Not Just A Minute – Now!

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
July 1, 2007

Not Just A Minute – Now!
Galatians 5:16-26
Luke 9:57-62

Most children have chores to do around the house;
certainly my three sisters and I did.
We each had our lists of things
we were expected to do throughout the week.
At dinnertime we had our assigned tasks:
my youngest sister set the table,
my middle sister helped serve,
and my oldest sister cleared the table
and helped Mom with the dishes.
My job came after dinner: it was to take out the trash.
I didn’t mind the job;
The garbage cans were just in the garage,
and they were steel cans,
the kind that made a wonderful racket
every time I took off a lid
and threw it on the concrete floor.

Taking out the trash was always the last thing to be done,
after the dishes were washed and the kitchen cleaned up,
so I usually went off to do something else right after dinner;
I’d go downstairs to the playroom in the basement,
or head outside, or go upstairs to my room.

Inevitably, though, the call would come,
finding me wherever I was, the words carried
down the hall, up the stairs, around corners,
outdoors front or back:
“Would you please take out the garbage?”

My reply was always the same:
“Just a minute!”
My mother’s response was unvarying,
unwavering, unyielding, firm,
filling every corner of the house,
reaching to the farthest edges of the yard:
“Not just a minute – Now!”

Her response never seemed reasonable to me.
She knew I would do it: I always did.
Still, she wanted it done then and there.
What I might have been doing at that point in time
was of no concern to her.
The garbage was to be emptied.
Now.
Not in just a minute.

The phrase was a regular part of my mother’s lexicon.
I suspect it is part of every mother’s, every parent’s.
The call to come for dinner,
the call to get ready for bed,
the call to take a bath.
The child answers,
“Just a minute”;
and the parent responds,
“Not just a minute, now!”

We don’t like being told what to do,
or when to do it.
We want to do things our own way,
on our own schedule.
Stubbornness seems to be woven into the fabric of free will.

We see it in the reaction Jesus got
from his three would-be followers.
The first was none too sure about the accommodations.
Luke records no verbal response,
but I have to believe
that the man’s body language said very clearly,
“Just a minute; let me think about this”.
The other two were more direct with their
“just a minute”,
one to go and bury his father,
and the other to say goodbye to his family.

Now those don’t sound at all like unreasonable requests,
yet Jesus responded the same way to each:
saying to them in effect, “not just a minute, now!”

Why does Jesus seem to be so unreasonable?
Not to let a man go back to arrange a burial,
not to let another simply say goodbye?

Jesus is making a point with these three,
a point to them, a point to his followers,
a point to us.
He’s telling us to get our priorities straight.
He’s telling us God comes first,
first before anything else,
before everything else.
He’s telling us following him means following him
all the way, every minute, everywhere, every place.
He’s telling us the same thing
Elijah told the children of Israel
more than 800 years earlier:
If we’re going to follow God, then follow him,
with heart, soul, mind, body, and strength.
No half measures;
You are either in or you are out,
no waffling, no limping.

In an consumerist world, filled with must-haves,
Jesus wants us to say that our must-have
is not an iPhone,
not a Wii video game,
not a BMW or Lexus,
Our must-have is God,
as we follow his Son.
as we truly commit ourselves…
completely commit ourselves.

Here in this passage,
and in many other passages scattered throughout the gospels,
Jesus makes a strong statement to make his point;
he wants us to get it.
He understands how easy it is
for us to say we are committed Christians;
words come easily to us.

Jesus isn’t saying to us
“turn away from your family.”
He is saying,
“where is your focus?”
“what is your priority?”
He challenges us to understand the depth and breath
of our commitment as he challenges us,
“if you had to choose between following me,
and being comfortable, what would you do?
If you had to choose between family,
and following me, what would you do?”
He never said this was going to be easy.

Following Christ is much more than just tagging along.
It means changing our lives,
changing ourselves as we work to become more like him
with each passing day.
Henri Nouwen reminds us that Jesus
“became like us so that we might become like him.”
become like him in our homes, our workplaces,
when we are out shopping, even behind the wheel of the car.
But that won’t happen unless we work at making it happen.

The Galatians were not trying to become more like Christ.
They had their focus, their priorities all mixed up.
They thought they were on the right path.
They thought that if they adopted symbols,
and followed the law, that would be enough.
They weren’t working to change their lives.
They weren’t completely committed;
they were skimming along the surface.

If the Galatians had been more focused
on becoming more Christ-like
do you think Paul would have had to rebuke them,
rebuke them not only for things like
idolatry, licentiousness, and sorcery,
but for things like
dissension, factions, envy,
jealousy, anger, quarrels.
Are we all that different?

This theme of “commitment” is a thread
that has run through the lessons the Lectionary has assigned
the past couple of weeks,
a thread that will continue to run through our lessons
in the weeks ahead.

This focus runs through the Bible because
commitment is not something that is done;
it isn’t something we do when we profess our faith,
or join a church.
Commitment is something we learn to do over a lifetime;
it is something we work on over a lifetime.
It is something we work on by working intentionally
to change ourselves: not to change one another,
but to transform ourselves each day
to become more Christ-like.

It seems fitting that Jesus puts this challenge before us
on this first Sunday in July.
It is this time of year when our attention is most easily
diverted from church,
from following, from transformation,
as we turn our attention to vacations,
gardens, golf, barbecues, relaxation,
all the things that come with summer.
It is the time of year
when we are most likely to respond to Jesus,
“just a minute”.
“I will get to it after my vacation;
or better yet, let me put it on the calendar
for September.”
Let me ask you a question:
why do churches, including this one,
plan activities based on the school-year calendar?

When you come to the table in a few minutes,
in response to our Lord’s invitation
to come share in the meal
that he has prepared for you, for me,
for each of us,
come and renew your commitment to him,
even as summer begins, as vacation beckons,
as heat and humidity drain energy.

Come to this table
and say,
“Lord, I come to your table to be fed.
I come to your table to be nourished
mind, body, and spirit.
I come to this table
to renew my commitment to follow,
follow you,
to follow you not in just a minute,
but now.
AMEN