June 29, 2025

Are You In?

For quite a while the poker game, Texas hold ‘em, was all the rage.  I think it’s still popular on poker TV shows.  I’ve never played it (I’m more of a seven card stud and five card draw man), but as I understand it the idea is to run your opponents out of the game by betting everything on one big hand.  The play proceeds one hand at a time, with moderate stakes, and you win some hands and lose some.  But when the person across the table puts all their chips in the pot, you’ve got to decide whether to put yours in or get out.  Everything is on the line.  When it comes to that point in the game, there’s no middle choice; you’re either all in or you fold your hand.

I think the Almighty plays a version of “Texas hold ‘em” with us.  Each day of our lives involves a series of choices.  We bet on relationships, and job interviews, and traffic allowing us to get to a meeting on time, and a thousand other things.  Sometimes we win; sometimes we lose.  We play the markets, spend dollars and save them; our stash goes up and it goes down.  One day we’re dealt a hand full of missed opportunities, miserable circumstances, and misunderstandings.  The next day our cards are all aces and kings.  And so it goes, from week to week, year to year.

But sooner or later, early in life or late in life, it’s bound to happen.  You’re sitting across the table from truth itself, the vast unknown staring you in the face, all of life’s blessings and all of life’s curses are slid in one pile toward you, and the voice of eternity asks, “Are you in?”

That’s what I think Jesus was trying to tell the disciples in this passage from the Gospel of Luke.  Jesus had been at the table, and the divine hand of truth had pushed all the chips toward him: go to Jerusalem to fulfill your ministry, be killed, and make your message heard for all time, or turn back and save your hide.  Are you in or out?  Jesus had made his choice; he was all in.  He had, as scripture says, “set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  Meanwhile, the disciples were caught up in a dispute about a group of people who wouldn’t let him stay in their town.  Jesus would have none of it – no distractions now, the decision was made, the whole game was on the line.

He tried to make them understand: a man came up to him and wanted to join the disciples but he said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  In other words, this is no penny ante game here; my way is a hard choice; people who follow me are giving up home, comfort, everything.  Another potential disciple wanted to go bury his father before joining them, and yet another wanted to go say goodbye to his family.  Again, Jesus put all his chips on the table: follow me, or stay behind.  This is one of those moments in life; there are no half choices, there are no compromises. I’m on my way to Jerusalem to die.  Are you in, or are you out?

Jesus’ words echo the voice of Elijah who had in ancient times presented his protege, Elisha, with the same kind of ultimate choice: to take up the prophet’s mantle and lead the people.  Elisha wanted to go home and say farewell to his parents before following the prophet, but Elijah offered a bit of scorn to impress on the young man the weight of his decision.

There are such moments.  There are times when the usual loyalties and normal routines are dwarfed by an issue so profound, a decision so momentous that all of your spirit, all of your character, all of your strength of will are called upon, and the rest of your life holds its breath while you decide to act or not.

I have a hard story to share with you.  It’s a story about that kind of decision – the painful, difficult decision to follow the way of Jesus, even when it hurts.  The story comes from Rev. Susan Thomas who was, at the time, on the staff of the City Mission Society in Boston that was a ministry of our United Church of Christ, and who once served as interim sabbatical pastor at our church.  Some of you may remember her.  She tells of the murder of a young man, Jaewon Martin, who was in the City Mission Society Afterschool Program.  You may remember reading about his death in the newspaper.  He was killed just about fifteen years ago on the Saturday before Mother’s Day.  An honor roll student in the eighth grade, Jaewon was playing basketball with his friends when some gang members mistook him for a rival and gunned him down.

Rev. Thomas said, “Jaewon was a wonderful young man, outgoing, engaging, really popular with everyone at our afterschool; he loved math, he loved basketball and football.  You could always find him in the kitchen with us wanting to help out with cooking supper or baking.  He talked about how he wanted to go to college and, as a lot of young people do, he wanted to be his own boss someday.  He also loved his family and was often called on to babysit his younger cousins.”

The day after Jaewon was killed, his mother and grandmother, with their hearts freshly broken, nonetheless walked with some local pastors in the Mother’s Day Walk for Peace.  They walked in a march to end the violence.

Rev. Thomas writes, “The staff of City Mission Society was counted among the hundreds and hundreds of people who jammed the overflowing church on the day of Jaewon’s funeral.  His mother was not able to speak during the church service but she did write these very telling words that were printed in the bulletin for the funeral service:

I know I do not want revenge.  I know my son is not the first teenager to be killed in a public place and I know my son was ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time.’  We have to come together as a community because in the end we are all losing at both ends of the gun.  We have to value and invest in all children and families equally.

We are in no way wishing this upon anyone else.  Anyone who does anything different from what we are asking, let it be known this is not our wish.  Please, stop this senseless killing.

I hope whoever did this will have the courage to come forward and seek forgiveness.  Even though the pain will always be there I have a heart that can forgive.  I hope that we do not lose more children.  Have faith.  Have trust in our Lord and Savior.

To my son’s friends – the best way to honor my son is to fulfill your dreams, get good grades, work hard, get along with each other, love each other.  Unite in love together, and that’s what I want you to do until it’s over.”¹

This message from the heart of a grieving mother was crystal clear.  It could not be mistaken by a neighborhood full of angry young men bent on revenge.  Jaewon’s mother was confronted by a greater moment of trial than any of us would care to face.  And the choice she made, the choice to live for love, and for forgiveness, and for hope, a choice that shined forth from her words in that funeral bulletin like a beacon light, was most certainly a critical juncture in her life and in the lives of many in her community.  But I suspect if you asked her, she might tell you that this decision was simply the culmination of choices that had come much earlier in life.  You don’t get to such a point of grace in the face of unspeakable trauma without having already come to terms with the power of love and truth and beauty and goodness.  You can bank on it: Jaewon’s mother had been living for these things for many years.  But a bullet changed things; now it was clear that pleasant smiles and Sunday school platitudes were no longer at stake; the greatest loss, the deepest hurt, the most profound issue at the heart of life were all on the table, and the challenge to live for love and forgiveness in league with the brutal realities of cruel fate had stared her in the face and put it to her directly: “Are you in, or are you out?”

I pray that none of you will be faced with such a public and traumatic crisis.  But sooner or later, the world being what it is, the exigencies and fortunes of life will conspire to present you with a powerful and possibly painful decision.  The eddies and tides of emotional stress will pull you one way and then another, fears and desires will clash, and a momentous choice for good or for ill will stare you in the face.

When that moment comes, what kind of hand will you be holding?  What will you have accumulated in your storehouse of resources?  What will you have been nurturing in your heart?  What will you have been studying, or sharing and hearing about with your fellow travelers?  Let me assure you, in that instant of truth, half-hearted commitments and hedged bets are insufficient.  When the chips are down, half a heart is not enough; the bet is all or nothing.

It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture when so many things are going on in your life.  It’s easy to fall into routines, and see church as just another such routine.  It’s not.  This is part of a high stakes game we’re playing here.  On Sunday mornings we read scripture verses, we sing hymns and say prayers, we hear a few hopefully coherent words from the pulpit; in this fellowship there are opportunities for group sharing, there are times of conversation and times of working together to accomplish tasks.  These are not casual exercises in social niceties.  All of this contributes to your own personal growth, to your spiritual development, to “strengthening your hand,” if you will.  You participate in this community of faith, this laboratory of the Spirit, for this: so that when the moment arrives, good and evil, hope and despair, grace and greed are in the balance, and time and all eternity are pushing a huge pile of chips your way, staring you eyeball to eyeball, and asking the fateful question, asking if you will take the gospel seriously when the stakes are sky high, you will have the spiritual maturity, the nerve, and strength of character to calmly reply, “I’m in.”

¹ From a sermon by Rev. Susan Thomas, June 13, 2010.