Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

“Do You Have What it Takes?”

Delivered by Reverend Dan De Leon

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Deuteronomy 30:15-20 and Luke 14:25-33

I’ve heard this example from many people in my parents’ generation who pursued degrees beyond their undergraduate studies…  There they are: Sitting in a classroom, in desks that are meticulously placed in perfect order, waiting for the professor to enter the room and tell them about what life will be like in their post-graduate studies of law or medicine or what have you.  The prof enters the classroom and says to the students in no apologetic fashion whatsoever, “Look to your left and notice the student sitting next to you.  Now, look to your right and notice that student.  By the end of this semester one of those two will be gone.”

This has become somewhat of a mantra for certain areas of the undergraduate world: trying to weed out underachieving freshman in their first year of college.  College is higher learning, and higher learning, after all, is serious business.  So, what those intimidating professors and coaches and deans and presidents are asking is a simple but disarming question: “Do you have what it takes?”

Members of Friends Congregational Church (and I’m speaking to myself on this, too), when you joined this community of believers, did you ever ask yourself in that process, “Do I have what it takes?”  Did the pastor who talked you through the details of membership in this congregation ever look you in the eye and say, “Do you have what it takes?”  For those of you who joined our church in the last two years, I know the answer to that question.

But this isn’t just a question for the members of Friends Church.  Everyone gathered here this morning, when you woke up this morning, and you made the decision that you would come to church, did you look at yourself in the mirror and ask, “Do I have what it takes?”

It might sound strange, but this isn’t a question aimed at weeding out apprehensive church-goers.  If I wanted to do that, I could just preach for an hour and start the sermon by saying, ‘Look to your left and look to your right.  By the end of the service one of those people will be gone!’”

No, that question, “Do you have what it takes,” is an invitation.  In church-talk, “Do you have what it takes,” is another way of saying what the contemporary Christian song Come Just as You Are says, “Come and see.  Come receive.  Come and live forever.”

Jesus asks this question of an enthusiastic crowd as he’s marching to Jerusalem, where there’s a cross waiting for him.  There’s a spirit of excitement in the air as this mixed bag of people crowds around Jesus.  Change is on the rise.  Everyone can feel it.  And Jesus is at the height of his popularity in this moment of social idealism that everyone is sure will come to reality.  But in this grand moment, near-perfect moment, Jesus turns around and says, “Enough with the pomp and circumstance!  Have you stopped to ask yourself whether you’re up to this?”

Jesus is like the irritated Dad driving the family oldsmobuick on one of those old cross country road trip vacations, and he’s so fed up with the stir-crazy squeals of glee from the backseat that he pulls the car over, looks in the back seat and says to the kids, “That’s enough.  I’m not driving this car another inch until you calm down and we have a reality check in this car!”  Maybe that’s another reason why they call those verbal ribbings from our angry parents the “Come to Jesus” talk.

This morning, friends, let’s realize that we are the crowd of gleeful Jesus enthusiasts that we hear about from Luke’s Gospel.  And Jesus is stopping this car, turning around and asking all of us, “Do you have what it takes?”

Now, I want to say from the start of this quick analogy that I’m not talking politically.  I’m not talking about political issues.  But with the race to the Whitehouse seizing as much as a fourth of our daily attention if we let it, we need to stop and talk about this; because our American culture in this anxious time is so much like that gleeful, stir-crazy crowd.

At this moment, all of the presidential hopefuls who’ve been taking part in the primary debates have a crowd of anxious, gleeful people following them, believing in them and cheering as loud and as long as they can for them.  And I don’t doubt the integrity of these folks.  But I do doubt that any of them will be willing to turn around in all this pomp and circumstance—willing to pull the car over—and say to the crowd, “Let’s have a reality check here.  We can’t keep moving forward until we see what this is really all about.”  And as we hoist our banners for change this, new day that, next chapter this, transition that, will any of the candidates we support grab us by the shoulders and say, “Do you have what it takes?”

When Jesus is marching to Jerusalem, he knows what’s waiting for him.  Everything that he stands for will be put to the test: justice, compassion, forgiveness, reconciliation, and love.  He has no illusions about the challenges ahead in his final days.  So, with a leader like this, you would think that the crowd following him would be emotionally exhausted, silent, even apprehensive.

And in a hopeless environment, you’d think that this hope-filled Jesus would find it easy to campaign for his cause.  “Feeling oppressed?  Follow me!  Can’t catch a break?  Follow me!  Is that grudge eating up your insides?  Follow me!  Have you backstabbed your friends?  Follow me!  Tired of living in fear?  Follow me!”

But this crowd is not hopeless.  They’re not emotionally exhausted and they’re far from silent.  These are Jesus enthusiasts through and through, and they are excited about the road ahead: the roads they will pave, the powers they will trample and the ideals they will establish.

Jesus doesn’t have to entice these folks.  He doesn’t have to campaign for their allegiance.  He’s got ‘em!  But when everything seems to be going right and the momentum is in his favor and the red carpet is rolled out for him to Jerusalem, Jesus turns around and says, “Wait a second!  Do you have what it takes?  Do you have what it takes to be a disciple of this Way?”

As we follow our candidate of choice and these months of campaigning intensify in our country, we will become so devoted to this process that we will not only identify with the platform of a candidate, we will be defined by that platform.

And here’s the reality check: Only one of them will be president.  On the day after election day when we hopefully know who will be our president for the next four years, all of the people who voted for the winner will say, “I knew it!  I knew my candidate was right!  I knew I was right!  I knew I would come out on top!”  And all of the ones who voted for the losing candidate will start to look suspiciously at others thinking, “You’re one of those idiots who voted for the other guy, aren’t you?”  Sound familiar?

Well, what defines you?  Pinpoint that, and you can surely find your cookie cutter candidate from the 20 hopefuls that make headlines every day.  What defines you?  Is it your job?

I spent a year working for a PR firm as an intern, and my boss had a sign posted above his desk that said, “Just because I have a job doesn’t mean I have a life.”  At the time I took that message playfully, like my boss was a dork who wanted some kind of affirmation that he wasn’t a dork.  But I’ve come to appreciate that little sentence: “Just because I have a job doesn’t mean I lave a life.”

When Jesus asks the enthusiastic crowd if they have what it takes to follow him to Jerusalem, he’s asking them what defines them.  And Jesus is asking us that same question today.

Are you defined by the school you attend?  Does the neighborhood you live in define you, or the town you live in?  The places you choose to eat, shop, do your daily business, do they define you?

Or are you defined by your family: your parents and their expectations and opinions; your spouse and his or her emotional makeup and worldview; deceased loved ones and the dreams they left behind; or even those four-legged family members, your pets whose eating schedules you might be able to set your watch to, do they define you?

Are you defined by a relationship you lost, or the questions and possible regret you have over a life choice you made no matter how long ago, or something that someone said to you that was so emotionally uplifting or so terribly harsh that you came to take it as gospel in your life?  Or are you defined by the work you’ve done in the past and that bar that you’ve established for the pace of your life, or the mistakes that you feel you’ve made somewhere in your past that you fear mark you and your tendencies forever?  Are you defined by your own sins?

What is important for us to understand this morning is that what matters is not what we are defined by but who.  Are you defined by a list of ‘whats’ or by a singular, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, redemptive, glorious, mighty, priestly and loving ‘who.’  Are you defined by all these things, places, politics, people and relationships, or are you defined by God?

That’s what Jesus is asking when he says, “Do you have what it takes?”  Well, I doubt you have what it takes to hate your mother or your father.  I doubt we have what it takes to hate our wives, our husbands, our partners and our children.  I doubt we have what it takes to hate our brothers, our sisters or even our selves.  But these are the things that define us, aren’t they?

Conundrum!  (Weighing scales with hands in air)  Hate my family and love my Jesus or love my family and just campaign for Jesus.  Hate myself and become an authentic follower of Christ or love myself and become one of the people the bumper sticker is talking about that says, “God, save me from your followers.”

Here’s the Good News.  When Jesus is talking about hate, he is speaking in a language that goes beyond our emotion of hate.  ‘Hate’ in today’s Gospel is a Semitic term that means “to turn away from, to detach oneself from.”  There’s nothing of that Semitic definition in our emotional words that pierce the heart when we say, “I hate you.”

In 1 Timothy 5:8, Paul writes, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”  Well, Jesus, are you saying that Paul was wrong?

No.  When Jesus says that we must hate these things that we hold so near and dear, he is not saying that we must foam at the mouth with loathing of our families, or walk around with some scarlet ‘L’ for ‘Loser’ on our forehead out of self-loathing.  Jesus is saying that we must turn away from the things that define us, detach our selves from the things we think make us who we are, so that we can turn around and define the things we hold near and dear by the unconditional love of God, not just our own.  Jesus is saying, “Let go!  Let go and let the eternal, redemptive, empowering love of God fill your life so that you can always choose life!

We are an individualized society.  We are an individualized society.  And we are defined by what we do on our own: my achievements and accolades; my failures and mistakes; my family that I have to impress or change or fix or accept; my spouse or partner that I have to work and work and work with to keep the excitement going or I have failed; my self that I have mobilized or torn down by my own choices in this time given to me.

Where did you get this time from?  It certainly wasn’t any of those things?  It wasn’t any set of ‘whats’ that made you who you are, but a ‘who’ that insists that you detach yourself, that you turn away, that you let go of those things so that you can look at them through more than just your own eyes.  Start looking at your life through the lens of God’s love and all of its righteousness, and everything you fear losing will never leave you, but be given to ten fold.

Let go and let God strengthen you with a passion that lets you see the beauty of all creation in the way your child laughs, or the way your dog barks or your cat purrs, or the way your spouse smiles.  Let go and let God redeem you from the authorities and hierarchies of this world that have misled you; the ones that have made you believe that you have to trample your neighbor to succeed, that you have to make tons of money for your kids and their kids to have a prayer in the future, that the day you stop working is the day you lose your worth, let go of that misguided direction and let God steer you the earthen vessel of your life toward shores of justice, peace, and ultimate victory.

Let go and let God give you what it takes to look at yourself as a child of unconditional grace, a child of a Creator who binds us all—one to another—in a true charge of compassion, forgiveness and love.  Let go so that when Jesus turns around in the fair weather days of your life, grabs you by the shoulders and says, “Do you have what it takes,” you can look into the eyes of your redeemer and say, “Yes, Lord.  I have what it takes to follow you.”  Amen.