Once upon a time there was a man named Emory. He was sitting on the floor in the church kitchen, along with five teenagers. Three girls, leaders in the youth group, vivacious and noisy, high school juniors. Two boys, kind of on the quiet side, one a sophomore and one a freshman. And himself, fifty-four years old, grey hair getting thin on top, a middle-aged guy not quite sure what he was doing there.

Nineteen of them had gathered at the church at 5:30 on Friday evening, fifteen teenagers and four adults, for the annual youth lock-in. Several of the girls had been heard to mutter that they gave up dates to come to this, they weren’t sure they really wanted to be there. Emory also was not sure he wanted to be there. He was there, actually, because at the previous month’s Christian Education committee meeting his wife had volunteered him to be one of the youth sponsors for the event. He had grumbled about it; but it seemed like something he could do, and he’d gone ahead and said okay.

It takes something special to be a youth group sponsor for a lock-in. This one was tougher than usual, though, because what Emory had found out after he’d agreed was that this particular lock-in was called a Planned Famine. It was one of those events that they say combines fun with learning. This retreat would help teach them what it feels like for much of the world to go hungry. Each of the students had signed on that they were not going to eat for thirty hours, from the close of lunch at 1:00 Friday afternoon until supper at 7:00 pm Saturday. They’d collected up pledges, so much an hour, from friends in school and teachers, from neighbors and grandparents, for overseas hunger relief. It turned out to be a little over $1600 that had been pledged, ranging from a nickel to a dollar and a half per hour.

They’d made it through suppertime with some of those goofy games that the Youth Director had gotten from one of the books that Youth Directors use. One game had something to do with balloons and spoons, and one had used about a mile of duct tape to make some kind of maze on the floor of the fellowship hall.

It had gotten to be 2:15 in the morning, and there were the six of them, three teenage girls, two boys, and Emory himself, sitting on the kitchen floor. They were talking about food. The mother of one of the girls had a well-deserved reputation for the wonderful cakes she brought to church suppers. Heather was telling about the cake her mother had baked that afternoon, a three-layer spice cake with chocolate filling, one of her mother’s absolutely best cakes. Heather explained that she had so much wanted to cheat and have just one slice after school, before she came to the retreat: but it was past 1:00 pm, so she couldn’t. The terrible lament was that she knew that between her two brothers and her stepfather, that cake was going to be All Gone by the time she got home Saturday night. Everyone agreed with her about how unfair that was.

Emory listened, and thought about food. He thought about a hamburger, dripping with melted cheddar cheese and sautéed onions. He thought about how strange it felt to be conversing with teenagers at 2:20 am. He thought about how strange it felt to be hungry and not go to the fridge and get himself a snack. And he thought about how very strange it felt for the six of them to sit there intensifying their hunger by talking about food.

One of the boys was talking now, about his family’s annual reunion picnic back in August. His uncles had set up this enormous charcoal pit, and had barbecued steak and chicken and pork chops. There were two picnic tables covered with different kinds of potato salad and pasta salad and broccoli bacon salad and about every other kind, too; and two more picnic tables covered with desserts. It was torture to listen. But they all listened.

When Saturday morning rolled around, earlier than usual it seemed, the Youth Director led them all in energizers to get their eyes open and their blood flowing. Then the pastor of a nearby church gave a presentation on the history of fasting as a Christian discipline. Emory found himself baffled at the notion that people would fast on purpose for as much as forty-eight hours, let alone for three or four days.

At noon they had a gripe session, where all the teens got to say just how miserable they felt. When they signed up, it sounded like fun: but everyone felt so hungry at this point, and couldn’t they cut this endurance test short at the 24 hours they had just about completed? How about if they called out for pizza and had lunch at 1:00 instead of waiting six more hours till supper?

The afternoon program featured the hunger specialist from the staff of the church’s regional headquarters. She explained how roughly a third of the world is subject to periodic famine: when bad weather or blight or insects wipe out a year’s crops, there is no distribution system to get food from other places. If the potato crop in Maine is no good one year, she said, Americans can get potatoes from Idaho: and we don’t depend on one staple crop, we have plenty to eat besides potatoes. But in other places it’s different. There’s only one crop. If that crop fails, there is no transport system to bring other kinds of food to eat.

She told them how her great-great-grandparents came to America as newlyweds in 1848, during the Irish Potato Famine. He was nineteen; she was almost seventeen. Their two families had gathered all their money to buy passage for this young couple, and sent them to America in hopes that they would live, while the rest of their families died of hunger. During the Irish Potato Famine a million and a half people left Ireland to avoid starvation. A million of those left behind died. In various parts of the world today where people depend on a single staple crop like rice or barley, when the crop is ruined because of drought or insects, there is no food. People simply starve and die.

Suppertime finally came. Everyone got a single bowl of watery potato soup, a small cup of boiled rice, and two plain slices of barley bread. Emory was caught off guard when they asked him to say grace. “God, I never understood before. Two days ago I wouldn’t have been grateful for this small amount of food. Now I am.” He paused. He felt like the prayer should say a little more than that. He felt like he really had learned something from the experience that he wouldn’t have learned any other way, and he ought to put that into words somehow. But he wasn’t sure how to say it. And in the meantime, the pause had gotten kind of long. Someone giggled. Emory said, “In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

Several other people giggled then, but it was all right. They were not going to die. They ate that scanty supper with quite a bit of laughter around the table. The teenagers sounded like they were making plans to go out for pizza on the way home. Emory thought he himself might stop and get a cheeseburger with sautéed onions. And he also recognized that the way he thought about hunger had been changed forever.

There are certain kinds of understanding that you can only get through sacrifice. There are things that you can learn that will transform the way you think, the way you live, the person you are: but learning these things costs you something.

II Kings 5 tells the story of Naaman, the Syrian army commander. He was a leper. Because of his success on the battlefield, he was held in high favor. But he was also an outcast in the middle of society, because of his leprosy.

He’s a symbol of human life. In one way, life is pretty good; in another way, life is pretty troubled. People have their homes, their families, their incomes, and feel like they’re doing all right: life is pretty good. At the same time people feel lonely, even in the midst of their own families; they feel worried about the future and they feel like not much of their life actually matters to anyone: life is pretty troubled.

Naaman came to the house of Elisha the prophet, seeking a cure for his leprosy. Elisha sent a brief instruction to go wash in the Jordan River seven times.

It made Naaman mad. It was too simple. He wanted more ceremony, or maybe more magic. “Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and wave his hand over the place, and cure the leper.” And instead he’d been sent to take a bath in the Jordan. Well, who needs that? And he stalked away in a huff.

It would have been okay with Naaman if Elisha had simply cured his disease with a miracle, then and there. But instead Elisha gave him a simple instruction: you go do this. It wouldn’t cost Naaman much: he would simply have to go and do it.

Naaman’s servant showed this wonderful practical wisdom. He said, Look, boss, if he had told you to do a great thing, some difficult task: you would have done it. If he had sent you on a quest, with overwhelming difficulties that must somehow be overcome, if he had sent you on a year-long journey into uncharted territory, to obtain a pair of potatoes from the Perfect Potato Plant of Power and Purity: why, you would have saddled your horse and gone and done it. By comparison, this is simple. All you have to do is go get in the river. If it’s wrong, you’ll be wet. If it’s right, it will change your life. So why not go ahead, and give it a try?

Naaman heard this wisdom. He put it into effect. It was not all that big a sacrifice, to give up his pride and his anger, and go plunge himself seven times in the Jordan. But I expect he would not have been cured without it. He might have gone away mad, back to Syria, continuing to live a life that was pretty good as famous commander and yet pretty troubled as outcast leper.

Elisha gave him one simple thing to do that would change his life. And Naaman almost didn’t do it. He’d have to give up his pride and his anger to do it. He almost decided that was too big a sacrifice to make. He almost went away mad, and never found out.

Jesus made reference to that story, when he preached a sermon at the synagogue in Nazareth. Here’s part of what he said, and then the people’s response to this:

“There were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a severe famine over all the land, yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many with a skin disease in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way (Luke 4:25-30).

So the people of Nazareth had the opportunity to learn from Jesus himself, but they got mad instead. There are always so many people who go away mad and never find out. Back in the days of Elisha the prophet, he told them, there were all those needy people. Including lepers, like Naaman the Syrian. All of them living lives that were probably pretty good in some ways, and pretty troubled in other ways. Suppose Elisha gave each of them one simple step that would change their lives? And then: what if they never went ahead and did it? It would have been just one simple step, not an immense sacrifice, not an impossible quest fraught with overwhelming difficulties. What if they never took that one simple step that would change their lives?

Jesus reminded the people of Nazareth of this story, and they got mad. Why did they have to get so mad? They got mad enough to hustle him right out of town to the point of throwing him off the cliff. I wish they hadn’t got so mad. What if the story were different? What if they had said, “Maybe only one person got it, back in Elisha’s day. But we want to get it, today. Maybe Naaman, the famous commander himself, didn’t get it at first. Maybe we ourselves didn’t get it at first. But in the end, the story of Naaman is the story of someone who went ahead and did what the word of the Lord told him to do, and it transformed his life. And we want the story of our lives to be the story of people who went ahead and did what the word of the Lord told us, and it transformed our lives.” What if it had gone that way in Nazareth that day?

This sermon advertises one simple step to change your life. Yet people are different: so you actually get three possibilities. You get to pick the one that will make the biggest difference in your life. Each one takes just five minutes to put into effect. Each one does have an actual cost involved with it: it’s not like it won’t take any effort at all. Yet none of the three is really all that difficult. You pick the one that addresses the heart of your life.

Possibility Number 1. Give up television, for the next year. When you get home this afternoon, go around and unplug all the televisions in your house. Tomorrow morning call up and cancel your cable and streaming services. Depending on how many you have, that might save you about $50 a month, or considerably more. Take that money and sponsor a child in a far-off country, and give a future to some child you’ve never even met. Take five minutes to put that resolve into effect. It will cost you something. But this sacrifice will change your life.

You’ll know you are providing a future for a child in need, and in the process you’ll give yourself an extra fifteen to thirty hours a week, which you can devote to Bible study, or gardening, or exercise, or whatever it is that you keep saying you want to do but there just isn’t enough time.

Possibility Number 2. Give up a tenth of your earnings, for the next year. April 15th has just gone by, so we all have a record of last year’s adjusted gross income. Because we are glad to be Americans, I guess we are glad to pay our taxes so that America can have a strong economy, and a strong military, and good roads and good schools. Because we are glad to have a roof over our heads, I guess we are glad to spend a big percentage on housing. When you get home this afternoon, pull out your tax form. Look at the line for last year’s total income. Take one tenth of that. Because you are glad for all God’s blessings, decide that you are glad to give that tenth of your income away for God’s work, as a tithe of all God entrusted to you last year: give that money away, to your church, to your college, to help meet needs here in town, or to do missionary work in faraway lands. Take five minutes to put that resolve into effect. It will cost you something. But this sacrifice will change your life. You’ll know that a substantial portion of the substance of your energy is out making a difference in this world, and in the process you’ll give yourself a simpler lifestyle.

Possibility Number 3. Give up complaining, for the next year. Jesus died for all your sins, and for all the sins of the people you complain about. Decide that you’re going to give up all the whining, all the judgmentalism, all the anger you feel when things don’t go the way you want them to go. Replace all the complaints with words of blessing, delight, and encouragement for others, even when they get it wrong. Take five minutes to put that resolve into effect. It will cost you something. But this sacrifice will change your life. You’ll know your friends and family hear the words of blessing and encouragement they need to hear, and in the process you’ll give yourself a heart filled with thanksgiving, instead of grumbling.

Each of these is a genuine sacrifice; yet none of these three is a difficult mission into the depths of faraway jungles. None of these is offering up the rest of your life to Christ in missionary service. And after all, if God called any of us to do that, to devote the rest of our life to service as a missionary, we’d do that, wouldn’t we?

This sacrifice is not that large. Why not go ahead and do it? Each of these three options focusses on a different part of our lives: one on time, one on money, one on relationships. You pick the one that addresses the part of your life you’d most like to see changed.

As Emory found out, there are some things you can only learn by personal sacrifice. It was only when he gave something up that he learned what hunger is really all about.

Want to change your life in the area of time? Give up videos. Want to change your life in the area of money? Give up a tithe of your income. Want to change your life in the area of relationships? Give up complaining.

Take five minutes this afternoon, and put into effect one simple step to change your life.