Sermon 2007 09 09

The first thing that I want to remind everyone about as I begin my sermon is that I don't get to pick what the readings are each week. The Anglican Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Presbyterians and Lutherans and Uniteds and many more follow a common lectionary or set of readings. Those readings form the backbone of the worship service leading to choice of hymns, the sermon, of course, the way the prayers are prayed and much more.

What is really neat about this is that, on any given Sunday, there is a whole great lot of Christians all around the world who are hearing about, meditating on and praying on the same ideas and themes. What a wonderful world-wide connection which Church-goers have week by week.

The downside of the lectionary is that sometimes it is a challenge to preach on the given readings on a particular week.

So, here we are, it is welcome back Sunday - the Sunday when we want to welcome everyone back after their summer vacations - the Sunday when the kids register and start Sunday School - the Sunday when we especially want to welcome new people and families to this congregation. And the first words out of Jesus' mouth in today's Gospel lesson is: "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple."

Thank you, Jesus! Some weeks I just want to say, "Come on, Lord, work with me here!"

It is important to understand here that Jesus was using hyperbole to make a point. Jesus, a faithful Jew, had no intention for his followers to break the Fifth Commandment, to honour one's Father and Mother. Jesus knows that the cost of discipleship is great indeed. He wants to let people know that this isn't going to be easy. Being a disciple will cost you. You have to be prepared to leave everything.

My friend Jacques and I were ordained deacons together nineteen years ago. We were young and energetic and full of dreams. I ended up in the Parish of Gaspe and he went to the Magdalen Islands in the middle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Both of us had left family and friends and homes to follow a call to serve.

But it wasn't long before Jacques joined the army reserves and took some time off from his parish to serve as a chaplain with Canadian Peacekeeping forces in Bosnia.

He came back a changed man. The misery and carnage which he witnessed had changed him. He stayed in his parish for about a year before he went off on an extended mission trip to the refugee camps in Goma on the border of Rwanda during the time of the massacres there.

It wasn't long after he returned from Rwanda that Jacques realized that a regular parish ministry wasn't going to be right for him. In the end, he left parish ministry to join work permanently with a humanitarian organization in Haiti.

I haven't heard nor seen anything of Jacques for many years. I'm not sure where he is right now. But I do know that he was a passionate follower of Jesus. Jacques left everything he knew because of Jesus' call. One of the images that I get when I think of the word, "Disciple" is one of Jacques, remarkably out of place, at a mundane clergy conference after returning from Rwanda. He was just about to chuck everything - to leave his possessions and to head off again. And of all the clergy at that conference, he was the one who was the most free.

Being a disciple of Jesus isn't some optional extra which you can fit into your life between work or school and soccer practice. Being a disciple isn't an interesting activity which you do on Sundays and perhaps an occasion evening. It isn't an add-on to your life: it is your life.

Notice that Jesus says disciples need to carry the cross and follow him. Following isn't something you do once, or occasionally, it's something which you keep on doing. Otherwise you'll get lost!

Does this mean that we have to all be like Jacques? Or do we all need to be like Mother Teresa? I don't think that we can all do that, but we do need to decide what we are to do with the life we are living.

Christine Pohl writes: "While we might prefer to make a single dramatic sacrifice as an expression of our commitment, usually the way of faithfulness involves laying down our lives in little pieces, through small decisions and unremarkable acts of kindness and generosity."

I agree with her. This is not to say that these small decisions and unremarkable acts are not costly. They are costly precisely because they are continual and consistent. They do involve laying down our lives: using them up, spending them wisely to follow Jesus' lead.

Jesus warns those who want to follow to count the cost. And then he says an astonishing thing: "So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."

I think Jesus says this because he knows that things are called possession not because we possess them, but because they possess us. And there's only two ways of giving up our possessions: one is to drop everything and leave. The other is to use them for God's purpose, so that they no longer possess us.

It doesn't sound like an easy life does it? Why would anyone want to be Jesus' disciple? What did his disciples get out of all this?

Well, they got to be with Jesus. They got to know his ways and to experience his love first-hand. And they got to be with each other. They got to realize that a life of faith isn't just an individual activity, but that it's done in the company of others. More than all of this, though, they all got to live lives which were full of meaning. And that is more valuable than any possession. This truth is what the Church is essentially about.

-A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing. M. Luther.

Perhaps, as this is the Sunday when we re-commission ourselves to this Church, it is not such a difficult Gospel after all. Our promise isn't just about going to Church - it's about being the Church. And that's an everyday, everywhere thing. Amen.