Maybe this is you.

Maybe you’re a young mother, and life is relentlessly hectic. You love caring for your children, and there are often moments of connection and joy, but more often you find the kids are more demanding than you can handle, the apartment more of a disaster than you can tolerate and you find yourself turning to Netflix as a babysitter far more than you said you would before Baby #1. In rare moments of calm, you turn to Instagram or Facebook to turn your brain off, and posts by friends or celebrity parents are there to greet you, full of smiling faces, apparent peace, beautiful places and fun games made up by the parents themselves. These people seem endlessly more creative, more energetic, more present than you. And suddenly, on top of everything else comes something even more exhausting than the mess and the child riot: it’s the sense that you don’t measure up. An hour later you snap a photo of your kids sharing a toy and post it. It gets a few likes, and you start to feel better.

Or…

Maybe when you were growing up you had dreams of doing great things. Maybe you wanted fame, or political office, or a heroic career. Down the line you do some traveling, or intern with a really cool company. But things soon change; obstacles get in the way of your time: family, money, your own lack of motivation. Maybe you end picking up a “side job,” doing entry level work in a company you swore you wouldn’t stay at, and suddenly you’ve moved into a position that’s comfortable, but entirely unglamorous. And now you live with the gnawing sense that you missed out, that you could have been so much more. And the sense gets stronger when you hear about co-workers getting promoted, or when you’re friend announces his book deal. Now sure, you have moments when the disillusionment fades and you find yourself laughing with friends or family and thinking, “My life isn’t so bad.” And suddenly you find yourself shooing off your contentment, because you know you shouldn’t really cheer up until you are handed a promotion yourself.

This is achievement culture. And it may be one of the greatest hindrances to discipleship in our time.

In this cultural moment, we have come to define ourselves through self-comparison. We are constantly being measured up, whether through television, social media, or the everyday personal politics we play even with our best friends. We are driven by envy, and we only feel good about our lives when we think our lives are enviable.

Achievement culture can even wriggle its way into our apprenticeship to Jesus. Am I spiritual enough? Do I post about my faith enough? How do I make sure to distance myself from uncool Christians? Sometimes, though we don’t always realize it, we care far more about appearing righteous than being righteous. Comparison guides our discipleship: if we feel like we fall short, we believe God must dislike us and we despair. But if we feel like we measure up, we believe God must admire us, and we become self-righteous. In either case, we judge ourselves by looking at the person to the right of us in the pew.

How can we follow a crucified Lord without identifying with his weakness? How can we live the abundant life while still clawing for our best life now? How can we grow in grace while measuring ourselves by our works?

Jesus was once in a house with two groups of people. The first was a group of spiritual masters. They were scholars, thinkers, but they were men of action. They were the embodiment of virtue. They were good people, the kind who has answers, the kind of person you want to sit across at the coffeeshop in the hopes that others will notice you sitting across from them at the coffeeshop. Holy high achievers. The Pharisees.

The second group was a little different: diverse-so they had that going for them-but incompetent, brash, lacking a number of social graces. They order their coffee at McDonald’s, work to live, don’t live to work. A couple of them smell like fish all the time. And all of them will end up abandoning their rabbi to a flock of armed temple guards, so there’s that too. They’re laughable, screw-ups: the disciples.

But in that little house, Jesus announces to that crowd of people that he considers these ragtag disciples his family, because they do the will of his Father. And it’s immediately after that that Matthew wants us to hear the parable of the sower. Jesus tells us there are many kinds of soils, many would-be disciples, but the ones that are truly disciples are those who receive the news about Jesus, and are changed by it. They take in the Gospel, and it does something to their lives. They re-center themselves around Jesus. They start breaking old habits of selfishness and egoism. They start to delight in God more and worship him with their lives.

And from the outside, as far as good works are concerned, the change may not be obvious. That’s why Jesus mentions that some will produce thirty fold crop, others sixty, still other a hundred. From the outside looking in, we may notice that some folks come to Jesus and the change is rapid and their life culminates in big, impactful good works. Others may come out of a background of addiction and broken homes and deep seated emotional pain, and while the change in their life may not be demonstrative, it is seen by God, and he is overjoyed by it

See, the disciples are special to Jesus not because of what they achieved, but because of what Jesus achieved. And that means that as Christians we must not be fooled by achievement culture. Our worth is not determined through self-comparison, but through the vindication we receive by being associated with the Risen King. The mirror does not define you. Your net income does not define you. The Pinterest-perfection of your life does not define you.

Jesus is inviting you into a way of life that is worth more than a higher standard of living, a way of life that we cannot achieve, but can only receive. If we start to compare ourselves, we will have gone back to finding our worth in things that cannot give us worth. Grace saves us from despair when we compare ourselves with others, because in Christ I am noticed and loved and worth something. Grace saves us from pride, because no matter how much I achieve, it’s only by God’s mercy that I am qualified.

Can we let ourselves be freed from achievement culture by the power of the Gospel? My prayer for you, Trinity Community Church, and for myself is that each and every one of us would look to Jesus and follow him and leave behind the restlessness of falling below expectations that won’t get us anything if we meet them in order to justify our existence. We may achieve, and we’ll thank God. We may fall short, and we’ll be content. Either way, we will receive the Gospel, follow Jesus, and bear fruit.