Beyond the Patio

THE POINT OF NO RETURN
Luke 9:51-62

Have you in your life had the feeling that you have gone by the point of no return?  You use that expression to indicate a time when choosing a course of action there is no turning back.

People talk about a point of no return when they are traveling.  When you have gone more than half way between your starting point and your destination, it will take you longer to go back than to keep going ahead.  That is even more crucial if your are traveling in an airplane.  The point of no return could mean that you have enough fuel to get to where you are going but not enough to go back to where you came from – that really is a point of no return.  The cost of trying to go back would mean that you end up crashing.

We talk about the point of no return in making a deal.  Once we sign the papers, put our money down, commit ourselves to the agreement, there is no going back without great consequences. You’ve reached the point of no return.

A friend of mine performed a marriage for a couple in a small community in Northern Ontario.  He took the signed forms required by the Division of Vital Statistics and mailed them immediately.  Next morning, which was Sunday, he was getting ready to go to church when there was a knock at the door.  He opened the door and there standing in the doorway was the woman whom he had just performed the wedding for.  She looked sad and in tears she asked, “Do you still have those papers?”  Things obviously did not work out and she wanted to rip up the papers and get rid of the marriage before it was even started.  But the papers had been mailed.  She was legally married.  They had passed the point of no return.  The only way to stop it was through the cost of annulment or divorce.

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To me, the ninth chapter of Luke’s Gospel is a point of no return for Jesus.  For it is here that we read that he “set his face to go to Jerusalem” .  He was determined to go even though he knew that it would probably mean death for him in the end.  This is the ninth chapter of Luke and by the time we get to the nineteenth chapter, he enters Jerusalem which eventually leads to his passion, death and resurrection.  So we can say that here at this point he goes past the point of no return.  He knew that he had to go and there was no turning back.

He also said to those that were to follow him that once they set their hands to the plough, there was no turning back.  He was emphasizing to them that to follow him meaning the same thing – no turning back. To follow him, to live by his way, meant a new kind of living and a break with the past. When you choose to follow Jesus fully, not just straggling behind, or floating along on the fringe, just kind of observing, you go past a point of no return.  Certainly in the early church when this Gospel was being written followers of Jesus faced great opposition from their families and close friends.  They were even in some cases considered dead by the family.  Funerals were probably held for them.  How can you go back to family and friends who have pronounced you dead.? 

 

I think of that hymn:

I have decided to follow Jesus
I have decided to follow Jesus
I have decided to follow Jesus
No turning back, no turning back

The cross before me the world behind me
The cross before me the world behind me
The cross before me the world behind me
To turning back, no turning back 

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Our choice to follow Christ has the same benefits and costs.  The great benefit of following Christ is in finding what it truly means to be fully human and fully alive. We know the love and forgiveness of God. We experience the power of the Holy Spirit – a power to live and to serve Christ’s way of life. We have a sense of belonging in a loving Christian community.   Our sense of mission is larger than any personal agenda.

However there are always costs.  The following of Christ demands personal sacrifices.  It often means unpopular stands on some issues, standing against such things as destroy love or works against love in our world.  We need to be working for peace and justice, for freedom of all people and toward the well being of all people.  It also means the loss of our motivation toward profit as our main goal in life.  We are found going against the grain in regard to materialism and consumerism.  We could even face possible persecution and even death.

Sometimes we don’t want to choose.  We don’t want to play the game but just be spectators and observe from the bleachers. We are like those described by one bishop and “people trying to continue in something that they never really started”.  When we choose the way of Christ fully realizing the cost and still continue on, we have gone by the point of no return.  There will be many times we face hardship because that is what love demands in some situations.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote the book Cost of Discipleship.  He also came to know the cost of discipleship.  He came to America for awhile while all the difficulties were happening in his own country of Germany. He went back to Germany eventually saying, “I have come to the conclusion that I have made a mistake in coming to America.  I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of the Christian life in Germany after the war if I don’t share the trials of this time with my people….since coming on board ship my inner disruption about the future has disappeared”. (1) 

You could say that he “set his face” to go to Germany where he was to be imprisoned and eventually executed for his beliefs and his opposition to Hitler.  We went past the point of no return and there was a great cost.

Every decision we are called upon to make opens the door on some things and closes the door on others.  The problem is that we sometimes want to keep all the doors open and sometimes when we do that all the doors close.  We would like to make all our decisions knowing that it is 100% the right one for us.  We rarely have that 100% assurance. Some times its 60% for and  40% against making a decision.  Sometimes its even 51% to 49%.  So you make the decision and that 40% or 49% always come back to bug you.  In every decision we have to consider the cost However we still have to decide, because to not decide is a decision and is usually the worse decision.

NOW is always the time to decide about our life.  It has always been impressive in the Hebrew Scriptures when the Israelites came to a critical time in their life and one of their leaders would put a decision before the people to “choose today whom you will serve.  (Deuteronomy 8 and Joshua 24)  This is alwaysthe choice before us as followers of Christ. That is the choice in all the decisions we face day by day. When we choose the giving, loving, caring way of Christ, it is always a CHOICE TO LIVE, and at the same time there is always a cost

Frederick Buechner on the subject of Life in his book Wishful Thinking, a Theological ABC gives us this to think about:

After lecturing learnedly on miracles, a great theologian was asked to give a specific example of one. “There is only one miracle, ” he answered.  “It is life”

Have you wept at anything during the past year?

Has your heart beat faster at the sight of great beauty?

More often than not do you really listen when people are speaking to you instead of just waiting for your turn to speak?

Have you thought seriously about the fact that some day you are going to die?

Have you stood up for something in the past year that you would consider of the highest value – something that you would be prepared to give your life for?

Is there someone in whose place you would take, if you could suffer pain for them? If one of you had to suffer great pain, you would volunteer yourself.?

If your answer to all or most of these questions to No, the chances are that your’e dead. (2)

 

I would add this question:

Have you considered in any of the decision that you have recently made the question “what does Love demand?”

If you answer “No”,  you may have already past the point of no return in your relationship with Christ.

But if you can answer even a small “Yes” and want to answer with a big “YES”, by God’s Grace, God is able to take your life that you offer at the Offering of the Eucharist this morning , and give it back to you at communion, restored, forgiven and united in God’s life in Christ to go back in the world to discover once again what it means to be fully human and fully alive.

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(1) unknown source

(2) Frederick Buechner Wishful Thinking, A Theological ABC, Harper and Row, NY. 1973 , p. 51.

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