Jesus certainly cannot be accused of using a “soft sell” approach when it comes to calling folks to discipleship. While salespeople are taught to extol the good points, ignore the bad points, and wait until you have your customer hooked before you deliver the price to them, Jesus comes out with the price right up front. And it is steep. Jesus doesn’t offer us a sign-and-drive option to follow him. He tells us this is going to be a costly adventure and we better be willing to ante up if we are going to join. The cost? Everything. Family, friends, comfort, and even our own lives are to be offered up for this chance to follow Jesus on the way into the reign of God. That certainly makes it easy for those of us in congregations and denominations of declining memberships! That should have them flocking to us in droves!
The problem for us is that we are too often focused on the organization and its needs. We don’t have enough members to fill all the leadership spots and the choir numbers are way down. We have had to reduce the hours the secretary is in the church office and do away with the youth pastor because the budget just couldn’t sustain them anymore. The building is in need of repair and we can’t even keep up with the regular maintenance costs. All of these things are filling our minds while Jesus is focused on one thing and one thing only: the reign of God. Bringing the reign of God into the lives of people and into the life of the world is all that really matters.
Jesus understands that many things compete for our attention. There are lots of important things happening in our lives. Some of them may be destructive to us but most of them are good things. The problem isn’t the things but the importance we put on them. Our priorities mis-order the events, people, and things in our lives and then we are in trouble. We put our jobs before our families and soon we find ourselves in divorce court and our children have become strangers to us. We become fixated on our physical appearance and abilities only to find that the steroids and weird diets have ruined our health. We decide we can be popular if we just do the things that someone tells us to do and find ourselves regretting our decisions as we carry a criminal record with us for the rest of our lives.
Priorities — we have to have them or we will find ourselves adrift in life without a real direction. But be careful because wrong priorities, even when they involve good things, can get us in a world of hurt. Jesus understands this and calls people to put God’s reign first which is the only way we can then rightly judge where on the scale the rest of the things in our belong. It is good to love and respect your parents. It is a wonderful thing to be devoted to your spouse and children. Being good at your work and dedicated to what you do is fine. It is a whole lot more fun to have money than not. But let any of these goals rise up to proclaim themselves number one in your life and it can destroy you.
Parents are meant to nurture us and care for us as they guide us into adulthood. But parents are people and they are fallible. There are not only the emotionally crippled parents who abuse their children but there are parents who will not let go of their children so that they can take their place in society as adults. There are parents who think they can make the best choices for their children about career choices no matter how old the child is or how much the child despises the choice the parent makes. And there are wonderful parents who have the best of intentions and desires for their children but they suffer from that awful condition called “being human.” As wonderful as parents can be, they can’t be what we build our lives on.
All must be given up so that God and God’s reign can become number one. As long as we hold tightly to other things we cannot make God first in our lives. We are just too prone to push family, wealth, job, or other things above God. It is only when we are willing to let go of them completely that we can put God first. When we have emptied our hands and offered them up in allegiance and prayer to God, then we can begin to deal with people as people and with objects as objects and not confuse them with being gods. When we have given them up and seen them for what they are, gifts from God, then we no longer see them as the ultimate objects of our lives.
When our lives are properly ordered with God and God’s reign being number one then we are free to receive and enjoy the good gifts that God desires us to have. Then we can receive the gift of family and celebrate it in all its goodness and offer forgiveness in all its failures. Without the pressure to make it perfect, we can accept it for what it is. When we have let go of money as ultimate measure of our worth and placed God and God’s love there, we can use the wealth, however large or small, that comes our way rejoicing that we have received it from God’s generous hand. When we have learned to know our place in God’s love then we don’t have to worry about our place in the minds of those around us. If they think well of us and laud our accomplishments, that is nice. If they ignore us or think us lowly and untalented, it does not matter. We are God’s and God loves us eternally and unconditionally. We are in a right relationship with God and nothing else matters.
This is what Jesus was getting at when he told us that if we seek after the kingdom of God, God’s reign, first then everything else will fall into place. Once God and God’s desire for creation are put first in our lives then we can sort out and reorder the rest as seems best to us. Whatever we turn our minds and hands to can become blessed if they are done to the glory of God and growth of God’s realm.
Seek ye first the kingdom of God.