The Stamford Independent

Sermon –Luke 14:25-33 Preached at Trinity Emmanuel, Stamford
Kate Heichler Pentecost 16, Year C; Sunday, September 16, 2007

Lord, without Your Spirit, these words are just words. Give them Your life, we pray, that we may have life. Amen.

Last fall I attended something called CREDO, which is basically an 8-day camp for Episcopal clergy.
In addition to pampering us – because, you know, our lives are so tough – they try to help us get more intentional and focused in four areas:
Health, finance, vocation and spirituality.
(CREDO was developed by the Church Pension Fund, which realized it made more sense to spend money preventing clergy burn-out than dealing with the aftermath.)

And these four areas overlap quite a bit – in the finance workshop I realized that, if I wanted a pension I could live on, I’d have to work till I was 75...which made me pay more attention in the health workshop!
But I learned something else in the finance workshop:
I learned that not doing anything with your money is as much a choice as investing it is. It is a choice to not save. A choice to not earn interest – which, when you factor in inflation, is a choice to lose money.
Not choosing, not acting, is in fact a choice, an action. A negative one, in this case.

That’s kind of true of the spiritual life, too.
Not being intentional means we can end up drifting, not gaining, not growing.
Sometimes not gaining means we’re actually losing.

Jesus is being tough on his followers in this passage.
"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple.

These words come as a shock to American Christians who equate following Jesus with “family values.” Jesus isn’t that high on the family unit – not if those relationships stand in the way of being his disciple.
He doesn’t insist that anyone follow him – but if they want to, they need to put the way of the cross, the way of self-giving ministry and love of God, first.
They need to choose, not vaguely drift along, doing what’s convenient.

And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
Jesus’ way was the way of losing one’s “self” to gain one’s real self. It still is.
And most of us aren’t any readier to hear it than his first followers were.
In fact, some of us are less ready, because our circumstances are so comfortable.
“Discipleship.” It is probably the most important – and neglected – word in the Christian faith, besides perhaps “love.”
Jesus commanded his followers to “go out and make disciples of all nations.”
He did not say to not go out and make church-goers, or altar guilds or vestry members, which is what the church has tended to do. Jesus did not say to go out and make social workers of all nations. Jesus did not say to out and make moralizers. He said, “Follow me. And if you want to be my disciple, here’s what it takes.”

The church spends a lot of its energy on things that are not “core.” The core is discipleship, being disciples of Jesus Christ.

What does it mean to be a disciple? It’s not a word we use much nowadays. Disciples are people who take on the discipline of a teacher or master. They say, “Your way is the best way, I’m going to follow you, learn from you.” So discipleship starts with a relationship. The benefits come from relationship. We don’t use the word, but can recognize do the action.

We can find examples of people “giving their life away” all around us. People with cats know all about putting their lives aside to follow the will of a master, right! But there are more substantial examples
A person starting out in a law firm or on Wall Street might become a disciple of a successful superior – and do scut work, maybe make moral compromises, slave 90-hour weeks, ignore the needs of their families and communities to please that person, to learn from them, to get the rewards of moving up.
Someone who loves yoga might follow a particular teacher, and start taking classes every night of the week, rearranging the rest of their lives around their yoga schedule.
The airwaves are full of ads that promise huge financial gains to those who “order my free tape and follow my proven method for gaining wealth/losing weight /getting out of debt/overcoming your anxieties.”
Someone must be ordering all those free tapes, because the ads are all over.

We’re not unfamiliar with the concept of discipleship – just with the word. And perhaps we get squirrelly when Jesus talks about it because he’s always reminding us that being his disciple means giving away your stuff and losing your life. In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple. Who wants to hear that? What wants to do that? We don’t like the word “losing.” We don’t like “giving up.” Let’s flip this around to an area where losing is actually desirable – anyone watch that show, “The Biggest Loser?” Anyone ever been on a diet?
When it comes to unwanted pounds and inches, we’re delighted to lose. Gaining the health and – let’s admit it, attractiveness – we want is worth giving up all kinds of things, right? I went for about 25 years not eating salads because it reminded me of dieting. I ate what I wanted, and complained about my weight all the time. But after my vacation this summer, I’d had it. The pounds were not going to lose themselves. I finally began embracing the salad, and giving up my cherished bread. (Not completely, but I don’t keep it around the house.) And, guess what? My pants are fitting me better again. And that’s led to other things. Now I’m even riding an exercycle most every morning. I’ve finally been willing to take on some discipline in order to get thinner. I’ve finally been willing to give up some things that were holding me back.

And that’s led to other changes. Now that I’m eating the salad and not the white bread, I’m not very interested in dessert – and I actually have come to value the bread less. I never thought it would be possible, but I could pass it up. I love bread so much, I gave it up for Lent once! But now it’s not as important.

That’s the kind of transformation that happens when we give ourselves to a discipline of following Jesus and his way of life. People who once said, “I couldn’t possibly find the time to go to church twice a week,” take on the disciple of coming to Bible study, and find, once they invest energy to deepen their relationship with God, that’s where they want to be.
You all did it when we ran Alpha last spring – you were here twice a week. Being at church, doing ministry, becomes life-giving, and it starts to come first.

And, just like me with the bread, our financial priorities also change. We exercise some discipline in giving to God’s work, and let God’s spirit work in us – and gradually our heart changes. Most of us balk at the idea of tithing, giving 10 percent of what we earn to the church for God’s work. But when we become invested in a relationship with God in Christ, it becomes the most natural thing in the world to want to give. I’ve been tithing for 20 years at least, and have never missed that money. I’ve always had more than enough. But it’s because giving to the church became a celebration of relationship, not a “should.”

When we give up our sense of owning our lives, of owning our stuff, and see it as on loan to us from God, we are in a sense “giving it up.” We still get to use it, but when we don’t cling so tightly to our money, our homes, our families, we are set free from a lot of anxiety and stress, and set free to find out what God put us here for. We become like “trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither,” to quote today’s psalm.

Jesus still calls us to follow him as disciples. And the only way to do that is start. Make the investment. What’s an investment? We part with our money and give it to someone who we believe will grow it and then give it back to us. So we make an investment of our spiritual lives – we give our wills over to God, and trust that God will help to grow us into who it is we’re intended to be. Our truest selves. It may feel like giving up, but what it is, is an investment.

We see something important for our future, and we go after it. Jesus’ first disciples had been looking for a sign that God would lead them to freedom, that God had not forgotten them. They found that in Jesus. They saw that he was the real thing, that he had Life. And they gave up everything they had to stick with him, even when his teachings were so contrary to human nature and societal norms, even when he led them into hunger and danger, even when he was beaten and killed and it looked like Death had swallowed up Life.

But Life had swallowed up Death. That Life that Jesus proclaimed He also ensured. We have access to eternal life through Jesus, and we have access to abundant life now through Jesus. We can make the choice to invest our time and energy and resources in our relationship with God in Christ. How do we do that? This is a start. And I’m going to recommend Trinity Emmanuel on Wednesday nights– Come for healing at 6, fellowship and a meal at 6:30. Come for a dip into the Word of Life at 7-ish, in our Bible study. Stay for a time of prayer after that. We’ll have you home by 9. Wednesday nights can become our nurture time, relationship building time.

And then Sunday mornings we focus on being disciples in the world, in our study of mission and ministry, in our worship together, which is a sign to the world.

Gathering here together to renew our commitment to Christ every week is a radical act. We are participating in God’s transforming the world.
If we’re not doing that, I’m not sure we should bother.
And we are inviting others, strangers and friends, to join us in that.

I want us to choose that life with Jesus. Every day we make a choice: choose life. Today, make that choice. Count the cost and say, “Yes, I’m yours. Give me life.”

Amen.