I need to tell you that being a control freak—trying to overly manage everything in life —is both highly overrated and hopelessly antithetical to the life of grace. I say this to you not from some textbook, but from raw, repeated experience.
I also need to tell you that renouncing control—renouncing all that possesses us—is genuinely life-giving and grace-filled.
And we all need to take the plunge today, because no matter how easy-going and laid back you think your great aunt Edna is, she, too, is a control freak. Have you seen how she organizes her pantry—alphabetically with jams on the left and jellies on the right!
What about your sister? Hello! Have you noticed she calls at the same time every Sunday night to tell you how you should raise your children? She’s a control freak! And have you noticed how your type-A boss begins to twitch if anyone else has the floor and has an idea? He’s a total control freak!
What about the complete stranger sitting next to me this week on my flight from Atlanta to Sarasota. The Wi-Fi wasn’t working, so I decided to deal with my lack of control (!) by taking on sudoku for the first time in the back of Sky Magazine. The guy sitting by me apparently was an expert, because he kept watching me try to play out of the corner of his eye. And, finally, somewhere over Tallahassee he couldn’t resist it; he turned to me and blurted out, “May I please show you the correct way to play!?!” Another control freak!
The truth is that we are all control freaks in our own way. The desire to control relationships and situations is evenly distributed. It’s rooted in sin, the flesh and the Devil.
Why Jesus tells his would-be disciples what it really takes to be a genuine, full-blown disciple! Jesus said, “So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he possesses cannot be my disciple.”
He’s not talking about being more generous with money, folks.
He’s saying if we don’t renounce all the things that possess us – if we don’t give our egos and controlling agendas the pink slip, we’re a bunch of fakers, and we’re ultimately rejecting the invitation to the life of grace-filled discipleship. Basically, we’re saying “no thank you” yet again to the invitation to trust 100 percent in the supreme sufficiency of His grace and mercy.
Have you ever thought about all the things that possess us – all the things we worry about controlling daily, if not hourly, and how all those thoughts and anxieties end up diluting the power of God’s grace?
Yet we need undiluted grace!
And we need it today, more than ever, because we live in a time and place that is largely devoid of it.
The world we live in is the world of the control freak – folks just like you and me, running around trying to control everything and everybody, which ironically is a manufactured illusion we’ve created out of sheer desperation to tell us we’ve got everything under control, when things are really falling apart—and fast. At best this is the world that gave us stress balls, a ten-billion-dollar self-help industry and personalized Yoga mats. At worst this is the world of Xanax, despair and a record number of teenage suicides.
And, tragically, the final word in this world – the world dominated by helicopter parenting, juice fasts and retirement seminars at Ruth’s Chris – is judgement. And that’s because if everything is about managing and controlling outcomes, it really means it’s all about measuring up. So, if I don’t swim, I sink, and, therefore, I’m a failure. And this worldview has no balm—zero power— to turn us around in the midst of sin, sadness and brokenness – in the face of real life…in the face of what the Bee Gees labeled a “tragedy” in 1979:
“Tragedy
When the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on
It’s tragedy
When the morning cries and you don’t know why
It’s hard to bear
With no one to love you
You’re goin’ nowhere
Tragedy.”
But, disciples of Jesus are different, because they know Only grace—God’s great goodness and love given to the not-so-good—can turn us around.
Don’t forget Kenny Rogers—yes, Kenny Rogers in 1982—“Love will turn you around, turn you around.”
And that’s all I want to say in this little homily. I just want to say, with as much conviction and confidence I can muster, that no matter what you’re facing – no matter the latest let-down, or the latest relationship backfire, that God’s grace can turn it around.
The single saddest thing I encounter as a priest – way more heartbreaking than the inevitable deaths and divorces I knew I’d face – is the distraught disciple who believes he or she must successfully control, or manage, some outcomes in life – has to measure up, in other words – in order to be loved.
Do you remember the 2017 movie “Dunkirk?” It was a nail-biter for sure; the soundtrack was wicked cool. They slowed down Elgar’s “Nimrod Variations,” and I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest.
Even if you don’t remember the film, or the soundtrack, you know the story. 300,000 British troops were stuck on the beaches of France after a horrible military blunder in 194 that demonstrated things were out of completely and hopelessly out of control. The idea of going home – going back to the safe smell of Mama’s cookin’ – wasn’t going to happen. It was over for Britain.
But you know what happened. They didn’t have to find their way home, because home came for them. Every weekender, sailing amateur and holiday-maker put his or her pleasure boat in the Channel, crossed over to France and saved the un-savable. Are you on that beach today?
To put it biblically, the Red Sea parted, Pharaoh’s chariots got stock in the mud and God’s chosen people walked freely and boldly into the Promised Land.
Home has come for each of us today. His name is Jesus, and He calls us once again to trust completely and totally in His rescue mission of mercy and grace. And when we do, we can rest assured we have given up all our possessions – all the possesses us – and we are indeed His disciples.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Charleston D. Wilson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
13th Sunday after Pentecost
8 September 2019