When I had a café, I used to employ a lot of young folks. Some of them were incredibly hard workers. Others of them, perhaps less so. But that’s OK because that’s what food service does for you. It teaches you to work hard, help one another, and take pride in your work. It also helps you to have empathy and laugh at the absurdities of life. It’s good training for life and as an employer in that world, I trained my fair share of young folks in service and in life.

During that training, I’d often find myself quoting Yoda from Star Wars, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Now that may sound harsh, but truly I tell you it’s the correct response at times. One of those times may be when a full-grown person responds to the requirement that the floor is swept and mopped at the end of the day by saying, “I’ll try,” you too may have found yourself saying, “Do or do not. There is no try.”

With certain things, there truly is no try. Yoda knew what he was talking about when he was training young Skywalker in the swamp.

Through the church year, which starts with Advent, we walk through the story of Jesus roughly in chronological order. We start with the anticipation, then birth, baptism, his teaching and ministry, death and resurrection, his ascension, and finally the beginning of the church with Pentecost. Now that we’ve gone through that story, we are in an expansive stretch of the many weeks of Pentecost, basically until Advent again. During this time in the church calendar, there’ s no particular trajectory of the story as we focus on Jesus’ teachings. While this will be interesting and fun, it’s easy to lose track of where we are in the story because we could be be-bopping all over the place in the story. And when we lose that context, we may get confused about why Jesus is saying what he’s saying.

This strikes me as one of those times, when Jesus seems harsh but we may not really know why. What Jesus is saying here is essentially, “Do or do not. There is no try.” However, Jesus isn’t always this impatient, so what’s going on?

Leading up to this point in Jesus’ story, he’s traveling, teaching, and healing as he goes. But then we hear that he’s set his face to go to Jerusalem, meaning, this is the time when he’s done being out with the people and he’s going to face his crucifixion. For Jesus and the disciples, this is go time. He doesn’t have time for messing around. The people who are with him already are going to be tested and here they are offering to rain fire down on folks. They are already going off the rails. His hands are full, so Jesus does not have time for people to consider whether it’s a good time to begin discipleship, even if those excuses are good excuses.

Sometimes I think my idea of Jesus was established in my psyche during Sunday School and perhaps certain paintings we had on the walls, since I have a tendency of thinking Jesus’ life as being peaceful, calm, and full of just hanging out with happy children and adorable lambs. Somehow I’ve come to believe that Jesus’ life was like one long, lazy Sunday afternoon with nothing to do but lounge and eat potato salad.

But that is not the case. The stakes were high. Political oppression was real. People struggled to live under the boot and threat of the Roman empire. Jesus was hardly the first or the last person to be crucified on a hilltop in order to terrify people and force obedience to political, economic, and cultural subjugation.

When he turns his face to go to Jerusalem, there is nothing gentle in this moment. He does not need folks who are not committed. I can tell you that when I knew we had a day coming at my café when I could expect lines out the door, I wasn’t going to schedule any employee who had the tendency to say, “I’ll try,” when I would ask them to do something. There is no try when the stakes are high. 

So, where are the stakes high in your life? Where do you look and see difficulty or perhaps catastrophe looming or unfolding? Where can you see that your integrity or faith might being tested? How might life be going sideways on a personal level? What about in your family? Family? Community? Country? World?

In response to these challenging times and situations, how are we responding? Are we in the “I’ll try” camp? What about the people around us? Or are we jumping to engage in response to the challenges of our days with Jesus?

It’s important to say there is room for failure or struggle in response to Yoda’s direction.  When we are faced with difficulty and when we are forced out of the comfort of lazy Sunday afternoons, we will indeed struggle and even fail. But what we don’t do, if we are students of Yoda and we are committed in our quest to free the galaxy, is respond to failure by shrugging our shoulders and saying, “I tried.” That sort of response would not have made an inspiring movie, right?

What do you hear when someone says, “I’ll try” in response to a need? What I hear is, “I most likely won’t, but I’ll feel bad about it.” When the stakes are high, Jesus has no time for that. When the stakes are high, you don’t have time for that; we don’t have time for that.

So, again, where are the stakes high for you? And are you prioritizing your discipleship of Christ as central to this struggle? Skywalker, by the way, was only successful in blowing up the Death Star because he prioritized his faith and practice of the Force. Just sayin’.

The problem is, when the stakes are high, we are tempted to fall apart with our spiritual practices. When things get really tough, we can easily become the worst versions of ourselves. This is true of ourselves as individuals, but also as groups of people. We can be tempted to “submit again to a yoke of slavery,” as Paul says in the letter to the Galatians. This slavery is our destructive, default patterns which comes about when we respond to Jesus with a tepid, “I’ll try.” Perhaps on easy Sunday afternoons, our tepid responses are sufficient. But when the stakes are high, there’s less wiggle room. Sometimes, there truly is no try. Otherwise, like Paul says, we may submit to our yokes of slavery; the slavery of being the worst versions of ourselves and to participating in or just allowing the evil of our world to unfold around us.

The fruits of the Spirit are indeed worthy of our discipleship; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. All this is relatively easy on lazy-Sunday-afternoon sorts of days. So, we have to remember Jesus and Paul did not live in easy, lazy days when the gifts of love, peace, joy, and faith just naturally bubbled up without intentional discipleship, prayer, and community.

We also do not live in times of low stakes in the world, however different our days are. And I’m guessing the same is true in a lot of our lives. The stakes are high, too high for just a tepid, “I’ll try.” And so we must follow Christ without hesitation or excuse.

Perhaps that looks like daily prayer on a particular problem. Maybe that looks like deepening your practice of meditation and contemplation without excuse. (Pointing the finger at myself here!) Maybe that looks like reaching out for support and telling the truth about what’s real. Maybe that looks like continuing in your advocacy for issues or people you care about without giving up, without shrugging shoulders and declaring it all to be beyond hope. Yoda did not stand for such foolishness. Neither did Jesus. (Again, pointing the finger at myself!)

This is why we need one another, is it not? We need to know that we’re on the right track, that it matters that we keep showing up in our lives for the sake of love in the world, instead of deflating into cynicism. When the stake are high, Jesus does not have time for “I’ll try” or “I tried” or “What’s the use”. Wherever it is in your life and world that it is indeed go time, know that Jesus is with you. The Spirit is with you, filling you with her fruits. But how are you with Jesus and the Spirit? How are we with Jesus? Let us not say, “I’ll try.” Let us instead turn our faces to discipleship and following Jesus wherever he goes in our lives and our world.

AMEN