Sunday, September 9, 2007
By pastor John Jorgenson
Text: Luke 14:25-33
“Now great multitudes accompanied him; and he turned and said to them, ‘If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.’
“‘For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he had enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘this man began to build, and was not able to finish.’
“‘Or what king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace. So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.’”
The Gospel of The Lord. Praise Be To God.
“So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”
Giving up stuff is not an easy thing to do. Growing up during the middle 1930’s living with my grandparents on a farm was an interesting experience when I look back at that now. Never did we go hungry. In fact we provided food for our family relatives living in Minneapolis. They would come and visit and we would provide them with potatoes and fresh vegetables from our huge garden as I recall. We would provide them with dozens of eggs and fresh chicken, duck or turkey. Then in the late summer and fall my grandmother and my mother would be busy canning pears and peaches. In our orchard we had trees with cherries, plums and apples that we picked and brought in for preserving as sauce and jam or jelly. Regularly on Monday they would be picking peas and beans for canning along with fresh carrots, sweet corn, and tomatoes. These would be shared with family as they came to visit from time to time.
Later in the fall they would be drying vegetables, smoking hams, bacon and sausage, rendering lard, and preserving beef, veal and pork along with venison, pheasant, duck, squirrel, and rabbit that my older uncles would bring to our home after spending the afternoons hunting. Of course there was fresh fish weekly as well. We lived a short distance from a lake where we fished year around, went swimming in the summer and skated and played hockey in the winter. As I said, we had more than enough food. We burned wood for heating and cooking. Occasionally we would have a ton of coal or coke brought in during January or February to offset the bitter 40-degree below zero winter temperatures. This warmth of family was shared regularly at holidays, weekends and other times as well.
So we did not starve and we were warm and dry. However, stuff like toys, furniture, and things for the house were minimal. Any available cash funds were used for farming expenses, like animal vet services, certified oats, barley, wheat, corn, flax and other seed for planting, machinery repair and fuel for the tractor.
Maybe you had two pair of shoes, a couple of jackets, some gloves, shirts and other clothing. Quite regularly grandmother or mother would use the fabric from a 100-pound flour sack and make a short sleeve shirt to wear.
Much time was spent keeping machinery running and in repair to be ready as crops ripened and were harvested for use during the winter.
So stuff was nothing to be simply thrown out. Stuff was kept and reused over and over again for meeting a variety of needs, including making toys for kids to use for play. One of my earliest toys that I remember was a red wooden sled with a hayrack and two white horses with harnesses that I could take off and put on to pull the sled. This my father had made in my grandfather’s shop as one of my Christmas gifts that year.
This experience is not new. This experience is not unique to our family. This kind of concern has been and continues to be shared over and over again year after year by people all over the world. The intrinsic value of stuff was and continues to be its potential for use and for reuse again. As a result stuff is kept and things have an important sense of practical and useful value. That which is not used is thrown away. We all recycle.
Now the issue we face in life is this. All of this stuff including that in the garbage dump is ultimately God’s gift to us. God has provided all that is needed for the daily continuance of our living, as long as we manage our own personal resources and lead others to do the same. Now Luke tells us that Jesus said, “So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” In other words, if I do not quit worrying about my laptop, I cannot be a disciple of Jesus. That is not so easy.
This past couple of weeks we were at Sea Isle City in New Jersey. There I saw hundreds of homes, condos and single dwellings, many for sale and priced at a million dollars more or less. I also saw hundreds of vehicles, and we parked next to a brand new shiny red Hummer when we went out on an errand. None of these vehicles was over a year or two old. The drivers and passengers were all very well dressed with all sorts of stuff like cell phones, sunglasses, and so forth.
Obviously, “stuff,” has picked up a very important meaning and purpose in our lives and culture. This is the setting for our look at our lives today in terms of what Jesus had to say and continues to say to us. Is our worth and value dependent on how much stuff we have accumulated? Does stuff determine the level of our respect and concern for one another? Does the amount of stuff we accumulate determine the level of our interest in and respect for Almighty God our Creator? What role does stuff play then?
Let me suggest that we manage our stuff in terms of the gift that it actually is, a gift from Almighty God. Our stuff is for our use and our stuff is for us to share with others who have nothing.
In our lesson for this morning, Jesus defines stuff for us. Luke wrote as follows: “So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” That is not so easy as it sounds. But on the other hand, Jesus was not kidding either.
Amen.