Proper 22, Year C
Sunday, October 6, 2013
St. Mark’s, Bay City, TX
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Luke 16:19-31
There is a big
difference between humility and feeling badly about oneself. You think rather highly of yourself, realize
your many gifts and talents, and still be humble, without pride, arrogance, and
a sense of entitlement that often accompanies pride and arrogance. Pride and arrogance often lead to a feeling
that the world should acknowledge one’s magnificence and give them special treatment,
make allowances, or bend to accommodate.
Jesus was telling
his disciples not to fall into the trap of price or arrogance with the
accompanying sense of entitlement. We
are who we are as Jesus’ disciples and we don’t believe the world owes us
anything for being Jesus’ disciples.
During Noah’s
soccer game yesterday, another of the dads and I were discussing the soccer
tournament which other teams were having this weekend, noting that the
tournaments went on to Sunday for those teams which did well. I said to the gentleman with whom I was
speaking that next year, if Noah is still playing soccer, he won’t be playing
on the Sunday games. The gentleman
agreed with me; we both felt our kids shouldn’t miss worshipping on Sundays for
the sake of soccer.
I realized later
that there was, however, something rather disagreeable in my tone when I said
Noah wouldn’t be playing soccer on Sunday.
My words were simple enough, but something in my tone implied that the
coach or tournament organizer would be wrong for even thinking about having a
soccer tournament on Sunday. The soccer
people should know, I felt, that Christians worship on Sunday, and the soccer
people should therefore, I felt, have everything wrapped up before Sunday. That, my friends, is prideful arrogance and
an accompanying sense of entitlement.
As a disciple of
Jesus, worship on Sunday is mine to uphold and protect. Worship on Sunday is my choice to make, my
faith to live out. The soccer
organization is not a church. The
responsibility of the soccer tournament organizers is to organize a soccer
tournament, not to ensure that I get to worship on Sunday.
We choose to live
as disciples of Jesus, and the world doesn’t owe us making our life as Jesus’
disciples easy. For a long time,
Christians kind of imposed our way on those around us. Most people were Christian in our society, so
some of the Christian way of life became the norm. Even when I grew up, stores were largely
closed on Sunday, but what began as disciples of Jesus choosing not to work on
Sundays, became disciples of Jesus expecting no one to work on Sundays (except
of course the NFL – they were far too entertaining not to play on Sunday). Parts of our way of life as disciples of
Jesus became the norm and therefore easy in our society, and we began to expect
society to make our discipleship rather easy, to accommodate our way of life.
Nowadays, however,
society largely does not accommodate our way of life. Sunday in society at large is just another
day to work or play and there certainly aren’t accommodations made by most
businesses or non-church organizations to allow Christians to worship on
Sundays. Lots of our folks at St. Mark’s
have to work many, if not all Sundays.
Folks can always ask, but they can’t exactly demand that their employers
allow them time off to come to church.
This bothers many
of us, feeling that our jobs and our non-church organizations should know
better and should accommodate our schedules as disciples of Jesus, but that is
the very feeling of pride and arrogance and entitlement which Jesus warned
against. We are who we are as disciples
of Jesus, and the world doesn’t owe us anything for being disciples of
Jesus. Our jobs and other non-church
organizations aren’t the church, and they don’t owe us accommodations for us
being the church.
Feeling animosity
towards others for not making allowances so that we can worship on Sundays is
not a particularly good witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ. Worship on Sundays is only one part of our
faith. It’s an important part, but we
are Christians not only on Sunday mornings, but seven full days of the
week. As disciples of Jesus, we have
been taught to live out and proclaim our faith joyfully and confidently, with
humility, realizing not all will believe as we believe and we are not going to
force them to. Forcing others to believe
or forcing others to accommodate our belief is really a form of cowardice,
spurned on by the fear that our faith or way of life will be threatened by
others not sharing our faith and way of life.
“God did not give us a spirit of
cowardice, [however,] but rather a spirit of power and of love and of
self-discipline. (2 Timothy 1:7) We
needn’t fear others now allowing us to live as Christians, because the only
ones who can stop us believing or living as Christians is we. Others can make it difficult for us to live
out some parts of our worship life, but they can’t stop us from believing, and
they can’t stop us from living out our faith in our daily lives. Prayer can be silent and can happen anytime,
anywhere. Service to others can be big
things or small things and can also happen anytime, anywhere.
Loving God and loving our neighbor
requires no accommodation by those around us.
Loving God and loving our neighbor requires “a spirit of power and of
love and of self-discipline.” Our faith
is ours to live and to live joyfully. We
needn’t be resentful towards the proverbial soccer organization for scheduling
things when we want to be here with our St. Mark’s family.
It is not the job of the proverbial
soccer organization to allow us to live out our lives as disciples of
Jesus. It is our job to live our lives
as disciples of Jesus whenever and wherever we are. If we are worshipping here, we live our lives
as disciples of Jesus. If we cannot be
here to worship, then we worship God anyway, wherever we are and live our lives
as disciples of Jesus.
As for those of us who can’t be
here on Sundays, we pray for them and with them, asking them to pray for and
with us, wherever they may be. As for
those who take part in other activities and choose not to be here on any given
Sunday, we pray for them and with them, asking them to pray for and with us,
wherever they may be.
That is true discipleship, no
feelings of hurt or animosity or resentment towards those who don’t live as
disciples of Jesus. Rather, we live out
our faith with love, self-discipline, and humility. Now there is a good witness to the love of
God in Jesus Christ. We are not owed
anything. We have done only what we
ought to have done as disciples of Jesus, joyfully living out our lives with “a
spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” Amen.
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