Saturday, September 28, 2013

A Health Risk (Sept 29 2013)

Homily:  Yr C P26, Sept 29 2013, St. Albans
Readings:  Jer 32:1-3a,6-15; Ps 91:1-6,14-16; 1 Tim 6:6-19; Lk 16:19-31

And so it continues.  Jesus in the Gospel of Luke just won’t let us off the hook when it comes to money.  Last week’s parable, about a rich man and his manager, was disturbing because it was ambiguous and confusing.  This week’s parable about the rich man and Lazarus is even more disturbing because it is so darn clear.  Jesus tells us a story which is a stinging indictment of the dramatic inequality between rich and poor that we perpetuate in our economy and our society, and he makes a promise that in the end, God will not allow this to stand.


Two years ago today, parks and public spaces around the world were flooded with supporters of the Occupy Movement which started on Wall Street in New York.  The Occupy movement drew world-wide attention to the inequality between the rich and the poor.  The numbers are quite staggering.  In Canada, the top 1% receive 11% of total income.  But it’s not just doctors and executives and pro hockey players who are wealthy. By global standards, many of us are wealthy.  We live in a wealthy country.  If your income is $21,000 or more, you are in the top 10% of income earners in the world.

What’s more, as we started to talk about last week, all of us are participants in economic and social systems that are oppressive and unjust towards the poor.  In fact, most of us actually benefit from these unjust systems.  I happen to like chocolate.  And I can buy chocolate for a lower price because in the Ivory Coast, the workers on cocoa plantations are held in slave-like conditions.  My taxes in Ontario are lower than they would be otherwise because the Ontario government promotes gambling, and has a plan to increase gambling in this city and throughout the province in order to extract more money from people, many of them lower-income people, who have a weakness for gambling.  My pension plan is funded in part from the profits of the Canadian financial system which promotes the use of credit cards, which boost the price of everything in the stores by several per cent and then the banks charge interest rates of 24% a year on people who can’t afford to pay their debts on time.  I expect that you can think of other examples.

So we need to be concerned about wealth.  Not because simply having wealth is wrong, but rather because having wealth puts us at risk.  There is a health risk, a tremendous risk to our spiritual health in having wealth.  If you like, think of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus as akin to the health warnings written on a pack of cigarettes.

So what is the risk?  One of the risks is the danger that Paul identifies in our second reading as being haughty:  the risk of thinking that we are better than other people, the risk of thinking that we are deserving of our wealth, the risk of forgetting that all that we have belongs to God and that we are mere managers who will one day be asked to account for what we have done with that which was entrusted to us.

In the story of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man has fallen into this trap.  I mean think about.  Even after he’s died in the story, even after he notices that Lazarus is by Abraham’s side while he, the rich man, is in agony, even then, he still has the gall to think he can ignore Lazarus and instead call out to Abraham who will send Lazarus to him as his personal servant, to cool his tongue and to warn his brothers.  I mean who does he think he is?  I tell you who he thinks he is.  He thinks he’s the rich man, and that he’s better than the poor beggar and that as a result he has the right to speak right past Lazarus as if he’s not even there and to demand to be served by him.  The rich man’s sense of identity has been so warped by his wealth that he is blind to seeing Lazarus as a brother, as one who is a fellow child of God.

But that’s not the only thing that has gone wrong for the rich man.  Think about it.  Day after day, Lazarus lies at the gate of the rich man.  And day after day, as the rich man leaves his home and as he returns, he has to step over or around Lazarus.  I imagine that at first, the rich man feels some compassion for Lazarus, after all, it’s only human to feel compassion.  He doesn’t chase him away.  He has his servants give him scraps from the table.  But day after day, as the rich man steps over Lazarus, his sense of compassion must dwindle.  He becomes more and more immune to Lazarus’ suffering.  He sees Lazarus less and less.  Perhaps his own sense of entitlement grows.  And his ability to be compassionate shrinks and shrinks until it is completely stunted and he can’t feel it anymore.  And when the rich man, or any of us, lose the ability to be compassionate, we have lost something which is deeply and genuinely human, and we are lost.

Oh and one more thing – why does the rich man have a gate?  Is it because he feels the need to keep Lazarus and any other beggars at a distance?  Is it because he’s afraid that he might be a target for thieves because of his wealth?  Is he tired of having people knocking on his door and asking him to donate money to their charitable causes?  Whatever the reasons, and I’m not saying that they’re necessarily bad reasons, whatever they are, notice that the rich man’s wealth has caused him to separate himself from other people.  The chasm in the afterlife which separates the rich man from Abraham and Lazarus is not the only chasm in this story.

There is another risk to our spiritual health illustrated in the parable, and that is the trust that we put in our financial security.  The rich man in this story thought that he was going to be okay.  He built a gate to protect himself from thieves and beggars.  Even when he arrives in Hades, he thinks he can use his status as a rich man to coax some special favours from Abraham.  When we are wealthy, it’s very tempting to trust in our wealth.  After all, it’s our wealth that buys us food and clothing and houses and security systems for our houses.  It’s our wealth that marks us out as successful, as intelligent, as well-educated, as hard-working, as deserving of respect, as powerful. 

But as children of God we are called to place our trust in God, not in wealth.  We are to be the crazy ones who like Jeremiah actually hand over our wealth, all seventeen shekels of silver, to buy a piece of land in enemy-occupied territory simply because Jeremiah trusts God, and God wants him to do this in order to provide his people with a symbolic gesture of hope.

When I was studying economics at university, I learned about a concept called “crowding out”.  The idea goes something like this.  If the government starts to invest a large amount of money in a particular sector of the economy, the automotive sector for example, eventually private businesses and individuals will stop investing in that sector, because of the competition from the government investments for resources and good investment opportunities.  Economists like to say that the government investment “crowds out” the private investments.

Well, I don’t care much what you think about this particular economic theory, but I do think this concept of “crowding out” applies to the things that we invest ourselves in.  Where do you place your trust?  In what do you have faith?  What is the source of your hope?

If we place our trust in our riches and possessions, then sooner or later, these will start to crowd out our trust in God.  There just won’t be room for it in our lives.  Like a muscle that doesn’t get used, it will waste away until it just isn’t there anymore.  When we set our hope in our wealth, we stop living by faith. 

And that would be tragic.  Because living by faith is what makes us fully alive, able to live in a way that is bold and beautiful and bigger than it otherwise would be.  Living by faith both enriches us and enables us to be open to the lives of others and to live justly and generously in response to their needs.

So let this story of the rich man and Lazarus be a warning to you about the spiritual risks associated with wealth.  And not just a warning, but also a spur to action.  Because it seems to me that there are two things we can do to stay healthy.

The first is to follow Paul’s advice that he gives to young Timothy in our second reading:

“As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes in the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.  They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous and ready to share.”

And the second thing that I think all of us need to do, whether we’re rich or poor, is what I’ll call “chasm work”.  There are chasms which separate people in our society, deep divides.  And we are called to do our part to bridge them, and to bridge them before it’s too late.  How can we do that?  I think that’s where I’ll stop for this morning and let you continue as we move now into our Open Space.


Amen.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

It's Time to Talk About Money (Sept 22 2013)

Homily:  Yr C P25, Sept 22 2013, St. Albans
Readings:  Amos 8:4-7; Ps 113; 1 Tim 2.1-7; Lk 16.1-13

Photo by MyEyeSees. Flickr Creative Commons.
It’s time to talk about money!  Because in today’s gospel, and in the gospel we’re going to get next week, Jesus talks about money.  In fact, Jesus talks about money a lot, especially in the gospel of Luke.  And the reason that money is one of Jesus’ favourite subjects is because he knows that how we use our money has an awful lot to say about our priorities, our values and our faith.

So let’s take a look at today’s story.  There is a rich man.  Most likely he’s a landlord who makes his money from charging rent to tenant farmers and loaning money to people.  He obviously does well out of this arrangement, after all we’re told that he is rich.  And this man, the master, has a manager who works for him.  The manager’s job is to deal with the people who work the rich man’s land, who pay the rents and borrow money.  They would be poor people for the most part.  The manager in our story sets up the deals, signs the contracts and collects the payments.  It’s a good job, no physical labour involved and it pays pretty well.  But there’s a problem.  Apparently this manager is not managing his portfolio very well.  He’s not making as much money as he should, as the other managers do.  He’s squandering the rich man’s property and somebody’s ratted on him.  We’re not told exactly what the problem is.  But the rich man hauls the manager into his office, tells him what he has heard and asks to see the financial statements immediately.  And, the master tells him, if the poor performance is confirmed, the manager will be fired.

As you might imagine, the manager is desperate.  He’s in a state of crisis.  After years of working for this master as a manager, he knows that he’ll never get a job anywhere else.   But then, in the midst of his desperation, he has an idea.  “I know what I’ll do.  I’ll go and forgive the debts of all my master’s debtors, so that when I’m fired, they will welcome me into their homes, and at least I’ll have some place to eat and live.” And so he goes to each one of the debtors, takes out their contracts and reduces the amount owed to the master.  A hundred jugs of oil, which might be several years of production for a small olive farm, is reduced to fifty jugs.  He does the same with all the debtors.

But the rich man finds out what the manager has done.  You can imagine the rich man’s reaction – or can you?

This is where the story takes a strange turn.  We expect the rich man to condemn the manager for what he has done.  We expect him to say “you have no right to fiddle with the contracts.”  We expect him to tell the debtors that the original debts still must be collected, that the manager had no authority to change them.  We expect the master to have this dishonest manager thrown in prison.

But that’s not how the story ends.  Instead the rich man praises the manager because he had acted shrewdly.  And Jesus himself concludes his story by praising the manager and holding him up as an example for the disciples, and for you and for me.

Why does Jesus praise the dishonest manager?

[time for discussion groups]

Now, if you had a hard time figuring our why Jesus praises the manager, don’t feel too badly.  Many commentators and scholars have said that this is actually the most difficult of all of Jesus’ parables to understand.

What’s going on here?  Surely Jesus isn’t advocating dishonesty, is he?  Surely he’s not advocating breaking the rules or fiddling the books?  The dishonest manager is basically self-serving isn’t he?  What is it about him that makes him a model for the disciples, a model for us?

It’s a bit of a dilemma isn’t it?  We’ve been taught all our lives to be honest and to play by the rules.

But what if the rules aren’t just?

I think that one of the reasons that this parable poses such a dilemma for us is that we operate out of the assumption that the economic system with its associated rules and practices, and the court system that backs them up, is basically good and just.

But what if the economic system is not good?  What if it is not just?  What if it is an oppressive system by means of which the rich are able to exploit the poor so that the rich get richer and the poor are oppressed?  What if the usual way that society operates simply perpetuates injustice?  Would this change our perspective on the actions of the manager?

Why is the rich man so rich?  Well, it’s because he seeks out poor people in distress and exploits them by providing loans which enable them to feed their starving children today, but at interest rates they cannot afford to repay.  When they default on their loans, he takes possession of their land as collateral, and they become tenants on the ancestral lands of their own families.  The absentee landlord lives in the city and becomes rich off the excessive rents paid by the peasants.  It’s an economic system called sharecropping, and it existed in Jesus day, and it still exists in many parts of the world today.  And the manager who worked for the rich man was supposed to play by the rules and make the system work, work that is, for the benefit of the rich man.  I think it’s interesting to note that in our text, the manager is referred to as a dishonest manager.  But I think that’s a bad translation.  If you actually look at the original Greek, the literal translation is that this man is the “Manager of Injustice”.  This isn’t a parable about honesty.  It’s a parable about justice.  Economic justice.

We don’t need to go back 2000 years to find examples of economic injustice.  Starting in about 2004, commissioned salespeople at financial institutions all over the U.S. and elsewhere realized that they could take advantage of relaxed lending rules and a housing boom to convince people who really couldn’t afford it to buy houses and take on mortgages.  These were called sub-prime mortgages and they boomed between 2004 and 2007 and the interest rates and the profits were high.  The people selling these mortgages knew in many cases that the customers wouldn’t be able to make the monthly payments for very long, but these same salespeople simply pocketed their commissions and moved on to the next sale. 
And the bosses of the salespeople didn’t worry about it too much either, because they figured out a way to bundle all these sub-prime mortgages together as derivatives called Asset Based Commercial Paper and they sold them to the big investment banks who were always looking for ways to get bigger returns for their customers.  And because the investment banks were making these higher returns, they were able to borrow lots of money from the big banks where you and I deposit our money.

As you know, all of this came crashing down five years ago this month in the financial crisis of 2008.  Homeowners defaulted on their mortgages.  The housing market in the U.S. and other countries crashed.  Asset Based Commercial Paper was frozen. Lehman Brothers, one of the big investment banks went bankrupt and the entire global financial system came to a grinding halt and was only saved by the fact that governments handed billions of dollars of taxpayer money, including $750 billion in the USA alone, over to the banks to prevent them from collapsing.  We are still dealing with the after-math of the 2008 Financial Crisis:  prolonged economic recession, job losses, high unemployment for young people, and high government debt loads which we will have to be repaid by the next generation.

And you know what?  Nobody committed any crimes.  People didn’t break the rules.  In fact, the main players followed the rules, and they obeyed the incentive systems that had been put in place, and they made big commissions from 2004 to 2007 and almost all of them kept them because according to our economic system, they had earned them.

But God has another vision of economic justice.

God’s vision of economic justice is revealed through Moses in the law given to Israel, where every fiftieth year was to be a year of Jubilee, and in that year of Jubilee, all debts were to be forgiven, all property which had been taken as collateral was to be returned and all people who had been taken into slavery because they were unable to pay their debts were to be freed.

God’s vision of economic justice is revealed through the prophets.  Amos, in today’s first reading, declares God’s judgment against those who commit economic injustice:  “Hear this, you that trample on the needy and bring to ruin the poor of the land, and tremble.”

God’s vision of economic justice is revealed in today’s psalm:  “God raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes.”

God’s vision of economic justice is revealed in Jesus, who in the first public declaration of his ministry declared, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor and to proclaim the year of Jubilee.”

God’s vision of economic justice is revealed in the gospel of Luke, from which we can distill the following basic economic principle:

Everything you and I have actually belongs to God and has simply been entrusted to us for a time and a purpose.  I do not own it.  I have not earned it.  I have no right to do what I please with it.  I am simply a steward, a manager, a caretaker who has been entrusted with both a gift and a responsibility.

Despite what the laws of our society say, despite what our economics tells us, despite what it says on our employment contract and the deed to our house, wealth and possessions don’t belong to us.  They belong to God and they are given to us so that we can use them in accordance with God’s purposes.

Amen.

Questions for Open Space.
Q1.  If we really believed in Luke’s economic principle how would this change our relationship with money?

Q2.  How can we serve God, not wealth, but still navigate our way through the economic situation we find ourselves in?

Saturday, September 14, 2013

That's What God's Like (Sept 15 2013)

Homily:  Yr C Proper 24, Sept 15 2013, St. Albans
Readings:  Jer 4.11-12, 22-28, Ps 14; 1Tim 1.12-17, Lk 15.1-10

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus.  And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling, and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  And wouldn’t you be grumbling too?  After all, these tax collectors aren’t like the nice polite auditors we have at CRA.  Tax collection in the Roman Empire was, let’s say, a tad more aggressive.  We’re talking about thugs, mafia types.  Traitors who were in league with the occupying army that oppressed your country.  The ones who would threaten to kidnap your children if you didn’t hand over the money you made from selling your crops.  These were people who bullied you and kept you dirt poor.  They were the ones who had abandoned their faith, their law and their own relatives in order to get rich.

Surely God isn’t with people like that!  Didn’t we just hear in our psalm this morning that “those evildoers should tremble with fear, because God is in the company of the righteous”?  So why did Jesus, who claimed to be sent by God, why did Jesus even tolerate the presence of these tax collectors, let alone welcome them and share meals with them?  And so the good people grumbled.

Jesus hears the grumbling, and in response he tells three stories.  Two of them we heard today, the story of the shepherd who goes after the lost sheep, and story of the woman who searches for the lost coin. 

Surprisingly, perhaps, given the context, the two stories that Jesus tells are not about the difference between the righteous and the sinners.  The only difference between the lost coin and the others, the lost sheep and the rest, is that they are lost.  And the stories focus not so much on the lost sheep and coin anyways, but rather on the shepherd and the woman who are doing the searching.   Because the real point of these stories is to answer the question ‘what is God like?’ and to reveal the essential character of God not as the one who is found in the company of the righteous, but rather as the one who seeks the lost and then throws one heck of a party when he finds them.  In fact it even goes beyond this.  Not only do the characters representing God in these stories,search for those who are lost, but they do so in a fashion that perhaps would be best described as obsessive. 

Let’s take the shepherd for example.  “Which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”  Well, actually, I don’t think any of us would do that.  No good shepherd in his right mind would abandon 99 sheep in the wilderness in order to pursue one sheep that had wandered off.  That would be totally reckless.  The wilderness is a dangerous place for sheep.  That’s why there were shepherds in the first place.

Or take the woman.  “What woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?”  Think about it.  The reason she’s lighting a lamp is because it’s night time.  Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to simply close the door, go to sleep and look for the coin in the morning?  Why stay up all night, sweeping in the dark?  Why such a rush, the coin’s not going anywhere.  But she lights the lamp and sweeps the house and then when she finds the coin, maybe it’s about 3 in the morning now, she wakes up all her friends and neighbours and throws a big party.  And if you do the math, that big party she throws for all her friends and neighbours, it’s going to cost her more than one coin.  By the time the sun comes up, she’s actually going to be worse off financially than she was before she started searching.

How would you describe these people?  Reckless?  Impatient? Foolish? Relentless?  The shepherd and the woman in these parables abandon all the normal considerations of costs, benefits and logic in pursuit of that which is lost.

That’s what God is like.  The God Jesus is telling us about is a bit crazy, maybe even a little obsessive in the way he searches for the lost and then rejoices when he finds them.  So why, Jesus asks the righteous people, why are you surprised that I seek out those who are lost, and when I find them, we celebrate by sharing a meal together?  That’s what God is like.

You see the fundamental difference in these stories is not the difference between being righteous and a sinner, a good person or a bad person.  That’s the way the Pharisees and the scribes characterize people.  It’s a way of defining and distinguishing ourselves by what we have done, and of course we do that all the time don’t we.  But in the parables that Jesus tells, the important distinction is between being lost and found.  And the difference between being lost and found, the transition from lost to found, is much more existential, and much more relational.  Those of us who once were lost and now are found have a new awareness of our relationship with God, and have experienced first-hand the essential character of God as the one who seeks the lost and rejoices when he finds them. 


Who are the lost?  Who are the ones that God is actively seeking like a crazy sweeping woman or a reckless shepherd?

The scribes and the Pharisees thought that they knew who the lost were, those tax collectors and sinners, and they were probably right.

But one of the ironies of today’s text is that good people can be lost too!  Oh, we don’t like to talk about it, we don’t even like to admit to ourselves, but we can be doing all the right things, and we can be in all the right places, and we can still be lost.  The scribes and Pharisees who grumbled in today’s gospel were good people who prided themselves on their knowledge of God and yet as it turns out, they really had no clue.  They had never experienced what God is really like.  They were lost.

Who else is lost?  Do you think there are any lost people in here today?

Could it be the person who just lost the job that was such a big part of their life?

Maybe it’s the ones whose relationship is having a rough patch?

Might it be the parent who dutifully signed their children up for all sorts of activities and now finds that life consists of driving from event to event and sitting in cold arenas?

Could it be the person who would have a great pension if she can only put in 10 more years at a job which she hates?

Might it be the priest whose ministry seems to consist of going from meeting to meeting and dealing with stacks of paper work?

Maybe it’s the student who’s got one year left to go in a program that she really isn’t interested in any more.

Might it be the teacher who realizes he really doesn’t enjoy being around children much?

I think that all of us are going to experience times of “being lost” in our lives.  In fact it’s even possible that ‘being lost’ might be one of the defining characteristics of our time.  We live in an age that has been described as a massive social experiment in learning to live without God.  The proposed charter of values in Quebec is just the latest manifestation of this social experiment.  However, if God really is the one in whom we live and move and have our being, as St. Paul put it so eloquently after his own lost and found experience of God, then the results of our current social experiment may well appear in the form of losses:  loss of meaning, loss of purpose, loss of identity, the loss of our experience of and our relationship with the divine.

So, yes, there probably are some people here with us today who know what it is to be lost.  And there are some people here with us today who have experienced what it is to be found.  And there are some people here with us today who are somewhere in between.

But there is also here with us today a crazy, relentless, even reckless, divine presence who is looking for us and who will find us, and will be so overjoyed at finding us that it’s only appropriate that we’ll share a meal and then have a bit of a party together.

Because that’s what God’s like.


Amen.

Friday, September 6, 2013

Are You "All-In"? (Sept 8 2013)

Homily:  Yr C, Proper 23, Sept 8 2013, St. Albans
Readings:  Jer 18.1-11; Ps 139.1-5,12-17; Phil 1-21; Lk 14-25-33
Photo by Jason Empey.  Creative Commons License.

There is an organization that started in the United States and that now operates in Canada called Focus on the Family.  The mission of Focus on the Family is to promote Christian family values.  And I’ve got to believe that the folks at Focus on the Family would be totally offended by today’s gospel.

Because Jesus says, “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.”

What sort of family values is Jesus promoting here?

And if you think that Jesus’ statement about hating your family is offensive today, just imagine how much more offensive it was when it was first uttered.  In Jesus day, family was the linchpin that held society together.  You never left the family home.  Unless you were very very rich, you couldn’t survive economically without your family.  All of society was organized around kinship.  Even in the law, in the ten commandments, the first commandment that talks about our relationships with each other is, “honour your father and mother”.

Now, we know that Jesus is using a little hyperbole here to get our attention.  We know this isn’t about hatred, after all, Jesus loved his mother, we know that from other parts of the gospel.  This isn’t about hatred, but it is about priorities, about the ordering of commitments and the sacrifices that this entails.  Jesus loved his mother.  But he also left home instead of taking up the family business like he was supposed to.  Jesus was a good Jewish man.  But he didn’t get married like he was supposed to.  Why?  Because he had a higher priority.  God had given him a job to do, to proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom to the people of Israel.  And he was committed to doing whatever it takes to fulfill that mission.

Next week, a week Monday, I’ll be heading up to the Laurentians for our annual clergy conference for all of the priests of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa.  It’s a great opportunity for us to spend some time with each other, catch up on news and listen to a guest speaker.  And in the evenings, some years, a few of us like to get together and play some poker.  Don’t worry, there’s no money involved, just chips and pride.  Our favourite poker game is Texas Hold’em.  Do you know how that works?  It’s the one you see on TV a lot.  You get two cards initially, and then you bet before each of the other cards is turned up.  And the trick in the game is figuring out how to bet.

If for example, I get a pair of aces as my opening cards, I know that I’m “all in”.  I’m willing to bet all my chips to see the rest of the cards and stay in the game right to the end.

If, however, I get something like a two and five, then I know that I’m out.  It’s not my hand, no sense sticking around or wasting any chips to see more cards, I’m just out.

The more difficult decision is when I get something like a King and a seven.  In that case, my cards are good enough that I could win if the right cards come up, but there’s no guarantee.  And so what I want to do is to “hedge my bets”. I want to try to hang around in the game at a low cost long enough to see the next card turned up.

In today’s gospel, there’s a lot of people in the crowd hedging their bets, hanging around and waiting to see the next card turned up.

You see, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and there’s a big crowd traveling with him.  They’re curious.  They’ve got some interest.  Maybe there’s something they’ve seen or heard about Jesus, or heard him say that captures their imagination.  And so they’re along for the ride, they’re not committed, they’re not “all in”, but they want to see what card turns up next.

But Jesus, he’s “all-in”.  He’s taking his proclamation about God right to the capital city of Jerusalem.  He knows that his won’t be a popular message with the authorities.  Already the religious leaders and political masters are out to get him, they’re plotting to kill him – when he gets to Jerusalem, he’s a dead man.  Jesus knows this, and he’s still all-in.  But the crowds haven’t figured it out yet.  And so in today’s gospel, he’s actually doing them a favour.  Look, Jesus tells them, if you want to follow me, there’s going to be a high cost to pay.  You might be arrested, you might have to give up everything you own, you might be separated from your families, you might even be killed.  Now, I need some of you to follow me, I need disciples who will be witnesses to what happens in Jerusalem.  But only come if you’ve counted the cost and you’re committed to being all-in.

I’m willing to bet that the crowds who traveled with Jesus on his way to Jerusalem became a lot smaller that day.

I think I get what Jesus words meant for the crowd that traveled with him on that day some 2000 years ago.  The bigger question is, what do they mean for us today?  What do we do with all this talk of choices and priorities, of commitment and of sacrifice?

Well much as we might like to avoid it, we all have to deal with this stuff, don’t we?  In all sorts of areas of our life we have to deal with questions of choices and priorities, of commitment and of sacrifice.

I remember when my son Jonathan was younger, he was a good hockey player and so he tried out for a competitive hockey team.  Just before the final selections, as the try-outs were winding up, the coach called a parents meeting.  And at that meeting he laid it all out for us.  “If your son wants to be part of this team, here’s what you have to do.  There’ll be two practices and two games a week.  Your son needs to be at all of them, and be at games 60 minutes before they start.  There’ll be six tournaments, three in town and three out of town.  You’ll need to volunteer for three fundraising activities.  And the total cost for the season will be $1500.  These are the costs.  This is the commitment required.  Before I make the final selections for the team, you have to tell me if you’re in or out.”

Some of you here today are pursuing a university degree.  In order to embark on that degree, you’ve had to move away from home and family.  You’ve had to pay big tuition fees and living expenses.  You’re going to take on debt that you might not be able to repay for years.  You’re going to work your butts off and at times endure tremendous stress.  That’s the cost.  That’s the commitment and sacrifice required.  Are you in?

One time when I was doing marriage preparation with a couple, I had the sense that they hadn’t really gotten their heads around the sort of commitment they were making.  And so I asked them to open up the prayer book and to read the marriage vows, for better and for worse and so on.  And I turned and said to them, that means if your partner gets hit by a truck and ends up in a wheelchair, you’re the one that’s going to be pushing that wheelchair around for the rest of your life.  You have to be all-in.  Are you ready to make that promise?

You see, there are areas in our lives where we’re all-in, and there are other areas where we hedge our bets.  There are things that we prioritize, that we commit to and for which we are willing to sacrifice.  And when we do commit and when we do sacrifice, psychologists who research this stuff will tell us that those things become even more valuable to us.  Or as my grandmother would have said, the more you put into something, the more you get out of it.

And so as we move into our open space, I want to leave you with two questions to discuss:

1    1.  In what areas of your life are you “all-in”, and where are you “hedging your bets”?
     2.  And, what does it mean to you to be “all-in” as a follower of Jesus?

Amen.

After Open Space (a time for conversation):

I hope your conversations about what it means to be “all-in”, and what it means to be “all-in” as a follower of Jesus were fruitful.  I must admit, to me, at times I find this to be a bit of a scary topic, and I’m tempted to hedge my bets.  But one thing that I find helpful is to remind myself, first of all, that God is “all-in” in his commitment and his love for us, and secondly that God knows us intimately, God knows us so well, that whatever it is he might call us to, whatever vocation or ministry or mission that might be given to us, it will resonate with who we are, with our deepest passions and gifts.  The psalm that we’re about to read together reminds us of just that.

Psalm 139:  1-5, 12-17
Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
2 You trace my journeys and my resting-places *
and are acquainted with all my ways.
3 Indeed, there is not a word on my lips, *
but you, O Lord, know it altogether.
4 You press upon me behind and before *
and lay your hand upon me.
5 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; *
it is so high that I cannot attain to it.
12 For you yourself created my inmost parts; *
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
13 I will thank you because I am marvellously made; *
your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
14 My body was not hidden from you, *
while I was being made in secret
and woven in the depths of the earth.
15 Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;
all of them were written in your book; *
they were fashioned day by day,
when as yet there was none of them.
16 How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *
how great is the sum of them!
17 If I were to count them, they would be more in number
than the sand; *

to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.