Donkey Tracks and Skid Marks

Whether it is the basic 10 or the Old Testament's 613, or any other arbitrary number we could specify; keep them all, perfectly, and it is smooth sailing.

But of course the commandments are not pointing to themselves, but to relationships, relationships between ourselves and God, and ourselves with one another.

It is not about a rule and me, but about God and me, and my neighbor and me.

And that man who was speaking with Jesus, his face fell when Jesus was explaining this to him.

He was measuring things in terms of possessions; Jesus wanted him to rejoice in relationships.

It is perhaps one of the saddest verses in scripture: “and he went away shocked, for he had many possessions.”

It might be more accurate to say that his possessions had him, and they were twisting him out of shape, turning him in upon himself, incurvatus in se, an old definition of sin.

How can he enter the kingdom of God?

Only by becoming untwisted, something which he cannot do by himself.

This is the work of the Spirit, and it may be a very long process indeed.

Just as with so many other stories around Jesus, we don't know what happened next.

Jesus had taken the first step of announcing to him the truth of his situation.

And the man turned away shocked and sorrowful.

How is that word of the Lord going to be working on the man in the hours and years that follow?

For surely the Lord having once pronounced good news is not going to stop with a single announcement.

We are much too hard-headed and hard-hearted for that!

Will he find a way to get through to him, and to us?

That is the cliff-hanger part of the story; what happens next, the part of the story that jumps immediately into our lives and challenges us to respond.

I have read that ranchers sometimes use a donkey to bring home a reluctant steer from the open range.

A well-kept donkey will come home, no matter what.

So ranchers have been known to recover recalcitrant setters from the range by tying them to a donkey.

A couple of days later, they'll both show up – a little bloody and banged up, perhaps, but they will come home.

Isn't that what we say about Holy Baptism?

Baptism is not about how wonderful and worthy we are, but that the Lord Jesus has tied himself to us in that sacrament of word and water, and by his promise is determined to drag us home.

Oh, yes, we turn away sorrowful, but the rope only goes so far, and then he begins to tug on us.

Our lives may look less like the famous “footprints in the sand” than a set of donkey tracks with a lot of skid marks from our resisting the call and direction of the Lord.

By ourselves, the whole thing is impossible.

No, we don't fit through the eye of a needle; we are too lumpy, with too much baggage.

But God never stops pulling.

It is hard work for God; it led Jesus to a cross, and causes us to face death as well.

Do we have things, or do they have us?

The question is appropriate, whether we are financially rich or poor, whether we have many possessions or few.

We could be clinging to the few just as tightly as to many!

Are they our things, or are they God's things placed in our trust?

May God be pulling consistently and tirelessly on the rope that binds us to him!

There is our hope and confidence.

We have already passed through one narrow place, the baptismal font.

To that death, we brought nothing of personal worthiness, and still we received his promise.

The second death will be no worse; he is determined to pull us through that as well, skid marks and all.

Some here have experienced one kind of skid-marks , giving up so many things in downsizing from house to apartment to room.

They know how painful it can be, and we don't want to minimize that experience.

But the deeper skid-marks are from another source; from the change of our attitude from “mine, all mine” to “thine, all thine.”

We are not alone in all this.

We have famous examples, such as St. Augustine, who chased the various philosophies and religions of his day, finding no lasting satisfaction among them, and who chased a girl and had a child outside marriage...the rope was let out longer and longer.

But it was the voice of a child on the playground through which the Holy Spirit began to reel him back in.

“Take up and read” the child said, and Augustine picked up the scriptures, read, and his turnaround was underway.

And another part of that rope connecting Augustine with God was the fervent and continuing prayers of his mother Monica.

With those prayers, she was doing what she could to bring about the needed change in Augustine.

When the work of the Spirit finally accomplishes part of God's aim, we, as well as Augustine, will have a different attitude toward our own lives and all the things of life around us.

The famous line from Augustine's book called the Confessions is true:

You move us to delight in praising you, O Lord; for You have formed us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You.

It is true whether God has entrusted many things into our care, or only a few things.

Do we cling to them fearfully, as the wicked servant in the parable of the talents, or do we use them generously for the good of our neighbor and the care of all creation?

A pastor observed that few in his congregation would be willing to offer their lives for the gospel, but at the same time many were dying of heart attacks and other illnesses brought on by stress.

He said, “So many think that it is crazy that martyrs are willing to die for the gospel; and instead others are quite willing to die for just a buck.”

That is the kind of powerful hold that ordinary things have on us.

Which way does the story end, the story that scripture leaves unfinished?

Will Jesus finally get to the man who once went away sorrowful, or will that person continue on his own way to a lonely and grasping death?

And what about our life's version of that story?

How will it end?

How many skid marks will we make as we resist the promise that Jesus made to us?

Our hope, the good news for us, is this: that even should we lose our courage or our grip amid the pains of all of the pulling and stretching and detours that we attempt, God will never, ever let go. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.