A Sermon On Sacrifice and Urgency

This sermon was preached on June 30, 2019, the weekend following my ordination to the transitional diaconate. The texts were from Luke, Galatians, and 2 Kings–though I did not discuss the Kings reading. Audio will be available shortly.

On Tuesday, as you might know–I took vows: vows that allow me the right to wear this stole, this collar, and to be ordained as a deacon in God’s church.

I made those vows with joy and solemnity. I am somewhat afraid of this commitment that I have made—and I believe that I should be. I have chosen a way that will require a lot of me. I will not always be able to live up to these promises. I will fail from time to time, but I will also have the incredible privilege of living in service to God, to the world, and to the church.

I made sacrifices in my life to stand here, and sometimes it seemed as if God asked for things that were as harsh as the things that Jesus asks for in this passage.

These are tough words: words that, as we prepare to bury our sister, friend, and mentor, Marge, might seem especially harsh to us today.

I have spent much of my life trying to understand the difference between toxic self-sacrifice that wounds us, and deep, honest, loving sacrifice that affirms our true calling. So, a passage like this can be tricky for me.

Here’s what I think the difference is: when we are truly and deeply called to something, we know it, and in the end, not making those sacrifices becomes more life-taking than making them.

I think many of you have also had these experiences. I have heard your powerful stories: going to a far away country to serve war-torn people; moving into the community next door with which you had a troubled history; giving your whole life to a medical profession; becoming a parent and raising children who have empathy, hope, and courage; immigrating to a new country; coming out, and being who you are.

You all are familiar with making a sacrifice for who God calls you to be. Perhaps the sacrifices you needed to make for these vocations seemed harsh, irresponsible, or cruel to those around you. But, perhaps for you, there was no way you couldn’t make those choices.

As a community in Christ, we have all also taken vows—vows at our baptism, for some also at confirmation, to live in a certain way. We reaffirm those vows each time we baptize a new baby: to serve Christ in all people, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to resist evil, to affirm the dignity of every human being.

Each time we affirm those vows, we say: “I will with God’s help.” We are never alone in carrying out this work. We are only committing to taking God’s hand and walking forward.

Those vows mean that each of us will have some kind of calling in which Jesus will ask something incredibly difficult of us. To the rest of the world it might seem harsh and bizarre, but in the end, it is precisely making that sacrifice that will allow us to become our true selves. I think these things are different for everyone.

We don’t know what kind of relationship this man had with his father. We don’t know what kind of relationship the other men had with wealth, or the place where he laid his head, or those at his home.

But, it is not uncommon for Jesus to ask dramatic things of people in order to be fully present to the kingdom. Perhaps these things were their own prison of obligation or pride. Perhaps this is just a demonstration of the way the rest of the world might look at us when we set our face on something we know we must become.

We do know that Jesus was not an ascetic:  his first miracle was wine for a wedding, the Pharisees called him a glutton and a drunkard, and though he did not put his family above all else, he did value them, and ensured that his mother was cared for as he himself died. Just last week, when he healed a Geresne man, he sent him back to his family—not as a wandering follower, but as a person restored to community.

This is a moment of urgency in his ministry, a moment when the time has come and the work is now.

We too face a moment of urgency as a nation.

There was a photo circling this week—a photo of a man face down in the water, his child’s arm wrapped around his neck, her body swaddled to him in his shirt. We have all now seen what sacrifices parents are making in order to give their children a better life. We are seeing the results. We are seeing the conditions that these children are living in, and the lack of resources, at our southern border.

Pauls’ words haunt me: if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

It may seem like the scripture’s only message is that we should leave everything behind and go do the radical work of caring for these desperate people.

No doubt that God is calling some people to do that.

But, I would caution against an all or nothing mentality: it can be equally disruptive, and equally urgent, and equally valid to live a life of radical love right where we already are. 

The work of loving one’s neighbor as oneself in the workplace, the home, the neighborhood, the classroom, the grocery store, and the street corner—that work is to be treated with the same urgency that Jesus displays when he sets his face on Jerusalem.  That was the work of the Galatian church: to live in Christian community radically in their lives, with the backdrop of the Roman empire.

We must set our faces on loving our neighbors as ourselves, wherever we are, however we can, in every way imaginable. This is the vow that we took, this is the way which is now being asked of us.

It may seem small, when we are faced with such incredible pain and suffering, but every seemingly small action we take to affirm the humanity of those around us, to listen to them, to care for them, to live as if God is right here in this world, looking out at us from another’s eyes—everything we do from within the Body of Christ matters urgently in this moment. We are called to teach our children this way, to show up in our communities, living out our baptismal vows: to seek and serve Christ in all people, to affirm the dignity of every human being, and to resist evil.

And Jesus reminds us—lest we become like James and John—that it isn’t about settling a score. There is only time for love, only time for the path to resurrection, only time for the Way.

In that work, God already dwells. Setting our face on love means setting our face on what God is already doing: I will with God’s help. The sacrifices will be great, but the reward will be our true selves in Christ.

In the silence that follows, I ask you: How are you being called to love your neighbor as yourself right here, right now? What sacrifices might God be asking of you to do this?