Hand it Over!

Jeremiah 18:1-11

The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD:

"Come, go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words."

So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel.

The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.

Then the word of the LORD came to me:

Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the LORD. Just like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.

At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it,

but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it.

And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it,

but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it.

Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the LORD: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings.

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

O LORD, you have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.

You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.

You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.

For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.

In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.

How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!

I try to count them -- they are more than the sand; I come to the end -- I am still with you.

Luke 14:25-33

Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them,

"Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?

Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'

Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand?

If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace.

So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

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When I was working for Consumers Energy, one of the things people talked about a fair amount with respect to their career choices was the notion of “work-life balance”.  I guess it’s not surprising that I would think about this on this Labor Day weekend, when we commemorate the contribution of workers to this country’s progress. The concept of “work-life balance” addressed how much of your life was devoted to your work, and how much time you set aside for other parts of your life, such as family, sports or exercise, church life, social life, and so on. It was worth thinking about such things, because for many of us who were trying to climb the career ladder, it was all too easy to let work consume every waking moment of your thoughts, your energy, your life. This got worse, of course, with the advent of the laptop computer, which made it possible to bring more work home than you could previously fit into your briefcase. And then, once personal handheld devices became available, there was no way to escape emails, phone calls, text messages, or any of the myriad ways that work could be your constant companion.

I used to mentor several young women engineers who were just starting out. And I remember clearly the conversation I had with one of them who had recently had her first child. She told me that her boss would regularly send her emails during evenings and weekends. She understood that those times might be most convenient for him to get some extra work done; but her question to me was, “am I expected to respond to him before the next work day?” In other words, is it acceptable for me to shut off work at any time of the day or night, in order to focus on my baby, my family, my self? Her underlying questions was, How much allegiance do I owe to my company, to my family?

Through the course of our lives, we find ourselves pledging our allegiance, so to speak, to any number of entities, either officially or otherwise.

·      We pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands.

·      We pledge fraternities or sororities. Just two days ago, I was meeting with Ron Case, who preached here in July and who is my spiritual director. We meet at a coffee house in the basement of a church on Washtenaw Avenue in Ann Arbor, on a stretch of that road that includes numerous beautiful buildings, many of which are used as fraternity or sorority houses. Since this past week is move-in week at U of M, there was much activity at the nearby houses. As we were sitting outside on Friday, just as we were wrapping up our time with prayer, we were jolted by the sound of about 40 or 50 young women’s voices nextdoor shouting CHI! OMEGA! CHI CHI OMEGA! Pledging allegiance…

·      We pledge our allegiance to our families – in our wedding vows, in our stated or unstated desire and intention to protect them from any harm, to make life as safe and good for them as possible.

·      We pledge our allegiance to the companies we serve with our work lives, too. If you ask any Ford or GM or Toyota employee, you will hear the various ways they are expected to only drive the vehicle their company produces. At Consumers Energy, it was expected that I would contribute to the Company’s Political Action Committee, that I would purchase their monthly appliance service plan, that I would take part in their employee stock purchase program.

·      And we even pledge our allegiance, as alumni of a particular university, especially one with a major football team! We pledge our allegiance to that university, to that team, being expected to cheer for it above any other, and also to be reviled by those who have pledged their allegiance to any other team.

These are some of the bigger ways we may find ourselves pledging our allegiance, but the truth is, our society challenges us to pledge allegiance to all sorts of other things. We implicitly pledge our time to our gardens, to our music, to our kids’ soccer teams or football teams or hockey teams, to all sorts of things that become our main priority, to which other things take precedence. Even at church, our buildings and our programs that benefit members can often claim our primary allegiance, pushing out the time and resources we feel we can devote to helping and serving others. And like it or not, we can find ourselves devoting our hearts to those things in our lives that are broken – our addictions, our obsessions, our constant worries and attempts to make right what is wrong in our lives. Pledging allegiance.

And in the meantime, Jesus tells us to give up allegiance to anything, to everything, that pulls us away from a life of discipleship. When he read him saying “hate your family”, the word being translated as “hate” does not carry with it a context of anger or hostility. What it means is to not prefer it, to not give it a place of primary allegiance or authority in your life. In other words, if your love of your family gets in the way of your ability to follow Christ, you are called to choose Christ over family, to choose the Way of discipleship over the needs of family.

It’s the same with love of country, or loyalty to company, or cause, or any form of human-created organization. If it gets in the way of your life as a disciple of Christ, there’s a need for a shift of priorities.

The prophet Jeremiah brings the same Word from God in a different way. When he speaks of God as the One who can take whatever has become spoiled, and destroy it like a pot on a potters’ wheel, reshaping it into something new, he is reminding us that even nations can and will come to an end. So it is important for us to not establish primary allegiances with anything having a temporary nature. Our primary allegiance is always with God. The work of our lives is discipleship, is following Christ. This is not part-time work; it’s a full-time, life-long vocation.

And it’s not work that will be easy street for us. Jesus says, don’t start down this path unless you understand its cost. The cost of discipleship is the readiness to give up everything for the sake of Jesus Christ. So just like you wouldn’t start building a tower unless you have the means to finish it, we should not start a life of discipleship unless we intend to take it all the way. All the way to the cross.

Now you may be thinking, I don’t know that I have what it takes to be that kind of disciple. I don’t know if I can make God the absolute center of my life, setting everyone and everything on the periphery. But take heart, dear friends in Christ! Because God knows you better than you know yourself. As the Psalmist says, we are fearfully AND wonderfully made, and God is with us always, everywhere we go.

God not only knows what we need, God also knows what we need to let go of, to hand over. Sometimes we cling so tightly to the things that hold our allegiance, that we are unable to let go in order to make space for the new thing that God is doing in our lives. In my own life, God often seems to move me one step at a time, which means that I end up letting go or stepping away from something before I ever know what it is that I am being released for; what that will enable me to do that could never have been possible otherwise.

God is the source of the strength and power and compassion and humility that makes it possible for us to be true followers. The spiritual nourishment that comes from the invitation to this table, to be nourished in Christ, is what equips us to turn in a new direction, to be more fully the disciples that we are called to be - if we choose to be.

So where is your true allegiance?

What takes precedence over everything else?

What choices does this cause you to make in your life?

What and how will you speak out for what you believe, for who you are and whose you are?

And what will you do when allegiances conflict with one another?

Is your Christian faith a part-time endeavor, to be fit in as time permits, but not to interfere with the other important things to which you have pledged?

When you consider your work and your life to be the pursuit God’s work, Christ’s mission, how does your work-life balance look? How do your possessions and your allegiances line up with that?

The next time you find yourself pledging your allegiance, whatever it is to, take a minute to consider its relative importance in your life; its importance relative to Christ. Then, in humility and faith, hand over your allegiances - to country, to family, to possessions, to life itself – hand them all over to God, and ask God to guide you, to direct your ways, to help you center your life on Christ. Then come to the table, ready to join the feast that has been prepared for all God’s children. Come to the table, and then go out into the world, ready to give up all allegiances, to take up your cross, to follow our Lord and Savior, serving only Him, pledging your allegiance to Him alone.