When I was growing up, one of the things I liked to do was build plastic model kits, Airfix models and those kinds of things. I really can’t remember how old I was when I first started doing that, but I do know that I was still at primary school, and I also remember that I started with simple models and then, as I became better at making them, I moved on to models that were more difficult to make. Something else I remember is that, as I got older and into my teens, whilst I still liked to build models, I sometimes found it harder to finish them. Sometimes I didn’t finish them because they were quite large models that took a long time to make, and I simply became bored with them, usually because I didn’t seem to be making much progress towards finishing those models. Sometimes I didn’t finish them because there were other things I wanted to do, and so the model was put to one side, and sometimes, in spite of my having every intention of going back to it later, I never did.
I think not finishing what we’ve started though, is a problem or at least can be a problem for lots of people, perhaps most people, can’t it? I’m sure that if we think about it, we can all remember times when we’ve started something but, for one reason or another, have never got around to finishing it. It might be something as simple as giving up on a hobby, such as building plastic model kits. It might be some kind of DIY project that we started and never finished. It might be that book that we always intended to write but never finished. In fact, there can be so many things in life that we want to do, started to do, but never finished doing. And this is a problem in our lives as Christians too.
In one sense, unless we lose our faith or renounce our faith, once we’ve started our lives as disciples of Christ, we never really give it up. But what we can do, and something I’m sure we all do at times, is put our faith to one side for a time, so that we can do something else, and then come back to our faith later. And there are so many ways we do this. For example, part of the Christian discipleship we’ve started is to come to Church to worship the Lord. But how many of us can honestly say, hand on heart, that they’ve never missed a Sunday, or a Holy Day, in Church because they’ve preferred to go and do something else instead of coming to Church? Part of the Christian discipleship we’ve started is to support the poor and needy. But how many of us can honestly say that they’ve never missed an opportunity to donate to charity, for example, because they’ve preferred to spend their money on themselves instead?
Those are just two of the many ways we can put our faith to one side but there are so many ways we can do that because the Christian discipleship we’ve started is about loving God above all things and loving our neighbour as ourselves, but how many of us can honestly say that we’ve never put ourselves before both God and our neighbour? If we’re honest, we know that we’ve all done that at times because, at times, we’ve all been selfish and followed the way of the world. That doesn’t mean we’re bad people or that we’re not Christians, but what it does mean is that, at times, we stop doing what we started to do as Christians.
This is what Jesus is warning us against in this morning’s Gospel. But, like all good teachers, Jesus doesn’t only warn us about a problem we need to avoid, in this case the problem of not being able to finish what we’ve started, he also gives us the answer to the problem. He tells us that, if we want to finish what we’ve started as his disciples we have to give up all our possessions.
I’m sure that there might be, and no doubt have been and are, some rather unscrupulous people out there, perhaps in TV evangelism world, who have encouraged people to take those words of Jesus quite literally and divest themselves of their worldly possessions and, for the sake of their eternal soul, hand them over to the Church. I think if I asked you to do that, I’d very quickly find myself with two empty churches and, no doubt, being invited for a little chat with the authorities of both the Church and the state! I’d be in hot water, and quite rightly so. Jesus tells us that to finish what we started as his disciples we have to give up all our possessions but if we take these words in the context of what he says at the start of this morning’s Gospel,
“If anyone 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.”
it’s obvious that when Jesus speaks about possessions, he isn’t simply referring to the things we own. What Jesus must be saying is that we have to give up everything that might prevent us from finishing what we’ve started as his disciples. What Jesus is saying is that to finish what we’ve started as his disciples, being his disciple must come before everything else. Loyalty to him and to our discipleship must come before loyalty to our families, it must be even more important to us than our own lives, than anything we want in worldly terms. That was Jesus’ example, the way he lived his life. That was why he could and did finish what he started. And that’s what it means when he says,
“ Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”
So we know what it takes to be a disciple of Christ and we know what we have to do to finish what we’ve started as disciples of Christ because Jesus tells us these things. But we also know that what we have to do isn’t easy.
Perhaps one of the most difficult things about being a Christian for us is not that it’s so hard to do what Jesus asks us to do, and tells us we have to do, although that often isn’t easy, but that we have to do it for so long. We all like to see the results of our work don’t we? And the harder and longer we work, the more we want to see some results. One of the reasons we can get discouraged and tempted to give up on something is that we’ve put a lot of work into something and we’re not seeing any results for all the time and effort we’ve put in. We begin to wonder if what we’ve started is worth the effort, we decide it’s not, and we give up and perhaps never finish what we’ve started. That is a great problem for us when it comes to finishing what we’ve started as disciples of Christ because we have to keep working at it for the whole of our lives. Our work as Christians is never finished until our earthly lives come to and end and we might never actually see any results from all the hard work we’ve put in. We might see some results in the good we’ve done for others, but in terms of personal reward for all our hard work as disciples of Christ, we don’t usually see anything in this life. The reward for those who do finish what they’ve started as Christians does come, but not until we’ve finished our time on earth.
Another great problem for us when it comes to finishing what we’ve started as Christians is that the things we know we have to give up are often the very things we least want to give up. We all like the creature comforts we surround ourselves with, for example, and far from giving them up for Christ, we not only want to keep what we have, but we often want to acquire even more.
When Jesus tells us to give up our possessions, I don’t think he means that we literally have to give everything we own away, but that we have to give up our fondness for the things we have, our attachment to them and our dependence on them. To finish what we’ve started as Christians we have to see our material possessions, whatever those might be, as less important than being about the business of being Christ’s disciple. We need to see our loyalty to family and friends as less important than our loyalty to Christ and to the Gospel. We need to see that to be a disciple of Christ and to finish what we’ve started as his disciples we need to love God and God’s ways more than we love having our own way. God loves us, so we should love ourselves too, but we need to love our neighbours just as much as we love ourselves.
So we have to think about these things and ask ourselves some hard questions. Do we really need all the nice things we surround ourselves with and are so attached to? Do we really need two or three televisions, two or three cars, a new conservatory? Do we really need so many clothes that we’ve run out of wardrobe space for them? When we go shopping do we really need to buy so much food that we have to throw half of it away because it’s gone out of date before we’ve had time to eat it? Do bishops need to live in palatial houses and have chauffeurs? Is our sense of self-worth as human beings defined by the number and value of our possessions? Why do we think nothing of spending £10s or even £100s on ourselves and our families and then baulk at throwing a few coins of loose change into a charity box? What is the Christian thing to do, to do these things and have all these things and continually acquire more, or to spend just some of the time and money we do on these things, on helping the millions of people who are suffering and in need in the world?
We do these things but that doesn’t mean that we’re bad people and it doesn’t mean that we’re not Christians. What it does mean is that we tend to practice our Christianity in fits and starts rather than sticking at it the whole time. We could say that rather than carrying our cross all the way to Calvary, as Jesus did, we pick ours up, carry it for a while, then put it down for a while so that we can have a break and a rest from the long, hard slog of discipleship. It means we could be better Christians than we are, and one way to be better Christians than we are, is to stick at it for longer than we do before we take a break.
We know that the reward for those who finish what they’ve started as disciples of Christ is eternal life. That’s a reward we all want and so we have to make sure that we finish what we’ve started. It is a long, hard slog to get there, a lifetime of hard work in fact, and we all need a break from hard work from time to time. Even Jesus knew and did that; the Gospels tell us he spent time alone, usually at prayer, sometimes while his disciples went on ahead of him to proclaim the Gospel and prepare the way. But, when the finishing line was in sight, Jesus’ Cross was quite literally on his shoulders. What we need to do is make sure that when our finishing line is in sight and the time comes for the rewards to be handed out, our crosses are firmly on our shoulders and not lying by the roadside because we’ve left them there while we’ve slipped away to some more self-indulgent activity.
Amen.
The Propers for the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 12) can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 