Giving Up “Mine” (Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost)

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I’m not sure if it’s still there someplace, but back a number of years ago we had a poster in the church nursery entitled: “Toddler Rules.” You may have also seen them on T-shirts and all over the internet. In fact, if you’ve ever had or taken care of a toddler, you know them intuitively!

These are some of the “Toddler Rules”:

1)      If I like it, it’s mine!

2)      If it’s in my hand, it’s mine!

3)      If I can take it from you, it’s mine!

4)      If I had it a little while ago, it’s mine!

5)      If it’s mine, it must not ever appear to be yours in any way.

6)      If I’m building something, all of the pieces are mine!

7)      If it looks just like mine, it’s mine!

8)      If I saw it first, it’s mine!

9)      If you’re playing with something and you put it down, it automatically becomes mine!

10)    If it’s broken, it’s yours.

All toddlers go through this stage. And we laugh, because we know it’s true. But I’ve always wondered how far we ever really get from the “Toddler Rules” in our lives as adults.  Although we get older, and we become more sophisticated in what we decide is “mine”, to be honest, most of us probably still have a tenacious grip on the concept of “mine”. And as adults, that’s especially true with more abstract things like “my right” or “my privilege”.

And it’s often hard to give up things we think are rightfully ours, especially if we’ve held them tightly for a long time. Yet Jesus comes along in today’s Gospel reading and says, “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”

Now of course, because we know we should move beyond the “Toddler Rules”, most of us are willing to give up some possessions, and maybe even some things we think we have a right to, especially if we can feel good about helping somebody in need or if someone acknowledges that we’ve given them something that clearly was ours!

But that’s not actually the really hard part of Jesus’ saying this morning.  Jesus isn’t calling us to give up stuff as much as he’s calling us to let go of that personal pronoun “Mine!” When Jesus says, “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions”, he isn’t so much telling us that we ought to live without our stuff as much as he’s telling us that we ought to live without the sense of “MINE”. That is, he’s calling us to give up the “YOUR” in “your possessions”.

And that’s because so often, the “mine” is really what keeps me from following Jesus and being his disciple. The sense of “Mine” tells me that:

• I’m entitled to the things I have … (instead of seeing them as gifts in my life; I really stop even considering that what I have is at least partly the result of other people giving me opportunities and God giving me abilities to do things…)

• I have an absolute right to how I use what’s “mine” … (nobody else gets to tell me what to do with it, not even God! And of course, it’s freeing not to have to play by other people’s rules in my own house, but sometimes I stop even considering how I SHOULD use a thing or an opportunity, even if I theoretically can do anything I want …)

• I have value because of what I have, or what I’m able to control… (my sense of self-worth is too often centered on myself and how I can insulate myself from the chaos that might be going on around me. And at those moments, I start to rely upon myself and my own ability to use my stuff any my resources rather than to truly trust God’s love and guidance to help me get through the chaos…)

And so giving up “Mine” is often the most important thing we need to give up in order to follow Jesus. We don’t ever manage it completely in this life, but Jesus calls us to struggle to do just that. And that’s because it’s only through giving up “mine” and “my program” that I can truly get into what’s “God’s” and God’s program.

And indeed, being disciples of Jesus is fundamentally about being involved and committed to God’s program for us and for the whole world. And it requires time and energy and resources. And the only thing that will make it possible to do what Jesus calls us to do is if we see our time and energy and money not simply as “mine” but as God’s gifts in our lives so that we can be involved not simply in our own program, but in God’s.

And, at least for me, part of learning to give up the “mine” in “my possessions” is about practicing spending my time and energy and money in such a way that I focus on:

• Giving thanks to God for what I have – that is, using the opportunity of giving to appreciate what God has given me, instead of counting how much “I have left”…

• God’s giving to me – that is, seeing my time and effort as a way of experiencing God working through me to do something in the life of the world around me … (which is what “God’s Work, Our Hands” is always supposed to be about…) 

• How “my possessions” are actually “my gifts” – that is, I understand myself to be a “gifted” person instead of a “lucky person” or an “entitled” person…

Those are all honestly hard things to stay focused on, especially in a society that tells us we always need more, and marketers and politicians who tell us we’re entitled to so much more than we already have.

But Jesus calls us to give up our claims of “mine” so that we can more fully appreciate God’s claim on us. Jesus calls us to give up our claims on “mine” so that we can appreciate God’s gifts to us each day. And Jesus calls us to give up our claims on “mine” so that we can grow as disciples of Jesus who can be God’s hands and presence in the life of the world around us.

But even more than that, in the end, nothing I call “mine” will actually remain “mine.” It will all pass away. But there is one “mine” that never goes away and endures forever.  And that “mine” is God’s “mine”, when God says to each one of us, “You are mine.”

Amen.