September 5, 2010
The Cost of Discipleship
- Luke 14:25-33
- Rev Ruth Chadwick Moore
Well how do you like our scripture passages for today? In Jeremiah we don’t have a God who is a gentle potter, we have a God who is shaping evil against us and devising a plan against us unless we change our ways. Then in Luke we are told that to be a follower of Jesus we have to hate our family, carry our crosses and give up all our possessions. Aren’t you glad you came today? Don’t you wish someone had invited you to his or her lake cottage for one more weekend of summer?
As I was reading and preparing for this sermon last week, I was sitting out in my backyard in one of our Adirondack chairs drinking a little fruit of the vine. I was watching Emma’s puppies Claude and Louise run around and tease each other. I was in a good mood, I was working ahead so I would be prepared to preach today, and then I read these scriptures and thought – how am I going to preach this? I was tempted to preach on something else – surely there must be some religious significance to the holiday of Labor Day isn’t there? But one of the reasons we are a lectionary based preaching church is so that we will preach from passages all throughout the bible and even preach on scripture that is difficult. So this is my attempt to preach on passages that we might not like, but that challenge our idea of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.
I agree with Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor – I don’t think Jesus would have made a very good parish minister. Part of my call or job description as your associate pastor, involves evangelism. I try to encourage you to invite friends to church and to help you make this congregation a welcoming place when people visit. (And by the way, Invite a Friend Sunday is September 26th, so be thinking now about who you will invite to worship with you. You can also take home one of the bookmarks found in your hymnals and give it to someone to invite them for the 26th. I promise I will not use scripture that day that will scare away your friends!) We can be a welcoming place that shares the good news of Jesus even with scripture that challenges us. And if you are visiting with us today, don’t be discouraged, not all of Jesus’ teachings are this harsh.
If you read about church growth and evangelism, all the experts tell you how important it is to create a welcoming, caring and safe environment where “people believe their concerns will be heard and their needs will be met.” (Bread) Teri, John and I work very hard to plan inspiring worship and to allow space so you can experience the presence of God. The staff and lay leaders plan for times of fellowship, education, small groups, and service opportunities. “A well-run church is like a well-run home, where members can count on regular meals in pleasant surroundings, with people who generally mind their manners.” (Bread)
And there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a well run church, or a well run family or a well run home. In fact they make our lives easier – less stressful. Presbyterians are known for doing things decently and in order. But according to Jesus we can’t be his disciples unless we hate our families. The word we translate as hate in our English bibles comes from the Greek word miseo. Miseo means to regard with less affection, to love less or to esteem less. “It doesn’t involve animosity, ill will or revenge, which our English word ‘hate’ suggests. It just means that by comparison, someone or something is less important that someone or something else.” (Counting)
Jesus is setting priorities here. In biblical times this was a very common way of speaking. To say you loved one thing and hated another was a way to state a preference. It had nothing to do with feelings. The issue was priorities. So if I said I love the beach and hate the mountains it would not actually mean I felt hostile to the mountains it would just mean that the beach was my first choice. If I said I loved Purdue and hated IU… well you know what I mean!
Every Sunday I pray and ask God to forgive my sins and to help me be a better wife, a better mother, a better daughter and a better friend. (And I have the same prayer every Sunday so I am not doing much improving!) And then if I still have time left I ask God to help me be a better pastor. I rarely ask God to help me be a better follower of Jesus. I tend to define myself as a pastor, a wife, a mother etc, but Jesus is asking me to define myself as a Christian. Jesus is asking me to rethink the way I see myself and to rethink the way I pray and the way I live my life. If you are going to be a follow of Jesus Christ and not just an admirer, he must be your first priority. He must be your first love. Jesus does not want second place in your life. Think of it this way. What if you someone wanted to marry you and he or she said, “I want you to marry me under this one condition: If down the road another person comes into my life that I like and love more than you, you will have to leave.” (The Kingdom) Would any of you accept a proposal like that? That may be how some people think about getting married, but that is not the kind of commitment Jesus is asking for.
Maybe we don’t have what it takes. Look at the crowd that is following Jesus. They have been hearing wonderful stories about him. He heals people, he accepts people, and he tells them about a God who loves them. But then Jesus tells them not to get their hopes up, because they don’t have a clue what following him will cost. Jesus is being honest with them, because he doesn’t want to mislead them. He refuses to make his way sound easier than it is. No false pretenses. Discipleship costs. Discipleship means we live our lives differently. Discipleship is dangerous.
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem in this passage. He is very aware of what is going to happen to him. Luke is as well, because when he wrote this gospel people were being persecuted for following Jesus. If the Romans found out that someone in your family was a Christian they would arrest everyone in the household – so turning toward Jesus meant turning away from your family for their own safety. “Once you made following Jesus your first priority, everything else fell by the wayside – not because God took it away from you but because that’s how the world works. As long as the world opposes those who set out to transform it, the transformer will pay a high price.” (Bread)
I think this is what Jesus wants us to know. He doesn’t want to scare us, he wants to inform us and love us. He doesn’t want to make it seem easier than it is. He wants us to know up front how costly it is to be his disciple so that we will not follow him under false pretences. So we don’t get halfway through building a tower and have to abandon it, or go into battle without the troops we need.
So what does it take to be a disciple of Jesus Christ? Is it about being good, stable citizens or is it about changing the world? Is it about your needs being met or is it about living your life in such a way that you might be killed? “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sister, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14: 26) As Barbara Brown Taylor says: “Discipleship costs all that we have, all that we love, all that we are. That is less God’s doing than our own. If the world were kinder to its reformers, discipleship might be a piece of cake, but it’s not, and Jesus doesn’t want anyone to be fooled.” (Bread)
As I mentioned, I was so taken aback by the harshness of this passage that I wondered how I would preach about it. I wondered why I didn’t ask for Labor Day weekend off! But as is so often the case, there are wiser people than I who can help me share the good news of the gospel – and even this costly call to discipleship is good news. Listen again to the voice of Barbara Brown Taylor: “Jesus may not have made a good parish minister, but he made a very good savior, and I don’t think he is through saving us yet. His best tool has always been the very thing that killed him – that cross he ended up on – the one he was carrying long before he got to Golgotha. He is always offering to share it with us, to let us get underneath it with him. Not, I think because he wants us to suffer but because he wants us to know how alive you can feel even underneath something that heavy and how it can take your breath away to get hold of your one true necessity. Even suffering pales next to what God is doing through it, through you, because you are willing to put yourself in the way.” (Bread)
“Discipleship is not for everyone. That is clearly what Jesus is telling us. There aren’t a lot of people who have what it takes to shoulder the cross – but I don’t think that means the rest of us are lost. It is for the rest of us – the weak ones – that Jesus took the weight of the cross upon himself. If we can’t help him carry it, he will carry us too. I think he just wants us not to take it for granted. I think he just wants us to know what it costs.” (Bread)
Sources
Bread of Angels by Barbara Brown Taylor. Chapter 9, “High Priced Discipleship.”
sermons.com, “Counting the Cost of Discipleship” by Ron Lavin
sermons.com, “The Kingdom is Not K-Mart” by James Merritt