Luke 14.25-33

Consider the Cost

Jesus sure has an odd way with a crowd doesn’t he? One might expect him to build a movement out of their curiosity or at least keep them in his orbit. After all, in our time churches and their pastors are looking for every way possible to get curious (and not so curious) folks into the door. Jesus, on the other hand, is determined to thin out the crowds. Or at the least, he wants to be perfectly clear what he’s up to before people sign on.

What better way to do that than announce that anyone who doesn’t hate his mother, father, son, daughter, brother, sister and - just to be sure everyone gets the point - your own life, is not ready to be his disciple. It’s no coincidence that the crowd was considerably smaller after that message. Jesus is remarkably honest in laying out the path that he will walk and that he expects others who follow him will walk.

What he says is bewildering but it may help to know that in the common usage of his day, hatred didn’t carry the violent emotional baggage that it does now. Few things are worse than saying you hate someone and few emotions corrupt the human spirit more. So hearing Jesus’ recommend it is like fingernails on a chalkboard. Stop it right now! Yet, words do shift in meaning over time and cultures and the word hatred is one of them. In the original usage, “to hate” is a term of value, not emotion. Jesus is not recommending that people despise the ones they love as much as he is calling them to love God above all else and to let that loyalty arrange all other lesser ones, including family, work, possessions and status any of which quickly become competing idols.

That makes it understandable but it doesn’t make it easy. Nothing will. It’s like Garrison Keillor said, “to love and serve God, of course, is why we are here; a clear truth like that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but will make you dizzy if you focus on it hard.” Jesus compels us to focus on it pretty hard. Enough to make us dizzy, too.

Each of us lives in a tangle of relationships with multiple demands on our time and allegiance. We are full of contradictions and competing loyalties: from marriage to family, to work to friendship; living is a huge juggling act with choices flying in constant motion. In this haven of workaholics, the mantra is how much are you juggling today?

Yet, juggling involves choices. I have to choose. And so do you. That’s inescapable. The question Jesus presents is what comes first in our lives? Each of has a different juggling act yet for everyone, in some fashion, being a disciple means laying down our lives in little pieces, through small decisions and unremarkable acts of kindness and generosity that display the life of Christ for others.1

So maybe Christian discipleship looks like someone sitting with the Alzheimer’s patient listening to incoherent stories and offering a gentle hand. Maybe it looks like befriending the person who knows only the only isolation of self-inflicted judgment. While we speak of a cranky person as “a cross to bear”, that is not what Jesus had in mind. Cross bearing is moving toward that cranky neighbor with something akin to love or listening to the obstinate colleague long enough that he (or she) experiences something of the patience of God toward all of us. This is the cruciform life of discipleship.

You know the saying, “if you have to ask how much it costs than you can’t afford it?” It’s has rescued folks like me from a lot foolishness. But in this case, Jesus says it’s better to consider the cost of following his path than fall away when the going gets tough as it surely will.

It costs nothing to admire Jesus. The world is full of admirers. Jesus is after disciples and that costs something. What might it cost you?

Remember the ad – be all you can be? Of course you do, who can forget it? It appealed to young people to reach for the highest possible goals in the military. The ad had stickiness. The only problem is that not everyone read the fine print. So when the call up came to the first war in Iraq, as happens in every war, one soldier protested, “I signed up to get an education, not to go to war.” That didn’t go ever too well. Consider the cost. Read the fine print.

Then there was the time I ordered music from a television program – yes, I’m one of those fools – and sure enough not one CD but a dozen came and kept coming along with a bill each time. It took several months and several bill cycles to stop it. Read the fine print. Consider the cost.

Jesus says this is serious stuff. Being my disciple will change your life. In fact, it’s like dying to your life and living into a whole new way of life. Consider the cost.

Here is what I think is most difficult to grasp. Life with Christ at the center is the most life affirming way of all. Allowing our lives to be shaped by Jesus pattern of self-giving leads to freedom, graciousness, mercy and kindness – the very things we yearn for and this world needs. This way is not a barrel of laughs but what kind of life is other than the superficiality of a culture that has nothing to offer other than endless entertainment? Real life – the kind of life that you and I know – is riddled with ambiguity and deep mystery. There are moments of laughter and joy, of course, but there are also moments of huge pain, heartbreak and sorrow. To pretend otherwise is, well, to pretend.

The way of discipleship is one that lives fully in the real world trusting that God is bringing life out of death. I could say trust me on this one – but that would miss everything. Instead, trust God and take up the way of Jesus in the company of his disciples.

This I know: no one can walk this path all alone. Who wants to anyway? It is in friendship with others that we discover what it means to lay down our lives in little pieces of love and acts of kindness, generosity and mercy displaying the life of Christ in the world. This is why small groups are so crucial to faith development.

•••

At our summer leadership retreat, the elders, deacons and leaders present declared their desire that Saint Mark be a community of disciples – not just admirers of Jesus and not members of a church only – but people seeking to live into the way of Christ. That means being a community with practices like hospitality to strangers, prayer and study, service to neighbor and generous stewardship.

We acknowledged that living these practices will cost each of us something – they will cause us to examine life priorities – but we are trusting that we will discover God’s life at the center and more importantly that others will experience God’s grace and mercy through our company.

My teacher Jurgen Moltmann once said, “... let us for God’s sake do something courageous! Choose the hope of discipleship whatever the consequences may be!”

It’s a great hope. Will you choose it?