Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
9/1/10
Luke 14:25-35
Bror Erickson
[25] Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, [26] "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. [27] Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. [28] 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? [29] Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, [30] saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.' [31] 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? [32] And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. [33] So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
[34] "Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? [35] 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." Luke 14:25-35 (ESV)
Now great crowds accompanied him….
Sounds like today doesn’t it? Great crowds following Christ. Gads and gads of them piling in to the nations capital. O.K. maybe not to follow Christ, but to hear those they think are His spokesmen. The political right and left of our country, Glen Beck and Al Sharpton, spokesmen for Christ, invoking God in the name of country. And no one seems to care a lick about what they are saying or doing, whether they are truly representing Christ or not, as long as they invoke his name while they are doing it. He said Jesus Christ he must be a Christian. Or the great crowds purchasing anything that calls itself Christian with the idea that it has to be good if it is Christian, and eating up pop psychology slightly warmed over by the spoonful as long as it invokes Christ’s name. And why is this so important? Why is it so important that they have Christ, that they invoke Christ?
Ironically, because they want the same thing these crowds following the true Christ want. Ironically, because they want the same thing these crowds wanted from Christ.
They wanted a Millennial Kingdom. They wanted their country to be restored to prominence. They wanted opulence. They wanted wealth. They wanted their families back together and not torn apart. They wanted free bread. They wanted an earthly king, political power, perhaps an honest politician that could fix things. And it was because of these desires and false expectations of the Christ that Jesus turns on them as He makes his way to the capital to do something quite different.
I mean the words that follow here are stark. The words that follow dash hopes. The words that follow are harsh. I’m not sure anyone has ever read these words or heard them without wondering, am I worthy?
Here the God who is love, tells us we have to hate. Hate, and not the people it is easy for us to hate, but hate the very people we are inclined to love more than Jesus: father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yourself. And if you don’t you can’t be his disciple.
Yikes. Of course, I’ve gone through my periods of hate now and then. I can look back on a few family squabbles between siblings and parents that turned down right ugly. I’ve harbored resentment towards family members for years. And oh that the hate Jesus was talking about would be such hate as that which ended with the January winds of Montana slapping me across my seventeen year old face a thousand miles from home and a thousand miles from nowhere. You know, the kind of hate that makes you look forward to a family get together as much as you do an inspection of your prostate. I mean the love I have for myself can justify that kind of hate. But the hate I have for myself can’t justify that kind of hate. Teenage pride can justify a lot of stupidity. But then Jesus doesn’t ask me to hate just them, but he asks me to hate myself enough to love them and forgive them as he forgives me. Now that can be a bitter pill to swallow, you mean I have to hate them that much, so much that I’m actually willing in the end to forgive them?
Jesus turns and slaps the crowd across the face. You want me? You want to own me. You want me to do your bidding. You think I am going to the capital to restore the kingdom, the golden era we had under king David, and King Solomon? Hah! And you follow me, because you want to go along for the ride. You don’t see it. I’m carrying a cross, and if you are going to follow me to the kingdom, you are going to bear a cross too, because this world is going to hate you as it has hated me. Don’t you see I go to die?
So you too, if you will live must die. You must die to everything in this world. You must die to sin. You must die and your idols with you, your family, your country, your job, your house, your ambitions, yourself.
“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Luke 9:24 (ESV)
Count the cost. Are any of these things worth it? Or do you really have it in you to put Jesus first in your life? Are any of these things worth it? Will you let them stand in the way?
“Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” And they aren’t easy crosses. Jesus drives the point home. He knows. He knows that there are those in the crowd who will hear him, listen to him and follow him. He knows for his sake they are going to lose all. Those who follow him are going to be persecuted by the world. Family will abandon them. Fathers and mothers will disown them. One thinks of St. Paul about whom many of the best exegetes argue was divorced, probably losing his wife when he converted and abandoned the best schools of the Pharisees. Or the ex Islamic Terrorist who converted to Christianity with his wife and children, and his father in-law killed his wife and kids in the name of Allah. That incident reported to me just last year. Oh I read that and I think of some of you. Lord only knows the pain suffered when the family that expects you to go watch their kids get baptized, won’t darken the door of your church when you or your children are baptized. The neighbors who come with cookies when you move in, and train their dogs to use your lawn two weeks later when you don’t go to “church” with them. Bosses that pass you up for promotion, and in the back of your mind, perhaps without proof, you can only but think, that’d be my job if…
Not easy crosses. Yet salt of the earth, you are here. For if the salt loses flavor who can restore it?
Jesus. What more is there? What could be worth it to abandon him? As St. Polycarp replied to his tormentors before being burned alive, “For 6 an 80 years I have been serving him and he has done me no wrong, how can I then blaspheme my king who has saved me!”
Yes, when you count this cost, it is a light burden that has been placed on you, an easy yoke. For Christ has saved you from this world. And if the world will hate you for loving Christ, then it is not love they will give you for hating Christ. (And that is the choice, hate Christ, or hate the world.) For it is not love that asks you to turn your back on your savior. It is not love that hates you for Christ’s sake. It is not love that would stand in the way between you and the salvation Christ has won for you on the cross. For this world does not know how to love, not when that love requires its death. But Jesus died. Jesus died for you. Jesus carried a cross, and his cross is your cross, your cross is his cross. He knows and loves you, and when you hurt he hurts with you because his is true love, love that gives you life. And he, unlike this world, unlike sin death and the power of the devil, does you no harm. Because if his cross is your cross, and your cross is his cross, then his death is your death, his grave is your grave, and his grave is empty, because his resurrection is your resurrection, his life is your life, and his life is eternal. And when this is realized, then hating the world in Christ, is to love in the name of Christ, a love that wants your father, your mother, your son, your daughter, your brother and sister to die to this world as you have died to this world, in Christ, so that just as you were buried with him in baptism so you would walk in the newness of life now, and so would they.
Now the peace of God that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment