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"Do You Know What You're Getting Into?" | Luke 9: 51-62 | June 27, 2004 |
(I read the entire story–I urge you to do the same)
A couple got married later in life and wishing to do it right they drew up a series of prenuptial agreements. One of them was that they would have either children or pets but not both. They had three lovely girls. When they reached grade school age the woman threw herself into the “bottomless pool of educational volunteerism.” She organized a grand fund raising auction. She knew a lot about dogs. “She had raised dogs all her life. . . She decided to shop the various local pounds to find an unnoticed bargain pooch and shape it up for the auction as her contribution. With a small investment, she would make a tenfold profit for the school. And for a couple of days, at least, there would be a dog in the house.” She found a dog of great promise. But as Fulghum points out, “to those of us of untutored eye, this mutt looked more like the results of a bad blind date between a Mexican burro and a miniature musk-ox.”
The mother went to work on the dog. Expenses: $50 to the pound, $50 to the vet, $50 to the pet beauty parlor, $60 for tack and equipment and $50 for food. The father observes that this is going to be one BIG dog. But he is patient about all of this. “After all, it is only a temporary arrangement, and for a good cause.
He remembers item No. 7 (children or pets) in the prenuptial agreement. He is safe.
DOG is brought early to the auction block because father finds him chewing the leather off the car’s steering wheel. As the bidding starts, with mother holding DOG on the stage, “in a whisper not really meant for public notice, the mother calls to her husband ‘Jack, Jack, I can’t sell this dog–I want this dog–this is my dog–she loves me–I love her–oh Jack.’
“Every eye in the room is on this soapy drama. The father feels ill, realizing that the great bowling ball of fate is headed down his alley. ‘Please, Jack, please, please,’ she whispers. At that moment everybody in the room knows who is going to buy the pooch. ‘DOG’ is going home with Jack. Having no fear now of being stuck themselves, several relieved men set the bidding on fire. ‘DOG’ is going to set an auction record.”
Adding up the up-front costs and Jack has spent $1,765 for “DOG.”
Jack, who now is the only one strong enough to be walked by DOG (renamed Marilyn), is still stunned. He had it down on paper. Kids or pets, not both.
“But,” writes Fulghum, “the complicating clauses in the fine print of the marriage contract are always unreadable. And always open to revision by forces stronger that a man’s ego. The loveboat always leaks. And marriage is never a done deal.”
We laugh, in part because we know what it is like to discover that you didn't really know what you were getting into. It may be in marriage, a new job, having kids, taking the grandchildren for the weekend, taking up golf, owning a boat--the list is very, very long.
In today's scripture lesson some who had been camp followers of the Jesus entourage say to Jesus. We want to follow you. We want to become disciples! And when Jesus responds, "foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has no where to lay his head." He seems to be asking, "Do you really know what you are getting into?"
Would Jesus "make it" as a parish pastor in today's consumer/ i.e. customer oriented society? You know what the theory is: find out what people are looking for and give it to them. We in academia now use the language of customer satisfaction, market driven, convenience oriented, anticipating customer wants and needs, one stop shopping environment.
Much of the "church growth" movement of the last few years which has been fascinated with the mega churches has focused on finding out what people want, what they are comfortable with and then supplying it in a style derived from surveys, focus groups and avoiding whatever offends.
We did an every member canvas this last year to find out what things you liked and what things you didn’t like. We continue to be concerned that worship is satisfying, Christian education is appealing, and that there are plenty of opportunities for fellowship and service. A well-run church, someone said, is like a well-run home, where members can count on regular meals in pleasant surroundings, with people who generally mind their manners. It has a bit of the Norman Rockwell illustration about it. Now I'm not knocking this picture. But Jesus doesn't seem to have read the marketing research nor listened to the church growth consultant. You wonder if Jesus had charge of a congregation if there would be any people left after a few Sundays of "Let the dead bury the dead" sermons. Isn’t it interesting that when in our Old Testament lesson for today Elijah chooses Elisha to become his disciple that Elisha at first asks leave to go say farewell to his family? It seems as if Elijah says “Oh, never mind. Go back home.” Far from trying to make it easy for people to follow him, Jesus seems bent on pointing out how hard it is, how down right life-threatening it is.
One way of looking at this text and others like it is that Jesus is making the point about discipleship that we discover in many areas: You must not think a complex task is simple. My records show that over 25 years ago I preached a sermon here at NECC titled "You Can't Do Just One Thing." Shortly before then I had tried to move a heating duct in my basement. I related how I discovered in the comedy of errors that ensued that if I moved one end of the pipe the other end sagged or the middle sagged or the pipe separated so that I became a one person keystone cops movie. In the intervening years I have discovered again and again that simple home improvement tasks are never simple. I need someone to constantly ask me “Do you know what you are getting into? Over the years I have received a graduate education on how "one thing leads to another."
When my children were little the collection of Halloween candy was a major enterprise. One year, the day after Halloween my twin sons (pre-schoolers at the time) got into the stash of candy that belonged to my daughter Beth. To say she was upset barely begins to describe the scene I found when I came home from the college. Being a parent who, at the time, practiced the good old American tradition of bribery, I took Beth on a shopping spree to replace the missing sweets. But on returning home my oldest daughter went into a rage of righteous indignation at what seemed to her as an unequal distribution of the worlds resources both in quantity and quality. I really did not know what I was getting into.
So too in matters of faith we ought not oversimplify what commitment means. We should be wary of those who would try to convince us that understanding the ways of the almighty can be simplified to a bumper sticker.
But even if this is a plausible and profitable reading of this scripture, it still seems that Jesus seems to discourage followers.
Barbara Brown Taylor says, "They all want to go with (Jesus). They want to get as close as they can to the energy that radiates from him like heat from a coal. They want to be the first to hear what he says next--to be part of changing the world with him--and they do not have a clue what it costs. Jesus wants to tell them, because the worst thing he can do is to mislead them and let them believe they are running off with the circus when they are in fact headed into battle unarmed."
We need to remember that when Luke wrote this gospel, Christians were already being persecuted for following Jesus. To have a Christian in the family was dangerous for everyone, because the Romans were thorough. If they found one believer in a household they would arrest everyone. So being a follower of Jesus was a very serious matter. It was clear to Luke that "once you made following Jesus your first priority, everything else fell by the wayside--not because God took it away from you but because that is how the world works. As long as the world opposes those who set out to transform it, the transformers will pay a high price."
Jesus is not threatening us. He, in love, wants to be honest with us and wants us to know very clearly what it may cost to follow him.
I read about a couple being interviewed on TV. They were in great grief, having just lost their beloved adult daughter in the terrible disaster of 9/11. At the end of the brief exchange, the reporter, perhaps sensing that he ought to say something before ending the conversation, said, “Well, er, I guess that you will be going to your place of worship this weekend to receive some consolation.”
The mother replied, “No. You see, our religion teaches that we ought to forgive our enemies. And we are just not ready for that right now.” Now there was a woman who knew something of the perils of discipleship.
I would imagine that those parents also discovered how their discipleship, their faith, became a source of strength and solace. My wife, Ida, and I went out to dinner last Friday night to celebrate our 44th anniversary. I asked her if I could use us as an illustration of how we, at ages 20 and 21 really did not know what we were getting into. She gave me permission. (You can see from the fact that I asked permission that I have learned a little bit about what I got into.) Let me also use this example to point out that not knowing what you are getting into is not necessarily negative nor that events will turn out badly–often quite the contrary.
The power of love is like that. Some of us are fortunate enough to know the pure joy of being willing not to count the cost of loving. My guess is that the man in the story who paid the $1,765 for the DOG he didn't want doesn't really mind in his heart of hearts for he knows the breathing joy of the kind of love that put him in that situation.
Jesus continues to call us to live out our faith--even if we don't always know what we are getting into. Amen
Joe Dunham
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