Sermon Reflections and More!
(scroll down and check out all the links in the left column!)

The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost September 4, 2016

This Weekend's Readings (click each reading to view the passage)

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 1; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33

Pr. Steve's Sermon: Saying Good-bye

Children's Sermon: Following Jesus

Sermon Notes from Pastor Steve...

This weekend, we've arrived at the official end of summer. No matter what the calendar says, for most of us, summer begins on Memorial Day weekend, and ends on Labor Day weekend.

And when I reach the end of summer, I sometimes think back over the course of the whole summer to when it all began on Memorial Day. And around here, Memorial Day always means Yard Sale! For many folks at Prince of Peace, the summer begins with the annual "purge". We've been keeping all the stuff that we want or need to get rid of all year long. But beginning on Memorial Day, we bring all that "stuff" to church, and get rid of it!

We do this every year! And no matter how much stuff we get rid of, we always have more stuff next year (which is, of course, sometimes because we buy other people's stuff at Yard Sale and the next year, we put it back in Yard Sale...!)

Perhaps we don't always realize how fortunate we are to be in this position. It's a particularly first-world problem to have so many possessions that you periodically need to clean things out and purge the stuff you have. In fact, it's strangely liberating to many of us when we can clear out the stuff that's been taking up space in our homes.

And above all, it keeps the final line of today's Gospel reading from really having its intended effect. When Jesus says, "you cannot become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions," most of us probably think of the abundance of "stuff" we have. And on some level, we recognize how our huge piles of "stuff" can get in our way. And then we figure, "well yes, I really should start cleaning out and getting ready for next year's Yard Sale!"

The problem, though, is that Jesus hasn't been speaking about "possessions" in the sense of "stuff in my house." When Jesus turns to the crowd and starts to talk to them about giving up, he isn't addressing anybody whose money is keeping them from following him. He doesn't criticize anybody for wanting to keep their land or their boats or any of their other "stuff."

Instead, Jesus speaks about relationships, and projects and life situations that people so often want to possess and hold on to. Jesus talks about how people are possessed of an idea, or a vision, or a pre-conceived notion of how things are; of how things were; or of how things are supposed to be.

And then Jesus says, "none of you can become my disciples if you do not say good-bye to those things." That's actually what the verb translated as "give up" means. It means to "say good-bye", and it's translated like that every other place that verb appears in the New Testament ... (for example, when Jesus dismisses the crowds after the feeding of the 5000, he "says good-bye" to the crowds and goes up on the mountain to pray...)

And in every other place that verb is used, what the person is saying good-bye to isn't a bad person or situation. Jesus says good-bye to crowds he clearly cares about. Paul says good-bye to companions who are partners in the Gospel. People ask to say good-bye to families they love.

And so it's also important to realize that the "possessions" that Jesus calls us to say good-bye to aren't bad, or worn-out or junk that we'll never use again (like so many of the "possessions" we put in Yard Sale.)

Instead, Jesus is inviting us into God's future - a future filled with promise, hope and a new reality that just doesn't match the way life is right now; the way life used to be; or the way we thought life was supposed to be.

You see, there were these large crowds traveling with Jesus. And clearly, many of them thought this was kind of like a fun field trip. They'd follow along for a bit, see and experience some miraculous things, and then go back home. They didn't see Jesus as someone who was going to change the reality in which they lived right now. They didn't believe that what they saw and experienced was intended to make it impossible for them to just go back to business as usual. And they couldn't conceive that the future Jesus was leading them into was different from the ways they thought even God was supposed to work.

So almost in frustration, Jesus turns and says, "do you folks realize the magnitude of what's happening here? If you want to follow me and live into God's future, it means you have to say good-bye to:

The way things are right now - and there are these really harsh words about hating parents and children and family; What is that all about? In reality, many of the people who followed Jesus got kicked out of their families - families they liked being part of; their family situation was their present reality, and they liked that reality. Saying good-bye was hard, not because family was bad, but because family was good... (This is the time of year when so many families send their first kid off to college; and that's often hard on the parents, not because they're saying good-bye to their child, who they'll see again, but because they're saying good-bye to the way things are in their family for a new kind of future. And even though they want that future for their kid, saying good-bye to the way things are is tough ...)

The way things were - especially when things are changing, and changing rapidly, it's easy to pine for the way things "used to be" and even to hope that those things will return once again. Yet, sometimes the unwillingness or inability to say good-bye to the way things were is the thing that most gets in the way of moving into the future ... (not unlike the struggles we have in our country right now on this Labor Day weekend as many people realize that the hundreds of thousands of blue collar jobs that used to be a central part of American life aren't coming back (or at least not those same kinds of blue collar jobs); and the inability of any of the political parties to really address that is just making the problem worse...)

The way things are supposed to be - Jesus talks about how a king who thought he could win a battle, or a builder who thought he could build a tower. Each of them reconsiders and doesn't get stuck dwelling on "but it wasn't supposed to be like this!" and instead is able to adapt to the new reality... (often, in the church, this is our greatest challenge - there were ways church was "supposed to work" that maybe never did work exactly like that. But Pastors and lay leaders often get stuck bemoaning the fact that people and programs aren't doing what they're "supposed to do"; and often, the only way past that is to say good-bye to our preconceived notions of how life is "supposed to be"...)

Today's Gospel reading is filled with lots of harsh sounding words, and the call of Jesus to say good-bye to things that, in and of themselves, are really good.

But what Jesus is really doing is inviting those who follow him - including us - into God's future, and into a new reality that's ultimately better than anything that we have, used to have, or even might have imagined.

And Jesus calls us to realize how much we're often possessed not by our stuff, but by how much we've become attached to the way things are, the way things were or even the way we think things are supposed to be.

And Jesus calls us to be open saying good-bye to those "possessions", so that we can follow him into God's future; into God's promises; and into the new reality that God is bringing about in our lives.

Amen.