How Much to be a Disciple? 9-4-22
How Much to be a Disciple?
Ps 1; Luke 14:25-33
Ps 1
Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night. They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Luke 14:25-33
Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.
Prayer - Lord Jesus, even though the cost of following you can be high, even though your way can be a demanding, difficult way, we believe it is the way that leads to live. Strengthen us, we pray, to walk your way, to pay the cost of discipleship so that we, even in our weaknesses and limitations, may be your faithful disciples. Amen.
Really, Jesus? Really? You can’t be serious about what you say in this week’s gospel reading. Can you? C’mon . . . hate my relatives, carry the cross, and give up ALL my possessions? Surely you don’t want this passage to be taken literally. You can’t mean what you say here. There must be contextual issues, hyperbole, overstatement, sarcasm, or something in your words to mitigate the sting of this directive.
Last week one of the first comments during our discussion time was that in preaching about Jesus ‘turning the tables’ I may have stepped on some toes. Well guess, what, Jesus is stomping toes today and no matter how much I wish I could soft-pedal his message, rationalize it, explain it away, or just flat out say, “Jesus doesn’t mean what he says here?” you and I know that Jesus probably means what he says in our passage this morning.
And I suppose that is why it is much easier to believe in Jesus than it is to follow him. Following Jesus means taking seriously what he says and not soft-pedaling it. Following Jesus means choosing Jesus over family and friends, taking up his cross of love and grace, and yep giving up that new 65 inch TV hanging in the den to watch football, basketball, tennis or golf. Following Jesus means there is a cost to discipleship and we have to decide how much we are we willing to give up to follow this itinerant street preacher.
Jesus’ language is sharp and pointed about the demands of discipleship. “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” Is that all then? My family and my life? No, one more thing, “Whoever doesn’t carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” Give up a comfortable life? Is that it? As long as you include all of your stuff, “None of you can be my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” Perhaps we do need to wrestle with the cost of discipleship.
Granted most of us will not be called upon to give up our lives for the sake of the gospel ala Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Manche Masamota, but we must consider the cost and decide just how much of God we want to buy on a daily basis. How much are we willing to give up to truly follow – that is the toe stepping on question before us this morning?
What about hating one’s family? Does that mean we might have to choose between our family and following Jesus? I shared with you previously my dilemma when my wife at the time said to me, “I don’t want to be a minister’s wife, you have to decide, me or God?” That was excruciating. Are we willing to disagree with our parents, our spouse, our children when it comes to discipleship? Interestingly I am the sort of the black sheep in my family of staunch Republicans – I am a staunch Democrat – and over the years we have had to work hard to not get all wound up in political debates, or policy discussions.
How do we address Jesus’ directive about possessions? This is a tough one. Western culture teaches us to value stuff, often to the detriment of our relationships. How many of us are attached to our smart phones and tablets? How many of us have watched as couples sat across the dinner table totally ignoring friends or loved ones while tapping away on social media? Think about the huge edifices and shrines dedicated to consumer culture – AMAZON, Google, big box stores, factory outlets – and the concept of ‘retail therapy’ as an antidote to almost anything. And here we have Jesus telling us to give it all up.
It seems that every time this passage comes up in the lectionary I immediately pull out my battered old copy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, The Cost of Discipleship. For those of us who have read Bonhoeffer’s celebrated book, we know how he stresses the way of the cross and challenges those who preach cheap grace. Bonhoeffer noted that to follow Jesus is in extraordinary difficult calling. Bonhoeffer took hold of Jesus’ message of the cross and laid it out as the foundation of the Christian life. So if we are going to follow Jesus, we had better sit down and figure how much it is going to cost to be a disciple.
But, is it really a cost? Or a choice? When it’s all about cost, it all about what we give up. What we sacrifice. What we deny. When faith is cast as cost, we become ignorant to the fact that life itself is costly, not just faith. Life is full of choices, of counting the costs, weighing the costs. Being a follower, being a disciple is making a costly commitment to bringing about the Kingdom of God each and every day. That’s certainly what it meant to Jesus.
Being a Christian, being a Christ follower, being a disciple of Jesus is a way of being, a way of living, a way of doing things differently because of living ‘in Christ’ as Paul puts it. Yet we tend to misconstrue Christianity as a way of thinking and believing, rather than living out of our faith. Don’t get me wrong, I love theology and believe it has an important place in the church. Sometimes I wonder if part of our decline as an institution is that we’ve spent so much time stressing what we need to think and believe instead of being and living and doing things the way Jesus did.
That is why this passage – this toe stepping on passage – has so much to offer. Because in this part of the story, Jesus asks his disciples both then and now to sacrifice. Actually, he doesn’t ask, he tells us he expects, even demands, our undivided loyalty – and that is where the hyperbolic language of hating comes in. This is why we are asked to decide how much it costs to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus – because the Christian life is expensive, it demands our commitment in terms of our time, our attention and our money. Let me be clear – I’m talking about your salvation or mine or anyone else’s being determined by our discipleship – that’s done, over, finished and completed by God’s grace alone. This is about how much it costs to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus.
I can imagine you are wishing I would have picked a different passage for this morning, and I do to because I can ask, or tell, or demand that you do something I’m not willing to do either. And I wonder if people will rally to Jesus’ expectations or remain lukewarm with their faith, with their discipleship. In our day and age, people are sacrificing a lot, for their families, their own sustenance, their own lives. I wonder if weighing the cost of discipleship has become something of a taboo in our world of easy convenience and instant gratification. And I wonder if we as a church start making greater demands on folks if that may not drive them further away from the church?
And so as we gather on this Labor Day weekend Sunday, I wonder if we can allow Jesus’ words in this passage to get equal time, to ask ourselves to look at the long arc of our lives and discern what is important to us, what we hope for ourselves and our families. Not simply because we should, rather because the abundant life and way of discipleship that Jesus both promises and announces also takes sacrifice – not to earn God’s grace but to live into the discipleship that grace makes possible.
This isn’t about our eternal destiny, God has already taken care of that. This is about the caliber and character of our Christian lives. And like anything else worth doing, discipleship takes time, energy, work and practice – in a word, there is a cost – how much does it cost to be a disciple? I’m reminded of what one of my old seminary professors shared – taking it from a John Dunne quote – our job is not to comfort the afflicted, but also to afflict the comfortable. I hope this has been as uncomfortable for you as it has been for me – thanks be to God – amen.