September 9, 2001
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What Cost? Prayer: God, we want this
prayer to be the words of the hymn: But God, we come to you as clay - dug out, washed off, sifted, strengthened, spun and put through the fire, so that we might be shaped by you in such a way that we will follow you with joy and thanksgiving as our bent and broken places are restored and redeemed. In Christ’s name, Amen. What does it cost to be faithful to God? What do we sacrifice or give up in our 21st century understanding. In another time to sacrifice meant to make sacred and holy. The question for us is, at what cost will we make ourselves holy? There is a process we go through of being molded and shaped by God, sometimes by good experience, sometimes through pain, but God is with us all the way. The question for us is, are we willing to let God shape us into the church God wants us to be? At what cost will we follow Jesus? As we come to the lesson in Luke this morning, Jesus has been busy. Already in the 14th chapter, he has taught a lesson about what it means to be a humble guest and a humble host. He has already told the parable of the great banquet. Remember the banquet stories of Jesus are a metaphor, they are ways of explaining what the eternal realm of God is like. So Jesus tells a story of a would-be host who sent his servant out to tell the invited guests that all was prepared, and the time for them to make their way to dinner had come. When the servant to the first house, the owner said, “I’ve just bought some land, and I need to go survey it, I’m sorry, I cannot come. It costs too much to leave my property.” The next invitee says, “You know, I would come, I planned to be there, but then I went out and bought some cattle and I have to go and inspect them. Sorry. It costs too much to leave my livestock.” The third invitee says, “Look, I appreciate the invitation, but I just got married, and I’m still on my honeymoon. I know your boss will understand. It costs too much to leave my new spouse.” The servant carries the news back and says, “but you know, there is still room at your table.” His employer says, “Let’s do this. If the ones I first invited cannot, come, then go out to the shelters and street corners and get people who are not so preoccupied with what’s new in their lives, and tell them to come. The ones who said yes, then said no will not get another invitation.” Now I know that property, livestock, a new spouse deserve a lot of attention, but Jesus is making a bigger point. The invitation to the banquet is really an invitation to discipleship. Those invited counted the cost and decided it was too high and so they declined the invitation. Part of us understands the ones who declined the invitation. Our lives are busy, there are things we need to attend to and a dinner party, just doesn’t fit into our schedule. But another part of us says, we would put a fence around the field, tether the livestock, and bring the new spouse along, because we know that this dinner party is a preview of the eternal feast waiting for the faithful. We would long for a seat at that table. During the time I was a member of Faith United Christian Church in Indianapolis, we used to end each worship service the same way. We would gather in a circle around the sanctuary and sing: “I want to be a follower of Christ, I want to be one of his disciples. I want to walk in the newness of life, so let me be a follower of Christ. What do I have to do, what do I have to say, how do I have to walk, each and every day. Tell me what does it cost, if I carry the cross. O let me be a follower of Christ.” The song was a reminder of the cost of discipleship, and of our stated desire to bear the cost of that discipleship. In this lesson, Jesus wants his would be disciples to know that discipleship is not a walk on the beach on a beautiful day. A lot of people are walking with Jesus. They have seen his miracles, heard his sermons, and they believe it will be fun and interesting to walk with him awhile. After all, they do not have to do anything. He knows that they have not counted the cost and so addresses them in what seems to our ears very strange words. Unless you hate your family - parents, spouse/partners, children, brothers and sisters, even your own life, you can’t be my disciple. Probably like me, you read and heard those words and thought, what are you talking about Jesus? How can you, the one who came to embody the love of God in the world tell us that we cannot follow you unless we hate our family? Isn’t that how cult leaders separate gullible people from their families? Don’t you know that family is the most basic relationship of our lives? It is so important to us that we will gather friends and create a family if we are away from our own. We will invent one if we need to find the emotional support and physical safety we missed in our own family of origin. And sometimes, we will cling to the family we have, even if it is unhealthy because it is all that we know. How can you tell us to hate our own families and our own lives, Jesus? You are the one who came that we might have life and have it in abundance. It was you that told us to love God and our neighbors as we love ourselves, and now you are telling us to take up a our cross, like it’s already been picked out, and make the incredible sacrifice so we can be your disciple? What are you telling us? Fred Craddock in his study of the gospel of Luke is helpful to us. He says: “To hate is a Semitic expression meaning to turn away from, to detach oneself from. There is nothing of that emotion we experience in the expression “I hate you.” Were that the case, then verse 26 alone would cancel all the calls to love, to care, to nourish, especially one’s own family found throughout both Testaments. And to hate one’s own life is not a call for self-loathing, to regard oneself as a worm, to toss oneself on the trash heap of the world. What is demanded of the disciples, however, is that in the network of many loyalties in which all of us live, the claim of Christ and the gospel not only takes precedence but, in fact, redefines the others. This can and will necessarily involve some detaching, some turning away.” (Interpretation, Luke, 181-182) “Jesus delivers these sharp words about the demands and priorities of discipleship. If they are contemplating being more than hangers-on and intend to be regular diners at Jesus’ table, they need to know what they are getting into and to decide whether they can sign on for the long haul.” (Texts for Preaching vol.3, p.504)The German theologian and martyr during World War II Dietrich Bonhoffer says in his book, The Cost of Discipleship that “when God calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Jesus is talking about what it means to become a disciple of his. He is not talking about a matter of denominational identity, but about what it means to be among the baptized believers and followers who find in him as the source and joy of our eternal salvation. If we are to say yes to being a disciple, we are called to let go of all that gets between us and him so when we pick it up again, we do so as new and renewed people. Jesus wants to know if we can count the true cost of being a disciple. Are we like some little children in the store with their parents have no idea how to count the cost of anything? You have seen them in the store. They love to put things in the cart, marketers put the most colorful cereal boxes, sweetest candy, soda, chips, ice cream at their eye level. They know what they want and they want it now. The cost does not matter. At what cost will we follow Jesus? Do we even know how to start the calculation. Some costs we calculate pretty easily - the place we live, the car we drive, we may overreach, but we may have a plan for that. We calculate the cost of education for children, for the dream vacation (people saved for years to celebrate with special trips special anniversaries), some even calculate the cost of death, taxes, food, clothes, and play. But what does it cost to be a disciple of Jesus? It costs everything we have. Hear Jesus as he speaks plainly - you cannot be my disciple unless you give up all your possessions. But I love my possessions. I love my house, my car, my books, my videos, my clothes. My possessions are the things that make me, me. I worked hard for them. Still the voice of Jesus comes, let it go. Don’t let it get in the way of our relationship. Put it aside, then take it up again in relation to me. What do we possess that we are called to give up for the sake of the gospel? After all, it’s really not about our personal stuff unless it gets in the way of our relationship with God. Sometimes, it does. That is what happened to the three who would not come to the banquet. But we are not only stopped by physical relationships. Some of our stumbling blocks are emotional and spiritual. Familiarity with where we are gets in the way. We say, “this is what we know and we cannot imagine anything else. We cannot do any more, give anymore, or be any more than we already are. God has finished with us, and this is who we are. If we let go of familiarity we can make room for the new thing God is doing in us. Sometimes, we possess faith so small that there is no room to trust God now and in the future. We can only believe what is in front of us, and if we cannot imagine or dream it, or think it, it simply cannot be. If we let go our too small faith and trust in the boundless grace of God, our faith can grow as big as all eternity. Sometimes, we are possessed by a fear of letting go of what we think we know so that we can pick up something else. We can become so fearful that we spread our pessimism and cynicism like a virus that infects everyone we encounter. We act as if we really do believe that our best days are behind us, that our future has to be bleak and uncertain, that any challenge we face and which faces us cannot be met head on and overcome. If we let go of fear that nearly paralyzes us, we can hear and believe the good news is that God who calls us in Jesus Christ, who loves us unconditionally promises to be with us and to never leave us alone. In fact God has given us the gift of the Holy Spirit to sustain us. We need not be overwhelmed by fear. After all our own life’s experience tells us disappointments will come. The doctor’s news is devastating, the news we hear and watch and read is depressing. Not all dreams come true. It can all knock us off balance. But we can place ourselves on the potter’s wheel, where God is working and reworking us readying us and steadying us for the crosses that we will bear. We are being made ready for all that God wants to pour into us. So much is there for us to achieve. We have in this room right now, the abilities to do wonderful ministries of outreach, find financial stability, and achieve growth in every aspect of our lives. I believe it can happen, because God is in the business of blessing faithful disciples and we can be no less. We have a promise from God that if we empty ourselves for the sake of the gospel, if we are willing to let ourselves be reshaped by God for the sake of the gospel, good things can happen. I believe God wants us to reshape our lives by inviting us to lay aside whatever hinders us in our relationship with God. We can be filled up with renewed life and strength, we can go back and pick up what we once put aside. Having counted the cost, we can, through the currency of the gospel find that all things are new, and it is all good. Relationships with family, those we are born into and those we choose can be better. Our own faith can grow determined and stronger and we can then see ourselves in relation to God. Then our possessions, our relationships, all that once kept us from being disciples of his become tools that give us a certain quality of life, but they do not define our lives. At what cost will we follow Jesus? It is worth everything we have so that all that we have can become even more valuable than it already is. Jesus counted the cost, and paid it anyway. He went to the cross, laid down his life, was raised by God from death, and now sits at the right hand of God beckoning us to come. Jesus paid it all. What will we do?Jesus invites us to count the cost, pick up our cross, and follow him. Will we go? God grant us strength and hope as we journey with Jesus. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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