Long
ago in a childhood far away…. I watched a Christmas Special or at least part of
one. It was 1978, Jimmy Carter was
President, Bear Bryant was coaching Alabama and I was a teenager. That Christmas season I watched just a few
minutes of A Mac Davis Special: Christmas
Odyssey 2010, but lost interest pretty quick. At the time my musical interest tended toward
Boston, Styx, Foreigner, and Heart. So,
this Mac Davis Christmas musical had little appeal. However, the theme of the special stuck with
me. In the show Mac Davis and Bernadette Peters
played a couple preparing for "Commerce Day," the winter holiday
which causes people to spend a lot of money on presents. It was, as I recall, pretty sappy and not
very good. But one of the lines was
prophetic:
"Every Commerce Day,
We get lots and lots of
stuff,
No matter how much we get,
It never is enough!"
At
this time of year, we can all decry the commercialization of Christmas, but there
is another and deeper issue.
He
had no TV, computer, MP3 player, or what we would call basic
transportation. His home would be what
we might call third world and compared to most of us his possessions were meager
and of poorer quality. But students of
the Bible call him “the rich young ruler”. And he walked away from Jesus because his heart
was so attached to his possessions. I am
often stunned by how much stuff I have.
I am even more stunned at how attached I have become to the stuff. Can I walk away from my stuff if the Lord
called me to do so? Would I try to drag
it along as I followed? Would I just let
Jesus leave and sit miserably with my stuff?
Why
does the Lord make such ridiculous demands of us? Why did God call for the sacrifice of Isaac
rather than Ismael, Hagar, or even Sarah?
Why did Jesus call those who followed him to hate mother and father
instead of hating Samaritans and Romans? Why did Jesus call for the abandonment
of wealth and security as terms of the rich man’s discipleship?
The
reason is simple; Jesus will not allow us to have anything between Him and our
heart. Those things nearest our heart
are most apt to sink their roots into our hearts. Jesus
demands that they be extracted. If the
decisions of our discipleship never cause us any distress we may not be making
the decision to be a disciple. To take
up the cross and follow Christ is not a decision that is made lightly.
In
my own heart, I often try to find the middle way: the path that allows me to
hear the comforting words of Jesus without having to be made uncomfortable by
following. We must not imagine that the
hurt of following in not real. It most
emphatically is. But it is a hurt that
will give way, perhaps in this life, certainly in the life to come. As we approach this year’s Commerce
Day/Christmas we would do well to ask: “What or who has grown too close to our
heart?” God grant us the pain of
faithfully following Jesus our Lord.
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