The Fifth Sunday After Pentecost, Year C June 27,2010
Do You Want To Be My Disciple The Reverend Dr. Howard J. Hess
I. Introduction: Do you want to be my disciple? Listen, because I will tell you how to do that. And in today’s Gospel Jesus does just that. He made far-reaching demands upon those who expressed an interest in following him. These demands might sound harsh to our ears: those who follow me will have no homes, will not be allowed to go home and bury their dead, and will not be able to say good-bye to their families before they leave. Some time ago, I had thought that Jesus needed a PR person, someone who could help him sort out how to interest new disciples and clinch the deal before they changed their minds. Throughout his ministry, Jesus was never interested in marketing. Instead, he approached discipleship with a clear message about how his disciples’ lives will be changed. Because of the cost of discipleship, many of his prospects never followed through.
Was Jesus being foolhardy or did Jesus understand something about Christian discipleship that has become blurry for many of us? I think the shortcoming, if we want to think about it that way, is with our understanding of his message, not with the message itself. The church has often become a social institution with many different branches, all of which require administrative resources, buildings that need to be maintained, and salaries that need to be paid. Some believe that the church in the west has become in fact so concerned with its survival that at times the message of Christ has been diluted so that it will appeal to a larger number of potential supporters. The tougher parts of Jesus' requirements of us, his followers, can be de-emphasized in order not to make us too uncomfortable. It's so much easier to “market” a loving, forgiving, smiling Jesus than a Jesus who expects us to change our priorities and to be faithful. But in today’s Gospel, Jesus is not into marketing, he's into truth telling.
II. Luke tells us that Jesus had “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” By this Luke meant that Jesus was moving toward his passion with all the anguish and suffering that this would entail. Furthermore, he had just been rejected by a village of upstart Samaritans. We would not call this a good day. It's most likely a day that Jesus could have used some extra support. In spite of this context, Jesus alienated would-be supporters by emphasizing the commitment required of anyone who would follow him. Why do you think he would make such a set of demanding statements? I believe that the explanation comes in the final sentence of today's Lukan passage: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” I don't know a lot about plowing, and in fact have never plowed even one row, but I am told that if one looks behind as he or she is breaking the ground, the furrows will be crooked and unusable.
Jesus has given us this metaphor for our spiritual lives. Unless we can focus our whole attention on looking forward to our lives as disciples of Christ, our discipleship will be deeply compromised. When we look behind us, we hang onto the past rather than giving our full commitment to our present and future relationship with Christ. All of us have desires, fears, anger, or insecurities that can prevent us from making full faith commitments. The truth of Christianity is that being Jesus’ disciple demands that we open ourselves to the experience of continuing conversion in whatever form it enters into our lives and changes us. And it demands that we be willing to become new creatures, leaving the old behind and assuming the mind of Christ.
II. Let me give you an example. One of the things that calls me to look behind myself is my father’s very strong message to me to be successful and thereby in his eyes, insure my security. On Friday I began my day with a devotional from “Song of The Seed” by Macrina Wiederkehr. Each reading includes a passage from Scripture. Friday's was the story about Jesus' conversation with the rich young man in Matthew 19. Do you remember? Jesus told him to give all his wealth away and then he could follow Jesus. The young man went away crestfallen. I realized as I prayed how directly that passage relates to me. Jesus knew that this young man had such an attachment to his wealth and to the security it afforded him, that there was insufficient room in his heart to make the complete commitment that would have been required to follow Christ. Jesus had asked him to give away his excess baggage, so that he could be freed up to become a new person in Christ.
How did I come to understand that this applied to me? My parents were children of the Depression. They both knew what it meant to be really hungry. They saved every bit of food that was left after a meal and used things as many times as they could. My father drilled into my head that I had to succeed. He had had one year of law school and had to drop out because his family could no longer afford the tuition. He always regretted that he had not become a lawyer. But for me, his son, it had to be different. I had to work as hard as I could and succeed at all costs. Family therapists might say that I was designated to carry his unfulfilled dream unto the next generation. The power of that dream was strong and has exerted itself in both expected and unexpected ways. I've felt that pressure in graduate school, in teaching, in grant writing, and in tenure reviews. The most surprising place I encountered my father’s voice was as I went through the formation process for ordination. The advice repeatedly given to me was to become a weekend priest, so that I could hold on to my university tenure and security. I recall one meeting in which someone told me it would be foolish to become a full-time priest. As Peg knows, I struggled with those voices and the disappointment I believed my father, who was no longer living, would have felt at my decision to give up my security.
It was my intention that upon entering the priesthood, that I would lay that dream and burden of success and security to rest. But it requires great spiritual discipline to do so. There are still times when I feel the pull to succeed for the sake of success – for example, to help lead a church I'm serving in to grow numerically and financially. Now these are not bad things, any more than the rich young man's wealth was a bad thing. But Jesus could see that wealth was a stumbling block for the rich young ruler. My desires for success in the world's eyes were part of my parents' legacy. But whenever I place a desire for success ahead of truthfully preaching and living the gospel, then I can no longer function as an effective disciple, let alone a good priest. Based on my own experience, I know that even when with God’s help, we overcome the stumbling blocks on our path to disciplineship, the very same temptations will confront us again.
III. I have come to understand that each of us has certain issues, desires, or concerns in our lives that hold power for us. It could be a preoccupation with family concerns, fear about stepping out in new ways, a need for control, an addiction, or a need to please others. It could be a need to be appreciated. It could be a need to be right. It could be an old hurt that we cannot let go of or even a disappointment about how our lives have turned out. This is my question for each of us this morning: what might be holding us back from moving whole-heartedly into Christian discipleship? There is a core truth about Christian faith in today's lectionary readings: Christianity is not a casual religion. One can be a part of a church and participate in religious activities, but that is not synonymous with living a vibrant Christian life.
IV. Authentic Christian faith experiences come out of listening to the voice of Christ and committing ourselves to new life in him. Anything short of that leaves us in the crowd, listening to Jesus, but not walking beside him. This week we experienced one of the powerful miracles that occur when we keep our eyes on Christ, moving forward with him. I share this with permission. One of our parishioners, Emily Coco, has felt called by God to go to Madagascar and reached out to family and friends to independently raise the necessary funds. The magnitude of the challenge was huge and it appeared that Emily would not be able to raise enough to go. She was discouraged, but had not given up. We were scheduled to meet this week to consider her going at a later time. The night before we met, a family who had heard about Emily’s faithfulness to her call made an anonymous gift of $1,500 to help cover her airfare. Emily and I were amazed at the generosity of this gift and at God's timing. Including the money from a piggy bank that someone had donated, with this gift God provided the cost of the roundtrip ticket to Madagascar with $4 to spare.
We are called to follow Jesus Christ. It is our human nature to hesitate and to look back. Christ calls us instead to a relationship of commitment and dependence upon him. It is not a relationship that makes sense to many in the world around us, but our eyes are not to be upon others. I invite us all into an examination of conscience, a time-honored Christian practice, to consider whether we are giving our complete selves to Christ or whether we are holding back and turning away from him. The miracles, the joys, and the peace that are associated with whole-hearted discipleship are well worth all that we are asked to leave behind. Thanks be to God. Amen
Do You Want To Be My Disciple The Reverend Dr. Howard J. Hess
I. Introduction: Do you want to be my disciple? Listen, because I will tell you how to do that. And in today’s Gospel Jesus does just that. He made far-reaching demands upon those who expressed an interest in following him. These demands might sound harsh to our ears: those who follow me will have no homes, will not be allowed to go home and bury their dead, and will not be able to say good-bye to their families before they leave. Some time ago, I had thought that Jesus needed a PR person, someone who could help him sort out how to interest new disciples and clinch the deal before they changed their minds. Throughout his ministry, Jesus was never interested in marketing. Instead, he approached discipleship with a clear message about how his disciples’ lives will be changed. Because of the cost of discipleship, many of his prospects never followed through.
Was Jesus being foolhardy or did Jesus understand something about Christian discipleship that has become blurry for many of us? I think the shortcoming, if we want to think about it that way, is with our understanding of his message, not with the message itself. The church has often become a social institution with many different branches, all of which require administrative resources, buildings that need to be maintained, and salaries that need to be paid. Some believe that the church in the west has become in fact so concerned with its survival that at times the message of Christ has been diluted so that it will appeal to a larger number of potential supporters. The tougher parts of Jesus' requirements of us, his followers, can be de-emphasized in order not to make us too uncomfortable. It's so much easier to “market” a loving, forgiving, smiling Jesus than a Jesus who expects us to change our priorities and to be faithful. But in today’s Gospel, Jesus is not into marketing, he's into truth telling.
II. Luke tells us that Jesus had “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” By this Luke meant that Jesus was moving toward his passion with all the anguish and suffering that this would entail. Furthermore, he had just been rejected by a village of upstart Samaritans. We would not call this a good day. It's most likely a day that Jesus could have used some extra support. In spite of this context, Jesus alienated would-be supporters by emphasizing the commitment required of anyone who would follow him. Why do you think he would make such a set of demanding statements? I believe that the explanation comes in the final sentence of today's Lukan passage: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” I don't know a lot about plowing, and in fact have never plowed even one row, but I am told that if one looks behind as he or she is breaking the ground, the furrows will be crooked and unusable.
Jesus has given us this metaphor for our spiritual lives. Unless we can focus our whole attention on looking forward to our lives as disciples of Christ, our discipleship will be deeply compromised. When we look behind us, we hang onto the past rather than giving our full commitment to our present and future relationship with Christ. All of us have desires, fears, anger, or insecurities that can prevent us from making full faith commitments. The truth of Christianity is that being Jesus’ disciple demands that we open ourselves to the experience of continuing conversion in whatever form it enters into our lives and changes us. And it demands that we be willing to become new creatures, leaving the old behind and assuming the mind of Christ.
II. Let me give you an example. One of the things that calls me to look behind myself is my father’s very strong message to me to be successful and thereby in his eyes, insure my security. On Friday I began my day with a devotional from “Song of The Seed” by Macrina Wiederkehr. Each reading includes a passage from Scripture. Friday's was the story about Jesus' conversation with the rich young man in Matthew 19. Do you remember? Jesus told him to give all his wealth away and then he could follow Jesus. The young man went away crestfallen. I realized as I prayed how directly that passage relates to me. Jesus knew that this young man had such an attachment to his wealth and to the security it afforded him, that there was insufficient room in his heart to make the complete commitment that would have been required to follow Christ. Jesus had asked him to give away his excess baggage, so that he could be freed up to become a new person in Christ.
How did I come to understand that this applied to me? My parents were children of the Depression. They both knew what it meant to be really hungry. They saved every bit of food that was left after a meal and used things as many times as they could. My father drilled into my head that I had to succeed. He had had one year of law school and had to drop out because his family could no longer afford the tuition. He always regretted that he had not become a lawyer. But for me, his son, it had to be different. I had to work as hard as I could and succeed at all costs. Family therapists might say that I was designated to carry his unfulfilled dream unto the next generation. The power of that dream was strong and has exerted itself in both expected and unexpected ways. I've felt that pressure in graduate school, in teaching, in grant writing, and in tenure reviews. The most surprising place I encountered my father’s voice was as I went through the formation process for ordination. The advice repeatedly given to me was to become a weekend priest, so that I could hold on to my university tenure and security. I recall one meeting in which someone told me it would be foolish to become a full-time priest. As Peg knows, I struggled with those voices and the disappointment I believed my father, who was no longer living, would have felt at my decision to give up my security.
It was my intention that upon entering the priesthood, that I would lay that dream and burden of success and security to rest. But it requires great spiritual discipline to do so. There are still times when I feel the pull to succeed for the sake of success – for example, to help lead a church I'm serving in to grow numerically and financially. Now these are not bad things, any more than the rich young man's wealth was a bad thing. But Jesus could see that wealth was a stumbling block for the rich young ruler. My desires for success in the world's eyes were part of my parents' legacy. But whenever I place a desire for success ahead of truthfully preaching and living the gospel, then I can no longer function as an effective disciple, let alone a good priest. Based on my own experience, I know that even when with God’s help, we overcome the stumbling blocks on our path to disciplineship, the very same temptations will confront us again.
III. I have come to understand that each of us has certain issues, desires, or concerns in our lives that hold power for us. It could be a preoccupation with family concerns, fear about stepping out in new ways, a need for control, an addiction, or a need to please others. It could be a need to be appreciated. It could be a need to be right. It could be an old hurt that we cannot let go of or even a disappointment about how our lives have turned out. This is my question for each of us this morning: what might be holding us back from moving whole-heartedly into Christian discipleship? There is a core truth about Christian faith in today's lectionary readings: Christianity is not a casual religion. One can be a part of a church and participate in religious activities, but that is not synonymous with living a vibrant Christian life.
IV. Authentic Christian faith experiences come out of listening to the voice of Christ and committing ourselves to new life in him. Anything short of that leaves us in the crowd, listening to Jesus, but not walking beside him. This week we experienced one of the powerful miracles that occur when we keep our eyes on Christ, moving forward with him. I share this with permission. One of our parishioners, Emily Coco, has felt called by God to go to Madagascar and reached out to family and friends to independently raise the necessary funds. The magnitude of the challenge was huge and it appeared that Emily would not be able to raise enough to go. She was discouraged, but had not given up. We were scheduled to meet this week to consider her going at a later time. The night before we met, a family who had heard about Emily’s faithfulness to her call made an anonymous gift of $1,500 to help cover her airfare. Emily and I were amazed at the generosity of this gift and at God's timing. Including the money from a piggy bank that someone had donated, with this gift God provided the cost of the roundtrip ticket to Madagascar with $4 to spare.
We are called to follow Jesus Christ. It is our human nature to hesitate and to look back. Christ calls us instead to a relationship of commitment and dependence upon him. It is not a relationship that makes sense to many in the world around us, but our eyes are not to be upon others. I invite us all into an examination of conscience, a time-honored Christian practice, to consider whether we are giving our complete selves to Christ or whether we are holding back and turning away from him. The miracles, the joys, and the peace that are associated with whole-hearted discipleship are well worth all that we are asked to leave behind. Thanks be to God. Amen
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