"Dubious Excuses"
Following Christ requires a life-long commitment to a journey of faith
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Text: Luke 9:57-62
It is unusual for me to have a book that I was given at Christmas read by the end of January, but this year I received a book that, frankly, I haven't been able to put down. It's titled, I've Got a Home in Glory Land by Karolyn Smardz Frost, and it's about the Blackburn family who were purchased as slaves during the antebellum period in the United States. They came originally from the Ohio Valley and moved up north to Detroit, Michigan to try to avoid the ravages of slavery. Thornton and his wife Lucy knew the slave owners would separate them, so they decided to flee. In Detroit, they met a group of other people who had done the same thing and were welcomed into a community that tried to protect them. However, they realized that those who had bought them as their slaves would come after them. The book describes how they joined the Underground Railroad and eventually made it across the Canadian border to Toronto. For the rest of their lives, Thornton and Lucy lived in this city in freedom and were received and integrated into society. It is an amazing book that won the 2007 Governor General's Award for non-fiction. No wonder.
The more I read, the more I realized that these people had to make very difficult decisions along their journey to freedom. It was a really difficult journey, which required courage, dedication and a community willing to support and nurture them. The more I think of that story, the more I think of what Jesus said to the disciples in today's passage. Jesus was talking to people who, like the Blackburns, were on a journey to freedom. For them, it was the freedom from sin, guilt and religious tyranny to hope, eternity and the promised land of Jesus' death and resurrection. Jesus talked to these disciples and gave them a way forward in this journey to freedom. He said they would struggle and face tough decisions; there would be a need for courage and to be surrounded by a community. When they asked what they should do, Jesus said, “On this journey to freedom, follow me.”
All too often, I think the Christian life is reduced to a series of assents to propositions rather than a personal journey. It is seen to be prosaic rather than prophetic. Too often, it is seen as passive as opposed to passionate and, in many ways, we have lost the sense in which the Christian faith is a journey. Don't misunderstand me, there is a role for belief in a series of doctrines and propositions; there is a need sometimes to be passive and allow God to do things. But to think that the Christian faith is anything less than a journey is to misunderstand what Jesus called his disciples to do.
I want to talk about that journey, which has an impact on each and every one of us in the way we conceive of the Christian faith and the Christian life. First, I want to understand the nature of this journey. I think the Apostle Paul had it right when he talked about how the people of God were on a journey to the promised land and Christians now joined them in that journey. The Gospel of Luke is right in placing Jesus' calling of people to that journey in the midst of rejection and difficulty in his own life. Luke, of all the gospels, places this narrative within the context of the rejection of Jesus. Jesus said, “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. If you want to follow me, you are going to have to count the cost.” He knew that when he told the people to follow him, he was calling them to a life of courageous engagement.
When I look at the Christian faith, when I watch people day in and day out struggling to live the Christian life, I realize that, just like Jesus and those early disciples, we face temptations, difficulties and sometimes rejection. The journey of faith is not an easy one; it requires courage, fortitude and a sense of purpose. I realized that just a few months ago when a gentleman - an occasional church-attender - came to see me. He said, “Dr. Stirling, I need your help because I am an alcoholic and just realized it.” He proceeded to tell me the story of how he had come to this point in his life and he expressed what this journey had been like. What was fascinating was that as he declared himself to be an alcoholic and started along a new path, he was rejected; he was shunned by all those with whom he had formerly been friends. His old drinking buddies didn't want to have anything more to do with him if he wasn't gong to drink with them. His friends, who had relied on him to buy the booze for them, no longer had a benefactor. Those who had done drugs with him and had a good time with him no longer wanted to be associated with him.
So often we think it is religious or self-righteous people who shun. Let me tell you clearly folks, sometimes it's sinners who shun and they can't stand people going on the road to freedom, righteousness and recovery. He said, “You know, more than anything in this life, I need some assurance that in this journey toward my liberation from alcoholism I am not alone.”
I thought of that great song that is chanted by the supporters of the Liverpool football club, the soccer club in England: You'll Never Walk Alone. What this man needed more than anything in the whole world was to know that he would never walk alone. When Jesus said to the disciples, “I want you to follow me,” notice that he didn't say, “I want you to go somewhere.” He said,
I want you to follow me. I will not leave you on the journey; I will be with you on the journey. It will take courage, and you might face rejection and be shunned. There are those who abhor righteousness and the cause of freedom from sin, but let me tell you, I will be with you if you follow me.
The nature of the journey is that it goes with Christ.
To go on that journey, there are a couple of things you have to eliminate. The first is excessive self-confidence. When Jesus said, “Follow me,” one of the disciples said he would go with Jesus wherever he wanted to go. In other words, “Of course I'm not going to let you down, I will be with you every step of the way. You know that.” Jesus thought, “You're a little overly self-confident, a little cocky.” I run into people who tell me they are unfulfilled in their spiritual lives; they have needs in their lives that they don't feel are being filled. Yet, when I look at the lives they live, they are not consecrated to anything firm and strong.
My first manse as a minister was an old sea captain's home in northern Nova Scotia when I was a bachelor. I realized after a week of living in that house that there were more mice running around it than there were members of the congregation I served. At night I heard the little pitter-patter of feet in the ceiling. Very disconcerting, let me tell you! I was told that the best way to stop the mice was to block the way they were getting in, which was a hole in the roof. So I got a ladder to go up to the roof to try to fix it. After I got on the ladder, I realized it was missing three rungs so I only got three feet off the ground. Every time I tried to get to the next rung I heard this very disturbing cracking sound from the one I was standing on. Not being light by any means, I gave up the project. Here's the truth: I could have fixed the problem had all the rungs been on the ladder. The problem with our spiritual lives is that there are rungs missing from the ladder.
Let's be absolutely honest about this: There is a lack of consistency in many people's walk with Christ. They are not consistent in their worship, and then they wonder why they don't really understand the Christian faith. They attend church four times a year and they are surprised they don't get the full story of the Christian life and message. They pray once in a blue moon, or when Mars is aligned with Venus, and then wonder why they don't have a sense of God's presence in their lives, or why, when difficulties come along, they have no idea how to deal with them. They wonder why the church is not there for them in their time of need and feel they are walking alone, when 90 per cent of the time they never have anything to do with the church. Come on people, get real! There is a need for some consistency and discipleship. It is no surprise that people feel the journey is rocky and difficult when, in fact, they have not made the commitment to be involved.
It is the same thing with making excuses. I love the excuse we find in Luke's gospel. The man said, “I'm sorry, I can't follow you. I have to go and bury my father.” Okay, I understand Jewish law - you have to bury the deceased before the sun goes down. But Jesus still said,
Look, you have got to think about what's important in your life. If you are going to follow me, then you are going to follow me to the path of crucifixion and resurrection. The really important thing is what I'm doing. Are you going to follow me?
I liken it to getting on a train like the great Orient Express that used to go from Paris to Istanbul, but now only goes from Strasbourg to Budapest. There was a time when you could actually go to the orient from Paris on this great train. Can you imagine if you could only get off in Budapest, or Vienna or Strasbourg and never go the whole way? Would you experience the journey? Would you ever get to the real destination? Would it ever really be the Orient Express? No!
It is the same with our faith. Many people just jump on and off the journey with Christ without any real commitment and then wonder why they don't feel that the whole event is worthwhile. Jesus was right - the walk of faith is a journey with him and it is a journey that requires a commitment to see it through to its very end.
There is one last concern. It is what I call double-mindedness. Jesus encountered people who had double minds; they were unsure if they should follow him or not. One of them made another excuse that suggested he wasn't totally committed to the cause. Jesus understood that he had missed the signs. That very often happens in life. Here, Jesus was not talking about - and I'm not talking about - having some doubts in your life. We all have doubts. We all read a passage of the bible and wonder if this is really true. We often see doctrines in the church and have our sincere doubts about them. That is not what Jesus was talking about. It is okay to have doubts once in a while, just make sure you are still on the journey. Jesus understood that the journey to freedom, the journey to follow him, was a long journey - a life-long journey.
I have been thinking about that in the context of the book, I've Got a Home in Glory Land. About 17 years ago, I took a course in constitutional law called “The Construction of Race Law in America” at Harvard Law School. We looked at all the laws pertaining to race from the very earliest days of the American courts dealing with the problems of natives, right up to the Civil Rights Act. It was fascinating to see the journey people had to endure. Even after the great Civil War, after the time of reconstruction, after the writings of the likes of Frederick Douglas and the liberation of the slaves, still in the 1890s the Supreme Court in the United States heard a case called Plessy vs. Ferguson. It set back all the great things that had been done since the Civil War. The case was very simple: Plessy was on a train in Louisiana and was moved from the car he was on, which was for whites, into a car for blacks and other non-whites. Here was the irony: Plessy was seven-eighths white and only one-eighth black. Still, he was designated “coloured” and put on another car.
The case found its way to the Supreme Court and Plessy made his case, as did Ferguson. The court ruled seven-to-one in favour of Ferguson, who argued that it was okay to have people live separately as long as there was a degree of equality within that separation. The idea that you could be separate but equal was the foundation of the whole segregation movement in the United States, right up until 1952 and the famous case of Brown vs. the Board of Education, which overturned it.
I've thought about this, because the whole movement for freedom, to not be judged by the colour of your skin (because that is a dubious and stupid way to judge anybody) has been a long, long road from when Thornton and Lucy Blackburn came to Toronto in the 1830s. The path of freedom is not a straightforward, easy path by any means. Nor is it simple in matters of faith or conviction. The life of faith and following Christ is a life-long walk that requires a great deal of courage. Do you have that faith? Do you have that courage? If you don't believe my words, listen to the words of one much greater than me, C.S. Lewis:
Christ says, ”˜Give me all. I don't want so much of your time, and so much of your money and so much of your work. I want you. I don't come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there; I want to have the whole tree. I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but have it taken out. Hand over the whole self, all the desires that you think are innocent as well as the ones that you think are wicked - the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you myself. My own will shall become your will.'
My friends, that is the life of faith. That is the journey of courage. And that is what our Lord meant when he said, “Follow me.” Amen.