Thursday, September 16, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
Choosing Is No Bargain - Saint Luke 14:25-33
In the winter of 1845 James Russell Lowell, an abolitionist, wrote these words to my favorite hymn from the old red (not to be confused with cranberry) hymnal:
Choosing is never easy and sometimes it is very hard. It may call us to take a stand which is unpopular. It may move us down a path that our family and friends do not understand. A choice, made on principal, may even drive people away.
Standing with the children of Israel on the brink of crossing into the promised land Moses tells his people that there will still be moments before them that they will be called to choose between good and evil, truth or falsehood, life or death, and he commands them to always “choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days.”
Moses and Jesus both speaking to large crowds; both men are speaking about the important of choice. Moses is standing with a multitude who are the completion of a long 40 year journey, Jesus is talking to a crowd who is trying to decide whether they want to travel with him or not. Both men are talking about choices – the tough choices of faithfulness, and devotion to God above every thing else. They are talking about the same choices that you and I have to make everyday – whether to follow God and live or go back to following our own desires and wander forever in the wilderness.
Both sermons are not quite what large crowds want to hear. Most people want sermons to be pep-talks, rah-rah, you can do it if only you try hard enough stemwinders. Neither Moses nor Jesus offer their people that kind of pablum, they tell them the truth, that to follow God in the midst of a world that doesn’t is going to be hard. Moses’ speech may have be designed to lead people into the promised land but Jesus’ homily to his large crowd seems perfectly suited to having the crowd head for the exits.
Scholars have tried to explain all that Jesus said away by saying that he was just using a technique that was popular among the rabbis of his day – extreme hyperbole, a kind of dramatic exaggeration aimed at making a sharp point even sharper. Still he does it five times in his message and each time, if you watch carefully, you can see more and more of the crowd melting away.
The thesis point of his speech is the same as Moses’. If you want to be a follower God must be more important in your life than anything else, even your family.
It’s important to note that the “hate” Jesus uses means not anger but to become detached from. But, even that, in our Westernized civilized culture, is hard for us to understand. We are not hated for being a Christian. While, as I said a couple of weeks ago, it was once expected that you would be one and that you would go to church – even if was like the ushers at Nebo who came during the summer months just long enough to pass out bulletins and then went outside to smoke cigarettes. How much they heard through the windows and their self-created haze I do not know, but they were still counted as being there. They were in the crowds. Now even the crowds are gone because being a Christian is no longer seen as the being the “thing to do” by our society. It is treated not with contempt but with benign neglect.
To be a follower of Jesus in the early centuries of the church, as we know, meant being cut off from family, friends, society, and maybe even losing one’s life. In some fundamentalist Muslem countries to embrace Christ is to bring a death sentence upon oneself. And if you are a Mormon, even though you are a member of “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints”, become a Christian and you will be “dis-fellowshipped,” a polite way of saying, dead to your family and friends.
Jesus wanted his followers to count the cost and choose wisely so many took another look at Jesus, really heard what he had to say and bolted for the door. Some translations point out the obvious, that at this point the crowds become significantly smaller. I’ll bet!
Next he mentions taking up the cross – never a crowd pleaser and offers up two stories that seemed perfect for thinning out the crowds. Both ask essentially the same questions: “Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Do you understand what following me might cost you”
Dr. William H. Willimon has said: “I tell you, when you think about some of the stuff Jesus said, consider his sermons, his demands ... it’s a wonder to me that any of you are here on a Sunday. Unless...unless what Jesus says just happens to be true.”
Several years ago I was presiding over a funeral that – even though there have been hundreds between then and now has stuck with me to this day. It was all because of a sign on one of the “memory boards” that the family had put together. The pictures, the crowds, the family all lead me to believe that the man was a good guy albeit a guy who had lots of stuff. There were pictures of him on his speed boat, an on his jet-skies, and at his “cabin” (which was nicer than my house), and on snow skies, and water skies. The man had even souped up his lawn mower to make it go faster. At the center of all the pictures was a sign – the most inappropriate sign I have seen in my 4.1 years in and around funeral homes. It said: “He who dies with the most toys, wins.”
I’m not making that up. I looked at the sign and then I looked at the 67 year old dead guy in the casket. I looked at the sign and then I looked back at him and then back at the sign and back at him and the only thing I could think of was: “No, he who dies with the most toys is just dead.” While this man may have had more stuff than you or I could ever hope to have, in the end he was dead. Stone cold, definitely dead.
The painfully sharp point in Jesus’ words is that the sign just doesn’t work. Toys won’t do it for us. In fact to have chosen them over everything else is not to have chosen life, but death. You have chosen life – a full, rich, life maybe – but still a life that is less than God intended.
This is the bottom-line truth that Jesus and Moses are insisting upon. If we are to follow God we have to do it with everything we have. It’s an all or nothing deal. It with’s a core affirmation of the faith that when you place everything – your riches and your worries, your health and well-being, your family and friends, in the hands of Jesus you have chosen wisely.
Choose to place your career, in the hands of God and it may not come back exactly as you wanted but it will come back raised to a higher purpose.
Choose to place your family, your friends, your dear ones, in the hands of God, and those relationships will come back tempered with a deeper love.
Choose to place your hobbies, your joys, your frustrations, your satisfactions, your sorrows, your joys, your money, your church, in the hands of God and they will all come back to you with a higher and deeper meaning because you have chosen to place them when they belong.
“Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,” Lowell began his poem. Decide, choose to place everything you have, and are, and every will be, in the hands of God and you will discover the truth of Lowell’s concluding words: Yet... behind the dim unknown. Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch upon his own.”
Choose wisely and then let God keep watch. Amen.
5 September 2010
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide;
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evils side.
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evils side.
Choosing is never easy and sometimes it is very hard. It may call us to take a stand which is unpopular. It may move us down a path that our family and friends do not understand. A choice, made on principal, may even drive people away.
Standing with the children of Israel on the brink of crossing into the promised land Moses tells his people that there will still be moments before them that they will be called to choose between good and evil, truth or falsehood, life or death, and he commands them to always “choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days.”
Moses and Jesus both speaking to large crowds; both men are speaking about the important of choice. Moses is standing with a multitude who are the completion of a long 40 year journey, Jesus is talking to a crowd who is trying to decide whether they want to travel with him or not. Both men are talking about choices – the tough choices of faithfulness, and devotion to God above every thing else. They are talking about the same choices that you and I have to make everyday – whether to follow God and live or go back to following our own desires and wander forever in the wilderness.
Both sermons are not quite what large crowds want to hear. Most people want sermons to be pep-talks, rah-rah, you can do it if only you try hard enough stemwinders. Neither Moses nor Jesus offer their people that kind of pablum, they tell them the truth, that to follow God in the midst of a world that doesn’t is going to be hard. Moses’ speech may have be designed to lead people into the promised land but Jesus’ homily to his large crowd seems perfectly suited to having the crowd head for the exits.
Scholars have tried to explain all that Jesus said away by saying that he was just using a technique that was popular among the rabbis of his day – extreme hyperbole, a kind of dramatic exaggeration aimed at making a sharp point even sharper. Still he does it five times in his message and each time, if you watch carefully, you can see more and more of the crowd melting away.
The thesis point of his speech is the same as Moses’. If you want to be a follower God must be more important in your life than anything else, even your family.
It’s important to note that the “hate” Jesus uses means not anger but to become detached from. But, even that, in our Westernized civilized culture, is hard for us to understand. We are not hated for being a Christian. While, as I said a couple of weeks ago, it was once expected that you would be one and that you would go to church – even if was like the ushers at Nebo who came during the summer months just long enough to pass out bulletins and then went outside to smoke cigarettes. How much they heard through the windows and their self-created haze I do not know, but they were still counted as being there. They were in the crowds. Now even the crowds are gone because being a Christian is no longer seen as the being the “thing to do” by our society. It is treated not with contempt but with benign neglect.
To be a follower of Jesus in the early centuries of the church, as we know, meant being cut off from family, friends, society, and maybe even losing one’s life. In some fundamentalist Muslem countries to embrace Christ is to bring a death sentence upon oneself. And if you are a Mormon, even though you are a member of “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints”, become a Christian and you will be “dis-fellowshipped,” a polite way of saying, dead to your family and friends.
Jesus wanted his followers to count the cost and choose wisely so many took another look at Jesus, really heard what he had to say and bolted for the door. Some translations point out the obvious, that at this point the crowds become significantly smaller. I’ll bet!
Next he mentions taking up the cross – never a crowd pleaser and offers up two stories that seemed perfect for thinning out the crowds. Both ask essentially the same questions: “Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Do you understand what following me might cost you”
Dr. William H. Willimon has said: “I tell you, when you think about some of the stuff Jesus said, consider his sermons, his demands ... it’s a wonder to me that any of you are here on a Sunday. Unless...unless what Jesus says just happens to be true.”
Several years ago I was presiding over a funeral that – even though there have been hundreds between then and now has stuck with me to this day. It was all because of a sign on one of the “memory boards” that the family had put together. The pictures, the crowds, the family all lead me to believe that the man was a good guy albeit a guy who had lots of stuff. There were pictures of him on his speed boat, an on his jet-skies, and at his “cabin” (which was nicer than my house), and on snow skies, and water skies. The man had even souped up his lawn mower to make it go faster. At the center of all the pictures was a sign – the most inappropriate sign I have seen in my 4.1 years in and around funeral homes. It said: “He who dies with the most toys, wins.”
I’m not making that up. I looked at the sign and then I looked at the 67 year old dead guy in the casket. I looked at the sign and then I looked back at him and then back at the sign and back at him and the only thing I could think of was: “No, he who dies with the most toys is just dead.” While this man may have had more stuff than you or I could ever hope to have, in the end he was dead. Stone cold, definitely dead.
The painfully sharp point in Jesus’ words is that the sign just doesn’t work. Toys won’t do it for us. In fact to have chosen them over everything else is not to have chosen life, but death. You have chosen life – a full, rich, life maybe – but still a life that is less than God intended.
This is the bottom-line truth that Jesus and Moses are insisting upon. If we are to follow God we have to do it with everything we have. It’s an all or nothing deal. It with’s a core affirmation of the faith that when you place everything – your riches and your worries, your health and well-being, your family and friends, in the hands of Jesus you have chosen wisely.
Choose to place your career, in the hands of God and it may not come back exactly as you wanted but it will come back raised to a higher purpose.
Choose to place your family, your friends, your dear ones, in the hands of God, and those relationships will come back tempered with a deeper love.
Choose to place your hobbies, your joys, your frustrations, your satisfactions, your sorrows, your joys, your money, your church, in the hands of God and they will all come back to you with a higher and deeper meaning because you have chosen to place them when they belong.
“Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,” Lowell began his poem. Decide, choose to place everything you have, and are, and every will be, in the hands of God and you will discover the truth of Lowell’s concluding words: Yet... behind the dim unknown. Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch upon his own.”
Choose wisely and then let God keep watch. Amen.
5 September 2010
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
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