It’s always interesting how we read history. The biggest challenge is that we know how history comes out, or at least we think we do. Much of the tension that rests in the greatest stories of history escapes us. The greatness of those stories can be experienced when we try to forget how things turned out and get ourselves into the mind of the time, seeing the struggle of the people involved.   

There was a man many years ago. He was a highly respected and successful businessman. There were some issues that came up in his day, some troubling issues about injustice and unfairness. Taking on the challenge of stepping into those issues risked not only losing his livelihood and his prosperity, but his life as well. The side that he chose to promote in the midst of the controversy did not look like it was going to win. We are often told a story about this man, George Washington, cutting down a cherry tree and then being truthful about it. Scholars don’t know whether he did that. It might just be a fable. But I find that the real truth and the real substance of his life is far better than the cherry tree story. When George Washington decided to take up the cause of American Revolution, he did not know whether he would survive it or whether he would lose all the things he spent years collecting.  But he knew that he must act in the moment that he had been called to. And he did with great courage.

There was another man not born to the same wealth as George Washington. He was born in fairly low circumstances. He was fairly bright, got himself educated, became a fine lawyer, and was making a very good living.  Then he got into politics. The worst crisis of this country occurred, in part due to one of the worst presidents this country has ever had, James Buchanan.  He spent most of his time trying to placate people instead of standing firm where he needed to stand. Many historians blame much of the crisis of the Civil War on Buchanan because of his unwillingness to tackle those issues and stand firm. Abraham Lincoln inherited those problems when he became president When Lincoln was living and even a few years after his death, he was not the revered deity that we have made of him. But as we have been able to see history settle and look at his words and his personal struggles, we see the greatness in what he did. He, like George Washington, was accused of being a traitor, of being an idiot, and of going against what some people considered the foundations of our county. He lived a controversial life. Sometimes I wonder about Abraham Lincoln. What was wrong with him that he would have taken on the responsibilities of being a President at such an ungodly time?  No matter what he did, he would be criticized. Our admiration of Abraham Lincoln has little to do with his eloquent words, though they were eloquent. It has little to do with his stature, and nothing to do with his fine good looks.  I do have one thing to ponder, though.  If we live in a day when a homely person can’t be elected to public office, what does that say about our superficial values as a culture and what we are looking for in the people we want to serve? Just something to think about.

The characteristic that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln share is their uncertainty about whether their efforts would be successes or failures.  They shared uncertainty about their personal fortunes, and I’m not talking about money. Neither knew whether their lives would be destroyed by the tasks they had taken on.  We know the rest of the story. In the controversial, violent times in which he lived, no sooner than the war over before Lincoln dead at the hands of an assassin. George Washington was more fortunate.  After leading the Continental Army he became President and then retired to his estate and enjoyed old age in relative peace.  Lincoln died because of the decision he made.  So we have two people in history that had little to gain by making the choice that they made, and yet did it because they saw a higher calling in their lives.

I was talking to a friend of mine in England a few months ago.  He is a priest in the Church of England. The Church of England is under a lot of strain these days and has been for the last decade. There is a leader in the Church who is an incredible scholar and one of the best theological thinkers of our time.  He lived a monkish, spiritual existence, and they made him Archbishop of Wales. Then they decided to make him Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the Anglican Church in England. . My friend told me that Rowan Williams had little to gain from becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury. He could have lived the rest of his career very successfully, leading people on spiritual retreats and academically reflecting on the issues of our day.  He could have been completely out of the fray and people would have loved him dearly. My friend said that Rowan Williams needed the Church of England a lot less than the Church of England needed him. He shares something in common with Abraham Lincoln; he is rather homely.  He looks funny in his Archbishop garb. He hasn’t always made decisions that I think he ought to make.  But I’ve been amazed at how he has been able to take two opposite sides of his church and remind them that they are in Christian community at a time when no one wants to do that. Whether or not Rowan Williams will be successful at leading his denomination through some difficult times into the future that God has intended has yet to be decided. He may not succeed. The measure of greatness in a person’s life ironically is never measured by whether they were successful. The key to knowing whether we have done what we should have done is not always measured in how successful we are. All three of these men were successful in their private lives, and because of that very success had much more to risk when they decided to undertake the tasks that God had called them.

Now I want to return to this wonderful story in Luke’s gospel.  I want to tell it in a way that is very different from the romantic images that we have layered so heavily on it over the years. Contrary to popular opinion, Peter was no country bumpkin fisherman. As a matter of fact, one of the only artifacts from Jesus’ lifetime that has actually been discovered is the home of Peter they are excavating at this moment. And it’s more like an Italian villa than it is a house. That tells us is that Peter belonged to a very small minority of people in Palestine of Jesus’ age who weren’t dirt poor. He was an upper class businessman, obviously successful. He had much more to risk by following Jesus than the average person on the street. And yet, what we hear from the gospel of Luke is that he didn’t hesitate to drop what he was doing and risk all in following Jesus. If we go back about four generations, it wouldn’t be that hard to figure out what people were doing to earn a living. They do what the generation before them had done. We forget that for the most of the history of human race that agriculture was the main occupation. People simply had no choice about career paths. Even a generation ago people started working at one company and retired from it, thinking that was the norm. Today the average person graduating from college will have had three or four career moves before retirement.  On one hand, this phenomenon says something about the stress of our modern day economy.  Often people find themselves in the undertow of economic change, trying to readjust and reeducate themselves. A more positive way of looking at that is that we live in a time when we have more choices about how we live our lives and we have more power to choose than in any other time in human history.  We often find ourselves like Peter, people who have found success from the hard work of our lives but trying to figure out what it is that we need to do with our lives.

There is an interesting article in the Christian Century this week. I don’t know if any of you have seen the movie Cheaper by the Dozen. I haven’t because I thought it was going to be silly, but now I think I might go see it. It’s a remake of an old movie about a couple that has a dozen kids.  The writer of this article says that it is the most counter cultural movie of the year. He chastises modern Protestants, particularly Methodist. If you look at the official position of our Book of Discipline about family planning, it basically says that we need to have as few children as possible to be responsible human beings. The writer of this article says that he often suspects that the real reasons that main line Protestants press for smaller families wasn’t so much the concern about the ecology or about limited resources.  The notion came at a point where our American culture started pushing more heavily on career choices of individuals. What became most important in lives of the average American was whether they could find success as an individual in the careers they chose.  That kind of attitude runs contrary to anything that has to do with parenting. To be a parent means being able to step outside of personal needs to meet the needs of another. The writer of this article says that Steve Martin does a wonderful job playing a goofy father who decides that being a parent is far more important than anything else in his life is.  There is one scene in the movie in which his boss challenges him about his lack of commitment to his job as opposed to his family. The father answers that his children are far more important to him than his job.  The writer of this article says is that this movie is not encouragement to have twelve children, but to think about the real focus of our lives.  The pivot of Luke’s gospel is chapter five, a question that God asks everyone sitting here. Where are you in your life right now? Are you living a life called to a radical sense of God and God’s calling?  Can you sacrifice your need for your own security? Are you living your life in such a way that your willing to risk everything to do what God has called you to do?  There is a desperate need for God’s grace to be preached in the world today.   Not just preached, but lived. Are you willing to settle for a and security in order to live your life? Or do you like Peter have the willingness to give up all that you have to do what Jesus would have you to do? And that is the question we are left with.

Let’s bow our heads now for a word of prayer.