The Road Less Traveled 9-7-25

The Road Less Traveled

Deut 30:15-20; Luke 14:25-33

Deut 20:15-20

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

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, we follow you, hoping to receive from you that which we think we need to make our lives more fulfilling. Then you confront us, telling us that you have chosen us to help you in the fulfillment of your mission. Forgive us when we seek your benefits but shrink from your assignments. Give us the grace to see that your way is counter to the world’s way, and that there is a cost to pay for being your disciples. Help us to count the cost and still say Yes to your invitation to be your disciples and follow the road less traveled. Amen.

I’m here to tell you, discipleship, following Jesus is doggone hard, demanding work. I’m not always sure that it is worth it either.  I’m not sure you imagined me saying those words to you this morning, or any pastor trying to grow a church, “Come this Sunday and we’ll tell you how hard it is follow Jesus. First, you have to love your family less than you love Jesus. Then you must carry a cross like a condemned criminal. Along with that, we expect you to give up everything you have worked hard to have. Do these things and you can call yourself a disciple, a follower of Jesus.” Can’t you imagine all the folks who will be lined up to come in the door???

I think that is why so many people prefer to worship Jesus than to be followers of Jesus. By worshipping Jesus, we can simply show up on Sunday morning, sing a few songs, pray a few prayers, hear another sermon, write a check and put in the plate, and head home feeling good about loving the Lord. By worshipping Jesus we give an hour or so each week, include our tithe in our monthly budget, hang out with some folks that think and believe similar things, and then go about our lives without any sense of transformation, without any sense of upsetting our day to day lives. Yes, I think it is a whole lot easier to worship Jesus than it is to be a follower. 

Listen to the words of our passage this morning, hate your family, carry the cross and follow me, give up all that you have – those are strong words, demands, expectations – if you want to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus. Really, Jesus? I mean, really?  You can’t be serious, can you? Come on, hate my relatives, well maybe a couple of them aren’t so great, but hate them? And how big is this cross I have to carry, and do you expect me to be crucified as well? And you have another think coming if you think I’m giving up my 65 inch smart TV or my Callaway golf clubs, I just got them in the last year! Surely 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.

Every time this passage comes in Year C of the Lectionary, my first inclination is to reach for Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book Discipleship (The Cost of Discipleship).For those of us who have read Bonhoeffer’s book, we know how he stresses the way of the cross and challenges those who preach cheap grace. To be a follower of Jesus is an extraordinarily difficult calling and Bonhoeffer took this message from Luke’s gospel and laid it out as the foundation of the Christian life. For many of us, being a follower is the road less traveled.   

This is a difficult and important passage because it uncovers the lukewarmness with which most of us approach our faith.  Many people would think that a Minister could call him or herself devout – but no one would ever call me a fanatic about my faith. I have sat down, and I have in some way, shape or form counted the cost, and I have concluded, like so many who are faithful, that I can only go so far. I imagine that most ministers and most people are somewhat similar to me. And still, I want to embrace this call to be a follower just as much as I’m sure you do. There has to be a softer, more palatable way of saying this, isn’t there?  I mean there has to be an easier way to follow the road less traveled, isn’t there?

In calling his disciples, importunate Jesus doesn’t pause to define the “kingdom of heaven” or even hint at the direction of the journey. They will learn what Jesus has gotten them into as they walk along the way with Jesus, like this Sunday’s gospel from Luke. Jesus pauses just long enough during their journey to Jerusalem to urge his disciples to “count the cost” of discipleship.

“Shouldn’t you have told us how much this trip would cost back when you called us to follow you in the first part of your gospel?” surely one of the disciples asked.

No, with the briefest of invitations, Jesus calls. Come: relocate, be homeless, venture forth to God knows where. Follow: submit to walking where and as I walk. Me: risk a life in service to a Savior whom you just met. They’ll have to learn what all that means later, like this Sunday when Jesus speaks of counting the cost. And you thought your call was unique.

Please don’t miss the pain behind, “immediately they left….” In saying yes to Jesus, there is also relinquishment. Nobody walks with Jesus without letting go of somebody, somewhere, or something. Boats, nets, father (and for all I know, families too) left behind. Did you hear Jesus, in this Sunday’s gospel, say hate families, parents, siblings in order to love him?

So I want you to stop right now. Count up what you gave up in order to walk the way of Jesus. What was the cost? I think the gospel implies that there will be a price to be paid for being embraced by Jesus and walking with him. There is a cost to taking the road less traveled.

I suppose that most of us stumble after Jesus without fully knowing where he’s taking us. (Be honest now, would you have said yes if you had known what Jesus had in mind for you?) Expect surprises. Here’s a journey that few want to walk and nobody can control. And when the way is hard—which a couple of years hence ends at the Place of the Skull—Jesus shows little sympathy for our complaints about the risky ride, the cost of discipleship.

Perhaps this passage is why so many Christians choose to worship Jesus rather than follow Jesus. With every year that ticks by, I feel more strongly that Jesus does mean exactly what he says in our passage this morning, and that we, you and I both, need to wrestle with the cost of being a follower of Jesus. Granted, most of us will not be called upon to give our lives for the sake of the gospel the way Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King, Jr, or Manche Masamola, but we must consider the cost and decide whether we are going to take the easy way out and simply worship Jesus, or if we are going to take the hard road, the road less traveled and be a follower.

Yes, this is a difficult, uncomfortable, perhaps painful teaching, and, it is a central one to the life of discipleship.  Nothing, nothing at all, must come between us and our relationship with Jesus. Nothing should stand in the way of following his command to love God with everything we have and to love our neighbor as ourselves – not money, not my 65 inch TV or my Callaway golf clubs. Not politics, not family values, not gun rights. Just as Romans 8 says, nothing in life, nor death, nor anything else can separate us from God’s love – well, guess what, Jesus is saying to us this morning that nothing should separate us from loving God. Following Jesus is a way of life.  It isn’t about our eternal destiny; rather, it is about the character of our Christian lives.

An implication of today’s gospel is that Jesus comes to call us into ministry and mission, not to maneuver ourselves so that we become the center of his ministry and mission. He comes not only to heal us (Jesus is notoriously ambiguous about the few healing miracles he performs), but he comes to call us, summon and enlist us, to give us jobs to do that are more significant than meeting our needs as we define those needs. Count the cost.

And yet, even though you have heard Jesus talking about the high cost of discipleship, there you are. You are following Jesus, even when there’s a gap between what Jesus demands and what you are able to do as his disciple. There you are. You haven’t turned away. You are still following Jesus.

To be honest with you, I would have preferred a different gospel passage for this morning as we prepare for communion.  A passage about grace and mercy would have been much easier for my appetite. Perhaps, like me, you are feeling a little sick to your stomach as you think about what Jesus has to say to us this morning. Whether it is with the dawning of the day, or the end of the day, each of us has to make a choice – am I simply going to worship Jesus, all that he said, all that he did, all that he meant to men, women, children and the world some 2000 years ago. Or, are you, am I going to be intentional about being a real follower, not a part-time follower, a lukewarm follower; am I going to be a real follower and choose the road less traveled. That is the question each of us gets to wrestle with each day. May God bless my decision and yours – thanks be to God – amen.