Counting the Cost

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Ordinary 23C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw

Text: 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.

Does he really mean that?  Did he really just say, straight up “If you want to follow me, you have to hate your father and mother, wife and children, even life itself”?

There’s a danger in reading everything in the Gospels literally.  There really is.  Just as we do today, in first century Palestine, teachers and speakers used different forms of speech when they were trying to make a point: allegories, irony, generalizations, exaggerations and hyperbole were all part and parcel of the practice of speaking and teaching.  It is disingenuous – in other words, it is less than honest - to claim that Jesus’ words in the Gospels can ONLY be read in their literal sense, that there is no other alternative explanation, no other motivation behind his words.  While it IS SIMPLER and EASIER to do that, it sets aside God’s call to love God with all our MINDS in addition to all our heart, soul and strength. 

An initial question I would ask as we approach today’s text is this: what is Jesus framing with this statement?  What is he addressing? 

He is continuing the thought that was so ably addressed last Sunday by Reverend Daniel Mochamps (by the way, remind me to not let so much time pass before I ask him to come back).  Jesus had just told the parable of the great dinner, where none of the guests who were originally invited deigned to show up, so the host sent his servant out into the streets to bring in anyone he could find; beggars, slaves, anybody. 

We have to start from that imagery and see where Jesus is going with this. 

First we have, in the first verses of the chapter, Jesus healing a man who suffered from dropsy – which is swelling due to abnormal fluid retention – and he does it on the Sabbath, in front of lawyers and Pharisees … and he asks them point-blank: Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?  Luke’s Gospel records that they could not reply.  It brings to mind Leslie’s message to the children Sunday before last, about getting bent out of shape because of a rule being broken, while completely losing sight of the fact that the PEOPLE and the RELATIONSHIPS are more important than the rules.

What Jesus engages in these two examples, the man preparing to build a tower, and the King facing the prospect of a fight against an army twice as big as his, is an entreaty to his disciples – not just the twelve, but any who would choose to follow him – to understand exactly what is involved in following him.  At this point in the Luke, Jesus is already aware of the rumblings that are beginning to be heard among the religious leadership… he is already sensing where this is going to end… and though it will end in ultimate good, it will not be without pain and suffering – and death.  HIS death. 

So Jesus is acutely aware of the fact that being a disciple of his will not be a cakewalk.  In telling these stories, he’s not discouraging people from following him, he’s discouraging them from following him without first counting the cost.

For his immediate disciples, counting the cost of following him meant accepting the likelihood – the probability – that they would eventually lose their lives – literally – for the Gospel.  What they began preaching after Jesus’ resurrection was simply too radical and too anti-establishment and anti-institutional to be readily accepted by folks who had become more interested in maintaining the institutions they belonged to than in helping to break in the Kingdom that God had intended from the beginning. 

Alyce M. McKenzie, Professor of Homiletics, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, puts it this way:

“Counting the cost doesn’t mean we have to pay up, that we have to come up with enough renunciation and enough pain to earn our way into Jesus’ good graces. Jesus is not saying that we must earn divine love by hating our family or by holding a contest to see whose cross contains the most pain.

Robert H. Stein, in his Introduction to the Parables of Jesus points out that “the kingdom of God is offered graciously by God to all” (112). God’s love provides us with the perseverance and energy to follow Jesus as we live in and into that kingdom. We need to view this passage in the context of Luke’s gospel, which repeatedly emphasizes the compassion of a God who seeks out and saves the lost, who stands ready to forgive the sinner. Stein Says, “We aren’t excluded from God’s kingdom because it’s too hard to earn entrance. We exclude ourselves when we willfully reject God’s gracious invitation” (112) Luke 14:15-24).

The grace of God is not cheap grace. It requires a response. Says Stein “one can only receive the grace of God with open hands, and to open those hands one must let go of all that would frustrate the reception of that grace. Jesus refers to this letting go as repentance…It is foolish and damning to answer the invitation if one is not willing to repent” (Stein, 112). Half hearted disciples RSVP to the messianic banquet and then find excuses not to attend (14:18-10).”

What Jesus is trying to convey to his followers – those who have been with him from the beginning as well as those who just found out he was in the area and decided to tag along, is that there is more to following him than simply agreeing with his teachings.  It is more than a simple philosophical agreement to live with the knowledge of a certain understanding of what it means to be in relationship with God. 

It means to put that knowledge, that understanding, that RELATIONSHIP on display and into action in the way we live as followers of Christ. 

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?   

Admittedly, it would seem to be a little more of a challenge for US to try to ‘count the cost’ of following Christ.  I mean, after all, we DO live in a country and at a time where following Christ – or at least calling yourself a Christian – is more the norm for THIS area than not, right?  So it should be easier to be a Christian in a place where we’re not really at risk of being thrown to the lions for SAYING we’re Christians …

The risk is in losing sight of exactly what it means to BE a Christian where it is presumed to be the norm. 

It is dangerous for faith to be co-opted, to be subsumed into a culture when that culture simply resorts to calling itself by that faith name, when there is actually very little IN that culture that could be identified as belonging to that faith.  I would dare say that, if Jesus were to come to the United States today, he would be astonished that the country calls itself a ‘Christian Nation’, or that a portion of the world would consider it to be that. 

I think he would still find communities in which he would feel at home.  Small, tightly-knit groups of people who work to do as he taught, to live as he lived, to love God and love their neighbor as he commanded…

My prayer is that this church called Jerusalem would be one of those places.

Let’s pray.