Which Hill Will You Live On?

You may not be able to pick which hill you die on, but you can pick which hill you will live on.

Do you really want to die on that hill? That is an expression used to encourage someone to think about what is so important that they are willing to give everything or die for. While there is value in asking this, the question is misleading. You may not have the power to decide which hill you will die on.

Jesus didn’t get to decide. He asked God to remove the cup of suffering placed before him. But when the powers of the world conspired, it spelled the end of his life on Earth as a physical human being. What makes his crucifixion so remarkable, is that he didn’t allow the prospect of death, suffering, being bullied, and even mobbed allow him to waver from what mattered most.

Jesus chose to live fully on the day of his crucifixion. He knew that he was made in the image of God, that he was God’s son sent to save the world. Powerful people who could make him suffer and die tried to get him to cave, cower, and forsake the truth. All he had to do was lie, all he had to do was say that, “Cesar is the Son of God.”

But if he had done that, then he would have saved his body, but lost his soul. Whenever we give in to fear, deny the truth, and deny who we are, we let our souls die a little. “What does it profit a person to gain the whole world, but lose their soul?”

Jesus kept his soul strong all the way to the end. You could say that he was fully alive, that he chose to live according to faith rather than fear, and so he lived his last hours in peace, love, and resisting evil.

So powerful was his witness to life, soul, and truth, that all along his final journey to the cross he converts people.

1. Pontius Pilate tries to intimidate Jesus. Rather than be intimidated Jesus says, “You say that I’m a king.” How audacious to try to convert Pilate!
2. Simon of Cyrene is compelled to take the cross of Jesus, to walk with him and help carry the load. Simon is brought to faith.
3. Many women including Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Joses walked with Jesus and by his witness their faith was strengthened.
4. Joseph of Arimathea got Jesus’ body and helped to bury him with honor.
5. A Roman Centurion at the moment of Jesus death confessed Jesus to be the Son of God. That would put the Roman in direct conflict with the Cesar. It was Jesus death on a cross that brought the Roman to faith, because Jesus truly lived the truth in faith.

We can do this like Jesus did, because we have a soul that exists beyond the physical realities. I remember my uncle Charles who was a peaceful man. He would catch lizards, put them in the freezer to cool them off, and then sketch them. They would warm up and run away by the time his sketch was over.

One day I went to watch a movie with my wife. A man sat near us who looked exactly like my uncle Charles even though we were hundreds of miles away in a different state. He even had my uncle’s same sketch book with him as he watched the movie. How often do you see someone taking notes and sketching in a movie.

When I walked out of the movie theater my mother called to tell me that my Uncle Charles had died that same day. To me, this was God’s way of letting me say goodbye, and of showing that there is more to us than our physical deaths. We are spiritual beings. We can be truly alive with our spirit in God’s care at every moment. Amen.