September 4, 2022 – Pentecost +13C – Luke 14:25-33

“Now large crowds were traveling with [Jesus;] 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.”

Sometimes my pastor brain reads the scriptures and then I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach — and all I can say is “Holy Crap”.  As a pastor – those “Holy Crap” moments mean we really have to dig into the word – because the good news might be that much more difficult to find and then relate it to our daily lives.  If you are to take something away from a text such as this for the week coming up, then my message will help you move from “Holy Crap”, to “Halleluia” – or at least “Holy Helpful”.

So, imagine for a moment, if you will, that for some time now you have been following Jesus. Your life hasn’t been that great to begin with, either due to poverty, being an outcast, or you are considered in general an “outsider”, and then you encounter Jesus. You have either met him, heard him teach, or witnessed one of his miracles, or healings, and you become a follower. You can’t help it, you can’t help yourself and certainly, you don’t want to miss a thing.  And of course you aren’t the only one.

There are many who, like you, are also following and together you don’t want to miss a moment. I imagine this is what it must be like for people who follow a band like “Phish”, or follow a presidential candidate around the country. And this crazy scene of you and your friends following Jesus, and listening, sharing, walking, goes on day after day after day. And then, something happens, and finally Jesus has had it. Perhaps he overheard people discussing how they can turn a profit on following Jesus – selling trinkets of their time together – or there is discussion of some other first century profit scheme involving their family and friends….and Jesus turns to your crowd and he says:

“Listen up!  Do you want to be one of my disciples?  Then you have to leave your parents behind, your wife and children as well, even your siblings. Oh, and you must leave your very life behind as well, including all of your possessions. And, more importantly, following me means that you will die — on a cross. Ready, let’s go.”

And you all look around at one another, and you are all thinking exactly the same thing – “Holy Crap. What have I gotten myself into?”

In essence this is what Jesus is saying when he turns to the crowd to tell them such a difficult teaching. “Leave your family, give away your possessions, carry your cross, detach yourself from everything you know and love in life.” Who can follow such a teaching, you say?  Obviously none of us, but I don’t think that is the end of the conversation about this text. Just like Jesus says that a builder calculates the cost of a building project, we too need to calculate the relationship we want to have with G-d, through Jesus. Or, a better way to say this is “How much do you value your relationship with G-d?” “Can you calculate the cost of the Cross of Jesus in your life?” Can you? Is it worth your friends, your whole life as you know it – or at least your family?

There is no doubt that in today’s America, our nation suffers from the idolatry of the family. What does that mean? “Putting family first” is a common mantra today – and it means we consider our own family over other families; it means our family takes precedence over our congregation; it means we won’t allow anything to come between our family and our wants. If this were not true, than so many more people would be choosing to have their children in church on Sunday rather than choosing to chase after their children and their travel sports schedules – which means playing on Sundays. Now let me be clear, the issue Jesus is talking about here is not the despising of mother and father as human beings, but the roles mothers and fathers played in contemporary Palestinian life that put families at odds with the Kingdom of G-d and its demands. Jesus’ new family was a family of choice bound together, not by patriarchal or any other societal notion of the ideal family, but by the Holy Spirit and radical equality, and serving each other to that end. Jesus’ purpose is not to instruct his followers to renounce their relatives, but to reject family notions built around blood, power structures and patriarchal subordination. They would be welcomed into Jesus’ new family with a new understanding of roles and relationships.

Does that help in understanding what Jesus is getting at when he says “hate your family”? Look, when we encounter a text that is so difficult, we need to remember that each of the texts we hear on Sunday morning is just a snippet of the entirety of the Gospel – of the journey Jesus is making to the cross. And, when Jesus says that we are to carry a cross and follow him, he is reminding us of the price he paid for each and every one of us. He bore the cross so that we don’t have to. He has defeated sin, death and the Devil, and is our ultimate shelter from the ever-present presence of evil in our lives and the world. And knowing that, it demands that we ask ourselves, “What is that worth to us? Will we choose life? Will we choose death? What is the cross worth?”

You see, each day, we wake up in the morning, and we give thanks to G-d for giving us another day (or at least we should do that every day). We remember our baptisms as we wash up for a new day, remembering that it is through our baptisms that G-d has chosen us, claimed us as beloved children of G-d. And then, as we go out into the world living into those blessings.  

Pastor Dave