Luke 14:25-33.
AIM: To examine the cost of discipleship,
and to show that it can be paid only through complete trust in Jesus.
AIf anyone comes after me,@ Jesus tells us in the gospel reading
we have just heard, Awithout hating his father and mother, wife and children,
brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.@ Is that good news? Can Jesus really
be serious?
In speaking about Ahating@ those dearest to us, Jesus was using
a Semitic word familiar to his hearers, but not to us. Hating for Jesus meant
simply detaching one=s self from someone or something. What he was really saying
is that He must come first. That is how Jesus himself lived. Even at age
twelve Jesus was putting his love for his heavenly Father ahead of love for
Mary and Joseph by staying behind in Jerusalem
after his earthly parents had left. ADid you not know that I must be in my
Father=s house?@ (Lk 2:49) Jesus asked them when they
chided him for staying behind. Luke tells us that Athey did not understand what he said
to them.@ But Jesus understood, though he was
still a boy.
Love for the Lord does
not exclude other loves. But it puts the in the right order. God is not
jealous. How could the One who is love, and who in creating us in his
image has given us the ability to love, be jealous of what he has made? Jesus
asks everything of us because he has given us everything. As Paul writes in his
letter to the Ephesians, AHe loved us and gave himself up for us@ (5:2).
Jesus spoke those words
about hating those dearest to us, Luke tells us, to the Agreat crowds@ which were following him. Did they
know how Jesus life would end? How could they? And if they had known, how many
of them would have continued to follow him? Many, perhaps most, were following
Jesus in a spirit of momentary enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is fine. But Jesus knew
that it must have solid foundations. His words about total renunciation, and
the two short parables which follow, were his attempt to supply those
foundations.
AWhich of you wishing to construct a
tower,@ Jesus begins, Adoes not first sit down and calculate
the cost ...?@ The example was immediately intelligible to Jesus= hearers. It was the dream of every
small farmer in Palestine
in Jesus= day to have a proper tower on his
property, rather than merely a shed. During harvest time he could sleep in the
tower, keeping watch for trespassers and predatory animals, to insure himself
against loss.
Valuable as such a tower
might be, Jesus= hearers also knew that it would be folly to start building
one without first calculating whether the available resources were sufficient
to complete the job. If they were not, the farmer would have nothing to show
for his hard work but some useless foundations. And his friends would laugh at
him for his imprudence.
The second parable begins
differently: not Awhich of you ...@, but Awhat king ...@ That too was easy to understand,
even though none of Jesus= hearers were kings with an army at their disposal. Common to
both parables is the sentence about sitting down first and counting the cost.
The first step in any important undertaking, Jesus was saying, is not action,
but reflection. Too often we act first and reflect later (if we reflect at
all). The crowds who followed Jesus with so much enthusiasm had not reflected.
When, finally, they did reflect, some of them would shout: ACrucify him, crucify him.@
The other sayings of
Jesus which Luke places before and after these two parables B about hating father and mother, and
about renouncing all our possessions B describe the cost of discipleship.
Following Jesus is not something we can do in our spare time. It cannot be
simply one interest among others. Jesus Christ must come first in our lives.
Some years ago the internationally
known American pianist, Van Cliburn, was asked by a television interviewer
about the sacrifices needed to succeed in his profession. AWhen you decide to give your life to
music,@ Cliburn replied, Ayou must never look back. You must
simply say: >If I am not in music, there is nothing.=@ That is breathtaking. But it is also
inspiring. Is it any different, at bottom, from the demand which Jesus makes
when he tells us that he must mean more to us than family and
possessions?
If you want to be my
disciple, Jesus says, count the cost. First reflect. Then act. So let=s reflect. If following Jesus Christ
really means putting him first B ahead of money, possessions, success, ahead of those we love
most B if Christian discipleship means
that, which of us could say with confidence that we had the necessary amount of
self-denial and staying power?
Does that mean that we
should not follow Jesus Christ? Of course not. It does mean, however, that we
should never try to follow Jesus Christ in dependence on our own resources
alone. That would mean certain failure. If today=s gospel is good news, it is because
of what it does not say: that there are resources for Christian
discipleship available to us which are adequate. What we could never
achieve on our own, we can achieve if we depend not on our own strength, but on
the strength that comes from God alone.
That is why Jesus tells
us in several places to become Alike little children.@ Little children are naturally
dependent on others. It never occurs to them that they can make it on their
own. As children grow, we encourage them to become more and more independent,
and to take risks. That is fine in the things of this world.
In spiritual things,
however, and hence in our relationship with God, we must unlearn that
spirit of independence which, in worldly affairs, is the difference between
maturity and childhood. When it comes to following Jesus Christ, we dare not
trust in our own resources. If we do, we are like the farmer building his tower
without calculating the cost; or like the king setting our recklessly on a
military campaign against impossible odds.
Jesus never asks us to
fight against impossible odds. He does not want us to build with inadequate
resources. That is why he gives us his resources. They are always
adequate. If we trust in the power which God alone can give us, we are safe. We
can build with confidence. We can fight confident of victory.
We are gathered here
around these twin tables of word and sacrament to receive that
power which can do for us, and in us, what we can never do for ourselves. This
power is not something impersonal, a kind of spiritual electricity, as if we
were here to get our batteries charged for another week. The power that is
offered to us here is a person.
His name is Jesus
Christ.
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