Every Yes is a No

It’s pretty revolutionary idea when you start to think about it: every Yes is a No. Every time you say ‘yes’ to something, you’re effectively saying ‘no’ to something else.

We’re all finite people with a set amount of time and energy. After all, we’re just creatures.

And so we can’t just add more things to our lives without taking away time and energy from something else. Every ‘yes’ is a ‘no’ to something else.

But here’s the wake-up call: most of the time that ‘something else’ is not something we’ll be asked to do in a few weeks time. It’s something that is already part of your life.

And it gets even more subtle: by ‘saying ‘no’ to something else’, we shouldn’t necessarily envisage this as stopping doing something else. In fact all too often we’ll try to keep doing what we’re already doing. But we just won’t be able to do any of it to the same level of quality or care.

And so that’s still a ‘no’, right? We’ve said ‘yes’ to something new, and so we’re effectively saying ‘no’ to keeping our existing commitments at our previous level of dedication or attentiveness.

(I’m no mathematician, but I think this is what’s called a ‘zero-sum game’?)

Yes Can Be Right

Of course, it may be that the commitment or person that we’re saying ‘yes’ to is more important or necessary at that particular season of life.

Maybe we’ve got time that we feel we could use better, or maybe it’s just a ripe moment for evaluating our commitments and changing things up.

That’s all well and good. The point of the principle certainly isn’t to say that a ‘yes’ is a bad thing.

I also want to factor in that as a Christian my default posture should be giving myself in generous, selfless love. But it’s because of a desire to lovingly serve others that it’s always worth thinking about the impact of a ‘yes’ on everything and everyone else I’m already committed to, rather than naively assuming it’ll have no impact.

Saying Yes To Church

Maybe an important example for those of us who are Christians is our commitment to our church.

Let’s assume you’re part of a church that meets on a Sunday morning. Now by default, we’ll probably then think of Sunday mornings as ‘for church’.

But of course, sometimes other things crop up. We get invited to family events and special occasions and we take holidays or go on weekends away. It’s not that we shouldn’t ever miss a Sunday morning.

(Although, saying that, I think it is a good practice to decide in advance how many Sundays we’ll let ourselves miss in a year).

But have we consciously realised that every time we say ‘yes’ to doing something else on a Sunday morning, then we’re saying ‘no’ to our church family?

That might sound stark, and of course sometimes that ‘no’ is not personal but more about the value of the corresponding ‘yes’. A family holiday or visiting friends at a precious time in their life.

But as you map those out over time, I think it’s helpful to see that it’s not just a question of whether we’ll say ‘yes’ to that invitation or opportunity. It’s a question of whether we’ll say ‘yes’ to that invitation/opportunity – or say ‘yes’ to church.

And I wonder if it’s that second half that we don’t tend to consider so much.

Your Church or Organisation’s Priorities

One area where this has been on my mind recently has been at the level of an organisation.

Take a church. There are so many groups running different events that would love your church to be championing said events. There are so many causes to which we could give our church finances. There are so many initiatives to which we could encourage our church family to give their time to.

But we can’t just say ‘yes’ to everything, because every ‘yes’ is a ‘no’. It’s a ‘no’ in terms of not really being able to enthuse people about the events we’re already committed to. It’s a ‘no’ in terms of limiting our financial support to the partnerships we’ve already established. It’s a ‘no’ in terms of ending up spreading our church family’s lives and time too thinly.

On that last one particularly, as a pastor I have a duty of care to the flock to which I’ve been entrusted. It’s not helpful if I’m endlessly expecting our people to sign up to all sorts of different events and initiatives. They’ll end up running themselves ragged and effectively can’t give quality time and love to their existing commitments and relationships and families. The ‘yes’ has led to a ‘no’.

Maybe as Christians we need to be better at understanding that a church might not be able to throw themselves into this or that – to say ‘yes’ – because they already have commitments that they don’t want to say ‘no’ to.

Every Day Rhythms

I think it’s also helpful to think through how many times we say ‘yes’ each day to ‘little things’, often without even thinking.

I was reflecting on some ‘everyday’ examples of this and realised that so many of them are bound up with how we use screens. We say ‘yes’ to picking up our phone as soon as we wake up. ‘Yes’ to casually checking our email during the evening meal. ‘Yes’ to mindlessly browsing online at work. ‘Yes’ to scrolling through Facebook for ten, then twenty minutes, then half an hour before bed.

Aggh. Isn’t it terrifying? But every single ‘yes’ there is also a ‘no’. It might be a ‘no’ to considerate conversation or prayerful reflection or giving someone our presence.

As you look through your day so far, how many times have you said ‘yes’ to some little activity (perhaps involving a screen) without really thinking about it. And especially without really considering what it’s meant you’ve unintentionally said ‘no’ to.

Every No Is a Yes

Of course, you can flip it the other way:

Every No Is a Yes. Now, that’s powerful.

Have you ever described yourself as ‘not being very good at saying “no”‘? Yep, me too.

But, doesn’t it change things when you realise that saying ‘no’ is about saying ‘yes’ to the things you really value and are committed to?

In fact, I think it can often be helpful to describe it in those terms to the person who is asking us to do something. Maybe try something like this: “I’m really sorry, I’d love to help and it sounds like a great project – but I know that if I took this on, I wouldn’t be able to honour the commitments I’ve already made at this time.”

You’ve said ‘no’ but it’s clear that it’s because you really care about your ‘yes’.

Nothing New Here

I can’t remember where I first heard this. In fact I’ve just Googled ‘every yes is a no’ and there’s like a gazillion posts.

So nothing new here, but maybe it’s new to you? But now that you’ve clocked the principle, I’m pretty sure you’ll see it all over your life.

Every Yes is a No. Yes?

The Future Is Not A Mystery

I remember a while ago hearing about the Death Cafe movement, where people get together to talk about their death. Turns out it’s going from strength to strength. Although Western culture often pushes the reality of our mortality under the carpet, many seem grateful for this chance to finally face up to it.

And yet, in the commentary I’ve read about the initiative, all the conversations about death seem to focus on the details of funeral services, whether people want to be cremated or buried, the types of care package for the dying, etc.

Of course, that all has a place. But what about discussing whether there’s anything beyond death? Now maybe that’s just too taboo, but I guess it also goes hand in hand with the prevailing sense that we cannot have any certainty about life after death.

Naturally, this can quickly become a very personal issue. We’ve all lost loved ones, whether family or friends. And it’s even more personal than that. It’s about us. It’s the ultimate statistic: 1 out of every 1 of us will die. Put like that, you can’t find a topic of conversation that’s more relevant to each of us.

And perhaps the temptation for any religious faith trying to credibly make its way in the twenty-first century would be to tow the cultural party line here. Why not just offer some vague platitudes about the mystery of death?

After all, there’s countless phrases that trip off our tongues:

“Gone to the next room”.

“At peace”

“In a better place now”

“Living on in our spirits”

“Passed away”

And yet this is where the Bible doesn’t stick to the script.

Resurrection First-fruits

In a word: resurrection.

I guess when most of us hear that phrase, we instinctively think about Jesus. Resurrection is for Easter. Most people are familiar with the New Testament documents’ claim that Jesus of Nazareth came back to life, three days after being crucified on a Roman cross, around 33 AD.

So resurrection is something that Christians believe happened to Jesus, right?

Well, yes, of course. But.

But there’s more to resurrection than that. It’s precisely because resurrection is something that happened to Jesus, that it’s also something that will happen to all who belong to Jesus.

The connecting image that the apostle Paul gives us is first-fruits:

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.” (1 Corinthians ch 15 v 20-23)

The idea of first-fruits isn’t rocket science (agricultural science, perhaps). Simply put, the first fruits are the sign that the rest of the crop is coming.

You’ve Seen the Trailer

And if we’re in any doubt about that lingo – because, admittedly, the farmers amongst us are probably few and far between – then we could talk about movies instead.

As everyone knows, one of the best bits about going to the cinema is watching the trailers. I don’t know why on earth you’d fork out the best part of a tenner and then rock up late enough to miss them, but some people do. Jesus’ resurrection is like the trailer for what will happen in the movie of our lives.

A life beyond the grave – physical, real, and yet imperishable.

What happened to him will happen to those who are his. And it’s sure as the crop follows the first fruits. And as sure as the summer blockbuster follows the two-minute viral preview stuffed full with action and great lines and released a few months in advance.

But in my experience that’s not a connection we often make.

Resurrection Means You Can Die Every Day

A recent survey of young adults in the UK suggested that just under half believed Jesus rose from the dead. Now, that actually seems quite high to me. But maybe that in itself betrays a disconnection. As the survey also identified, most people who affirmed a belief in the resurrection of Jesus didn’t think it bore any relevance to everyday life.

But for the apostle Paul, resurrection is everything:

“If in Christ we have hope in this life only, [Christians] are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians ch15 v 19)

That’s a huge statement when you start to let it marinate for a bit. Paul’s expectation is that without this resurrection future the Christian’s life will just look pitiable. It won’t make sense.

Why so? Because Paul is living for his resurrection. He’s staking his lifestyle on it being true. A few verses later he phrases it like this:

“…I die every day! What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” (1 Corinthians ch15 v 31-32)

Paul’s life is marked by sacrifice and service – so much so that he phrases it as ‘dying every day’. That might sound overly-dramatic, but actually it’s Christian discipleship 101, following Jesus’ own words.

But he’s doing that because resurrection awaits. If there was no resurrection, then you can bet your bottom dollar he wouldn’t have bothered with half of what he was doing. To put it another way, if life is just about now, then we may as well all sign up for getting what we can while we can.

But. But it’s not just about now.

Resurrection is coming. After all, we’ve seen the trailer.

And so that means that today I can choose to live against the grain of ‘get-what-you-can-while-you-can’.

Your Labour Is Not In Vain

The apostle Paul’s most extensive treatment of resurrection is in his first letter to the Corinthians. When we think of resurrection in that book we often focus on chapter 15, but actually I’m convinced the whole book is written with resurrection in mind.

It seems that the Corinthian church have completely lost sight of the future that awaits them. As a result they’ve become obsessed with the present world. Life is about what looks powerful now and getting what you can now and asserting your rights now.

So Paul seeks to re-orientate them to a different timeline. Because knowing you’ll rise to a resurrection existence changes everything.

I can choose to sacrifice, knowing that I’ve got nothing to lose.

I can choose to give generously with all that I am, because I know that I’m going to receive resurrection.

I can choose to labour for the gospel, knowing that in the Lord my labour is not in vain.

And don’t get me wrong: this is about the mundane and everyday as much as anything else. One of my favourite parts of 1 Corinthians is the often forgotten sixteenth chapter. On one level it looks very mundane and ordinary, particularly compared to the glorious truths of chapter 15. But the point is that knowing resurrection awaits is meant to impact the mundane. This is about how I use my time and how I use my pounds and how I use my words. It’s how I love and how I live and how I give. With the family and at work and in my community.

Dying every day because resurrection awaits.

Resurrection is for life, not just for Easter.

—

1 Corinthians became a very special book to us when we spent a year teaching through it in our some of our discipleship groups at a previous church back in 2011-12. If you’re interested in a series of bitesize devotional reflections on 1 Corinthians, we wrote some of those notes up into this collection, ‘Not in Vain’, which you can pick up here.

“He needed to be brought down to earth…”

We might find ourselves uttering such words on occasions, often in reference to some unlucky fool whose ego has been dramatically deflated, or whose ethically-questionable fortunes have turned in a moment. “It was coming to him,” we sometimes say.

But what if all of us could do with being brought down to earth? Brought right down to earth, to the reality that one day we will return to this earth from which we came.

Dust to Dust

“For dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Those are words taken from the judgment issued to Adam in Genesis 3:19. And they’re words traditionally repeated on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian season of Lent, a day where we intentionally remember that our future is death.

To be honest, I’ve not really gone in for Lent in a big way over the years. The whole ‘giving stuff up’ thing can seem to focus the spotlight on ourselves, rather than lifting Jesus up.

But if we buy into the Christian calendar when it comes to Christmas, Easter, and even Advent, then why not Lent?

Yes, for the Christian every day is to be a ‘remember the cross’ day, just as every day is a ‘remember the resurrection’ day and a ‘remember Jesus will come back’ day. But perhaps these annual rhythms provide an opportunity us to re-focus our hearts. Chuck Colson explains the ‘Christian calendar’ by saying that, “during these seasons, we encourage certain theological emphases, spiritual practices, and corresponding emotions to instruct and train the church in godliness.”

Not obligatory, of course. Ash Wednesday isn’t in the Bible. But how will you choose to remember your mortality in a culture whose default mode is to assume we’re immortal?

As Mike Cosper has put it,

“While I certainly don’t think [Ash Wednesday] is mandatory for Christians or churches, I would simply want to ask the critics, “What’s your strategy? How are you preparing for your encounter with death?”

Life in the Shadow

Because, for most of us, death needs to be brought back into the picture.

Not all of us, of course. For some of us, death’s grip on our lives will feel all too firm. For some of us our mortality is hardly far from our minds right now.

Maybe it’s the debilitation of illness. Maybe it’s the persistent and aching presence of grief. Maybe it’s a general and/or personal sense of life as we know it unravelling before our eyes. However we feel it, the cold shadow of death lingers over us. The tree of life couldn’t be further from our reach.

But for many of us, we need to be brought down to the earth, our cradle and our grave.

Because we’ve become pretty adept at hiding death.

Adept at packaging up its presence and keeping it at arm’s length, away from the daily rhythms of our lives: a rise in care homes; the conversational taboo; the media-infatuation with youth. Often the best our culture can do is to ‘honour’ an individual’s life. ‘Death is nothing at all’, we recite, hoping, wishing. The funeral becomes a ‘celebration’, the wake a party.

Voyeurs of Death

But we can’t keep it at bay forever. One day the eulogy will be about us. One day our Facebook status won’t be updated again. If you’re one of the lucky ones, then the obituary will try and capture your years in a few paragraphs of black ink. Past tense, of course.

And isn’t that denial why we’ve seen the emergence of the Death Cafe movement? And if we cast our minds back to the striking response to the horrific missile attack on an international passenger flight, MH17, in 2014, isn’t our culture of assumed immortality actually breeding voyeurs of death?

But deep down, don’t we know how helpless and hopeless we are? And so in a culture where so much pressure is placed on people to achieve, to maximise one’s experiences, and to control one’s life, we find ourselves not really knowing what to do with death. 

In short, our avoidance-tactics aren’t just negligent; they’re dissatisfying too.

The Way To Live Is To Know You’ll Die

The book of Ecclesiastes gets a bit of stick for being a depressing book. But actually it’s full of life and joy. Far from being about the meaninglessness of life, I’m convinced it actually teaches us how to really live.

But the way to live is to know you’ll die:

“It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.” (Ecclesiastes 7:2)

The final chapter of Ecclesiastes paints a graphic illustration of death as a slow and painful de-creation. Actually talk to someone who knows they’re in their final years and they’ll tell you all about it.

But when you know you’re dying, then you’re reminded of the gift of life.

Life begins when we see we are all creatures, born into a world where life is fleeting and fragile. Life can be found when we see we are all sinners, born into a race that lives under the consequences of our turning from God.

Remember Your Name And The One Who Named You

The clue’s in the name: Adam.

When God creates man, adam, he names him after the ground, adamah. Like a child understanding their name for the first time, Ash Wednesday is about helping us to re-learn our name. It is about remembering who we are.

And if anything, that should cause our gaze to be turned to the One who gave us that name. As Ecclesiastes puts it, to “remember your Creator” (12:1). He is the One who scooped up that dust and first made man. He is the One who breathed into our nostrils the breath of life. He is the One against whom we staged a revolution that led to being banished from the place of life.

And so He is the only One who can provide a way back.

What can you do to remember that?

Maybe you’ll partake in an ‘Ashing’ service, where a cross is marked with ashes on the hand or forehead? Maybe you’ll gather the family and light a match, before blowing it out and rubbing its ash between your fingers? Maybe you’ll spend some time prayerfully reading through Ecclesiastes 11:9-12:8, whilst streaming this album?

Of course, it’s got to be more than a day. I read recently of a church that had been built in the shape of a coffin in order to remind the congregation of their mortality. Likewise, the skulls that often decorated the insides of older churches were a reminder of that mortality.

But will we remember our name?

Glorious Dust

But by turning our eyes to our Creator, Ash Wednesday also reminds us where our hope is.

In the gospel of Christ crucified and risen, God promises to take the perishable and clothe us with what is imperishable (1 Corinthians 15:52).

If God can take adamah and fashion Adam, why can’t that same Creator take our dust and re-make us after the likeness of the ‘man of heaven’, the second Adam, the risen Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:22,44-48)?

Death is real. Death is coming. Death is an enemy.

Ash Wednesday asks us whether we realise that. It asks us whether we’re ready. It asks us whether we’ve turned to the One who can bring life in the face of death. Ashes are for life, not just for Wednesday

And as we find our place amidst the dust and ashes, it’s only then that we learn to cry out, ‘Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Corinthians 15:57).

As Mike Cosper has put it,

“To those critics, I’ll agree: Ash Wednesday isn’t required. But preparing for our encounter with death is a gospel priority. We live in a culture loaded with death-denying strategies. How are we, as the church, refusing the blinders they offer, staring death in its face, and saying all the more boldly, “Where is your sting?”

We are dust, but in Christ our future is glory.

We walk towards our grave, but the tomb is empty.