Sunday, September 28, 2014 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.

Songs about Jesus

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 78:1–4, 12–16
Philippians 2:1–13
Matthew 21:23–32

I was so tired on that day. It had not been a good week of ministry. My new church was embroiled in conflict about our commitment to an interfaith Thanksgiving service. The youth program I ran was being critiqued for not being as fun as the one at the Methodist church. Greg and I were still new in town and were feeling a little lonely. And all of that pressure just made me tired. So I packed myself up and got in the car to drive the three hours from the Houston area to my parents’ home in Waco. As I drove along, I put in a brand-new CD I had bought (no iTunes yet) of David LaMotte. David is a peacemaker, social justice activist, and folk singer. And he almost caused me to wreck my car that day.

“Sing me a song about Jesus. But please don’t sing about the poor. I’ve already had a long day. I don’t want to hear anymore. Sing me a song about Jesus that will make me feel happy inside. Sing me a song about forgiveness that will make this lifestyle feel justified. Sing me a song about Jesus.”

If I had not been driving on I-45, I might have dropped to my knees as I heard those words, because I could have been the one singing that song. I wanted to follow Jesus. I wanted to live out my faith in action. But not right then. I was busy. I was tired. So why couldn’t I just work with the poor and outcast another day. I would tell the good news of God’s grace and love later. I would take up my cross after I had a good nap.

David’s words convicted me back then, and I must confess they often still do. Perhaps you stand in that space with me. We want to follow Jesus. We want to live out our faith in action and we will—but we just have some long days. We get busy. We get tired. Some of us who are in school or working in and out of the home are doing our best just to keep all the balls up in the air. Some of us who are retired cannot believe how quickly the days are filled.

So can’t we do God’s work out in the world when things slow down or when we feel more settled or have some free time on our hands? For now, can’t we just preach about the Jesus who held little children and spoke of easy burdens? That is in scripture too. We will get to doing our peacemaking, our friend-being, our mercy-granting, our justice-seeking work of discipleship in a little while. So Jesus, if you would, just give us a break for a bit.

Those religious leaders in the temple that day might have wanted a break from Jesus, too. Now, I am purposefully using the term “religious leaders,” because this is one of the passages in Matthew that has been abused by anti-Jewish interpretations. But those interpretations are not faithful to the text. So when we say religious leaders, we are going to think of those of us up here in the robes, the paid Christians, as well as those of you who sit around Session, Trustees, and Deacon tables.

And from their vantage point, Jesus was doing nothing but stirring up trouble for them. Before the conversation we heard today, Jesus had turned over the tables of the money changers in the temple and openly challenged the tradition that religious leaders like us are charged to protect. In response, those fed-up leaders had a few questions for Jesus. “Who do you think you are?” they asked him. “Who gave you the authority to come in here and tell us about God and what faithful living looks like? Where did your M.Div. degree come from, Jesus? What presbytery ordained you? How big is your church? How many years have you been in ministry? By what authority do you do these things?”

Now, Jesus had been down this road before. He knew they were trying to prod him into a verbal sparring match. So Jesus responded by asking a question of his own. He asked them who gave John the Baptist authority. It was kind of a trick question. Jesus knew full well that if the religious leaders said “from God,” then they would reveal to everyone they had been ignoring God’s will by not listening to John and following Jesus. But if the leaders said John got the authority from humans, then the crowd would turn on them because the crowd believed John was a prophet. There was no easy answer for those religious leaders. And when they realized their dilemma, they took the cowardly way out and pleaded ignorance: “We don’t know.”

But Jesus wasn’t going to let those religious leaders off the hook that easily. He was not going to simply sing them a little song to make them happy and satisfied. His call was to teach them, to proclaim to them the reign of God had drawn near. He desired to help them see things differently for themselves so they might act differently in response. So Jesus did what he normally did—he told them a story, a parable.

You heard it. A father approaches his two sons and asks if they will go and work in the vineyard for him. The first son immediately says no but then later has a change of heart—the actual verb could be translated as “a change of what one cares about” (www.crossmarks.com; the Greek verb is metamelomai)—so he goes to work. The second son, wanting very much to please his father, says, “I will go, sir.” But then he never gets around to it. Maybe the day just got away from him. Maybe he was consumed with other work. Regardless, he signed up but did not show up. “Who,” Jesus asked the ministers, elders, and deacons, “did the will of the father?” Well obviously, they declared, the first son did the will of the father. Yes, he was wrong in the beginning, but he realized it and changed. The second son said all the right things but did nothing. He stayed the same. Now after hearing their response, Jesus seized the moment.

In his own way, he told the religious leaders they just convicted themselves. They were acting like the second son. They said all the right things. They believed all the essential tenets. They passed all their ordination exams. But yet even while they were saying yes to God, they were acting out a big no (Barbara Brown Taylor, Home by Another Way, p. 199). From Jesus’ perspective, they had signed up to work but had not actually shown up for work.

And Jesus was not done. “And by the way, those racketeers and prostitutes, all those you toss out, are going into the kingdom ahead of you” (notice it is not instead, but ahead). “They may have said no to me at first, but they have changed what they care about. And now they sign up and show up.” As pastor Susan Jones writes, it is no small wonder that Friday of that same week the religious leaders took counsel against Jesus to put him to death (Susan Jones, “The Obedient Son,” Christian Century, 8 September 1999). He was leveling a pretty serious charge against them. He was accusing those good religious folk of substituting their beliefs about God for their obedience to God.

But Jesus’ charges went beyond mere hypocrisy. By telling the parable and eliciting their response, he pointed out the religious leaders did not even realize what they were doing in their lives of faith. Perhaps they had talked the talk of faith for so long they didn’t even notice that somewhere along the way they had either slowed way down or stopped walking the walk of faith completely.

And I do not know about you, but Jesus’ charge can get me too. It is why David’s song hooked me so deeply fourteen years ago. It was not that I was consciously professing faith in Jesus while actively refusing to live out my beliefs. Rather, fourteen years ago as a new pastor and almost new mother, my decision to slowly substitute belief for obedience was completely unconscious. I had talked the talk of faith so long—all through seminary, all through internships, all through chaplaincy, all through the ordination process, all through my first year in ministry—I had become so articulate in saying what I believed that I started to assume I was living out my beliefs with that same clear articulation. It was not until I heard my life laid out bare in that folk song did I realize what I was doing: “Sing me a song about Jesus. But please don’t sing about the poor. I’ve already had a long day. I don’t want to hear anymore.”

In my car, somewhere between Houston and Waco, I realized that I had been wanting to hear all about Jesus, but only if I were not required to change anything. I would believe the right way. I would say the right things. But please don’t require me to live differently, to ask hard questions, to look at my checkbook or my calendar and get real honest about what my priorities actually were. It had been way too long of a day for that kind of serious discipleship. If I had not been driving down the highway, I would have been on my knees. And frankly, it is a struggle I still have sometimes, though over the years I’ve grown quicker to see it, and I have also realized I am not alone with these struggles. As I suggested earlier, perhaps from time to time you stand in that space with me.

In our Reformed theological tradition, we have a word for the discrepancy between what we say we believe and what we actually do. It is called sin—missing the mark. And as Barbara Brown Taylor preaches, though sin is inevitable and forgivable, it should not become tolerable for those who love God (Home by Another Way, p. 190). I’m sure many of you have heard the quotation from Kierkegaard: “Jesus wants followers, not admirers.”

The world is full of people who will say, believe, and stand for all the right things. But what God needs is people who will go where God calls them and do what God tells them to do (Home by Another Way, p. 191). God needs people who will put their feet to faith, who will sign up and show up for God’s work of peace-making, friend-being, mercy-granting, and justice-seeking in all aspects of life, not just on Sundays.

Luckily for us, we have some examples in our very midst of what that can look like. Yesterday afternoon, I attended the Chicago Lights fiftieth anniversary celebration of our Tutoring program. It was powerful and beautiful. One piece of the program was the chance to hear from young adults who are now in college or in graduate school who came up through Tutoring. They spoke movingly about how their tutors made profound differences in their lives. One young woman said you would never guess that one night a week could make such a difference. But it did. It changed her world. It changed the world of the tutor too. It made them family. Together, they made the decision to put feet to faith, and the transformation it unleashed is holy. But that tutor had to sign up and show up. So did the student. That kind of transformation does not just happen.

Putting feet to faith is not just a challenge for individuals, either. It is a challenge for the church, as well. Let me give you just one example: Right now, your staff leadership and soon your Joint Finance Committee, Trustees, and Session will try their best to reflect this kind of show-up commitment through our budgeting process.

We all know that a church’s budget communicates far more than just what it costs to run a church. It reflects our priorities. We spend money on what is important to us. We do that in our own lives, and we do it as a church. So the leadership of this congregation wants to make sure we, like those tutors and students, are doing our best to put our feet to our faith, our money where our mouths are. And we do that while hoping you will do the same as you prayerfully consider your own pledge for 2015. We hope your pledge, your financial giving to what God is doing through Fourth Church, will be a decision to put your feet to your faith, as well.

But why do we do it? Not because we are scared God won’t love us or because we are trying to earn our worth or frightened that if we don’t, we won’t make it past the pearly gates. This is not a text about works righteousness or condemnation. Remember, Jesus said the prostitutes and tax collectors were going in ahead of those religious leaders, not instead of them. Rather, don’t we want to put our feet to our faith because we are grateful for the way God claims our lives? Don’t we want to be a part of the way God is transforming this world? Don’t we desire to sign up and show up because our faith has changed us and we simply cannot go back to the way we were, no matter how tired or busy or overwhelmed we feel? Something inside us won’t let us go that easily. After we get a taste of living out our baptism, we realize substituting our beliefs for our obedience just won’t fill us up anymore. The fancy theological word for that, by the way, is called sanctification, being made holy.

Now, don’t get me wrong: we will all continue to have days when we look in the mirror and realize our mouths are moving a mile a minute but our feet are firmly planted still. We will all continue to have moments when after a long day we only want to hear happy songs about Jesus, rather than the challenging talk of discipleship. This church will continue to wrestle with who we are called to be in this community and world and how we, as Fourth Presbyterian Church, put our collective feet to our faith, our money where our mouths are. On some days, we will do it well. And on some days, we will miss the mark.

But like the tax collectors, the prostitutes, both sons, and the religious leaders, we too are called to keep at it, to keep on turning, again and again, away from our brokenness back into God’s claim on us. Hopefully as we do so, we will keep each other from getting comfortable with signing up but not showing up. And maybe it might even be that when we look into the mirror, we might find that our mouths and our feet are moving in sync more often than they are not (see Barbara Brown Taylor, Home by Another Way). That we are gratefully, even if clumsily, doing this dance called discipleship and service, as people, as families, as a congregation. That we are putting our feet to our faith and are being transformed more and more into God’s hopes for what we might be and somehow, even through us, this world is being transformed more and more into God’s new creation. May it be so.