25<\/sup> Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a026<\/sup> „If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters–yes, even their own life–such a person cannot be my disciple.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a027<\/sup> And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a028<\/sup> „Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a029<\/sup> For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you,<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a030<\/sup> saying, ‚This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.‘<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a031<\/sup> „Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a032<\/sup> If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a033<\/sup> In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a034<\/sup> „Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a035<\/sup> It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. „Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.“ Luke 14:25-35 New International Version\u00a0(NIV)<\/strong><\/p>\n Holy Bible, New International Version\u00ae, NIV\u00ae Copyright \u00a91973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by\u00a0Biblica, Inc.\u00ae\u00a0Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.<\/strong><\/p>\n Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n A few years ago a church not too far from here received a healthy financial gift in memory of a member who had just passed.\u00a0 The gift specifically went to the cemetery fund, and as this congregation was wanting to install a columbarium in their cemetery, the gift provided a nice start to the total cost of this project.\u00a0 The cemetery committee then started going around to many of the local churches that had installed a columbarium and taking measurements, pictures and just gathering ideas so they too could get started on their project. About a month later I ran into the pastor of that church and I asked him how their progress with their columbarium was going.\u00a0 That was when I got the other side of the story.\u00a0 Turns out the memorial money was burning a hole in the pockets of the committee.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t have enough saved up for a columbarium, but they knew they wanted to go in that direction.\u00a0 The chair of the committee was adamant that they go ahead and spend this financial gift and pour the concrete foundation and the concrete pad that their future columbarium would sit on.\u00a0 The pastor and several of the other members of the committee were hesitant to do that, especially since they had no specific or concrete (pun intended) plans for an actual columbarium.\u00a0 The pastor called it \u201cputting the cart before the horse\u201d which I think is an appropriate description of the situation.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Luckily reason won, and the church as a whole decided to wait until they had the money for the whole thing, and not just the concrete pad.\u00a0 It\u2019s perfectly fine to plan for the future, but as the church, we need to be cautious of \u201cputting the cart before the horse.\u201d<\/p>\n \n In our Gospel today Jesus tells a crowd that is following him that they need to be planning for their future and for Jesus, that future means looks very different.\u00a0 Jesus tells his disciples they will have a cross to bear, and they must carry it in order to follow him.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t sound like good news because the cross is an instrument of death and torture.\u00a0 However, in order to bear it, the time to plan for it is now, because its coming.\u00a0 Jesus uses two examples of planning ahead:\u00a0 The first is of a person that wants to build a tower.\u00a0 That is similar to this local church that wanted a columbarium, putting the cart before the horse.\u00a0 The next is about a King who must decide if his troops are strong enough to eliminate twice as many, and if not, he must send a delegation of peace.\u00a0 Both of these examples show us that there is a bigger picture that we have to look towards.\u00a0 That bigger picture may put us at odds with those that we love, or even with ourselves.\u00a0 That is because following Christ is a radical path to take.\u00a0 It is a conflict with many of the things we face on a daily basis.\u00a0 It can be a conflict with logic, with sound reason, or even a conflict with our beliefs and understandings of the church.\u00a0 That is why we have to plan for those moments.\u00a0 We all have moments where we want to put the cart before the horse, where we have what we think is a good idea or the best\u2026.but others may think it is illogical or even crazy.\u00a0 And so stepping back and looking at the bigger picture, is what is in order.<\/p>\n \n Luke quotes Jesus as saying \u201cWhoever does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.\u201d\u00a0 The word used there for disciple also translates as \u201clearner.\u201d\u00a0 To use that translation, we get a slightly different understanding here.\u00a0 Whoever does not carry his cross and follow Jesus cannot be his learner.\u00a0 Reading it in that way gives me the vision of Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, while Martha busily prepares the festival meal, being frustrated and probably muttering under her breath that her sister is not helping.\u00a0 But Jesus\u2019 comment on that one is that Mary chose the better part.\u00a0 Learning from Jesus is always the better part.\u00a0 Discerning what cross we bear in life is a part of that learning.\u00a0 It is the cost of our discipleship.<\/p>\n \n In our text Jesus finishes his teaching by telling the crowds that in order to become his disciple they had to give up all their possessions.\u00a0 As if bearing a cross wasn\u2019t hard enough.\u00a0 We all know humans have a need to have \u201cstuff\u201d.\u00a0 So much so that we pay a storage facility to store all the stuff that won\u2019t fit in our houses.\u00a0 Could you give up everything you have in order to be a disciple?\u00a0 Or to put it another way, could you empty yourself of everything you have in order to gain discipleship.\u00a0 Emptying ourselves is not just giving of time and talents, it is not just helping at community needs center or collecting food or delivering school supplies.\u00a0 Instead, it is all these things together.\u00a0 Eventually we do indeed reach that point where we are empty of all these things.\u00a0 That point is the moment in time when we move from the church militant into the church triumphant and into the eternal care of God.\u00a0 We can\u2019t take anything with us, we can\u2019t buy our way in.\u00a0 But we don\u2019t wait until the final moments of breath to reconcile our souls.\u00a0 Instead, we plan for that moment by living a life in service to God.\u00a0 We strive to plan ahead, rather than getting caught up in the moment.\u00a0 We have to have moments of reason, and yet realize we are on a radical path that doesn\u2019t always agree with humanity.\u00a0 Resurrection itself is radical when we compare it to the human life.\u00a0 We are born, and one day we will die.\u00a0 But resurrection adds a third element, life everlasting.\u00a0 That is the tower we are working towards, even though we are still working on the foundation.\u00a0 But thankfully we have enough to build the tower, because in baptism Christ has claimed us as his own, and we know that we will reach the pinnacle.\u00a0 The battle will be won, the tower will be built, and we will see what a truly possession less life looks like, as we bask in the glory that is the Kingdom of God.\u00a0 In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n \u00a9The Rev. Dr. Judson F Merrell, STS<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 judsonmerrell@bellsouth.net<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 St. Peter\u2019s Lutheran Church<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 Lexington, SC USA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 13th Sunday after Pentecost | 7-9-2025 | A Sermon on Luke 14:25-35 | by The Rev. Dr. Judson F Merrell, STS | 25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: \u00a026 „If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters–yes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20799,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,157,853,108,110,235,413,3,109],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-25413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lukas","category-beitragende","category-bibel","category-current","category-engl","category-judson-f-merrell","category-kapitel-14-chapter-14-lukas","category-nt","category-predigten"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25414,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25413\/revisions\/25414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25413"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=25413"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=25413"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=25413"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=25413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}