You may remember the scene in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall" where Woody tells the story of the man who goes to the psychiatrist, complaining that his brother-in-law, who lives with him, thinks he is a chicken.

"Describe his symptoms," the doctor says, "and maybe I can help."

The man replies, "Well, he cackles a lot, he pecks at the rug and the furniture and he makes nests in the corners."

The doctor thinks for a moment, then says, "It sounds like a simple neurosis to me. Bring your brother-in-law in and I think I can cure him completely."

"Oh no, Doc," says the man, "we wouldn't want that! We need the eggs."

Even when we are captured by destructive neuroses we are still, curiously, unwilling to change. Even when life becomes sick and destructive it is better, we convince ourselves, than the unknown.

So much of contemporary Christianity seems to be centered on this reluctance to change.

We cling desperately to the past. We cling because it has worked for us then so why not now.

Christians get confused as to what they believe. We say we believe in resurrection but act as if we believe in immortality. There can be no resurrecting without the dying. That is what Jesus taught over and over again with his life and then, of course, with his death. When we say yes to God, we most often must say no to something else. To place God paramount in our lives is, by necessity, to reprioritize our lives. This is the task of discipleship. This is what it means to say we are Christians.