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It seems to me that, when I watch the news coming out of India or Afghanistan or the Philippines over the last several years Christian aid workers and church workers have been imprisoned or killed for no other reason than that they bear the name of Christ. 

"Imperfect Lumps of Clay"                   Cicero United Methodist Church

September 5, 2010                the 15th Sunday after Pentecost                   Jack Keating

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It seems to me that, when I watch the news coming out of India or Afghanistan or the Philippines over the last several years Christian aid workers and church workers have been imprisoned or killed for no other reason than that they bear the name of Christ.

And, it appears, some things haven't changed much in the last 2000 years.

As it was in the Roman Empire - where, over period of about 250 years, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people were tortured and executed for saying "Jesus is Lord" - so today it can still cost people everything to be a disciple of Jesus.

Most of us will never face that kind of choice in our lives. We will not be asked to give our freedom or perhaps even our lives for the sake of the Gospel.

But what about the other costs?

-the giving up of self that we are so reluctant to do?

-the giving up of a lot of our self control - which is no easy thing - so that God                   might rule in us?

-the giving up of hatreds and resentments against those who injured us or slighted                         us?

-or- and this can really hurt- the giving up of meaningful amounts of cash money               to God's work- money that could better be spent on our pleasure and                       comfort?

Discipleship is what today's passage from the Gospel according to Luke is all about. The discipleship - the following - that calls us to love God - to love Jesus above all other things, to love God more than our mother or our father, more than our spouse and children, more than our brothers and sisters, even more than our own lives.

What is the commandment - the commandment that come to us from the Covenant God made with Israel at Mount Sinai - and which is lifted up by Jesus for us as the greatest of all of God's commandments?

Is it not the greatest commandment "Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength"?

You know, how we talk about love is really interesting to me - and I am sure it is to you as well.

I know people who love the views they can get from the tops of mountains. I know I love it. There is nothing quite like what we saw when we reached the top of the expressway on Mauna Kea in Hawaii just a few months ago. The view was absolutely incredible!

But I have to ask myself - what if the easy expressway ride wasn't there?

People have told me that the views from the rim of the Grand Canyon are wonderful. I love that kind of view. I love the pictures that National Geographic has taken there, although I've never been there myself. Seems I haven't expended the time and sweat and energy to ascend that trail.

It seems to me that most people love ice-cream and watching television as well - and they find it much easier to pick up the spoon or the remote control than to strap on a pair of hiking shoes and start climbing.

And I have to ask myself from time to time - and maybe you do too - is my love of God like my love of the view from the top of those mountains?

My love of God is a real and genuine thing; but is it one in which I'm only willing to put in so much effort? Is it, just one love, as it were, among many?

These kinds of questions my friend, my brothers and sisters, as we allow ourselves to struggle with them serve a deep purpose in our lives.

They are like the hands of the potter we heard about in the reading from the prophet Jeremiah, the hands that shape the clay into a pot - and when he sees that the clay is marred .... pounds and reshapes the clay into a new and better form - until it is pleasing and useful to the potter.

We can, I think, assume that this is not always a comfortable process for the clay - but the results are worth it - for the potter is God - and God, as the bumper sticker says, does not make junk.

There is a difference between following God and doing what God wants us to do - a difference between loving Christ and being his disciples ... being those who take up their cross and follow him.

The Jewish historian Josephus, who wrote his history of the Jewish people during the time that Rome ruled Israel- in the middle of the first century- talks about the cross and what it was like in those days to walk the main road that led into Jerusalem. He records how, along that road there would be - at times- as any as 2000 or 3000 crosses lining the way- each with another victim of the Peace of Rome - nailed or tied to a cross - or the decaying and rotting body of an unfortunate one baking in the heat and causing a great stench to hang over the roadway.

Unless we have seen with our own eyes and smelt with our own nose the horrors of places like Vietnam, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Iraq, and Serbia we can't really grasp what it must have been like to walk into the city beside a row of crosses with folks dying or bodies rotting on them.

Nor can we grasp the absolute insanity that the words of Jesus must have brought to mind for his perspective disciples - when he told them - a people who often said "Cursed is the one who hangs on the tree" - that to be truly his they must "Pick up their crosses" and follow him.

It was probably the worst possible image that Jesus could have used if his whole intention was to get people to love Him - and to love God - in the way that I and so many other people have come to love the view from the mountains.

Jesus uses graphic images today to remind us that God wants more from us than our eagerness to receive bread without cost and wine without price.

He uses words about hating all those we should love to shock us, he uses words about taking up our cross to horrify us - and to help us wake up to what is at stake: to help
us realize that for his followers there is more to loving God than simply feeling thankful to God, more to loving God than simply waiting for God to pour out a handful of goodies into our laps.

God wants us to be disciples, to be followers, to be vessels able to receive his love, vessels able to hold his love and then pour it out upon others.

Jesus is telling us that being half-hearted is about as much good as having no heart
at all. Giving up some things, but not everything, to God - he tells us - can only earn US the ridicule of others.

"Count the cost," he says in our reading today, "and pick up your cross and follow

me."

Oh, how much I want it all to be easy. How much I want every mountain to have an expressway ascending it. How much I want not to have to suffer and die, to live forever without having to pass through the grave, or, as my mother sometimes used to put it, how much I want to have my cake and eat it too.

I want to be a beautiful vessel for God my potter but I don't want to be shaped and
formed on the wheel if it means that I will be pounded on and pushed around and have water soaking me and wires and wooden edges cutting and shaping me.

And isn't that the truth about most people? Isn't that the reason why Jesus talks
to his followers the way he does? Isn't that why Jesus challenges us?

How easy I want it to be - and how awful the way of the cross appears to be. But-
I can't help thinking - because the Gospel has touched me - that perhaps all the suffering
that I fear, all the self-sacrifice I am loathe to make, all the humility, the thinking about
myself less and others more - is more than worth it for the sake of that which has been
revealed and is still yet to be revealed to the children of God.

You see the cross that Jesus speaks of, the cross that he himself was raised on,
does not end the story. If that was so - the story would not be told and people would not
offer their lives in service to God in places like Iraq or Afghanistan or Rwanda.

The one who talked about the cost of loving God not only shows us what true love is like when he died for us on the cross - he also shows us what God's love is like when he was raised from the dead on the third day.

God's intention and purpose is to have US become beautiful vessels - beautiful pots - one that can hold his love and pour his love out on others. God's intention is to make us more like Christ in every way, every day, to makes us ones who are a blessing to others - and who ourselves know the blessing, the presence, the peace, that only He can give.

What do we need to give up?
What do we have to give up?

Well, we don't live or work in Afghanistan or any other places in the world today
where people are killed for telling others that Jesus is the Lord of Life, and of Death, and
of Life beyond Death - unless of course God has called us to one of those places specifically.

But there are things to give up to God right here; perhaps those things indicated in The Beatitudes of the Evil One that Paul Harvey shared years ago.

It seems that those beatitudes for believers in Christ - for those who start but do
not finish, go like this:

Blessed are those who are too tired, too busy, too distracted to spend an hour once a week with their fellow Christians, they are my best workers.

Blessed are those Christians who wait to be asked and expect to be thanked - I can use them.

Blessed are the touchy. With a bit of luck, they may stop going to church - they will be my missionaries.

Blessed are the troublemakers - they shall be called my children.

Blessed are the complainers - I'm all ears to them and I will spread their message.

Blessed are the church members who expect to be invited to their own church - for they are part of the problem instead of the solution.

Blessed are they who gossip - for they shall cause strife and divisions. That pleases me.   

Blessed are they who are easily offended - for they will soon get angry and quit.

Blessed are they who do not give their offering to carry on God's work - for they are my helpers.

Blessed are those who profess to love God but hate their brother or sister - for they shall be with me forever.

And finally - Blessed are those who read or hear this and think it is about other people - I've got you .....

Our Gospel reading today ends with the words:

"In the same way, any of you who do not give up everything he has cannot become my
disciple."

Some things are well worth giving up to God - they cause us and others nothing but
grief. Other things are well worth giving up to God - because God can renew and remake

them    because God can renew and remake us.

In any case those things we treasure that get in our way, we can't keep them
anyway. All flesh is mortal and suffering will come whether we are dedicated to God or
dedicated only to ourselves.

How much better then that if we are to suffer - that we suffer for the Lord who is
forgiving.

How much better then that is we are to die - that we die for the Lord who gives life
to those who call upon him.

God is the potter and we are the clay.

May we - may you - may I be ready to have him mold us and fill us. May we follow
Jesus not counting the cost as people of this world count the cost, wondering if we can do
what we propose to do, but rather counting the cost as Jesus counted it ... knowing that this
slight, momentary affliction will prepare us for eternal glory. And knowing that in Christ we
can do all things for he loves us with a love that overcomes the world.

Blessed be God - our Father - our Creator - the one who forms us and reforms us as
the Potter forms the clay. Amen.