Excuses -- It’s not my job. I don’t feel like it. It’s not my problem. I don’t have time. It’s not my fault. We are all familiar with excuses such as these….because we all make them. Everyone does. We hear them spoken as often as we speak them. And it seems a venial enough matter, especially relative to the scandals we hear about day to day.
But listen to what people like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington Carver, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln, respectively, have to say about excuses:
He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
An excuse is worse than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.
Excuses are tools of the incompetent to build a monument to nothing.
He who excuses himself accuses himself.
There aren’t enough crutches in the world for all the lame excuses.
And so, perhaps we should consider whether our lax attitude about excuses is itself an excuse for making them. Perhaps too we should consider excuses more carefully to see why the great minds find them anything but venial.
Excuses, if you reflect about it, no matter what form they take, all seem to have one thing in common. They all seem to share one common aim – and that is to evade responsibility. They are in fact rationalizations that we can not or will not make the required effort to accomplish something.
Excuses, therefore, allow us to assume just the amount of responsibility we want to assume and no more. They allow us to do just what we want to do and no more. They allow us to be just who we want to be and no more. They allow us to take the easy course. But the easy course, despite its ostensible allure, may not necessarily be the best course. It is the broad road after all, the Bible warns, that leads to destruction.
For are we really meant to take the easy course? Has anyone who has made an impact on history taken the easy course? Did Washington or Jefferson or Franklin or Carver or Lincoln? Has anyone you truly look up to taken the easy course? No, the easy course is decidedly not the best course. We aren’t mean for ease; we are meant for undertaking. We are meant to take responsibility.
And this holds true for just about everybody. It’s simply life. But for Christians the ante is upped considerably, because for Christians it is not just life that calls us to responsibility; it is God. God calls us to responsibility to him. Consider this morning’s gospel lesson, Jesus’ Parable of the Great Dinner. A host issues invitations to a great dinner. When the oxen and fat calves are slaughtered and prepared; when the table is laid and everything is in readiness, he sends his slave to summon those invited. They all make excuses. For one it the piece of land he has just purchased that is in need of his inspection. For a second it is the five oxen he has just purchased that are in need of his testing. For a third it is a wife he has just acquired who is in need of his who knows what. The point is that they are all are too preoccupied with their own endeavors, so they all send their regrets. They all make excuses
God, the parable teaches, has called us to responsibility, responsibility to him. And what excuses are we likely to offer? For some of us it may be our possessions that preoccupy us, and the more possessions the more we are preoccupied by them. For others it may be our livelihoods, for others, our families. And these are all good excuses. They are in fact brilliant excuses for indeed they are all bona fide
responsibilities. But they are in the last analysis excuses, for God’s call to responsibility to him comes first.
For it you think about it, how are our responsibilities to possessions, livelihoods, and families rightly and truthfully met if we have not first met our responsibility to God? Possessions, for instance, can certainly be positive goods. We are all needful of some basic kit to survive – food, clothing, and shelter. What’s more, it is not too much to allow that we are all entitled to a few extras – objects of beauty or remembrance or adornment or comfort. But what of our tendency to hoarding and excess and greed? What of our tendency to use our possessions to proclaim our self-worth? Only
after we’ve answered God’s call to responsibility do we learn the value of simplicity and humility that allows us both to give the glory to God and to share with those in need.
And so it is with our livelihoods. Livelihoods too can certainly be positive goods. We are made to work. We are not made to idle or luxuriate. This does nothing more than spoil our characters. But what of our tendency to consider our livelihoods as solely the means to personal gain? What of our tendency to assert our livelihoods as a claim to status? Only after we’ve answered God’s call to responsibility do we learn that our livelihoods are the means by which, according to our interests and gifts, we contribute to the betterment of society and grow his Kingdom.
And so it is even with our families. Families can as well certainly be positive goods. We hear again and again that the family is the most basic unit of society, without which society itself is threatened. But what of our tendency to view our families as proud bulwarks over against other families? What of our tendency to subject those closest to us to abuse, neglect, or control? Only after we’ve answered God’s call to responsibility do we learn that that family is the place where we first learn that love that that is meant be shared boundlessly.
Yes, God’s call to responsibility to him must come first, and to those who may still be tempted to make excuses, let us return to the parable. When those invited make excuses the host gets angry and orders his slave to go out again and invite those who will not make excuses -- those who are less
“important”, those who have less to preoccupy them -- the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.
God, the parable teaches, will not accept our excuses. Period. And God is not being harsh. We must not we blame him for it. God is not a God of indulgence, a God who pampers and coddles us in our obduracy. That would be to show us no real kindness. It would be to enable us in our obduracy, and this God will not do. He will merely, the parable teaches, leave us to our excuses and demonstrate through those replace us, those we may deem less worthy and respectable than ourselves, that his purposes will not be undone. Rather, it is we who will be undone.
And lest we go from this place with a grim sense of resignation, we must be reminded of one thing. It is as Jesus himself declares, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me…and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” When we take his yoke upon us, by his
word, we will experience a lightening of our temporal burdens, a lightening of our worldly burdens we’ve ever experienced. We will experience a relief from our temporal burdens we never thought possible. This is because we will experience the life that in him is everlasting. Amen.