Read the Fine Print
Preached at CRCDS
Chapel Service, September 7, 2016
Luke 14:25-33
Not to alarm you, but by my calculation there are only 109
days left until Christmas. This means that it is not too soon to start talking
about Christmas movies, and with that in mind I now turn to the 1994 classic
The Santa Clause. In The Santa Clause Tim
Allen plays a workaholic divorced father named Scott Calvin who is in charge of
developing toys for a toy company. On Christmas Eve he reads ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas to his
son and goes to bed only to be awakened a few hours later by noises coming from
his roof. When he and his son go outside to investigate he startles a man
dressed as Santa on his roof, who then slips and falls in to a snow bank. As
Scott and his son Charlie are discussing what to do with the mysterious
intruder, the man disappears leaving behind his signature red suit. At
Charlie’s urging Scott puts on the suit only to assume the duties of Santa
Claus for the night. They wind up at the North Pole where the head elf Bernard
informs Scott that he is now, in fact, Santa Claus. To prove this claim,
Bernard pulls out a business card that Scott found with the suit, puts it under
a magnifying glass, and shows Scott the fine print: anyone who puts on the suit
takes over the job of Santa Claus until something happens that renders him
unable to perform the duties (such as falling off a roof). Scott is stuck
because he did not read the fine print.
Today’s passage from Luke is the Jesus version of this movie,
or perhaps The Santa Clause is the Disney Christmas movie version of this
passage. Jesus is like Bernard and the business card, and the large crowd is
like Scott Calvin. They want to put on the mantle of disciple and follow Jesus
but they can only focus on the immediate situation. They feel compelled to put
on the outfit without really knowing what the consequences will be. Jesus is
the one who has to tell them that this is not a one-night-only gig, this is for
life. Following Jesus is not something to be taken up lightly or impulsively. There
is a cost.
We all have our different stories of how we ended up here
today. Some of us always saw ourselves here, some of us never would’ve thought
we’d end up here. Some of us have come right after undergrad, some of us are
embarking on second careers. Some of us are born-and-raised in one denomination,
some of us may need two hands to count the different denominations we have
found ourselves drawn to over the years. But I think many of us can share the
same sentiment: in one way or another we have been called to ministry.
Now, how many of us here read the fine print before we
started seminary? How many of us even knew there would be fine print to read?
Much like the traveling crowd, I too was swept up in the idea of what all of
this meant but hadn’t really thought it through. I had no idea what giving up
my possessions really meant, other than looking at that poor rich guy who was
told to sell everything he owned to follow Jesus and shaking my head at his
reluctance to do so. Little did I know that I would be giving up the most
important possession I had: my idea of who I was.
See, there’s this part of seminary life that isn’t mentioned
in the course booklets or website: what you have to give up. I mean, it’s here
in the Bible, so it’s not like it’s a big bad secret. We just sort of take on
the mantle of seminary student or future pastor or ministry work without going
too far beyond that. Following Jesus will be awesome!!! And it is. But man, it
can be rough, and even when we think we’ve read the fine print we can still be
thrown for a loop when the reality doesn’t quite match the fantasy. Following
Jesus is not all sunshine and roses, or I guess for us loaves and fishes. While
we may not hate our family like Jesus suggests in verse 26, we give up a part
of our relationship with them. We may have to move away from them for a few
days out of the week or for months at a time. We can’t spend time with them
because we are in class or doing homework. Maybe they don’t understand why
ministry is now a life path for us. And it’s not just family, all of this pertains
to our friends as well. Our conversations now center around things like Bonhoeffer
and Old Testament. Our co-workers don’t understand why our availability is so
limited. Maybe we have to cut back our hours. Maybe we quit our jobs
altogether. Maybe we give up retirement. Some of us will change denominations.
Some of us will have emotional breakdowns in the middle of class. Some of us
will struggle with having our minds blown up when a new idea is presented to
us. Some of us will give up self-confidence and wonder what we’re even doing
here or why God possibly thinks we could be any good at this. I could go on and
on.
But as I mentioned, I think the hardest thing about taking up
this cross of ministry is letting go of who you think you are. Being here, going
through what we go through, learning what we learn, can’t do anything but
change us. We start out seeing ourselves a certain way. We think we know who we
are. Other people tell us who they think we are. We think we know what role we
play in our relationship with God and with others. But somewhere along the way,
all of that starts to shift. Sometimes it’s subtle. Sometimes it’s immediate.
But one day we wake up and find we’re different. Without even realizing it we
look at ourselves in a completely different way. It’s terrifying to give up the
image we had of ourselves. You look around at your life, how you interact with
others, how you react to different situations, at what others say to you and
realize you are not the same person you were when you answered God’s call. You
put yourself in to one box and suddenly you are thrown outside that box and
everything you thought you knew about who you are is completely different. And
there in the fine print we read: “None
of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” We
like to think that even if we had read that fine print before we filled out the
application we would’ve carried on anyway, but that may not be true. We’re only
human, after all, and very comfortable with moving forward with everything
being exactly the way it always has been. Don’t our churches often remind us of
that when we hear “But we’ve always done it this way!”?
But here’s some finer fine print: it doesn’t matter if we
know who we are or not, because God knows who we are. The Psalm paired with
this Bible passage in the lectionary is select verses from 139: “O LORD, you
have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you
discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O
LORD, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your
hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I
cannot attain it. For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me
together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully
made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden
from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of
the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. How
weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I try to
count them-they are more than the sand; I come to the end-I am still with you.”
God knows us. God knew us before we were
born. God knows us now. God will know us even after we take our last breath.
And to borrow from a familiar Bible passage, If God is for us then how we can
be against ourselves?
For those of you that may be new to seminary or may need a
reminder after the summer off, let me give you a little fine print spoiler
alert: the internal wrestling you will do here will make Jacob and the angel
look like two tired little puppies who are more playing than fighting. There
will be stretching and pulling and pushing and struggling and screaming and
crying and doubt and fear and enlightenment and despair and joy and a
strengthening of faith that you didn’t know needed to be strengthened in the
first place. And we haven’t even started talking about writing your papers yet.
You will discover things about yourself that you didn’t know were there. Words
will come out of your mouth and you’ll wonder where in the world they came
from. A friend of mine and graduate of CRCDS once said “If you don’t have a
crisis of faith while you’re here you’re not doing it right.” Now I don’t know
if that’s true, but be comfortable with crisis. Be comfortable with struggle.
Be comfortable with fear. Be comfortable with doubt. Be comfortable with being
uncomfortable. Because God is comfortable with our crisis. God is comfortable
with our struggle. God is comfortable with our fear. God is comfortable with us
being uncomfortable because God knows how we are going to turn out. I’m reminded of the lyrics to a DC Talk song:
“What if I stumble? What if I fall? What if I lose my step and I make fools of
us all? Will the love continue when the walk becomes a crawl? I hear You
whispering my name. (You say) my love for you will never change.” God has searched us and known us. We may forget
to read the fine print at times, but God doesn’t.
Remember Scott Calvin, our reluctant Santa Claus? He spends
the rest of the movie trying to deny who he is becoming. He keeps trying to
revert back to who he was on that fateful Christmas Eve. But no matter what he
does, he can’t go back. He is finally at peace when he accepts this and stops
fighting who he has become. The same is true for us. Whether it happens slowly
over your four or six year plan or happens all at once sitting in your
Supervised Ministry class one random day, change is going to happen. But if we
remind ourselves that God has our back, that we are God’s, and that God knows us,
we shouldn’t fear it or run away from it. We should embrace it, and embrace who
we are becoming, for we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Amen.
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