Choosing Now Over Later

Choosing Now Over Later
This is our last Sunday in Lent…It’s also the beginning of Holy Week…Our attention turns slightly from the prayer and meditation and inner searching to celebration and shouts of Hosanna! But…it’s still Lent…Still a time for prayer and meditation and inner searching…Because just as quickly as those shouts of “Hosanna” reigned for Jesus, they were just as quickly turned into cries of “Crucify Him!”
In our time together in prayer and inner searching, our Lenten series has been using Rev. Paul Nixon’s book I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church. As we’ve asked the 6 critical choices, we’ve looked at what the mean for us as individuals and what they mean for us as a church…We’ve looked at the choices of life over death, community over isolation, fun over drudgery, bold over mild, frontier over fortress and today we examine the choice choosing now over later…
A couple years ago, I organized a trip to Italy that included our faculty advisor, Dr. Richard Eslinger and my friend Richie…Our first day in Rome, we spent walking a lot…and all day Richie complained about all the walking that we were doing…Now, I suppose it’s pretty understandable because we did walk at least 7 miles everyday…But, it was only our first day! As we were walking back from dinner back to our host families’ home, I heard a voice behind me complaining about having to walk the ½ mile to the house…I finally had enough of it so I turned around quickly and said, “Suck it up, cupcake!” and turned back around to keep walking…When I heard the same voice say, “Excuse me?” and I realized that I had not said it to Richie…But instead, I had said “Suck it up cupcake” to my professor Dr. Richard Eslinger…Now, we all had a good laugh about it and Dick accepted the “cupcake” nickname for our time together…And really the phrase picked up momentum and really I still use the phrase quite a bit!
The phrase, “suck it up cupcake” really means a lot of the same thing as Nike’s “Just do it!” campaign…Do what needs to be done…Or to use our choice for today…Choose now over later…And as easy as it may sound to make that choice…It’s just as easy to say, maybe later…
If there’s something that you really don’t want to do or just aren’t happy about doing…What do you say? “Maybe later…” Because it’s so easy to just say, “maybe later” than to tackle things head on and just do it!
In our story of Jesus calling the disciples…they obviously choose now over later…Those that Jesus called and said, “maybe later” were left behind and they didn’t become one of Jesus’ 12 disciples…But those 12 that said Yes, I will follow you now spent intimate time with Jesus, hearing his message, learning about God’s love, and being sent out into the world to share the message of the Gospel…Sure, they weren’t the only ones who heard Jesus preach or who were called and sent, but there was certainly something different about these 12…These 12 were called and they immediately dropped their nets and followed Jesus…
They didn’t always understand what Jesus was talking about when he would teach and preach…And there were times that they disagreed with what he said…But, they always followed…Some of them even stayed until the very end…And some of them deserted Jesus…But throughout Jesus’ life and ministry, they followed, listened, and chose now…
Can you imagine what would have happened if they didn’t? Well, we know that those who were called by Jesus and said, “maybe later” were left behind…Maybe the did choose to follow Jesus later, but we don’t know…And I think that’s important to point out…The ones who said, “maybe later” were left behind…Or when Jesus gave the disciples the instructions of what to get before he entered Jerusalem…If the disciples had said, “yeah, maybe we’ll get that donkey later, Jesus.” Would the prophecy have been fulfilled? Would Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem have been such a scene with palm branches and shouts of Hosanna? It would take someone to say, “I’ll do it now!” It took someone to choose now over later…
The choice between now and later can be a scary one because there are times when we just don’t feel ready to make a decision or to do something new or different…Out of that fear, we may say, “someday we’ll think about that.” But that’s not where Jesus calls us…Jesus doesn’t call us to think about doing ministry…Jesus calls us to do ministry…We have to choose now over later…
Now, let’s be clear and say that there should always be sufficient time in prayer and discernment or listening to what God is calling and where God is leading…That is very important to spend time…But, a friend of mine said that sometimes discernment is just a “church word” for procrastination…That we can spend too much time in discernment and that makes us choose later instead of now.
Rev. Nixon gives examples of how churches can choose later…He says that churches choose later by saying among these, “We need to work first on doing a better job at pastoral care of our current members.” (p.98) or “We don’t have enough workers for the things we are trying to do currently.” (p.98) “We should just wait until we get a different pastor.” “There’s a new condo development in the mix. When that is built in a couple of years, we will have the people we need to do this.” (p.99) There are several other ways which are by no means an exhaustive list…Have you heard these things said before? All of these ways are choosing later instead of now…
When we choose later, it gives the space for something or someone else…If we don’t share the message of the Gospel now with people who need to hear it, someone else will share a message with them and it may not be the Gospel…If we don’t share the Good News of Jesus now, someone else will share their message of “good news” that may have nothing to do with Jesus…When that happens, we’ve just said “maybe later” not just to Jesus and Jesus’ call, but we’ve also said “maybe later” to the people who need to hear the Gospel…
Jesus knew that he had a limited time on earth to share the message of God’s love and God’s grace…He knew that he had a limited time to spend with the disciples, teaching and sharing with them…Jesus chose now at every turn…And you may be thinking, “well, duh…He’s Jesus!” But as Christians, we are called to imitate Christ…That’s what being a Christian means…Literally… “Christian” means “little Christ”…So how are you choosing to be a little Christ now? As the church, we are the body of Christ at work in the world today…How are we choosing to be the body of Christ now?
We have to choose now…Because if we say, “maybe later”…It might be too late…Let’s choose now together because God is calling to us still and God is calling to us now…There are people who need to hear the message of the Gospel…There are people who need to know the love of God…We have to show them now…We need to be “little Christs”…We need to be the body of Christ at work in the world…And we need to do it now…