"Discipleship, Part One: Impulsive"
Credits and debits, freedom and responsibility
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Text: Luke 9:51-62
Last January, I visited a very famous department store in the area known as Knightsbridge in London, England. I won't mention its name because of our policy of not advertising for any particular store or business from this pulpit, but you probably know which store I am talking about. It is known for having very high-end objets d'art, and brands such as Louis Vuitton and Cartier. It is always very exotic in terms of its merchandise, and one of its promises is that if they don't have it in store they will find it for you, no matter what you want.
In the middle of this very famous store there is an area called the arcade, which is for the likes of me and others like me. It is a place where you can pick up relatively inexpensive things just so you can carry around a bag with the store's name on it and say that you were there. There are teddy bears, toys, coffee mugs and the ubiquitous biscuits and chocolates. It's a wonderful place and I understand from talking to people who run the store that it is that very area where they make somewhere in the region of 75 per cent of their sales.
When talking to one of the clerks when I was picking up my teddy bear, we had a discussion about why this area is so busy and so successful. He said, “You don't realize, sir, that when most people come into this store they buy impulsively.” Very few come in with something in mind and purchase it rather, they see something, buy it and leave. Impulse buying is one of the most powerful tools in marketing. Impulse buying is (and I think I have mentioned this to you before) the bane of my existence. It's plagued me for years at drugstores and now I find even hardware stores are getting me, with the chocolate bar display right under the till. I mean, chocolate bars at hardware stores? I don't get it. But they get it. They know people buy on impulse; we succumb to it all too easily.
But impulse buying is not something you should do for serious matters or major items. One would not, for example (I would hope), make an impulse move when you decide to marry someone. You should not move just on impulse when you're going to purchase something large like a house. You should not move on impulse if you're an employer selecting an employee, or if you are an employee deciding to work for an employer. Impulse buying is fine for little things, but for major things it is profoundly dangerous.
So, too, when it comes to matters of faith. If our faith is one of the most important, if not the most important, decisions we make in our lives, if it is not our ultimate allegiance in our existence, then you can be impulsive. But if faith is important, if it is central to your life, if it is a matter of your ultimate allegiance, if it is those things, there is no room for sheer impulse.
No one makes that clearer than Jesus in this morning's passage. It is at a very sensitive moment in Jesus' life. He is on his way to Jerusalem through Samaria and he's just been rejected by the Samaritans, and he knows that he will be rejected by Jerusalem, the city where he is going.
He is looking ahead to his cross and his passion. At this very moment, three different characters come up to him. All three say they want to be his disciple, they want to follow him. The first is the one that I want to look at this week. It is the impulsive disciple. It is the disciple who comes up to him in the midst of a difficult moment in his life and simply says, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus takes this person to one side and says, “Just a minute now, foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Why was Jesus rejecting in such a powerful way this person who seemingly just wanted to be a follower? The answer is Jesus did not want followers who were not willing to look at the cost of being a disciple. He didn't want people to follow him in a facile way, in an impulsive manner, to make a decision of this magnitude without realizing that if you are going to follow Christ there is often a price to be paid, a commitment to be made, a sacrifice along the road. Jesus did not want people to come along and treat his ministry and the method of his bringing about the Kingdom simply in the way that we buy a candy bar: a momentary, impulsive decision. He wanted it to be reasoned and thought out, to be weighed up and the cost to be determined.
Now, you may be asking, “What has this got to do with Thanksgiving Sunday? Why is this impulsive disciple that comes to Jesus, and Jesus' rebuke, meaningful to us?” I think the answer is clear. It might seem absurd in the light of the relationship I have with my wife Marial (who is an accountant), but I am the one in our house who balances the chequebook. I balance the chequebook whenever I possibly can, to the best of my ability, but I confess that I am not particularly good at such matters. Arithmetic was never my strong point. That is why I have a little yellow tab on my desk reminding me what I need to know about accounting. It simply says, “Debits on the left.” That is, of course, if they are not assets or liabilities, in which case everything changes, but for me, simple stuff works: “Debits on the left.”
And so with that in mind, I seek to balance the chequebook, but I don't do it very often and I don't do it very vigorously. Every now and again the spirit moves me and impulsively I decide to do it. I often wonder why Marial thinks it's important for me to do this regularly and then I am reminded, and this is the salient point, that if I do not reconcile our books, I have no idea how much we've got.
My friends, the same is true when it comes to our faith and our relationship with God. If we are going to be impulsive, if we are not going to take stock and balance what we have been given with what we are expected to do, then we never really know precisely what we have to give thanks for. There is a need, then, for all disciples and for all believers to do two things. The first is to take stock of our credits.
The world is driven by the humanistic and materialistic view that we are the sole proprietors of all that we have. What we possess and own is simply that, ours to own, ours to possess. We have the right to own it, we have the right to keep it to ourselves and, in fact, what we own is ours by virtue of something that we have done. But there is another view and it is the view of faith: All that we have has been given to us. While we do have the things in our keeping according to the law, according to property rights, the fact is, none of us, by virtue of own will and abilities can really say that everything that we have is by virtue of our own abilities, gifts and strengths. On the contrary, there is a divine hand that is the giver of every good and perfect gift. When you start to think in such terms, it alters the whole way in which you look at the world around you and how you assess your credits.
John Wesley in writing a very powerful sermon about this, once said, “We are not, in fact, the owners, as we seem to think, of everything that we have. We are merely the stewards. God gives us something in time and in place and we are stewards of that which we have been given, not owners.”
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus, to whom I was introduced a few years ago by Paul Grenfell from our own congregation who has subsequently passed away wrote these words in his wonderful work, Enchiridion:
Never say about anything, ”˜I have lost it,' but only,' I have given it back.' Is your child dead? It has been given back. Is your wife dead? She has been given back. ”˜I have had my farm taken away,' someone says. Very well, this too has been given back. Yet it was a rascal you say who took it away, but what concern is it of yours by whose instrumentality the giver called for its return? So long as God gives it to you, take care of it as of a thing that is not your own, but as travellers treat their inn.
My cousin Jill lives in a 17th century farmhouse in High Kettlebeck, in the mountains of north Yorkshire, some five miles north of Howarth where the Brontë family lived. She has lived in that very remote place for 20 years, and every now and again I have the privilege of going to visit her. She lives there with her husband Peter, two horses, two dogs, four cats (or maybe more on any given day), chickens, the odd turkey and all manner of wild creatures. She lives in this menagerie on the hill, and it's an amazing place to go and visit. (Although I warn you if you ever do, wear wellington boots, because it's extremely sloppy.)
I went there to visit Jill a couple of years ago, not long after her father, my Uncle Ray had died. While looking around this magnificent house, I said to Jill, “What does it feel like to own a 17th century home?”
She said something startling to me: “No, I don't own it, Andrew.”
I said, “Well, you don't rent it from anyone.”
She said, “Oh, no. No, no, no. We have a mortgage. We own it in one sense, but just think how many generations have lived in this house over the years. Think of all the people who have actually come through it. And when I'm gone, there will be others who will come through it. I'm just its guardian. I am the one who lives in it, but I must use it wisely. I don't really in ultimate terms own it.”
My friends, she understood that in this life we may possess some things, but there is a timelessness to the world and we are stewards of what God has given us, nothing more and nothing less. There is another side to this: On our balance sheet we not only have the credits that are what we see and feel and have, we also have the credits that are what God himself has done. Jesus wanted this would-be disciple to take stock for a moment of the ministry ahead of him. He was going to bear the cost of the redemption of the world, he was going to lay down his life for the sake of others.
This Thanksgiving, we need to take stock of our faith, we need to take stock of the great things that we have been given, of the great country in which we live that we do not own or possess, and remember they are gifts from God of which we are the stewards. These are the credits that we need to recognize.
We must also take heed of our debits. A natural corollary of what I've said is that if God is the giver of every good and perfect gift, then to have things is not a sin because God has given them to us. But if we are the stewards of what we have been given, then they are a responsibility. And what we do with what we have been given is a true sign that we understand that with the credits we have been given there are also debits. There is a theory in law that says that for every freedom there is a commensurate responsibility, for every right there is an equivalent obligation.
Some people these days are questioning that. Bruce Waller, a professor of law has just written a book titled Freedom Without Responsibility. He questions whether this notion of responsibility is not too moral and too rooted and too grounded in the Christian tradition, or Judaism or faith at all. Maybe we need to jettison that and simply enjoy our freedom, but not our responsibility.
I say to him, “Maybe, but if you go down that road, what kind of world are you going to live in?” It may seem tantalizing for a moment to live in a world with unbridled freedom and no responsibility and no obligation. It might seem pleasurable for a second, but it would lead to the most devastating anarchy that you could imagine. You can't have your freedom if you don't understand your responsibility, because the moment you take away your responsibility, then your freedom can be at the expense of someone else.
It's very much like an ad that I saw at a car dealership, that I'm sure they got wrong. The ad said, “Auto repair service: Free pick-up and delivery. Give us a try and you will never go anywhere again.” Sounds good, but there's an “else” missing in there somewhere. The “else” that is missing in much of our thinking is that with freedom there must also be responsibility.
That applies to the whole of our existence. It applies to the emotions that God has given us. Just being emotive is not enough if you are not responsible with your emotions. Your sexuality is a gift from God, but it must be used responsibly. You may have the gift of all manner of material things, but you must use them with an obligation in mind for those who do not. You may have thought and knowledge and power, but if you do not use it responsibly, then it is a waste.
There was a movie a number of years ago called Papillon, the story of a French convict who was imprisoned for crimes against the French state. While in prison he has a number of dreams. In one of them (and one of the most powerful moments in the whole of the movie), he appears before a judge and is found guilty. He says, “But I am not guilty of these charges. I am not guilty of this crime.”
The judge says, “No, you misunderstand. I am not convicting you for these charges, but for something else. You have been found guilty for the most heinous of all crimes and that is a wasted life.”
To which Papillon says, “In that case, Your Honour, I am guilty.”
My friends, even our very existence is a gift from God, but even that is to be used and not wasted. We must be stewards of the days and the time that we have been given, for they are precious. When we look at the devastation of the world around us, when we look at Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, when we look at Somalia and Sudan, wherever we may look in this world we can see that we have been given so much in this great land of Canada. And if God is our source, then his expectation is that we use what we have been given wisely, as good stewards for those who are crying out for more.
An article in the September 3< sup=""> Toronto Star caught my eye. It was about a woman named Joe who drove to a coffee shop (a topic near and dear to my heart) every day of the week The article was titled, “This Cup of Joe is on Joe.” This woman goes to a drive-through every day and pays for the person behind her in the line-up. She pays ahead. In the interview you can feel her sense of obligation, but also her sense of love in doing things for others. She says, for example, “Maybe somewhere down the line the person who receives this coffee will talk to somebody else and make their day better, too. There isn't enough caring for other people nowadays in our busy and rushing world. One good person cancels out all the bad ones.” (A very good theological principle, by the way.) She says she feels comfortable about doing all of this. She's only paid a few hundred dollars throughout the last year to brighten up lives of people she's never met. Then she says, “It's a wise investment and my face is happier, too.”<>
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is very clear. It's not difficult. It's deep, it's challenging, but it's simple to understand. When that young man came to Jesus and said, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus said, “No. Understand, I'm having to pay a cost for this. I am paying ahead.” In paying ahead, Christ is saying, “Look at what I'm going to give you. If you follow me, you have to do it like me. You have to take stock of those things that you have. You have to understand that if you do this, you have an obligation to the world, for indeed what we own, what we have, who we are, where we live is a gift that is so precious you don't receive it on impulse, but with conviction.”
May you do that with your families, with those whom you love, with those who surround you this day and may you, having weighed up your debits and your credits, have a truly glorious Thanksgiving. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.