Sermon manuscript:
On my day off last week I was at my dad’s farm near Albert
Lea. I was there to help with the harvest, but in a different way. My sister
and her family were visiting from Florida. She has a son in the sixth grade who
loves running machinery. So my help was not so much me doing stuff. I was more riding
along, supervising, and coaching my nephew who isn’t quite experienced enough
to run the tractor all by himself.
As I was sitting next to my nephew I couldn’t help but
remember when I was his age. That was when I was learning how to run machinery.
I was seeing the tasks we were doing through his eyes. Some of those tasks are
intimidating: Backing up to wagons. Pulling full wagons. Gears could grind.
Stuff could break. There is an element of fear. Stuff could go wrong.
Not all fear is bad. Fear goes together with learning new
things. Fear happens when you leave the safety of what is familiar to master the
unknown. Life without fear would be a life without challenge. That would be
pretty boring.
It is not uncommon for people to think that being a
Christian is pretty boring. When was the last time you were afraid to be a
Christian, a disciple of Jesus? Maybe never! But if that is your experience,
then your experience would be different from the disciples we heard about in
our Gospel reading. They were frightened by what Jesus said.
First of all, Jesus said, “How
difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.”
It says that the disciples were amazed. Maybe another way to say what was going
on is that they were saying to themselves, “What are you talking about Jesus?”
But Jesus did not back down. He went on: “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It
is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person
to enter the kingdom of God.” It says that the disciples were “exceedingly astonished.” “What in the world are you
talking about? How could you say something like that?”
The third time the disciples are spoken of as being astonished
or afraid is at the end of the reading. As I read that, try to picture the
scene in your mind’s eye. It says, “And they were on the
road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. And they were
amazed, and those who followed were afraid.” Jesus is up ahead. Nobody’s
walking with him. The disciples slink along behind. They’re afraid. They’re
afraid to be Jesus’s disciples. New experiences are in store for them based on
what Jesus said.
The challenge that Jesus says down for his disciples is not
to cling to wealth. How does a person not cling to wealth? There’s really only
one way: You have to be willing to give it away. You have to be willing to give
more and take less, or maybe even to give it out freely for no services
rendered. That is a new experience. No one has to teach us to snatch and grab
and horde. We’ve been doing that since we were toddlers. As we get older we are
often trained by teachers and authorities that what’s ours is ours, and we
don’t have to give anything to anybody, and the more that we can accumulate for
ourselves the better. Therefore, in the pursuit of ever-increasing wealth, you
should give as little as you possibly can, and take as much as you possibly
can, and that is how the game is played. I suspect that none of you have been
frightened by this philosophy that I have just laid out. It is utterly
familiar.
What might be frightening—if you are willing to take Jesus
seriously—is his statement: “How hard it will be for
those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.” And again, he says:
“How hard it is for anyone to enter the kingdom of God.”
This is new. I thought it was easy to enter the kingdom of God. I thought no
change was necessary to enter the kingdom of God—the church word for that is
“repent.” I didn’t know I had to change. I didn’t know that I had to repent to
enter the kingdom of God.
Now, one way that you could take Jesus’s words is that he is
slamming the door on all who have wealth: “Get out and stay out!” But there is
another way that you can take Jesus’s words. You can see them as a challenge to
grow up. We can’t stay babies forever. We can’t remain in our merely natural
state where we are grabbing, snatching, and hording. If you want to remain like
that you are basically saying that you would like to go to hell, because hell
is the place where people go who practiced their whole lives to be masters of
snatching, grabbing, and hording. The only problem is that you, also, would be snatched and grabbed, and you
probably won’t like that.
If we are going to enter the kingdom of God we have to
become different. We have to learn from our teacher and master, Jesus, the ways
of love. This will be something new. We have to learn about giving, suffering
and bearing the cross. We are all naturally afraid of suffering and pain, but
Jesus and the Holy Spirit can teach us that the fear of suffering doesn’t have
to control our lives. If we suffer, we know that we will be comforted. Even if
we die in our pursuit of love, we know that we will be resurrected.
These are not childish teachings. These are very grow-up,
Christian teachings that require courage. These are the teachings of the
Kingdom of God that will prepare us for heaven instead of hell. Heaven is a
place of love. God dwells there, and God is love. The love of heaven is so pure
and rich that we can’t even begin to grasp it. Maybe we could try by saying
that everyone in heaven loves so purely and richly that they would do anything
for you. They would suffer the loss of everything for you. But they won’t have
to. Because heaven is the place where all things have been made new. It is the place
where, as Revelation 21 puts it: “death shall be no
more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the
former things have passed away.”
To arrive at the place where God dwells, where love dwells—what
might a person give for that? Let’s say you have 100 million dollars. Is that
what you are going to hold on to? It’s just a bunch of zeros in some Edward
Jones account somewhere. You can’t even lie on it like the dragons of old who
liked to sleep on their heaps of gold. You would rather have those zeros on a
piece of paper than to be kind, to be generous, to be merciful? It’s a
no-brainer which is better! That is not to say it isn’t a challenge—a change—which
brings fear, but the challenge is worth it.
Suppose I said to my nephew: I know that you want to run the
tractor, but just think of all the stuff that could go wrong! The steering
could fail. You accidentally drive into the ditch. You could fall out the
window and be crushed to death when the tractor rolls on top of you. Those are
foul, ugly thoughts. They falsely inflate fears, which might cause someone to
remain in immaturity, to remain in safety.
Jesus does not want his disciples to remain immature and
without fruit. We all have to grow up. We all have to change. We all have to
repent. We might be afraid, but let’s all agree that a boy learning how to run
a tractor is a good thing. How much more, then, is a disciple of Jesus growing
up in the love that Jesus teaches a good thing? Jesus’s teachings and Jesus’s
commands set us on an adventure, but that adventure is totally worth it.
And you do not go on that adventure alone. If you get
rejected, Jesus accepts you. If you suffer, Jesus will comfort you. If you die,
Jesus will resurrect you. Therefore, there is no reason why you should ever
give in to your fears. You, understandably, might be afraid to give away wealth.
The voice of fear might say: “What if I end up being miserable?” Your wealth enables
you to do a lot of nice stuff for yourself.
Or take another command of Jesus’s: You might be afraid to
love your enemy. Enemies have been known to do some hurtful things. Don’t be
afraid. Jesus, your teacher and master, teaches good things, not bad things. You
can’t go wrong if you will take the risk of being obedient to him. But you
can’t know that goodness until you take the plunge.
But suppose you try to carry out Jesus’s commands and you fail.
What then? Should you wish that you had never tried in the first place? That’s
a loser’s mentality. If you fail, then ask Jesus to forgive you. Then get right
back up on that horse. It’s inevitable that a person will get bucked off while
learning to tame a horse. How can we expect that it should be easy to tame
ourselves? Or what kind of ride might we have if we make up our mind to love
our enemy? Who knows what might happen!
On these adventures it's almost certain that mistakes will
be made. Gears will accidentally be grinded. My nephew, by the way, didn’t
grind the gears even once this past week. I was the one who accidentally grinded
the gears—but don’t tell dad. On second thought, maybe you can tell him. I
think he would forgive me.
Right next to the forgiveness of sins, growing up in love as
Christ’s disciple and student is the best of things. It sets us on adventures
already in this life, and those adventures will continue on into the next. Don’t
be ruled by your fears. Put your trust in Jesus. He will protect you. He will
pick you up when you have fallen. He is your Lord and Savior.
