Following Jesus IV: "Pas d'Excuse"
Be thankful and live thankfully.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, October 13, 2002
Text: Luke 9:57-62
I think it was Art Linkletter who said: "Kids say the darnedest things."
I thought about that not long ago when I was invited to an event outside the city that I didn't want to go to. I thought of all the many excuses that I could find to tell the people out of town that I really didn't want to go. For days my imagination raced and every time that I even tried to rehearse saying what I was going to say on the phone, it sounded trite and insincere and somewhat ridiculous.
Now, don't look smug. I am sure all of you have done that some time in your lives, right? Where you just don't know what to say to let people down and nothing really sounds right. Well, I tried to find every excuse in the book that I could find and nothing worked.
Finally, I just replied by saying the truth: "I'm sorry, I'm just too busy."
I did this because my mind went back to my childhood and to the dangers of making bad excuses. You see, one day when I was about 10 years old, I was called into the principal's office. When I went in, to my great dismay, my home-room teacher, Mrs. Clegg was sitting right there,. I knew things were bad, however, when around the corner, sitting in front of the principal's desk, were my mother and father.
The principal said: "Andrew, we have gathered here today to ask you why you are not doing your homework."
Well, I must admit that at that moment, I had no fears whatsoever, for unbeknownst to them and their great wisdom, I had designed 52 excellent excuses to not do homework. I would rotate them every 52 days so I would never repeat one within the same week or even the same month. There is no way they are going to catch me out, I thought… until the principal asked me: "Andrew, can you tell me, how many grandmothers do you have?"
I said: "Hmm, two."
She said: "Well, that's very interesting because, according to our records, you have attended four funerals for grandmothers and you have spent six weeks in mourning. We were wondering what was going on. Our condolences."
I said: "Oh well, I'm sorry. There must have been a misunderstanding. I don't know." I thought, "That's okay, they've only got me on one."
Then the principal said: "Now, we would like to know how your iguana is doing."
I said: "Eh, hmm, hmm, my iguana?"
They said: "Yes, because this poor beast has a propensity for eating your homework and we were wondering how its digestion is."
I looked at my mother and father and knew that the game was over. The wheels had fallen off. I had no iguana. This was the beginning of the end of my life, I thought.
As I sat there with everyone staring at me, I remembered the words of Corinthians 13, where Paul talks to the Corinthians about maturity in the faith. He says: "When I was a child, I thought like a child, I acted like a child. But now I am an adult, I have done away with childish things." I had done a childish thing and had got caught doing it.
I remember coming out of that room feeling most dejected and wondering if my great academic life was now finally coming to an end, when my home-room teacher, who was also the French teacher, exclaimed to me: "Pas d'excuse, Stirling, pas d'excuse."
I've thought about that whenever I have since tried to make an excuse that isn't real or isn't honest. We sometimes do that and, like children, we think we get away with not telling the truth, with not being sincere; but as those who are mature, we should not think in such terms.
I say this because today we have in our Scripture reading two disciples who in their own ways were childish: one a wannabe disciple and the other one a reluctant disciple, but both of them giving childish responses to the challenge that Christ set before them. I say childish because you have to look at the context in which it was said. Jesus was on his way from Galilee to Jerusalem. It was near the end of his ministry and he was deeply concerned about what lay ahead of him, namely the cross.
It was a serious moment, a moment of decision, a moment of importance, just as I believe Thanksgiving is a moment of decision, a moment of importance, a moment to take stock of the things that really matter and seriously take into account what we have been given. And so, by looking at these two somewhat immature disciples, you and I can learn much this day about how we should leave this church.
The first of the disciples is what I would call an impetuous or an impulsive disciple. Jesus is clearly walking along on the road and he runs up to him and he says: "Anywhere you will go, I will follow. I will just do anything and go wherever you are."
Now, this was a classic emotional moment for this person. Very often, my friends, people of religion and people of faith get caught up in the emotion of the moment; they get caught up in the emotion of their faith and they do not think about its ramifications, or its importance, or its real meaning. I've run into many people who in their lives have had an emotional fervour, an emotional joy, quite sincere, just like this young man who was sincere in coming to Jesus: "I will follow you wherever you go." But he had not taken into account the real importance of what he was doing or the nature of the calling.
That is why Jesus responds to this eager, overly emotional, young man: "Now, just remember the Son of Man is not like a fox that has a den, is not like a bird that has a nest: The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."
Now, this is not a sort of a formed asceticism. This is not an I'm the poor Jesus, I have nothing statement. On the contrary, Jesus had lots of places where he could lay his head. Throughout the Gospels he would lay his head at the homes of his friends in Nazareth, at Peter's home in Bethany, in Matthew's home in Jerusalem. There were lots of different places where Jesus could lay his head.
No. What Jesus was simply saying to this young man was that the Lord of the Universe was a vagrant within creation; that if you follow Jesus of Nazareth, it is following him not just into the ecstasy of joy, not just in the fervent moment of emotion, but that you are having to go all the way and in Jesus' case, go all the way to the cross; that having once faced that cross, as he tells another disciple later on, you can't turn back and go in another direction. In other words, he wanted this young man to weigh up the importance of discipleship and not treat it as a trivial thing, for what Jesus wanted from this young man was for him not to start something that he could not finish.
I have thought about that quite recently. I think it's very much the same when it comes to diets. I know it's cruel to talk about diets on Thanksgiving Sunday, You're probably saying: "Oh Andrew, how inappropriate to do it today!" But when you start a diet, if you are like me, you're all excited, and you're pumped up. You've got your books, and your calorie and carbohydrate counters, and your eight glasses of water, lined up on your desk at the beginning of the day. I always start by doing what they tell you to do: I stand in my underwear in front of the mirror. Have you ever done that? If you don't want to go on a diet after you have stood in front of a mirror in your underwear, you never will. Trust me.
The only problem is that, after the first few days of standing in front of the mirror in my underwear, nothing really changes. After a while, I start to lose heart. My convictions dissipate and no longer is the passion there. That's why diets fail, I think. That's why we have this emotional "Oh, I will go wherever you want; I will lose whatever weight; I will do anything to lose weight" without really taking into account the fact that what is really needed is a complete change in the way we eat, in the way we live.
Jesus knew that with this young man: It's all very well to say you're going to come with me now, but you need a change in the whole way you're going to live; for if you're going to follow me, that is the importance of commitment and that is what you are being called to. Do not start what you don't intend to finish.
My friends, I think that is very fitting this Thanksgiving, because in many ways this is an emotional day, a day filled in many cases with family and with food and with fun, a day off work and a chance to meet with others. This is a glorious, beautiful time of the year. It is easy to be full of thanksgiving and joy. I know it is cliché and I've heard it said many times but it is right: It is no good just to have a spirit of thanksgiving if you don't have a spirit of thanksliving, if the rest of your life does not reveal your true sense of thankfulness to God and that you are willing to make your life, the totality of your existence, a statement of that truth.
You see, this young man came to Jesus and volunteered himself. Volunteers are good and we need more volunteers in organizations in our society. Charitable organizations for the needy and indigent need volunteers. We need volunteers. But Jesus isn't talking about being a volunteer. He is talking about being a disciple. A volunteer can decide at any time that his or her their voluntary activity comes to an end or that he or she move to something different, but a disciple of Jesus Christ makes it a life-long commitment. Jesus knew that for this young man it would be a life-long commitment: "Don't just come to me and say 'I will follow you wherever you will go' unless you mean it."
The second disciple was the disciple that I call the diffident disciple, or The hesitant disciple. Jesus comes up to this individual and says: "Follow me."
The individual says: "Ah, but just a minute. First let me go and bury my father."
Now, on the surface this sounds like a very reasonable request and it is a reasonable request. Many of the things that we do that delay us from serving God and following God are reasonable. There are things that just have to be done. It's important. But I ask you, if your doctor were to say to you, "You are not allowed to go to work today. You are to rest and change you diet or else you will die." All very reasonable requests - what would you do? Would you say to the doctor "Oh but first I've got to go and do this, that and the other?" No, you wouldn't. You wouldn't because you would see that there is something more important than even the greatest obligations of your life. So it is with God. If God is the most important thing, then everything else, in a sense, is up for grabs.
Now when Jesus said this, a lot of the people around at that time would have known and understood it. The rabbis of Judaism had a saying: "If anyone wants to be a young teacher of the law, he must be prepared to leave his father's funeral." This was a sign of commitment that God comes first.
Now I want you to keep in mind that in Judaism you bury the body right away. That is an immediate thing; but the funeral, the mourning, the ongoing activity can take days, even weeks, and so the young man isn't saying "I have to go and bury my father's body." He is talking about the funeral and the funeral is something that would go on and on and on, something he didn't need to, or have to do. Nevertheless, he put it first. Even righteous people, even the most devout people, very often find that there are other things that they put before truly honouring and serving God.
I read a story not long ago of a man and a woman who got up early one Sunday morning, as was their custom, to get ready to go to church. They made breakfast and the wife went off and got herself changed. She came into the living room and her husband was still there, unshaven and not dressed.
She said: "But it's time to go to church. Aren't you ready to go to church?"
He said: "No, I'm not going."
She said: "Do you have a reason for this?"
He said: "Yes. I have three reasons for not going to church today: 1. The congregation is cold; 2. Nobody there likes me; 3. I just don't want to go."
She said: "Well, I have three reasons why I think you should go. The first is the congregation is very warm. Secondly, there are some people there who like you. The third is you're the minister, so get up and get dressed."
Man, can I identify with that guy sometimes! Even the most religious people still find sometimes a barrier, a blockade to their truly responding to God. We all do it and we should be aware of it and when we are aware of it, we should take stock of it.
One of the best preachers I've ever heard is The Reverend Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor. Barbara tells a story of two people that she knew well. They already had one child and the wife was pregnant with a second. They lived in only a small house and they had no idea how they were going to fit in this tiny house, for even their one child slept in their bedroom and there were no other rooms available. They thought about what they could do and where they could put this new child, this new addition to their home.
They did an inventory of their house and there was one room that they decided upon finally, although reluctantly. It was the man's study and library. It was filled wall to wall with beautiful leather books. He had a big leather chair and would sit and smoke a cigar in it. It was his room. Nobody else went in it. It was his retreat, his place; but he realized that he would have to give it up because this new child was arriving. And so he took some of his books to his office. He placed others on bookshelves around the house and broke up his library in order that the new addition to his family might have a room.
Barbara says the Christian life and Thanksgiving are just like that. We all need to make some room in our lives to recognize God's presence. It's as if there's a new life in our lives, and if we are going to make room for it, we have to identify the clutter and get rid of it.
My friends, that, I believe, is at the heart of our faith. It is at the heart of Thanksgiving. This is the day when every one of us takes stock of those things that God has given to us and His graciousness to us; when we recognize those things and in so doing make sure that the other things, the superfluous, the secondary things are put in their rightful place that God may have his.
I know I have said this for five years to this congregation and, indeed, to every congregation I have been in, from Parkdale Church in Ottawa (from where I see some friends here today), to Woodlawn in Dartmouth, and elsewhere I say it every year: There is never a Thanksgiving that goes by when I do not in my heart of hearts honestly thank God that I live in this country. When I think of how free we are, when I think of the majestic nature of our land, when I think of the expanse of our waters, the grandeur of our mountains, the productivity of our plains; when I think of the wonder of our cities and the freedom that we have to move and to live and to exercise our faith and I look at other countries that I have been to in the world, I simply say, "There but by the grace of God go I." There should not be a Canadian of any background who does not get on his knees this day and say with the depth of all his heart: "Oh Lord, I am grateful unto You. You have blessed our land. I have no excuse, I have no reason not to give You room in my life."
Pas d'excuse. God has been good. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.