Luke 14:25-35 September 18, 2016 A+D
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. +Amen+
Our text for this morning is from the Gospel according to St. Luke, Chapter 14 verses 25-35, where we learn what Jesus has to say about the cost of discipleship:
“Now great crowds accompanied (Jesus), and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” ”
This is our text.
Many of you have had to make a decision regarding a major expense in your lives. When you need to make a major investment, you look at all your bills versus your income and see what you can afford, whether it be a house, new car, or major appliance. When you don’t count the cost of everything in your budget including this new endeavor, you can find yourself in serious trouble financially, digging a pit of debt you may never climb out from.
When the military plans a campaign, they count assets like aircraft, ordinance, tanks, drones, Humvees, and men. They look over the terrain and at enemy encampments and defenses and take an account of the cost in lives and hardware to see if the objective is obtainable with a reasonable expenditure. If the cost is too high, the assault is abandoned or another way is formulated. If all the variables are not taken into consideration, and the military planners fail to count the cost of the campaign, the result can be a protracted bloody conflict with no resolution, and the cost in lives devastating.
While Jesus’ teaching wasn’t making the Pharisees or lawyers very happy, He was still drawing a large crowd to Him, which we could imagine was hanging on His every word and waiting to see what He would do next. You see, Jesus was journeying towards Jerusalem at this time, and already had His eyes set on the cross. We can infer by the teaching that follows in our text today, that Jesus knew that many people were following him for selfish or superficial reasons. Maybe He would perform another miracle. Maybe He would feed the large crowd again! Maybe they, or someone they knew, would be healed of some disease or disability!
Today, Jesus continues his message of repentance and belief, but this time He re-emphasizes what He began to say before he sent out the seventy-two and fed the five thousand men. He had spoken before about carrying the cross to follow in His way. Today, He tells us about the uncompromising high cost of being a disciple.
The fourth commandment tells us “Honor your father and mother”. Martin Luther explains to us that this means “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger those whom God has placed in true positions of loving care and authority over us, but honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them”. St. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Ephesians, chapter six verse three: “that it may go well with you and you may enjoy long life on the earth”, echoing God’s promise in Exodus. In fact, as Luther points out, this is the only commandment with such a promise attached, therefore it must be very important indeed! But here Jesus is telling us that if we don’t hate our parents, and brothers and sisters, and even our own life, we cannot be his disciple. Here again, we must ask: “What does this mean?”
Is Jesus really telling us to hate our parents, our families, and ourselves? In the Jewish tradition, to love one thing and to hate another can be understood as a metaphor for priority – the thing that is loved has priority over the thing that it hated. As it is written in Malachi chapter one verse three “Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated”. Hatred refers to the choices one has to make between Jesus and loved ones, even as God chose to bless Jacob (Israel) over Esau (Edom).
This is the first barrier to discipleship, division within families and being cast off by friends because you have put your trust where it belongs, and others are unwilling to listen. Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus taught us that our neighbor is everyone we come into contact with, greatly expanding our view of the Law to “love your neighbor as yourself”. Count the cost of being a disciple: Are you able to put God first, and family and friends second? For many, following in the way of Christ is too much if it means giving up family and friends who don’t want to hear what God has to say.
Furthermore, Jesus teaches us that we are to hate our own lives and bear our own cross after Him to be His disciples. Are we to then engage in self-loathing and disgust in ourselves? By no means! We are to celebrate the new creation that we have become, as a part of God’s family, and have contempt for our old sinful ways. We each have our own, individual, unique cross we must carry. This is the paradox of being a Christian. We are called to be in this fallen world, but not of it. We are marked – set apart as a child of God. As St. Paul wrote in Galatians chapter six verse fourteen: “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” And the world will despise you for that. The world will hate you for that. The world may even kill you ...for that.
ISIS’s campaign against the Yazidis has seen around 3,500 members of the religious minority, mainly women and children, held as slaves by the militant group. In August 2014, ISIS members stormed Sinjar, in northern Iraq, murdering around 3,000 men and older women and taking thousands of women and girls into slavery, selling them between fighters in public marketplaces. Yazidis were forced to hide on Mount Sinjar without food or water, and when found were given the choice between converting to Islam or being killed. They remained steadfast in their faith, and many died for it rather than convert to Islam.
On February 12, 2015, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) kidnapped twenty-one Egyptian Coptic Christian migrant workers in the city of Sirte, Libya and beheaded them. The 21st of these was originally a non-Christian, but he saw the immense faith of the others, and when the terrorists asked him if he rejected Jesus, he reportedly said, "Their God is my God", knowing full well that he would be killed!
This is the second barrier to discipleship: For many, bearing their cross is too great a burden, and like the seed that fell on the rocky ground and sprang up quickly, because it had no depth of soil, it withered and died. Count the cost: Can you take up your cross and walk with Jesus daily? For many, the concept of dying to self and living a life of service to our neighbor rather than ourselves is just too tall an order. For many, facing ridicule and losing status in the workplace or our social circles is just too much to ask. For many, if it comes to a choice between holding onto this life, or dying for professing the Gospel that Christ Jesus is our Lord and Savior, they will choose the easy way. When they sit down and count the cost, it is simply too high.
The third barrier to discipleship may be the most difficult one of all in our consumer-driven society. It can seemingly be more difficult even than giving up your life – giving up your lifestyle. For many, their love, their priority, is in the things of this world, the status symbols and achievements of this world, and their own abilities in this world. We make the accumulation of wealth our god, and take our eyes off the cross of Christ. As Jesus taught, the door is narrow: many will hear, fewer will listen, and fewer still will believe. Those whose love is misplaced, taking their eyes off God’s promises, will have their faith and trust in God weaken, wither, and die. Like the cities and palaces of the ancients, stones that crumbles and becomes dust, all of our things will wear out, become obsolete, become boring or unfashionable, and be discarded. Count the cost: Can you put the eternal things of the world to come ahead of the temporary things of this world?
Count the cost of being a disciple. Are you able to walk away from your family and friends to be a disciple of Christ? Do you have the strength? Or aren’t you really like the king going out to meet another king in battle, only to find you are outnumbered two to one and must send a messenger to seek peace, which is no victory at all, but a humiliating defeat.
Count the cost of being a disciple. Are you able to lay down your own life to be a disciple of Christ? When the gun is to your temple, will your faith remain steadfast in the face of death? Or aren’t you really like the builder who began with a firm foundation, but didn’t have enough to complete his tower.
Count the cost of being a disciple. Are you willing to give up your lifestyle in service to your neighbor and your community, dying to yourself so that others can see the light within you? Or aren’t you really like the salt which has lost its saltiness, and is of so little value to anyone that it isn’t even worth adding to the compost heap.
Count the cost – it is very high indeed. For the Christian living in today’s permissive world full of temptation around every corner, where tolerance and diversity are celebrated yet somehow it is OK to pick on Christianity at every turn, and the faithful are being killed simply for saying they follow Christ, it seems as though your cross is heavy indeed. Are you willing to pay the high price of being a disciple? Are you even able to do so? The answer is… (whispered) No...
On your own, you cannot carry your cross. You cannot die to self. You cannot be Jesus’ disciple. The cost is too great. The burden is too heavy to bear. You can’t even begin to pick it up under the weight of the temptations of the world, the devil, and our own sinful flesh.
When Christ knelt in prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, He, too, counted the cost. Crushed under the weight of it, He sweat blood in his agony. (Agony – this is the only time in the entire Greek New Testament the specific word agonia is used). He willingly obeyed the Father’s will and went to the cross of Calvary, where he suffered and died for every one of your sins. And with his glorious resurrection proclaiming victory over sin, death, and the power of the devil, we can now say Yes! Yes! We can now carry our cross daily because the burden is now light, as we are strengthened by God’s gracious gifts; Holy Baptism setting us apart forever as His dear children, His Holy Supper where we receive His very body and blood to eat and drink for the forgiveness of our sins and the strengthening of our faith. He gives us His Word to read and to hear proclaimed to plant and blossom the seeds of faith and nurture us all the days of our lives. These gifts offer us strength and renewal to remain steadfast in the carrying of the individual cross we are each given to bear. Most importantly, the greatest gift is that He gave us His only Son, the Word made flesh Himself, to live a perfect life in our place, and pay the ultimate cost to redeem us, so that we may look forward to eternal life with Him.
The demands for following in the way of Christ are great, but for us, the cost is free – freely given through the price paid by Jesus on the cross through His death and His victorious resurrection. The high, uncompromising price was willingly paid, not because of anything you have done, but because of what Jesus has done for you, and it is yours... now, and forevermore. (This is the cost: †) Amen.
And now may the peace which surpasses all human understanding keep your hearts and minds focused on Christ Jesus.
+Amen+