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Homily preached
at Bradford Cathedral
Trinity 5 22nd June 2008 - 10:15 Holy Communion Romans 6:1b-11 & Matthew 10:24-39 |
Recruiting for life! This is the time of year young people like - or ought to. Exams are ending and holidays around the corner. Some are considering the future and what direction to go in. Canon Frankie and I were in Harrogate this week, at a gathering of 500 Sixth form students. There is a sense of anticipation about what lies ahead. And maybe fear too. So how do employers draw young people to their career? I want to enlist the help of ours today, so please pay attention. Any of you under 25 can join in. I'm going to give you the strap line for some organisations that might want to sign you up. If you think it sounds appealing/attractive/cool then give a high thumbs up. If OK, a low thumbs up, if dodgy and doesn't appeal to you a thumbs down. Are you ready? Here's the first: 1) Modern and Relevant, Capable and Resilient….?.... (The Royal Navy) 2) Agile. Adaptable. Capable….?... (The Royal Air force) 3) Be the best! …?... (The Army) Any of you thinking about the Armed Services? They want to recruit good people, train them and sign them up for life. How about this for a strap line? "Give up your life and follow us to death." Not very attractive? Well that's how Jesus tried to recruit people for life. Matt 10:39: "Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." And earlier in vs38: "whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me." It doesn't sound like a v clever strap line does it? So why has Jesus managed to recruit millions of followers, more in fact than any other cause? Well maybe it's something to do with the honesty of what he says and its power too. We all understand deep down that anything worthwhile costs us something. We understand that difficult things have great rewards. There's a story about a career day school assembly (this is in America) where the school had invited the Army, Air Force and Marine recruiters to give their pitch to the student body. The first two went over time and the Marine had only two minutes to speak. He stood and stared at the students and finally said, "I doubt if there's more than three of you here who could even make it in the Marines, but I want to see those three at my table." You know what happened--his table was surrounded. There was honesty. The strap line for the US Marines is: "A few will lead." It's not for everyone, it's challenging and costly. The students knew that, and understood that anything worthwhile costs us something. And Jesus is also being honest, he cautions us against cheap discipleship and advises those who would follow him to consider the cost. Look at vs. 34 onwards. This is how it is put in The Message, a modern paraphrase: "Don't think I've come to make life cosy. I've come to cut-make a sharp knife-cut between son and father, daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-law-cut through these cosy domestic arrangements and free you for God. Well-meaning family members can be your worst enemies. If you prefer father or mother over me, you don't deserve me. If you prefer son or daughter over me, you don't deserve me." Challenging and uncompromising. (Actually he was quoting the prophet Micah so it shouldn't have been as strange to his hearers as it is to us). Let's stand back from the passage and try and make some sense of it. The Gospel passage is full of paradoxes, apparent contradictions. Jesus, The Prince of Peace, says he has come to bring conflict not peace. He tells us 3 times not to fear, then that we should fear! He says only by losing our life will we find it. Let's stay with that last one, losing our life to find it. At the v least he is telling us we need a different way of thinking. The last thing we naturally want to do is give up our lives. As human beings we are wired for survival. Our instinct is to survive and it's a healthy instinct. We are driven to get food, shelter and protection for ourselves. Threaten that though, and there may be trouble. Push in at the supermarket checkout and you may get punched. Threaten my young child and I will fight you to the death. We are geared up to look out for ourselves and for those closest to us, to feed, nurture and protect ourselves. Just like the rest of nature. Then, along comes Jesus and asks us to think differently. Yes, he says, like the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, you have been made by your Father, but you are worth much more than them. You were made for something more than them, made for something greater than survival. But to discover that, means letting go of animal instincts, trusting God to provide for your basic needs, and going deeper. It means letting go of the desire to get meaning by looking good (which the young do with beauty and the old with wealth and success). Or giving our lives meaning simply through our family relationships, important though' they are. Only by letting go of these things, says Jesus, will you be free to discover true enrichment. The Message again, on vs. 38 & 39: "If your first concern is to look after yourself, you'll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you'll find both yourself and me." A paradox again. The way to new life has to be through death. Jesus must have lost people at this point. By talking about taking up the cross he was breaking social taboos. This was not politically correct. Crucifixion was shameful, a Roman invention for the worst offenders, and it was not mentioned in polite society. Jesus uses it to shake people into realising the cost there can be to doing things God's way. The cost was one he had to pay and a disciple is not above the teacher. Why is the cost so high? Is this just about exceptional Christians like St Francis who risked his father's anger to live the simple life? I don't think so. I think Jesus is recruiting ordinary people; it is any of us who chose to sign up. The point is v simple: if the world is going to be changed it can only happen by people living differently in the world. We can moan and lament the state of the world but to change the world we have to be different from it. So for those who sign up, it is a daily challenge to live differently, where it is needed, to die to our own drives and desires to follow the way of Christ. Let's bring this down to earth. Marriage is v much on our minds at the moment. Like the Dean's daughter, our daughter is also preparing for marriage this summer. She has been involved with a youth dance company and mixing with ordinary young people from Manchester. When she told them she had got engaged they were astonished. 'Why do you want to get married? Why not live together first? How do you know it's going to work out?' Fair questions. And she knows that behind them lies a scary prospect. Marriage does mean dying to the single life in order to create something new and, something which is yet not yet fully known. Yes, there will be rewards, but they come through sacrifice, through a sort dying to self which alone can make such a life-long commitment possible. Some of you here today have shown that it is possible. And your self-giving commitment to your 'other' is Gospel living. And a daily challenge. For others the sacrificial commitment is expressed differently. As the prayer of St Francis puts it, it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. 'Don't think that I have come to make life cosy.' 'Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.' On the face of it, not an attractive recruiting slogan. But on the lips of Jesus, worth taking seriously. In fact, if we want to change the world for the better, or (in the words of the army) we want to 'be the best' the only recruitment slogan worth taking seriously. May we have the courage to do so, not just once, but every day of our lives. Amen.
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