September 4, 2016
16th Sunday After Pentecost Year C

“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.” Luke 14:25-33

“Christianity, I’ve come to realize, is a way of being, a way of living, a way of doing things differently because of living “in Christ” (to borrow Paul’s favorite phase). Yet for much of my ministerial career I’ve preached and written as if it’s primarily a way of thinking. Don’t get me wrong, I love theology and believe it has an important place in the church. But sometimes I wonder if part of our decline is that we’ve spent so much time stressing what we need to think and believe instead of talking about what we can and should — indeed, are called to — do.  That is why this passage — this difficult and demanding 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 that he expects, even demands, undivided loyalty (and it’s where the hyperbolic language of hating comes in). This is why we are asked to count the cost — because the Christian life is expensive, it demands our commitment in terms of our time, attention, and money. Again, let me be clear, I’m not talking about salvation. That’s done, over, finished and completed by God’s grace alone. So can we move on? Can we talk not only about justification but also discipleship? Because that’s what Jesus is talking about here, the cost of discipleship.” (David Lose, working preacher website, The Cost of Discipleship, Monday, September 02, 2013)

As David Lose says so eloquently, there are texts that the preacher would rather run away from then run towards – and this Gospel is one of those texts. And yet, we need to take this reading into our hearts just like we do all of the others. Yes, we do not like to sacrifice anything, and American advertisers keep telling us that we deserve so much. As a pastor I am called to preach just the opposite – the thing that is most valuable to us is something we do not deserve. And yet it is ours because we trust in the resurrection of Jesus – and so it is a gift. We can do nothing to deserve it or earn it. So we live into the gift – which means we find ways to live differently from what society and advertisers tell us to live. And sometimes that means that we sacrifice – we give away things we hold most precious, like money, time and service. As servant leaders we take what we hold most precious and we give it away expecting nothing in return – and what we hold most precious is time, money and our very lives. It is a foundation we can build upon our entire lives. And when others stand to talk about us, on our resurrection day, they might say “his or her foundation was Jesus Christ, and it was a life worth knowing and a story worth sharing, because he or she knew the cost of discipleship.”

Pastor Dave