I notified my students I will no longer be a piano teacher. In our last month together, I’m focused on ending our relationships well and preparing for our final recital. I should be more nervous. I’m giving up my last source of stable income, my justification for my college education and answer to “What do you do?” Will God provide a new job? How will I cut more expenses? How much will it hurt to change? A more normal person would be really concerned about these questions. I keep expecting fear and its pal indigestion, overeating with its buddy heartburn, depression, insomnia. Not this time. It’s an absolute cliché to say I trust God will provide a way through, but I do. I believe God knows exactly what we need and will provide it. I have Scriptural promises asserting that, whatever comes of this decision, God is with me. Faithfulness means acting on what I believe. The call on my life and yours remains the same – to love God and to love others. I can do that as a piano teacher and I can do that as a stay-at-home-parent; I can do that with less money and I can do it with more.
I recently read a book by Christopher M. Hays, Renouncing Everything: Money and Discipleship in Luke. It’s a quick read, especially for a theology book, about the wealth ethics of the Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles, two books of the Bible likely written by the same author. Luke’s Gospel recalls Jesus saying,
“You cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own.” (Luke 14:33)
On any list of The Hard Sayings of Jesus, this one easily makes the top 3 cut. It’s one of those verses in which suddenly everyone is a theological scholar parsing the original Greek text and caring a lot about context. Instinctively, we want to dismiss this as something Jesus only asked of the rich, young ruler. The thought that he says this to me, too, is terrifying.
You can’t be a Jesus disciple without giving up everything you own.
Hays explores how this extreme idea plays out in the life of Jesus, his disciples and the early Christian followers. Luke’s Jesus isn’t being hyperbolic only for effect. All Christians are called to actually give up everything for Jesus. To be sure, not everyone is called to itinerate ministry, dependent on the hospitality of others. Some are called to renounce everything and provide hospitality for the itinerant ministers. Owning something isn’t the problem. Failing to give what you own to Jesus’ purposes (in loving others and praising God) is the real problem.
I wonder, How do I renounce everything? What does that look like in my context, generally, and in my life, specifically? Giving up my job was an act of faith because it was my backup plan, my way of not truly depending on God. Sure, I was using this job to do good work and earn a living, but also to protect my reputation and assuage my insecurities. I kept at it long after I felt I needed to move on because I couldn’t see how my life would work without it. I still don’t, but I guess I’m renouncing my fear too.
Believing God provides doesn’t mean God will provide what I think I need. I am well aware that God will provide what I actually need, as determined by God, and my opinion on the matter is amusing at best. Renouncing everything feels like loss. Pruning is painful. (Please remind me of this when I start to doubt because life is hard and evil is pernicious.) However, this is the same God “who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.” (Ephesians 3:20) And “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) I mean, there’s a chance that renouncing everything will be easier than I could imagine and I will wonder why it took me so long to trust God to see me through. Right? I know where this ends – closer to Christ. I just don’t know how living with less gets me there. Yet.