How Much?

Sunday, September 5, 2004
14th after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Luke 14:25-33

25Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, 26‘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. 27Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 28For 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? 29Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, 30saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” 31Or 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? 32If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. 33So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

A youth group gathers for Bible Study in their church’s social hall. Shortly after they begin their study, it is suddenly interrupted by a masked group of gunmen, brandishing machine guns and pistols, slamming through the doors and screaming at everyone in the room to get on the floor. They continue to scream and terrorize the kids who minutes earlier were studying what it means to follow Christ. They then begin to question the faith of the kids: What do you believe? Who do you believe in? And then comes the question they were all dreading: “ARE YOU WILLING TO DIE FOR YOUR JESUS???!!!” They continue, screaming, “If you are, stand on that side of the room, UP against the wall!!!” Slowly at first, one and then another member of the group stands and, shaking, makes their way to the wall, some are in tears, some are praying, others are quietly making their way to the area. When all those who will have gathered against the far wall, the gunmen fall silent.

After a pause, they begin removing their masks, revealing themselves to be a group, not of terrorists, but of youth leaders. Their next question quietly reverberates across the room.

“Okay, you’ve shown you’re willing to die for Jesus, but are you willing to live for him?”

The first time I heard the illustration, it took my breath away. In youth, I think we tend to present faith in the starkest way possible: black and white, good and bad, life and death. Because that is, after all, what we are talking about: temporal choices with eternal consequences.

And here’s the hard part: that aspect of faith never changes. However much we moderate the presentation, the experience, the delivery, the CONTEXT in which we live out that faith, it is still, ultimately, an all or nothing proposition. I find myself uncomfortable with the thought. Not that I disagree with it, it’s not that at all. What makes me uncomfortable is the thought that I’m not being who I’m supposed to be. I’m not doing all that I’ve been called to do. That comes out in some aspects of the Pastoral ministry, but on a deeper, more universal level, it is a thought which I would hope all of us who call ourselves Christ-followers will at some point find ourselves wrestling with.

Wednesday night I shared the text reference with the group that was here, and read verses 25, 26 and 33 to them, and asked for prayer as I was preparing for today. The request was in all sincerity.

It is a passage that I think most of us who’ve either been raised in the church or have spent any time in regular Sunday School attendance or Bible study are at least vaguely familiar with.

The word that jumps out, of course, is ‘hate’. This is the prince of peace, the one who came to the world to save it, not to condemn it, speaking. What is Jesus telling us to do?? HATE our parents an brothers and sisters in order to follow him? What’s up with that?!? If we were to read with the understanding of the word in today’s modern English, there are very few subtleties, very few nuances to the word “hate”. We have a translation issue at work here. ouj misei ' – (not) hate - in this case, the term hate is used in a relative sense … interesting in light of the principal thrust of the passage as a whole - In first century Palestine, and probably as true today as it was then, to neglect social customs pertaining to family loyalties would probably have been interpreted as hate. Jesus was talking to his audience then and there. What he was saying has resonance throughout history, and speaks to us on as many levels today as it did to the people who heard the words coming directly from his lips.

The examples Christ gives are plain and simple. We still ask for a bid on a contract to build a building. That is part of what it means to be prepared, to set a budget, to plan for the cost. We hear of the casualty estimates that are worked up when Generals are facing the prospect of sending troops into harms way. That’s just the way things are done.

It is no different when we confront the prospect of following Jesus Christ. What Jesus tells us, though, is exactly what it will cost us to follow him. And the answer is: EVERYTHING.

We may not live in an area of the world where becoming a Christ-follower could cost us our family relationships, our jobs, or even our lives, but the specifics are not what Christ is so much concerned with. Whether we DO lose our possessions, our livelihood, our family, or our lives for the sake of Christ is not the point.

Jesus always went to the heart of the matter. And the heart of the matter in this case is not the possibility or even the probability of losing those things, though it became a VERY real and commonplace result for many Christian martyrs during the mid and late first century and into the second century.

The heart of the matter was that the listeners needed to realize up front that they would need to forego any claim those things had on their souls in order to turn it ALL over to Jesus as Lord of their lives.

What Jesus is asking us to do is to ask ourselves the question: who will you serve? How much does following Christ mean to you? No, that’s actually the wrong question. It’s not the following in itself that is at the heart of this debate. The right question is: How much does JESUS CHRIST himself mean to you, to us as a congregation? How much do we mean it when we sing “Wherever He Leads I’ll Go”, or “Have Thine Own Way, Lord”?

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

In verse 33, we hear Jesus say,

‘None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up
all your possessions.’

While there are those among us who have done just that – given up everything in response to the call God placed on their lives, we need to understand that the call really doesn’t allow for any response OTHER than that from any of us.

What does ‘giving up all our possessions’ mean? My friend Jay Voorhees preached a sermon a couple of months ago on possessions – on being possessed as much as on possessing, and the point he made was this: what we consider ourselves to possess, to one degree or another possesses us.

Would you rather be possessed by the obsession with an object - a car, house, a career, a 40 inch plasma screen high definition television set, or by the Lord of life, the giver of all good gifts, the redeemer and savior of our souls?

In the words of Joshua,

“Choose this day whom you will serve … as for me and my house, we will serve the
LORD."

Let’s pray.