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Don’t Start What You Can’t Finish

23rd Sunday : 8 September 2013  : Luke 14: 25-33

In the early 90’s a friend of mine started a rental car business. Over the next few years she worked night and day, 7 days a week, to make it work. When asked to explain her extraordinary work ethic she told me that research showed that 80% of all new small businesses in this country failed within the first 2 years because of poor cash flows, inexperienced management decisions and poor planning. She was determined not to share that fate.

This morning we have heard bracing words about the cost of being a Christian. Don’t start what you cant finish, says Jesus. Getting going, and continuing on, in the gospel way requires the same kind of serious planning and determination as starting a business, or for that matter a war. No doubt this theme will be very much on the mind of military planners at the Pentagon and the White House right now. This morning’s take home message for us is, don’t be a flash in the pan Christian who is just here for a season because it suits you now.

Speaking to the crowds of curious onlookers as he travels to Jerusalem for the final time Jesus decides that this is the right time to sift the people thinking of joining his movement. Let us be clear – the bit about hating father, mother, wife, and children is a piece of Semitic hyperbole. Jesus was, as usual, exaggerating to make his point that nothing matters more than the Kingdom, and being close to God. Nevertheless his message is very challenging for us to take on board in our comfortable lives.

If you translated today’s message into contemporary terms it could go something like this. "Do not allow your walk with God to become sidetracked by entanglement with possessions and relationships. These things are not the be all and end all of life, and will not bring about the kind of ultimate satisfaction that you are looking for. The Christian way is demanding. It requires all of you. It asks a lot in order to give even more in return."

And the rewards are great. For God has done his feasibility studies on us - he knows that if we give it a go with all we have got then there will be a fulfilment for us in unexpected ways beyond our wildest dreams.

It is true that once we let the Kingdom message take root in us it will relativise all the protections, defences, loyalties and priorities of our lives. Families, relationships, work, prized possessions. All will come to seem of less importance.

But those words of Jesus about the need for a careful reconnaissance, a thorough feasibility study, weren’t just addressed to those thinking about taking the plunge in joining the Jesus movement. They were addressed also to those of us within the household of faith who have been journeying with Jesus for sometime now. They were saying that God has done some careful reckoning about how things will turn out if we come half way to meet him in the adventure of gospel living. And that in turn invites us to spread that gospel influence more widely into other areas of our lives.

Recently I was talking to someone who was recalling her growing up years in America, and the patterns of loyalty she observed in her father. He was an Episcopalian, who went to Church most Sundays. She reflected that no doubt he received comfort, a sense of belonging, and probably a way of making sense and meaning out of his life. But he never spoke about it at home, or gave any indication that that hour of worship had any influence on other areas of his life. His was a very discrete, almost well concealed style of church membership and Christian example. Religion was a private business for him, something that he did with a part of his leisure time, as an add on option to add value to his life in quiet ways.

Now she wonders if this is part of the reason for the current difficulties of the Episcopal Church? Was a substantial part of its membership of this well camouflaged within American society sort, quietly observant but not explicitly Christian in other decisive parts of their lives? Had their denomination got them to Church, but not challenged them to make a difference along gospel lines at work and at home? Was there not enough gospel gruel as it were in the diet of what was served up at her father’s church Sunday by Sunday to get him enthusiastic about his faith? And did this low commitment style of Christian belonging translate through into the slow withering away of parishes, so that this denomination is now a shadow of its self? As it happens the person who told me about this part of her growing up world is a Christian, and is indeed a Minister of Religion, but in another denomination. She made those crucial commitment decisions without much home influence, and she would have loved to talk to her father about what his faith meant to him.

This past week I turned 61, and looked back with gratitude to God for the gift of perseverance in the Christian way over the past 50 or so years, of which well over half have been in parish ministry. It has been a time to give thanks also for the people who inspired me and supported me in this distinctive way of life. There has been sadness too in thinking about colleagues who tossed in the towel, and who so far as I know don’t even worship God regularly. How could they chose to miss out on this wonderful privilege I think to myself – I would feel as though I had missed breakfast if I didn’t go to the Eucharist regularly. And how, having taken the yoke of obedience on their shoulders, could they step away from the most wonderful vocation in the world as if that part of their life was just something weird they did for a while?

Looking back I can see that I might have faltered, might have lost the fire in my belly, if there hadn’t been seasons of renewal in my life. I am not doing this now for the same reasons I started to do it in my late 20’s. There have been times when I realised that if I didn’t deepen my gospel walk I would have to get out of ministry in the end. There is nothing worse for the people of God than the discouraging example of a burnt out parish priest. About once a decade or so I have been invited to take action to discover more about what it means to be a Christian, and the price tag that goes with that. But it hasn’t all been about my efforts.

On the wall of my kitchen there is an icon of Christ holding up an open Bible. It is a copy of the icon that is on the east wall of the chapel at Westcott theological college. The text reads, "You did not chose me, but I have chosen you." We are all here this morning because he chose us, and will more than meet us half way if we follow him.