secularized more comfortable more consumerist more materialistic culture i just want things to remain comfortable for me winston churchill another remarkable paradigm of courage once said about the united states you can always trust the united states to do what is right after they have exhausted every other option and and very often our first thought my first thought is how can i have life go the way that i want it and that does not develop the kind of character that is deeply committed to values part of what the scriptures teach about these ultimate values and of course love is at the core of them is we think that we're their champions we think that we are the ones holding them up we are the ones that are um uh propping them up but the reality is they're what hold our lives together [00:383:12]

the psychologist eric erickson talked about the stages of life and the final stage he says is either one of integrity or despair despair comes when i realize my life has been about nothing other than just my survival just my own doing well integrity comes when there are values that are so deep that i would give my life for them there was a uh old old old uh bit in a marx brothers movie there were comedians way way back in the day where harper marx is leaning up against a building where there's a no loitering sign and the cop comes and says hey you got to move on what do you think you're doing holding up the building and so he moves and of course the whole building collapses it turns out he actually was holding up the building the values that we think we are holding up in our virtue or our character they are actually the things that hold us up and this is supremely true when it comes to god [00:455:84]

and so lent is a time when we remember when we enter into the story of jesus who said to his friends on the final night this will be the last time that you see me until my death but it will not be the end and he told them that he was willing to lay down his life for his friends and then he called the little group of peter and even though peter like you and i failed that test the first time he took it one day the courage the commitment the devotion the love that was in jesus also filled up peter and he was given that test history tells us he was led to a place where he did not want to go and he was willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of that in which he believed for the sake of the one that he followed for the sake of the love that he could give [00:514:71]

so that's the zelinski test how much am i how much are you willing to sacrifice for what we say we believe in and of course if we're not at that place right now a good place to start is what am i actually sacrificing for and as we walk through lent very often in this season it involves fasting giving up things that my appetite wants food time in social media and then almsgiving where i'm being generous and then prayer so as i'm doing this um maybe i'm giving to help people in ukraine over this last weekend nancy and i were a place where folks spoke from both ijm they they've released 66 000 people from human trafficking around the world and then compassion international released uh hundreds of thousands of children for poverty and and a lot of you support those organizations maybe you just reflect on that for a while today maybe we just asked god where's an opportunity that i can make some kind of sacrifice where i have entered into suffering of some kind and i offer it to you so that ultimately i can be filled with the kind of love that jesus had and be willing to lay down my life if it's needed [00:572:39]