September 9, 2007 Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 1; Deuteronomy 30:11, 14-20; Luke 14:25-33
Today’s gospel passage comes just eleven verses after last week’s, and the
two are closely related. Last week Jesus said this: “All who exalt themselves will
be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” That would be a
good moral for the fable I told the children. The acorns who exalted themselves
with such pride in their hard, bright green shells were humbled by life as they tried
to hold on, but when they finally let go and humbled themselves and softened and
cracked open and let in the humus of the forest floor they could be exalted and
therefore transformed into soaring oak trees.
Today’s passage ends with Jesus saying, “None of you can become my
disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” This, too, would make a good
moral for the fable of the acorns. They were so attached to their shells that they
were resisting opening to the change God wanted to make in them. They could
not become oaks without giving up all the treasures they were keeping locked in
their grasp. They had to give their entire hearts to God in trust.
That is all well and good for acorns in a fable but for us in our real lives,
what does this mean? Do we really need to hate our family and life itself? Do we
really need to give up all we have? And what is the oak tree we turn into—why is
being a disciple of Christ worth giving up all that we hold dear?
Before I say anything that might make this teaching seem easier to bear, let
me remind you that the man who said it was arrested and tortured to death by the
ruling establishment. And let me remind you that he would be just as condemned
in our own society, and that many who proudly call themselves Christians today
would be among those sentencing him to the cross. Teachings like this are still
turning the tables of our culture upside down. They are still revolutionary. Jesus’
teachings go against the values of self-interest on which all competitive societies
are based. They completely undermine all rationales for the accumulation of
wealth or status. They make violence and war unjustifiable even in self-defense.
What I am about to say will, I hope, make these teachings seem possible to
follow and even desirable, but be forewarned. If you allow yourself to be
persuaded by Christ, you will end up carrying your own cross through the jeering
crowds, ridiculed and condemned by your society. “Whoever does not carry the
cross and follow me cannot be my disciple,” Jesus said. You do not have to
wonder, what is my cross? You do not have to go out looking for a cross. Follow
Jesus and your cross will come to you. It is an inescapable part of the
transformation from acorn to oak.
And yet, there is a reason why the lectionary puts this teaching of Jesus
together with the teaching of Moses in Deuteronomy. Moses says, “Today…I
have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you
and your descendants may live.” We are here today because followers of Christ
have found it true that to choose to accept the cross and give up all our possessions
is to choose the blessed life.
Moses said, “Surely this commandment that I am commanding you today is
not too hard for you, nor is it too far away...No, the word is very near to you, it is
in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” Jesus said, “The realm of
God is not coming with things that can be observed [outside you]…For, in fact,
the realm of God is within you.” (Luke 17:20-21)
For Moses and Jesus alike, the realm of God opens up to us when we turn
to God within us with our whole hearts. For Moses that meant “loving the Lord
your God, walking in his ways and observing, his commandments.” But, he went
on, “If your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down
to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish.”
Jesus taught that we cannot serve both God and mammon, God and
possessions, God and anything else. We have to turn all we are toward loving
God—all our heart, mind, soul and body. Not until we choose to give up all for
this single focus will we discover what we are capable of being and what we are
meant to be.
To “give up all” means to let go of even those things that seem good to hold
onto—parents and siblings and spouses and children, even this precious life itself.
This is the cost—to choose to lose it all and turn everything to God. This is what
divides the acorns from the oaks. Acorns that stay acorns say, no, we cannot let
go of everything that gives our life meaning, our very acorn-ness. This makes no
sense. It is repulsive, horrific, suicidal. And they have a point—their reasoning
seems sound.
On the other hand, those who say yes do so on a crazy leap of faith, on a
hunch that Jesus may be right. And that is what many have found. They find that
if they cultivate the practice of surrender, moment by moment, day by day, and
keep turning to God and returning when they slip back to their old possessiveness,
they end up changed. They may not feel changed, they may feel worse rather than
better at times, but the fruits of their lives show that they have been transformed.
Such people are no longer citizens primarily of their society; their first
allegiance is to the realm of God. But they do not leave the place where they live,
necessarily. They do not leave behind the family or nation or life they have turned
away from. They are still there among them. Only now they are full to
overflowing with the life and light and love that nourishes those whose roots are
deep in God. Now their relationships with this world are richer and more intimate
than ever before. They see that they are one with all creation, and their
compassion and forgiveness are almost as infinite and unconditional as God’s.
God’s thoughts become their thoughts, God’s ways, their ways. God is their
vision.
I read an article recently about a man who made this leap of faith in his life.
Tom Fox was one of the four members of the Christian Peacemaker Team held
captive in Iraq for several months. Fox was not a perfect man, but he was a
Quaker who believed deeply that God is an energy of love, a light that is in and
around all things, including us, a light of love that wants to grow in and shine out
of us all. Fox believed that the spiritual connection to this energy was perfected in
Jesus. Our calling is to give our lives to increase the love-energy in the world as
Jesus did so that one day all will be transformed into the realm of God on earth.
That is why he was part of the Christian Peacemaker Team, and why, when
they were captured, he poured all his powers into remaining full of light and love
even toward his captors, praying and focusing on God. He kept transforming the
world as he could, until the day he was separated, as the only American, from the
other team members and was found dead on a Baghdad road.
The night before they were captured Tom Fox wrote something entitled
“Why Are We Here?” It was a question about life as much as about Iraq. His
answer was “that we are here to take part in the creation of the Peaceable Realm
of God,” a realm we help create when we love God, our neighbors and our
enemies “with all heart, mind and strength.” Tom Fox saw that the process of
doing this required the rooting out of all the sources of violence within himself.
To be transformed, emptied of the possessiveness that leads to violence so that
God’s pure light of love can flow through us—that was the transformation from
acorn to oak tree for Tom Fox—the great thing we are meant to become.
Jesus asks us to give up all our attachments and possessions. There are two
ways in which we do this. We do it by physical actions. We can give away what
we own to those who are in need. We can give all our time and attention to loving
and serving God and neighbor. We can sacrifice our life as Tom Fox did or
Martin Luther King Jr. did or Jesus did as they tried to transform the violent and
self-interested societies around them into loving, peaceable and just communities.
Those physical actions may require leaving behind our families or
possessions or life itself. But there is a second form of “giving up all,” that needs
to be going on at the same time as that active way. It was this that Moses and
Jesus both had first in mind. We need to give up all in our heart. We need to turn
to God in our heart, turning away from the worship of or attachment to anything
that is not God. Those who skip this step and try only to give up the outer things
of life may do soaring deeds of charity, but they are still acorns at heart. They are
not transformed. The seeds of violence or spiritual pride or selfishness are still at
the core of all they do. We cannot be what an empty shell becomes unless we start
with what is inside of us and work out from there. The heart of the acorn must be
changed before it becomes an oak. The purpose of the outer changes, the purpose
of the softening and cracking of the shell is to help transform the heart.
As I ended last week, so I end today. If you want to learn how to transform
you life beyond the limitations of the ego’s tight shell and beyond death itself, if
you want to become what Christ calls you to be and God created you to be, the
church offers you a place to learn and to practice. Coming to worship, coming to
the Prayer of the Heart, coming to a pastor for spiritual direction, participating in
any of the many ways we can give of ourselves here to help others and help create
the peaceable realm of God and bring more love into this world—all these can
help you become transformed.
As Moses said, “Surely, this…is not too hard for you, not is it too far
away.” The seed of your Christ-self is in your heart right now. All you have to do
is choose to give up all and turn to become what those who follow Christ become.
All you have to do is practice that choosing and that turning, over and over, every
moment of every day. It takes a long time, it takes patience to become an oak.
But all you need to do is give your consent; God does the rest.
“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.” Let us pray in
silence, choosing life simply by giving up all and letting go, into God’s love, and
trusting in this moment.
Let us pray………
Sermon 09/09/2007