Have you ever noticed that people love to make jokes about certain professions? Lawyers—there are a million jokes about them. Doctors. Pastors—for some reason, the clergy are popular targets for jokes. Don’t ask me why. I think we’re nice people. And salespeople. I think the reason these professions inspire so many jokes is that a small minority of people in these jobs are lazy or unprofessional or even downright unethical. Any job that offers the potential for gaining a lot of authority or a lot of money will inevitably attract a few bad apples.
That being said, I can’t help but share some of my favorite sales jokes. If you are in sales, you are welcome to tell bad pastor jokes at work tomorrow.
After closing his first deal, a real estate salesman discovered that the plot of ground he had sold was completely underwater. He called his boss and said, “The customer’s going to be really mad. Should I offer him a refund?”
“Refund? Are you kidding me?” the boss yelled. “Get out there and sell him a houseboat!” (1)
A store manager returned from lunch to find her clerk bandaging up his hand. Before she could ask him about the bandage, the clerk announced, “Good news! I finally sold that ugly suit we’ve had hanging on the sales racks for so long!”
“Do you mean that repulsive pink-and-yellow striped leisure suit?”
“That’s it!” the clerk beamed.
“Great job!” the manager said. “I don’t know how you did it. That’s the ugliest suit this store has ever carried. By the way, what happened to your hand?”
“Oh,” the clerk said, “after I sold the guy that suit, his seeing-eye dog bit me.” (2)
If I were to make a list of the worst sales tactics I’ve ever heard of, I’d list things like lying about the product or service, overselling its benefits, trying to coerce a customer into buying something she doesn’t need, putting pressure on a customer, not listening to the customer, or getting angry when the customer says “No, thanks.” I’m sure we’d all have our own list of the worst sales tactics we’ve experienced.
So it’s interesting to see how Jesus responds in our Bible story to two different “sales situations.” Our lesson for today begins, “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” Keep that sentence in mind. It’s going to be very important. “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” We’ll get back to it in a minute.
In the first situation, Jesus and his disciples plan to pass through a Samaritan village and they need places to stay, food to eat. So a few disciples go on ahead to make the arrangements. But when the Samaritans learned that Jesus was heading to Jerusalem for the Passover, they rejected him. Samaritans believed that religious sacrifices should be made on Mt. Gerizim there in Samaria, not in Jerusalem (John 4: 19). They refused hospitality to Jesus and his followers. (3)
Two of Jesus’ disciples, brothers James and John, asked Jesus if they could call down fire from heaven to destroy the Samaritans. Talk about a bad selling technique! Let’s put the fear of God into those Samaritans if they won’t buy our “product!” Yet Jesus barely registered the insult. In fact, he rebuked his disciples and kept heading toward Jerusalem.
In the second “sales situation,” an unnamed man approaches Jesus and says, “I will follow you wherever you go.”
Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
Now this is one of the stranger sales techniques I’ve ever seen. Jesus has got a willing recruit, and he’s turning him away. “Hold your horses, friend. You don’t want to follow me. I don’t have stable housing or a place to sleep.”
Then Jesus approaches another man and says, “Follow me.”
But this guy says, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
Another guy responds to Jesus’ offer by saying, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”
It looks like Jesus is missing a lot of opportunities to sell people on following him. He’s not listing the benefits of following him. He’s not appealing to their fear of missing out on a good deal, or their desire to look good in the eyes of others. He’s not closing the deal here. Is Jesus the worst salesman ever?
I think there’s something else going on here. Let’s look back at the sentence that opens our lesson today. Remember I said it would be important? It’s Luke 9, verse 51: “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven . . . Jesus knows what’s waiting for him in Jerusalem: arrest, torture, and a lonely, painful, humiliating death. And yet our Bible verse says Jesus “resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” He didn’t protest, procrastinate, or try to protect himself. He headed straight toward the cross, knowing that he was fulfilling God’s purpose by giving his life in our behalf.
When Steve Jobs, the late founder of Apple Inc., was 17 years old, he read a quote that changed his life. It was worded like this: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” He says that after he read this quote, he began every morning by looking in the mirror and asking himself the question, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”
In a 2005 speech, Jobs said, “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure—these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” (4)
We would add to Steve Job’s words that remembering that you are going to die is the best way possible to focus your mind on what is truly important: Is there a God? If so, what does that mean for your life?
The Greek word that Jesus uses in this passage for “follow” as in “follow me” is made up of two separate words. One word means “to follow, accompany, or travel with.” The other word refers to a path or a journey. Literally, the word “follow” means to “to path-join to someone.” To path-join. That’s what Jesus was inviting these folks to do. That’s what Jesus is inviting you to do. To join your path with his. There is no fine print in Jesus’ offer. He wants these folks to know up-front the challenges of joining his path. He wants them to count the cost. (5)
How do people know that you are a follower of Jesus? Is it because you attend church? Maybe you study your Bible, or you pray before meals, or you don’t curse or drink or buy lottery tickets. Is that what it means to follow Jesus? Or does Jesus’ path require a level of commitment, courage and sacrifice that goes beyond just trying to be a better version of him? I hope this Bible story today will help us understand that Jesus’ path is not easy, but it is the pathway to life and joy and meaning, and that God made us for this very purpose.
It’s important for us to see, first of all, that Jesus walked the path of commitment. He was passionately committed to obeying God in every moment of his life. Through prayer and obedience, he kept his heart, mind and will constantly aligned with that of God the Father. And this alignment of his whole self with God allowed him to live purposefully, without fear or anxiety or distractions.
What does undistracted, purposeful living look like? To me, it looks like the life of an Irish missionary named Amy Carmichael. In 1901, Carmichael moved to Dohnavur in Southern India to minister to women and children there. Not long after, she met a seven-year-old girl who had been held as a ritual prostitute in a Hindu temple.
So Amy Carmichael and her associates opened an orphanage and then a school to rescue young girls out of prostitution. She eventually admitted boys too. The Dohnavur Fellowship grew to include an orphanage, schools, a dairy farm, fruit and vegetable farms, and numerous businesses to provide jobs for the lowest-caste Indian citizens. In spite of great opposition to her work, Amy dedicated the rest of her life to ministering to the poorest women and children in Dohnavur. She died at the age of 83 and is buried in the Indian village she loved and dedicated her life to. She once said of her ministry challenges, “If one is truly called of God, all the difficulties and discouragements only intensify the Call.” (6)
Jesus made it clear that his followers would experience difficulties and discouragement. What did he say to the first person who offered to follow him? “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Jesus isn’t offering earthly security or comfort. He could have protected his followers from these challenges, but he didn’t. Why? In Philippians 3, the apostle Paul says that we know Jesus when we share in his suffering. It is in the difficulties and discouragement of following in Jesus’ path that we understand Jesus’ love for us in a deeper way. And by persevering through the difficulties and discouragement, we show the world how much we love Jesus. Jesus calls us to walk the path of commitment with him. Are you ready?
Jesus also calls us to walk the path of courage. Lao Tzu, an ancient Chinese philosopher, once said, “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” (7)
“. . . loving someone deeply gives you courage.” When you love someone deeply, you are willing to confront your fears and face down challenges unflinchingly for their sake. That was the source of Jesus’ courage too. Jesus knew he was deeply loved by God; that was the source of his strength. And Jesus loved God and us deeply; that was the source of his courage. There was no pain he would not bear to show his love for us. And now he calls his followers to show that same level of courage in loving others in his name.
In 1947, evangelist Bob Pierce held a series of preaching events with Youth for Christ in China. He got the opportunity to preach to thousands of Chinese citizens, and thousands became followers of Jesus through his messages. One of his preaching services was at a small school for girls run by a Dutch missionary named Tena Holkeboer. Many of the girls prayed to become Jesus followers at this chapel service, and Bob Pierce challenged them to go home and tell their families about their new commitment to Jesus.
The next day, Pierce stopped by the school to speak to Tena Holkeboer. She was holding a sobbing girl in her arms. From the child’s injuries, it was obvious she had been beaten. Holkeboer told Pierce that this little girl who they called White Jade had prayed to follow Jesus at the previous days’ chapel service. And when she returned home and told her father, he had beaten her with a cane and thrown her out of the house.
Bob Pierce was stunned! He said, “. . . you’re going to take care of her, aren’t you?”
Tena replied, “I’m caring for as many children as I can. The question isn’t what I’m going to do. The question is what are you going to do?” And she handed White Jade to Bob Pierce.
Bob emptied all the cash out of his pockets and promised to send more to cover the costs of caring for this abandoned child. But when he returned to the States, he couldn’t get over her courage, and what her love for Jesus had cost her. Over the next three years as Bob Pierce traveled the poorest parts of the world on preaching missions, he was also collecting the support to begin a new mission organization. Today, World Vision is a “global Christian humanitarian organization” that provides food, education, health care and disaster relief to millions of people around the world. Bob Pierce’s experience with White Jade and Tena Holkeboer helped inspire the founding of World Vision. And White Jade was the first child to receive sponsorship through World Vision. (8)
Remember Tena Holkeboer’s challenge to Bob Pierce: “The question isn’t what I’m going to do. The question is what are you going to do?” Jesus calls us to walk the path of courage with him. Are you ready?
And finally, if we are going to join our path with Jesus, then Jesus calls us to walk the path of sacrifice. Sacrifice is simply “an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy.” (9)
Jesus considered our life more valuable that his. That’s why he headed to Jerusalem. He was giving up his life as a sacrifice, an offering to God, in our place. In his death he took on the weight and the penalty of our sins so that nothing would stand between us and a holy, holy, holy God.
Author T.R. Glover once wrote that the secret to the spread of Christianity across the Western world was because the followers of Jesus “out-loved, out-gave and out-died” the devotees of the other religions and cults. They had a great example. Jesus did it first. His love for us motivated him to walk the path of commitment, courage and sacrifice for us. And he invites us to follow him, no matter what the cost. I hope that you will make the choice today to join your path with Jesus, God in the flesh, who loved you enough to give his very life to show you the way to God.
1. Best Jokes About Salespeople: 18 Stories To De-Stress, July 9, 2019 by Xant Team, https://www.xant.ai/best-jokes-salespeople/.
2. Contributed by: Oaktree.
3. “Chuck Smith Bible Commentary” Luke 9, https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/csc/luke-9.html.
4. “‘You've got to find what you love,’ Jobs says.” This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005. Stanford News, https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/?utm_source=morning_brew.
5. https://www.abarim-publications.com/DictionaryG/a/a-k-o-l-o-u-th-e-om.html#.Xjg-ZGhKjIU.
6. “How Female Missionaries and Evangelists Paved the Way for #MeToo” by Sarita D. Gallagher, Christianity Today, June 12, 2018. https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/june-web-only/metoo-how-female-missionaries-and-evangelists-paved-way.html.
7. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/courage.
8. “Women who inspired World Vision’s founding father” by Marilee Pierce Dunker, World Vision, https://www.worldvision.org/christian-faith-news-stories/women-inspired-bob-pierce.
9. Languages.oup.com.