Change My Mind
Jeremiah 18:1-11; Luke 14:25-33

September 5, 2004

It was a magnificent sight, driving down the new section of Interstate 84 southwest of Hartford, Connecticut. You drive under a spectacular set of overpasses arching high above the road below. There must have been cloverleafs upon cloverleafs. If you could afford to look closely, however, as you drove under and through this engineering marvel, you realized that this overpass and network and entrances went nowhere.

Yes, in one of the great funding and engineering gaffes of the century the Connecticut government had built an overpass and never quite got around to connecting it to any roads. Jesus’ dire caution to count the cost before you begin a project, to build a tower, to properly get on and off the highway, was not heeded there. Of course, since it was the Connecticut government, everybody in the state was given the privilege of paying for it and getting absolutely nothing out of it, except this story.

There are people who write and sell best-selling books in the mass market telling others that in order to be successful they need to do exactly what Jesus is advising. Naturally, the language is more complex and jargon-filled, but it’s just another way saying the same old thing in a clever new way. No rocket science here.

And Jesus didn’t seem to think there were any rockets to be built either. “Everybody knows, you can’t build something if you don’t get together enough materials to finish the job.” Tell that to the government.

Nevertheless, Jesus wasn’t talking about rockets or towers or building cathedrals. In the midst of a huge crowd following him around like one our movie stars, he made it clear that you couldn’t just follow him to be a disciple. There was a cost, a certain labour of the soul, that one had to undertake to truly journey on God’s road.

Jeremiah’s image of God as the potter, spinning and remolding the clay into a different pot is not far off of Jesus’ advisement. Both recognized that in order to live in the presence of God, you had to change your way of living. For most human beings and human institutions, that means understanding that they have not been doing it right, and that they have to turn all the way around and do it another way. To admit that, even to yourself in the silence of your mind, is humbling. It is a rare person who does not work into a comfortable routine, assuming that it is the right way for you to conduct your affairs. To admit that your previous experience and success and all your accumulated wisdom is perhaps not as wise as it could be is ... well, you and I usually don’t admit that.

One of the primary reasons we are gathered here is to hear something we have not heard before. Trivia are trivial facts that don’t really matter. But if you hear something about how to live that you have never heard before, then you have very little choice except to change the way you go about living. In the church we are experts at coping with dramatic and traumatic change and even conversion to a new style of life.

Jeremiah’s picture of the potter working with uncooperative clay has often been trivialized. It sounds so nice that God is willing to reshape us after we have messed up into another more useful pot. He was referring to Israel’s wayward practices, how the nation of God’s people had warped its clay by getting interested in and involved with other gods - some bronzed statues, some metal armaments, some silver and paper currencies, some illusionary of grandeur and power. All gods -- different shapes and ideas. No rocket science required.

But when the clay gets out of hand, it is picked up, thrown in a lump on the work bench, and completely reshaped and made into something it wasn’t before. Put that in human terms and it means revolution, defeat, destruction, annihilation. None of it is pretty and sweet.

The situation was pretty much the same later on with Jonah and the wicked people of Nineveh. If the people would genuinely repent, turn themselves completely around and convert to a new way of life, then the Scriptures report God saying, “I will change my mind.” That, with all the puns intended, is a revolution.

God is a revolutionary. You cannot get involved with God without your world being turned around and upside down. We work extremely hard to domesticate God, to make God comfortable and normal, and when we do accomplish that domestication it is no longer God we worship.

Large crowds were traveling around with Jesus, the evangelist Luke relates, and I believe Luke was delivering a subtle editorial. Large crowds, large congregations, large attendance at religious events have historically shown evidence of popularity, but not a real witness to faith. A lot of us here became or were active in church life during the heady days of the 1950’s when this sanctuary and so many like it were packed to capacity. Many were fooled into believing that we were doing everything right and the Christian Church was vibrant. It was until it wasn’t beginning in the 1960’s.

Jesus looked around the adoring throngs hanging on with him, and perhaps with a little sarcasm told them that unless they hated their father and mother, wife and husband, all their families, and hated even life itself, they were incapable of being his disciple. That could not have been a popular condition. The large crowds were there for the excitement, for the spectacular miracles of healing, for the wonderful oratory. There almost had to be great music as well in such a group, so they were there for the great music as well.

These weren’t a bunch of monks and nuns, celibates by in large. Popular religion today is always built on the back of family life -- Jesus wasn’t encouraging family life. He was insisting upon a conversion experience, a turning in the opposite direction, a revolution that would topple governments, change the mind of millions of people, change the mind of God.

So you want to be a Christian, a disciple? Then you have to count the cost before you get started. Don’t come because there are mobs of people clamouring to get inside the church. You can’t build a tower without figuring out every brick and brace. A king and his generals have to carefully fill out their war plans before firing the first shot. It is interesting that Jesus actually uses the practice of war as an example of one of his most spiritual principles. A lot of Christians today don’t want us to sing “Onward Christian Soldiers,” but Jesus was not shy to illustrate carrying the cross with a militaristic scenario.

“You cannot become my disciple unless you give up all your possessions.” His other examples were about making certain you had enough possessions and weapons and people to accomplish the task. Jesus is revolutionary. He turns our world’s accustomed way of thinking inside out. You are faithful when you have no possessions, when you do not define yourself by your possessions, by how much money you make and what you own.

I bet Jesus’ large crowd thinned out pretty fast. Most popular religious movements, today and yesterday, are based on the principle that if you are faithful in the church you will prosper in your life, and often that means materially. That may be true, but it isn’t the Gospel. It ignores the revolution. No minds are changed. I guess God’s mind is not changed either.

At the beginning of a new school year, you and I summoned to learn just how we do become a disciple and how you and I will give up all our possessions.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan