I AM NOT IN CONTROL—AT LEAST NOT ALWAYS
Author:
September 08, 2019
When I am
moving around in a car, I am almost always alone—and I am almost always the one
who is driving. I notice that because of
the few times when that isn’t the case. I become aware that I am often very uncomfortable being a passenger in
someone else’s car. And it’s for one
reason: I’m not in control of things, and I don’t like that. I don’t get to determine how fast or slow we
are going, how closely we are following the vehicle ahead of us, what is the
temperature in the car, what’ on the radio, which route we are taking to our
destination…all of those buttons and switches on the dashboard are in someone
else’s hands, as they should be. But I
don’t like it. I want to be the one who
decides things while on a road trip, and usually I get to. It’s a matter of personal comfort, and
sometimes a matter of what I regard as safety. (By the way, I happened to be driving on I-94 on Friday to St. Cloud for
a pastoral visit. The speed limit was
70, and I was doing about 72. This car
came racing past me in the left lane and I noticed the bumper sticker on the
back of the vehicle. It said, “Student
Driver.” I gave him plenty of
room.) But I was free to do that because
I was the boss of my own vehicle.
That may
seem a fairly small thing for me to get concerned about, but I think it speaks
to something bigger in my spirit and of many spirits, namely, the impulse to
have to be in control of everything all the time. And that includes the things of faith and
religion. I want those things on my own
terms, and it is distressing when I become aware that that can’t always
happen.
I want to be
the guy who runs “my” church and who decides what the gospel requires of me in
my daily ordering of life.
But it is
Jesus who tells me and all of us in the gospel today that that’s not what he’s
offering, and it’s not something that we should be pretending to accept as
true. To embrace this Lord is to give up
a certain measure of control—not entirely, but significantly. It’s to move over to the passenger’s seat for
the ride.
And he’s
pretty blunt about it: “You cannot follow me without ‘hating’ your parents,
spouses, children and siblings and even your own life.” That’s what he said. It would not have been a bad question for
some in the crowd to ask him, “Just who do you think you are? Demanding that we prefer you to all of the
relationships that can and do matter the very most to us.” And that was precisely the question that
Jesus was calling out of them: Just who do you think I am? Do you regard me as the most important person
of God whom you will ever encounter? Deserving of absolute priority in the decisions you make about God and
relationships and morals and priorities in your life? Or am I something less—maybe a Sunday morning
kind of appendage to what you were planning to be and do anyway? Do you know what my gospel actually requires
of you? Are you ready to hand over the
controls to me? -- Because you’re going to have to if you plan to be a true
disciple. You can trust me, but you
can’t own me.
Nobody is required
to follow this Jesus, but if we claim this as our wish we had better be
prepared for the kinds of demands that he actually places upon us. The language of “hatred” for loved ones seems
very harsh, and it’s not to be understood as despising people. But it most definitely is intended to jolt
people into paying attention to what and who must always be of absolute
value. It is God and God’s reign,
nothing else. Nothing else. Even our greatest treasures.
Elsewhere in
this gospel Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before he
died, telling God that he would prefer not to suffer, but that he was willing
to if that’s what being faithful required of him. And it was. The next day he took up his cross. And today we hear from his own mouth that “whoever does not carry his
own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”
Just who do
you think you are? Just who do we
believe he is? For us, of course, the
cross is a metaphor, a symbol. But that
doesn’t make it any less absolute as a priority of faith.
Few or none
of us here will be made to die or to hate our families because of our embrace
of Jesus Christ. But we can expect to
have to do many other things—difficult things—along the journey to the kingdom. In that sense we will have to hand over
control of our own destiny to one who is greater—who is, in fact absolute.
And I don’t
like that either, but I understand it to be completely necessary. I am the passenger, not the driver here. I have to travel in a way I’d rather not.
What might
some of those crosses, those “handings-over” be for us? Well it probably starts with the willingness
to de-center myself as the judge of people and things and situations—to let the
gospel rather than my desire direct me to the right way to be in this
world. That may lead me into conflict
with people I care about, with people I work with, people I vote with, people I
worship with, people I go to school or play sports with, even people I live
with. And young people are not excused
from this responsibility either.
Where there
is any hatred, resentment, racism, exclusion from community, or abuse, the
cross involves us saying so—no matter to whom, and no matter the
consequence. That’s what Jesus means
when he tells us to “hate.” We are to
hate sin and evil, not people, but it means that sometimes when people embrace
those things they need to be opposed and exposed, and that isn’t easy. It’s the cross.
We stand now
at a moment in history in which hate, sin, and evil are being presented to us
in a way that I don’t ever recall in my lifetime, as actually legitimate
options for people. That is false. And I and we don’t have the option to pretend
otherwise. We are not in the driver’s
seat. God is. And Jesus is our navigator. Let us pray for the courage to respond as we
must, not as we prefer. We are
passengers on this journey.
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