The Cost of Commitment
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 1
Philemon 1
Luke 14:25-33
Tim
Christoffersen
St. Anselm’s
September
9 , 2001
Let
me ask you two questions. If you have children who also have children of their
own, you have a double opportunity to raise your hand. If you don’t have
children, answer based on your intuition of what you feel the answer would
be. When you look at family environment when you were raised compared to the
environment when you raised or are raising your children, are there ways in
which it was significantly different? If your answer is yes, raise your hand.
The second question is do you think raising a family is tougher today?
We will come back to the family question in a few minutes. All the readings
today deal with "personal choice" in some manner. In the reading
from Deuteronomy, the "personal choice" is stark and unambiguous.
Moses tells the Hebrews as they are about to enter the ‘promised land’
that the choice before them is life and blessings or death and curses. If
they love God, walk in his ways and keep his commandments, God will bless
them and the land they enter.
If they turn away from God and bow down to other gods, they will be destroyed
and not live long in the promised land. We know how the story unfolds. The
Hebrews begin to worship the local gods of the inhabitants of the lands they
enter.
I believe the soul of man has a natural tendency to value those things we
like, and to bow down to that which appears to be of value to us.
Paul puts a "personal choice" to several brother and sisters in
the Letter to Philemon. Paul has with him a slave named Onesimus who he calls
his son. It is apparent Paul has great affection for Onesimus and Paul desires
that he remain with him. But Onesimus has apparently been "borrowed",
as he was a slave, and Paul feels obligated to offer to send him back. Paul
clearly does not want to do so but he wants the choice to be entirely theirs
and not under any overt pressure from Paul. He puts the "personal choice"
into their hands.
The first Psalm also sketches clearly two paths that are a "personal
choice."
"Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight
is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and might. He is
like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers."
The choice is between keeping God’s commandments and turning to the way
of evil persons, the way of sinners, and the way of mockers or scoffers. I
know for me the greatest temptation is the way of mockers or scoffers. It
is too easy for our souls to be cynical or judgmental. We don’t think
of this behavior as evil but it is clearly not God’s way. The choice
is essentially between life and good and death and evil. Our intelligence,
which is the capacity to make distinctions, recoils from the stark simplicity
of good and evil. But that is the "personal choice" described in
Deuteronomy and Psalms.
Jesus words in the reading from Luke are, on the surface, an assault on our
intelligence. How do we square "thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself"
and "Honor thy father and mother" with hating your father, mother,
brother and sister…and even yourself? And if that is not enough, Jesus
says, "none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all
your possessions."
I believe Jesus intends us to confront seriously the cost of being a Christian,
the cost of commitment. We live in a little window of human history where
we are free to be Christians in this country. The majority of the Christian
brothers and sisters who preceded us often paid a heavy price for their willingness
to "take up their cross" and follow Christ. Even today, Christians
face persecution in places like northern Nigeria, parts of Indonesia, several
more extreme middle east Muslin countries and China, to name a few.
But our challenge as Christians here in Lafayette and the Bay Area has much
to do with our families. I believe the dramatic point Jesus was making was
to say that your family can bind you to the ways of the culture, the ways
of the flesh and make it difficult for a person to accept Christ and to seek
to understand and to do God’s will in their lives. The Latin word for
house or family was domus and from that we get domesticate. The risk
is being domesticated by the social or work culture of our time. It is often
the work culture and not the family culture that draws us away from seeking
to know and to do God’s will in our lives. I believe that in the passage
in the gospel today, Jesus referred to fathers and mothers who were not disciples
and did not seek to do God’s will in their lives.
But today many of us are "domesticated" or have bowed down to our
work culture and do not make our families a priority. I can speak from my
own experience when my children were young. I was caught up in my business
life and its demands. It provided what I perceived as "value" and
my soul bowed down to its claims on my time. This came at the expense of Susan
and my kids. I suspect others here today may be experiencing the same kind
of pressures. And the challenge is even greater when both parents work.
Many of you thought it was tougher to raise a family today. I suspect the
economics or cost of raising children is one of the reasons. Another is probably
all the juggling of schedules that results from the many activities of our
kids and the limited time we have together as a family.
The issue is to what gods do our souls bow down. Is it success in our career
in the work world at any price? Is it the car or the house? Maybe it is the
soccer accomplishments of our kids or our kids IQ?
In Jesus’ day the family was likely to draw the person away from becoming
a disciple of Jesus. But in our world today, it is more likely to be the siren
song of wealth and possessions and the dream of success in our professional
or business life.
As it was for those in each of the readings today, it is for us still a personal
choice. Do we choose to seek to follow Christ and to do God’s will? Or
do we turn to the gods and the recognition offered up to us by our secular
and materialistic culture?
For where your treasure is, there will be your heart also.
AMEN.
