Seizing the Moment
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Matthew 8:18-27
The New Testament in a Year sermon series
Rev. Brian North, Westminster Presbyterian, Chehalis, WA
September 18th, 2011
I have always managed to stay in shape and jump into whatever athletic endeavor I wanted to with minimal on-going exercise. So I’ve never been one to run 4 days a week, lift weights, and so forth. For a time I exercised regularly in a class at Thorbeck’s, but that only lasted about 6 months one time and about 2 months another time. So my track record on regular exercise is pretty pitiful. Instead, I’ve stayed in shape through the sports that I do – skiing, waterskiing, mountain biking, hiking tennis, basketball, volleyball…whatever. And for much of my life, that was sufficient. I could engage in one sport or another throughout the year and stay in shape. Now, however, it’s different. My life situation has changed the last few years (four kids will do that, you know), and I don’t get out for those things much.
Well, this past week I had the opportunity to go waterskiing on a man-made water ski lake, behind a competition ski boat, and go through a slalom course. It was the perfect combination. And so all of that combined together gave me great incentive to ski aggressively. Unfortunately, I skied too aggressively and I tore the medial collateral ligament in my left knee. I didn’t even crash when it happened. I reached out with my one hand on the rope, made the turn around the buoy, and just as I started coming back toward the wake to head toward the buoy on the other side, I felt the ligament pop – like a rubber band stretched too far. If you’ve never had that happen, be glad. It’s not too fun.
This experience has been a wake-up call that I need to do a better job of exercising regularly – not just when it’s fun or easy or convenient to do so, but even when it’s not high on my list of priorities, when I’d rather be doing something else. Because if I want to experience the joy and the fun of sports like water skiing, I’d better engage in the discipline and sacrifice of exercising regularly so my body will hold up.
And in today’s passage, we see how Jesus offers a similar challenge to the people who follow after him. So I invite you to your Bible if you brought one, or the blue pew Bibles in front of you. We’re starting in Matthew 8:18, page 8 in the NT of the pew Bibles…
Matthew 8:18-27
Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. A scribe then approached and said, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ Another of his disciples said to him (By the way, with these words “another of his disciples”, I believe Matthew is telling us that these two guys became Jesus’ disciples, probably right here on the spot), ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.’
And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A gale arose on the lake, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, ‘Lord, save us! We are perishing!’ And he said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, you of little faith?’ Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a dead calm. They were amazed, saying, ‘What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?’
Let’s begin with the first guy who came to Jesus. He was a scribe – which means he was a particular kind of Jewish religious leader – and he says to Jesus, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And he addresses Jesus as “teacher” which in the Hebrew language which he would have spoken is the word “rabbi.” So he’s putting Jesus up on a pretty high pedestal here. And then he says that he will follow Jesus wherever he goes. Coming from a scribe, this is pretty amazing, because Jesus didn’t generally see eye-to-eye with the religious leaders of the day; he ruffled their feathers an awful lot.
Now, if I were Jesus – and that’s always a very dangerous statement for anyone to make – but if I were in his shoes, I’d want to make sure that this guy stayed close, that I didn’t lose him. And so I would take steps to make sure that it was easy for him to follow. But does Jesus do that? No. He tells him that “the Son of Man” (speaking of himself) has no place to lay his head. In other words, following him isn’t going to be easy, because Jesus doesn’t have it easy. And so he is testing out the guy’s commitment. Is he really into this? Is he really up for it? That’s what Jesus is finding out.
We see here that to be a disciple of Jesus takes some personal sacrifice and discipline, much like physical exercise. Yes, there are many times of joy and exhilaration and celebration in the process of discipleship – those are comparable to the opportunity I had a few days ago on that lake up until I got injured. In fact, in the verses before this Jesus is healing people and some awesome stuff is happening, and that’s probably in part why these guys decide to follow Jesus: they see the miracles and want to be a part of that. But to follow Jesus rightly as his disciple is not easy, and takes more than just being there for those mountain peak times. That’s what Jesus is letting him know.
Then another guy, having just heard this and not deterred by the challenge of the discipline, pipes up and says, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus replies – and every time I read this, I imagine Jesus’ voice being really rough and tumble, like Clint Eastwood in a Western movie – “Follow me (“punk” – Clint would add that ), and let the dead bury their own dead.” Now, he probably didn’t say it quite like that…but it’s still a line drawn in the sand. (“Bury my father” – Idiom of the day that had to do with “fulfilling obligations to my parents until they pass away. So length of time not known, could have been years.) But His point is clear: Jesus’ expectation is that nothing comes between Him and those who follow him. We can always find reasons to delay following Jesus. There’s always a reason for not participating fully as his disciple, just as I have had a ton of reasons not to exercise the past several months and years.
And so at that moment, what Jesus is essentially saying to him is: “This is the time, and this is the place. Are you following me or not?” Because Jesus knows that if the guy walks away, the odds of him coming back aren’t real good, because there will be something else that comes up. Another opportunity. Another need. Another scheduling conflict. Another time commitment. When we allow those things to get in the way of following Jesus, William Barclay calls it: “The tragedy of the unseized moment.” It’s a great phrase. And every day we’re faced with opportunities to seize the moment and follow Jesus and His will in our lives. Some of them become seized moments, and others of them remain unseized.
Just recently, I had one of these. Well, I’ve had lots…but this is one that comes to my mind. Someone came into my office to talk about a struggle he was going through. And in part because our conversation wandered to other stuff, and in part because I’m as sharp as a brick a lot of the time, I totally forgot to pray with him. He didn’t ask for it specifically…but he shouldn’t have had to. I completely failed Prayer 101. Totally just spaced on it. That was an “unseized moment.” Fortunately, he came back in to my office a couple minutes after he stepped out, and said, “Hey, can you pray with me?” And so we prayed right then and there. We seized the moment the second time around. But we don’t always have those second chances to seize the moment again.
You see: Every day you and I have moments which we can seize in order to follow Jesus. For instance, all of us had a moment to seize this morning, when we each had to decide: Am I going to church today, or not? And we seized it. Here we are. We’ll have the same opportunity again with worship next Sunday, and beyond. Then there are other moments every day throughout the week: opportunities to pray for someone, to pray with someone, to read our Bibles, to go to a men’s or women’s Bible study or come to the Stand on Wednesday evening, to help out someone in need, to give a word of encouragement and hope to someone, to invite someone to church, forgive someone, to extend mercy and grace to someone, to live with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control, to stand up to a culture that’s quite un-Christian, to live morally pure and Biblical lives…I could go on! There are many opportunities that you and I have every day that we can seize and live out our discipleship to Jesus. But oftentimes we don’t. We let the moment pass. We procrastinate on it. We make other business a priority over following Jesus.
It gets me wondering, at least for myself: Why do I do this? I mean, if I believe that Jesus is who he claims to be, that he did what the Bible tells us he did, that I can know true and lasting peace, that I can experience forgiveness for my sins and have a right relationship with God, that I can have hope for tomorrow and for eternity, and have it all through a relationship with Jesus: Why wouldn’t I put more into that relationship?
I think it’s because: I want following Jesus to be easy. This gets us back to the first guy who said he’d follow Jesus wherever he went. Jesus made it clear, right up front, what that was going to entail. And it isn’t easy. But too often we think about Jesus like little Davie thought about police work. Little Davie’s kindergarten class was on a field trip to their local police station where they saw pictures tacked to a bulletin board of the 10 most wanted criminals. One of the youngsters pointed to a picture and asked if it really was the photo of a wanted person.
“Yes,” said the policeman. “The detectives want very badly to capture him.” Little Davie asked, “Why didn’t you keep him when you took his picture?”
Too often, we think of our relationship with Jesus that way: that it’s just that easy. Maybe someone once told us it would be that way. We do a disservice to the gospel when we tell people following Jesus is easy. Today, on National Back to Church Sunday, I really wanted to preach an easy message. Like I said earlier, if I were in Jesus’ shoes, I’d make following him easy. But Jesus never said that following him would be easy. The gift of forgiveness and grace that he offers is free – we can’t do anything to earn the offering of the gift…but it’s not cheap or easy. The cost is in our response.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship) You see, grace costs something. It cost Jesus his life, and then he offers it to us free of anything we’ve done. But then we do something because we’ve received it and follow him.
In fact, that’s exactly what happens next as they follow him into the boat, and out onto the water where the storm whips up some huge waves, freaking out all the disciples. And then Jesus then calms it with just a few words, and the disciples are happy and content and at ease. But they wouldn’t have experienced the peace of the sea and their souls in that moment if they hadn’t followed Jesus into the boat and been in the rough waters first. It’s a picture of the challenge of following Jesus, but the assurance of peace that makes it all worth it. And in the end, their response is one of amazement: “Who is this guy?” they ask. They’re fascinated with Him and amazed by Him, all because they seized the moment, and got in the boat with Jesus.
And Jesus still gets in the boat and invites us to follow him. How are you and I seizing the moments we have to follow Jesus? Does Jesus ask a lot of us when we follow him? Yes. But he has already given, and continues to give, so much more. He gave his life for you and me so that we would have peace that passes all understanding, knowing that no matter how tough this life gets, Jesus has everything in the palm of his hands. My prayer for each and every one of us is that in our lives we would have few “tragedies of the unseized moment” when it comes to following Jesus. I pray that we would strengthen our faith regularly, and live with the discipline to stay in shape and following Jesus, even when it’s hard. Even in the rough waves of life. That will mean something different for each of us, because we’re all in a different place with Jesus. So whatever the next step is for you in following Him, take it. There may be some challenges for us in doing that…it may not be easy, we may have other priorities competing with it…But don’t do like I’ve done with physical exercise and wait until you tear a spiritual ligament or hit rock bottom in some way. Let’s seize the moment that you have today, and get in the boat and follow him each and every day, wherever he leads. Let’s Pray…Amen.
