All the news we didn't want to hear

If we were to develop a list of the 10 passages of scripture that we would rather that they never appeared in the list of readings in the 3 year cycle of lessons, I suspect that today's Gospel would be high on the list.

All those who came today wanting to be patted on the back for at least trying during the past week, and desire to be commended for the successes that they have been able to put together are going to be sorely disappointed.

One of the things which we learn to do very early in life is to count.

And we count everything:

how many toys did you get? and it had better be the same or more than a brother or sister.

And here in church we count also:

how many people, how much money...and we print those numbers right there in the bulletin every week.

And we worry about those numbers and fret about what to do when they aren't where we think that they should be.

Jesus should have been pleased that day in Galilee when he turned around and so that “large crowds were following him”, as Luke reports.

Large crowds , big numbers following; well that is what he wants, isn't it?

But for Jesus it seems to be not only How many? and How much?; he is not content to simply count things up in the way they we calculate.

He turns to the large crowd and says to those people: 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.

Now we see why the usual sort of advertizing campaign is not appropriate for the church.

Jesus doesn't bother counting things the way we would count them; his measure of success is so utterly different.

He had gotten off to a shaky start with that sermon in his hometown Nazareth; he had managed to get out of town before they threw him off of the cliff, remember.

But now things were humming along, folks are excited, crowds were following...

and we can imagine a disciple pointing out, “Master, take a look at that crowd! We must be doing something right!”

And Jesus turns to the crowd, and instead of something an advertizing genius would say such as:

“Are you looking for deeper meaning in life?

Would you like to approach your work with more enthusiasm?

Is this your 65^th birthday?

Does your marriage need a boost?

In four easy payments of only $19.95 you can have the secrets of life revealed to you.

Sign up today with Peter sitting by that rock over there, and Judas with the moneybag is ready to receive your first installments.

Act now, and get in on the ground floor of what is sure to be an exciting organization.”

That may be the way we would have played the situation, but not Jesus.

He says, “whoever comes to me and does not hate his father and mother...etc.”

“What did he say? Did you hear that? This man is deranged!”

What does he mean: “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. That is crazy talk.”

I'm thinking that the crowds became much smaller after this pronouncement.

Advertizing is so pervasive, and it intends to shape us in a certain way.

Advertizing aggravates our tendency to be self-centered.

It treats us as a bundle of wants that are being pushed to turn into needs.

So that if we buy product XYZ, we will have arrived at the promised land.

A college billboard trumpeted:

“We have what you want; now come and get it.”

Is that the best a college can say?

I'd say it is rather weak, because some of what students want is immoral, other things are downright illegal.

Come and get it?

If the church tried to approach evangelism that way, we would be very guilty of false advertizing.

We cannot make the telling of the Gospel merely a response to the needs that folks claim to have.

When Jesus called us, he called all of our life, not a convenient corner of it.

If we pretend otherwise when we talk with others, we're fooling only ourselves, because an alert person will soon discover that the claim of the Lord Jesus is not partial, but total.

We should be honest about it.

And we should be honest about the cost.

So many Christians in Sudan, Indonesia, China , Saudi Arabia, Myanmar (Burma), North Korea and too many other places are literally dying for their faith in Jesus as the Lord of their lives.

When we remind God about them in our Prayer of the church, we are also reminding each other about the scope and size of the cost.

And for a number of them, the cost has included the death of relationships with even close family members.

And this has always been the case.

“Inclusiveness” is the buzzword of the decade in the church.

Are we to include all sorts of conditions and kinds of people in the church?

Yes, of course! but not by saying that the truth doesn't matter.

People are included in the people of God by being in the process of transformation

from the self-satisfied, self-indulgent persons we naturally are

into the ones who pass on what we have already received from the Lord Jesus.

Here's an exact quote from a congregational bulletin:
You are welcome to receive communion here because in this church it doesn't matter what you believe.

That is no-cost religion.

A server in that congregation changed the words that were said at the distribution from “the blood of Christ” to the “elixir of life.”, whatever that might mean.

No cost, non-offensive religion.

A number of churches these days are removing the cross from their worship spaces claiming that the cross is an impediment, a turn-off that gets in the way of their attempt to reach people.

A no-cost, non-offensive, sanitized religion.

But it is not faithful Christianity.

We have to keep asking about the message that we are giving.

Is the Gospel we proclaim merely a warmed-over version of what any good social-service agency would give,

or is it truly a different, life-transforming message.

Jesus doesn't seem to be interested in meeting our religious needs.

He is leaving that game to Oprah and her ilk.

Rather, he seems to be intent on giving us needs that we would not have had, had we not met him.

He intends to sever us from some of our most cherished values such as family and self-fulfillment.

No matter how absurd it may seem to us, this is the path to life eternal with him.

In the middle of a heated argument, someone said, “There is no cause worth dying for.”

the other person responded: “Then you will die for nothing.”

A college chaplain said that one day a very irate parent called him.

“I hold you personally responsible.”

“Me?”

“It is absurd. My daughter is getting a BS degree in engineering from Duke, and she is going to throw it all away on mission work in Haiti, digging ditches.”

“Well I doubt that she received much training in the engineering department in how to dig ditches, but she is smart and will catch on quickly, I'm sure.”

“Look,” said the father, “this is no laughing matter. You are completely irresponsible in encouraging her to do this. It is all your fault.”

“Me? what have I done?”

“You filled her head with all this Jesus stuff. She likes you, that is why she is doing this foolishness.”

“Now look, buster, weren't you the one who had her baptized?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And then didn't you read her Bible stories , take her to Sunday School and youth fellowship?”

“Well, yes, but...”

“Don't but me. It is your fault that she believed this stuff and gives it all to Jesus. You're the one who introduced her to Jesus, not me.”

“But all we ever wanted her to be was a Presbyterian,” he said meekly.

“Sorry, You've messed up and turned her into a disciple.”

May that happen every time we speak

the life-transforming Good News of Christ Jesus,

the news that we thought that we didn't want to hear!

Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.