3^rd Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 8) | Luke 9.51-62 | June 29, 2025 | Pastor Richard Johnson |

29 June 2025

When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, „Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?“ But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, „I will follow you wherever you go.“ And Jesus said to him, „Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.“ To another he said, „Follow me.“ But he said, „Lord, first let me go and bury my father.“ But Jesus said to him, „Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.“ Another said, „I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.“ Jesus said to him, „No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.“ (Luke 9.51-62) 

As you probably know, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a young German pastor and theologian who lived during the rise of Hitler in Germany. He was one of those courageous churchmen who fought against the directions being taken by their government and their nation. In 1937, when Hitler had taken complete control of Germany and was beginning to reach for power throughout Europe, Bonhoeffer wrote a book, The Cost of Discipleship. It was not a book about current events; it says nothing specifically about Hitler, about fascism. And yet it is a book about what it meant to be a Christian in those days, in that place. It is a book about the cost of following Jesus, the commitment that is required to follow Christ completely.

The cost of discipleship

         This is the theme also presented by our gospel lesson this morning—indeed, this story is one Bonhoeffer talks about a great deal in his book. It’s a story we must be constantly reviewing and taking to heart if we are to be serious followers of Jesus Christ.

 “As they were going along the road, someone said to Jesus, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’” The cost of discipleship. Jesus was never one to say that following him would be easy. You know all the verses: “If anyone would follow me, let him take up his cross.” “Can you drink the cup that I drink?” “Sell everything you have and give to the poor; and come follow me.” All these are harsh words. And in this passage, too, the words are harsh. This stranger says he is willing to follow Jesus wherever he may go—and commitment like that does not come easily! Jesus just replies that those who follow him have a rougher life than the animals of the field, or the birds of the air, for they will have no home, no bed to call their own. In short, those who follow him will pay for it; there is a cost that must be borne.

I don’t think there is anything is the gospel that is more difficult for us to understand. We live in a society where it doesn’t cost much to be a Christian—or so we often think. Perhaps the biggest mistake those of us in the church have made is that we downplay the cost of discipleship. We do that in many ways. We make it terribly easy to join the church. It isn’t that way everywhere. At least some years ago, in the Church of South India new church members committed themselves to attend all services of worship, to observe daily private worship in their homes, to attend classes on the Bible and Christian doctrine. They committed themselves, even if they were illiterate., to learn to  read the Bible for themselves. They committed themselves to give one-tenth of their income to the church. They committed themselves, in that land where the caste system was still a strong social force, to eat a meal with someone of a different caste and thus prove their belief that all people are equal in God’s sight And they committed themselves to winning someone else to be a Christan.

If those were the requirements to join this congregation, would you be here this morning? Probably most of us wouldn’t. Our membership requirements are a lot less stringent. And maybe that’s why we don’t do so well in some aspects of our church life. Once I did a study of new members in the congregation I was serving. I found that of some hundred members who had joined in the past five years, only about half were still active in the life of the congregation. Now of the half who were no longer active, of course, some had died, some had moved away, some had become incapacitated. Still taking all that into consideration, over that period I studied, about a third of the new members had simply dropped out. Statistically, that is not unusual. Perhaps those new members were simply not prepared for the cost of being a disciple.

We cannot cast stones, however, for I suspect that you and I were partly responsible for this. We were the ones who tried to make the church sound easy. “Come to our church,” we say, “it’s so friendly. The people are so nice, we have great programs.” Well, we hope that’s true, but do you see the problem? If people join the church because the people are friendly and the programs are great—then they simply aren’t prepared to count the cost of Christian discipleship. And so, like the man who came to Jesus, they are filled with enthusiasm for a while; but when they discover that being a Christian is more than joining a club with some nice people, they fall away.

What is required?

         What is the cost of discipleship in our day? What does following Christ require of us? Well, it has something to do with money, for one thing. That seems an odd place to start, perhaps, but Jesus often started there. He told the rich young man that he’d have to give up all his material possessions to be a disciple; he warned the man in today’s story that Christian disciples often give up the security of their home and have no place to lay their head.

More to the point, we live in a society that is highly materialistic. If we don’t understand that following Christ has a lot to do with our material goods, then we just haven’t understood about the cost of discipleship. A few years ago, I drove by a big, beautiful church building on a busy street. There was a sign in front of the church with the pastor’s name, time of service, and so forth. And there, at the bottom of the sign in great big letters, these words: “This church does not have a financial campaign” What a way to advertise! They were obviously seeking people who didn’t want to feel they were always being asked for money, but I think they misunderstood the cost of discipleship. Following Christ means re-ordering your financial priorities. That’s part of the cost.

Now I’m not talking just about what we give to the church, though certainly that’s a part of it. When Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he opposed the state withholding tax, saying that people ought to have to pay their taxes directly because taxes ought to hurt! I’m not so sure about his remark as a matter of policy, but I think he’s on to something in terms of Christian stewardship. A Christian’s giving ought to be felt! That’s one reason that I, for one—and I’m not saying this is the right choice, it’s just my choice—I, for one, have resisted the temptation to make my giving an automatic bank withdrawal. Most every other obligation I have is on autopay. It’s easy. I don’t have to think about it. But with my giving to the church, I want to write that check every week. I want to feel it. I don’t want it to be just another bill; I want it to be my deliberate, conscientious act of following Christ with my material goods.

Of course, faithful Christian discipleship is about more than giving to the church, much more. It’s also about deliberately stepping back from the materialism of our society. Someone once said that Christian stewardship isn’t so much about the part of our income we give to the church, it’s about what we do with the rest of it. Are you one of those people who simply must have the latest car, the latest electronic gadget, the latest, everything else? How different form the Son of Man, who had no place to lay his head!

It’s not just about money

There are other costs to discipleship. There is the cost of taking time away from what you want to do to help someone else—to visit a lonely elderly person, to attend a school boar meeting and take part in community affairs. There is the cost of taking an unpopular stand because you believe it is what Christ calls you to do. No, being a Christian disciple is not easy; it requires a commitment that gives, and gives, and gives, and sometimes doesn’t seem to return much in return. That’s the kind of commitment that Jesus offered, the commitment that led him to set his face toward Jerusalem where he knew a cross was waiting.

“Jesus said to another man, ‘Follow me,’ but the man said, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ But Jesus said, ‘Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’” Now Jesus isn’t quite as harsh here as you may think, Scholars suggest that the man’s father wasn’t literally dead, but that he was old and sick, and the man was really saying, “Let me wait until my father dies, then I’ll be free to follow you.” When we think in those terms, we begin to understand that this man is like all of us who intend to follow Christ, but not quite yet—not until we take care of some important personal business.

But Jesus tells us something here about the urgency of following him. Christian discipleship is no something that will wait; it needs to be acted on today. Years ago my great-uncle Dan had a pacemaker put in. One weekend, he told me, he was just sitting in his chair, and he took his pulse. It seemed much too low, so he called the doctor. The doctor was out of town, and the doctor on call didn’t seem concerned. “Just take it easy,” he said, “and call your own doctor Monday morning” but Dan felt that something was seriously wrong, so he went to the emergency room. There a cardiologist examined him and immediately sent him to surgery to insert the pacemaker. He later told Dan that if he had waited until Monday morning, he likely would have been dead.

It is that kind of urgency that Jesus presents. His words to the man who wanted to care for his father are directed to all of us who have great piles of excuses about why we’re not more serious about our faith right now. “We’ll worry about that a little later,” we say to ourselves. “Right now, other things are pressing.” And what’s so difficult, you see, is that other things are pressing. What could be more important than caring for an aged father? That’s not a flippant excuse; it’s a very good reason. But Jesus isn’t convinced! Nothing, he says, is more important than following Christ—now, today.

Singleness of purpose

Another man said to Jesus, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus replied, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Here Jesus tells us something else about discipleship. He demands singleness of purpose. His example is short and to the point. If a man’s job is plowing a field, he can’t have his mind on what’s happening back home; if he looks back, he won’t be able to plow a straight line.

What he means is that in our lives, our commitment to Christ must be our primary concern, our chief purpose. It is easy to think of the church as just one more group we belong to, one more commitment we have. Jesus says otherwise. Your commitment to me, he says, is your very purpose in life. It is not recreation; it is not an extracurricular activity. It is the main event. And whatever else you do, whatever other commitments you have, if they prevent you from giving your full attention to Christ, they must be set aside.

I hasten to say that commitment to Christ and commitment to the church are not always necessarily the same thing; our commitment to Christ requires that we give a complete commitment to our marriage, or to our children; sometimes that means that time spent with spouse or children must come before commitments to the church. But they don’t come before commitment to Christ! Indeed, a full and complete commitment to Christ is the only way we can fulfill the commitments we make to other people. What Jesus says to this third man is simply that following him must be our primary purpose in life, and all other purposes, no matter how good, noble, understandable, must be secondary. Very simply, Christ demands our all.

A discipleship that is costly, the sense that gospel’s message is urgent, the singleness of purpose of those who follow Christ—these are the demands that Jesus makes of us who would be his disciples. Now as then, it is a difficult road to take. But our Lord has promised us that we do not do this on our strength. He has promised that his yoke is easy, his burden light. “And the favor he shows, the joy he bestows, are for them who will trust and obey.”

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Pastor Richard Johnson

Webster, NY

roj@nccn.net