Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, 09/09/2007

Sermon on Luke 14:25-33, by Hubert Beck

Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.' Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (ESV)

GOD'S GRACE - A COSTLY TREASURE!

Life continually keeps a person "off-balance," does it not? So often when one experiences what seems to be a period of relative calm and stability something "blind sides" a person, throwing stability into instability. It is not a moment by moment experience, of course, but it is the rare person indeed who goes through life without being knocked off-balance by unexpected turns of events from time to time. A secure job is lost to out-sourcing. A marriage flounders over unanticipated difficulties or disappointments. A supposedly model child goes into surprisingly uncharacteristic ways. A doctor's clean bill of health one day becomes a critical life and death issue the next day.

Even worldly event take such strange turns: The Berlin Wall comes down with hardly a previous hint that it is not permanent. Communism flounders and the Cold War becomes a luke-warm alliance between previously inimical nations within months. Floods and hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes knock stable lives into a sea of trouble in an instant. Time after time the quiet steadiness of life is thrown into turmoil by extraordinary happenings that alter the entire path of history.

Life is always on the very lip of being thrown off-balance.

JESUS - A CREATOR OF OFF-BALANCE MOMENTS

Jesus regularly creates such off-balance moments. They are not accidental, unplanned, unexpected moments. They are quite clearly intentional if we take the gospel narratives seriously. Today's gospel is a clear case in point.

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters . . . " How can this "bearer of the love of God" speak of hating parents and children and siblings? Is he not known, in fact, for his constant call to love one another? People in our own day and time regularly call for the resolution of problems and troubles, whether they be personal, national, or international, through the exercise of love - and Jesus is repeatedly named as a primary origin of such calls to self-restraint, neighborly courtesy, thoughtful interactions, benevolent deeds, considerate conduct, tolerance of differences, and other such "random acts of kindness."

Here he is, though, calling on us to hate our parents and children and siblings. Of course, he is not merely calling us to hate those people as an act in itself, but it is to be done in order to "come to me," for unless such hatred is exercised, one "cannot be my disciple." So there is something of a mitigating circumstance in this hatred of those whom we are usually called upon to love, but it is still hatred, and that sounds so unlike the very bearer of God's love in his own body.

To add to all this Jesus insists that one not only hate parents, children and siblings, but "yes, even his own life." For "whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." He said all this before his hearers had actually seen him bear the cross he was to take up in a relatively short time, but the reference was unmistakable. A cross always meant death, and to "bear one's own cross and come after me" unquestionably meant a complete and total denial of self, a "death to all one has previously lived for" in order to take up a new life by following Jesus. That, my friends, is one big order, for we all hang onto our lives with every ounce of energy at our disposal. Jesus does not tell us that it will be wrenched away from us. That would be one thing - it would be out of our control if it were wrenched away from us. But he calls on us to voluntarily renounce our lives as having any ultimate importance, to reject everything the world values in itself, to pronounce our lives dead to all earthly partialities in order to take up a whole new way of life directed and governed by none other than the one who calls us to follow him.

It is apparent from these words that "following Jesus" is most assuredly not a comfortable way of life! It is very disconcerting, for it is a demanding, challenging, taxing, trying way of life. He makes that quite clear - and it is essential that we listen to him carefully!

This set of stringent demands on our life is set into a particular context. It is essential to note this so that the text can be given its proper significance. Immediately preceding today's Gospel reading we hear of Jesus' visit to the house of a ruler of the Pharisees where he has engaged in a series of actions and sayings that have heightened the rising tension around himself as he moves toward Jerusalem. It is the Sabbath, and he heals a man right in the house of the Pharisee who has invited him in to eat, enraging the righteous lawyers and Pharisees at table with him - the very ones who are trying to show courtesy to him by this invitation to dine with them. Then, noticing how these guests were jockeying for position at the table he addresses this effort at exalting themselves by urging a humility alien to their actions. He follows this by addressing the man who had invited him, virtually admonishing him by saying "when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you." None of this sits well either with the man in whose house he is dining nor with those who are dining with him. He has thrown everything off-balance for the people whose hospitality he is experiencing.

One of those at table, nevertheless, seems at least somewhat impressed with Jesus. He says, "Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God," as though he at least caught a glimmer of what Jesus was trying to get across. Jesus responds to that remark with the parable of a man who gave a banquet, inviting friends who, one and all, found excuse not to come. Upon hearing the report of all these refusals, "The master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.'" When that was done room remained for more guests and the master order the servant to "go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled." Jesus is clearly saying that God wants people at the table of his grace, and he is determined to have them there, no matter who they are - even if they are, in fact, unlikely guests! This is a direct address to the people around him, for he says, "I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet." He offends those around him who are sure that they belong at this banquet table of God and that they deserve such a place, telling them that God will gather the most unlikely people to share in the heavenly feast in place of them.

This is how our text throws everything off-balance, for hardly has Jesus said that God wants all kinds of people at his feast when he says that coming to this banquet table requires the most stringent kind of commitment - a commitment renouncing all that one holds near and dear in order to be present at this table. Coming to this table is not so simple as just coming in and sitting down. One must leave everything near and dear to one's self at the door before one can enter this banquet hall. In one breath he speaks of God's wanting everybody to come in and in the next breath he does everything he can to insist that it will be most difficult for anybody to sit at this table at all!

Accenting this, instantly following our text one reads the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin and the Prodigal Son. Immediately one sees and hears once again God's intense desire for the lost and wandering to be present with him in the banquet hall of his grace. In other words, surrounding this text speaking of how much commitment is required to get into the banquet hall he speaks constantly about how much God wants people to be there. That is what I mean when I say that he keeps throwing us off-balance. Does he want us at any cost . . . or is the cost so great that hardly anybody will be admitted?

LIVING WITH THE OFF-BALANCE MOMENTS

So what are we to do with all this? Perhaps an early kind of response to the question can lie in the form of the vocabulary at issue. The Greek word translated "hate" is very literal, but it is suggested by most commentators that it is not, at least in this case and others similar to it, a hatred such as we usually associate with a rejection in the form of intensely detesting the one hated, an emotional loathing and abhorrence of the one hated, but it has more to do with refusing to designate a primary place to the other, a renunciation of first responsibility, a rejection in the sense of loving one less than another, a putting off of one love in order to love the other more intensely. While it is important than we not downplay the power and force of that word in our text, it is equally important to recognize that even Jesus did not "hate" his own mother or brothers in the earlier sense while he quite clearly refused to give them first priority in his life over against the Father's will.

It is clear under any circumstances that Jesus is saying that those who become his disciples must be committed exclusively to him. They cannot have commitments to anyone or anything else above or before him. He is demanding the separation of the disciples from any or all other earthly attachments. It is recognized, of course, that certain "attachments" are necessary for daily life. Even Jesus ate and drank, was clothed and sheltered. But the crowds to whom Jesus addresses himself in the text are asked to "hate" such attachments in the sense of making them secondary to their attachment to Jesus and the Father who sent him. As he says in the concluding verse of our text, "So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple." There, in a nutshell, lies the basic point of our text.

To emphasize this he tells the two parables that are the inner core of today's Gospel reading. If one intends to build a tower, one must count the cost before starting it or else one will become the neighborhood fool for starting something one cannot finance to the finish. Or if a king goes to battle he must determine the likelihood of his forces overcoming the enemy forces, for if he fails to do so he runs the grave risk of losing everything. So also, that one who desires to follow Jesus, to become his disciple, must count the cost before undertaking such a position and the journey that goes with it.

GOD'S GRACE - THE MOST OFF-BALANCE ACT OF ALL!

I once heard a fellow, commenting on these parables, say that he had always found them to be some of the most perplexing statements in the Bible. "How can one count the cost ahead of time," he asked, "when one has no real idea of what those costs might be? After all, many a person has miscalculated costs in spite of the best efforts to anticipate them ahead of time. Once all the calculations are made, the surprise element sets in. The unanticipated takes place. The unexpected catches one off-balance and, in spite of the best intentions and the most careful estimates, one cannot complete what one begins. So how can I count the cost with the certainty that Jesus seems to insist on if I am to truly be his disciple to the very end? How can I know the possibilities of my defecting from the course of faith as life takes its toll on me, as pressures mount in life, as anti-faith forces and influences place constraints on me? I desperately want to remain faithful to the end, but how can I be sure I shall be?"

This lament, I suspect, haunts many or most of us, for we know any number of people who have not stayed the course - and we know that our own faith lies constantly at the mercy of many uncertainties of life. We hear this text and are ever so ready to stand up with the boast and the confidence that nothing, not any thing in the world, can or will ever stand between us and the one who calls us to follow him. But nagging at the back of our mind is the awareness of all the things in life that catch us off-guard, that cause our balance to become shaky, that threaten to undo all our best intentions. We have all too often already found ourselves doing things we never thought we could or would ever do, and we have done them under the influence of situations and pressures that we had not ever anticipated - and then we have regretted them and wondered how we ever could have acted in this or that way. We know, in our heart of hearts, that we are far weaker than we like to think we are.

The same man mentioned above who spoke of his reticence about dealing with this text, however, came up with a "clue" that puts a new light on these words.

"What if," he asked, "we turn the parables inside out and examine them that way? What if we make God the one who is building the tower or the king who is going out to war? After all, that is, in a sense, what he is doing through Christ. He is building the tower called the church. He is waging the war against sin and death that must be won if his creation is to be restored. If he had not counted the cost, everything that Christ stands for is in vain. If he had not been up to the task, everything we believe in and trust as Christian people is just a pack of lies and our human situation is hopeless." He summarized all this by saying, "God has the means - and God means to do it!"

The secret, then, to this call for renunciation of the world lies in the same one who tells the parables. He is, himself, the means that God used to build the tower, and the Father is counting on him to complete it at the cost of his life. He is the one going to war against sin and death, and the Father is counting on him to win that war. God "counted the cost" and embarked on the building of the tower and winning the war by sending the Son to earth where, quite contrary to everything humans would imagine to be the treasury necessary to complete the tower or the force to beat back the enemy, it was the giving of himself over to weakness, the suffering and death of this one speaking that became the means of completing that which the Father had begun. Paul summarized this beautifully when, in writing to the Philippians, he said, "Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him. . . ." (Phil. 2:5c-9a ESV) In short, "God had the means - and he meant to do" that which was necessary for the salvation of the world. It is, indeed, finished, as Jesus himself said on the cross.

This is the grace that gives us deep insight into the text. That to which we are called is the same as that to which God, himself, has responded! He, the Creator, found it necessary to redeem us, to break apart the powers that held us so securely in their grasp. Unless God, who made us, came to our rescue, we lay helplessly at the feet of the enemy. The singular one who "had the means" came to our rescue, which is precisely what he did in Christ Jesus, who speaks to us in today's text.

It is as though he were saying, "Put aside all the supposed facilitators of salvation to which the world points - all the supposed ‘helpers' who propose to be the ultimate rescuers from your folly - all those people or things that purport to liberate you from the powers holding you subject in and to this world. Do not trust any of them, for they are all useless. Put them behind you and come, follow me, for I, and I alone, am the one through whom you will find your salvation, your liberator from the forces presently holding you so powerfully in their arms. Turn away from everything else, turning instead to me - and I will give you the life that was originally intended for you by my heavenly Father. I have built the tower of your salvation. I only ask you to live in it. I have triumphed over sin, death and the evil one. I only ask you to join me in the victory march. Simply trust me!"

This grace of God surely catches the world off-balance, for the world has great faith in its own power, in its own ability to analyze and understand the strange powers that keep everything imprisoned in dead-end after dead-end, no matter how much physical effort or intellectual prowess we humans apply to them. It goes entirely against the grain of our human nature to look outside our own innate abilities for help against the eerie darkness that haunts our human existence with a persistent shadow.

Jesus calls us into the light of God's grace - to look outside ourselves and the world within which we live - to see in him "who has the means and who means to do" that which the world cannot do of its own accord or by its own strength - the one hope and the everlasting promise that resides only in the resolution made possible by the Father. He is not calling on us to find a singularly unique strong will-power within ourselves that shall unfailingly follow him. He is not asking us to see the road ahead with eyes that can determine whether it is "safe" to follow him. Nor is he asking if we have the strength to bear up under the burden that we must bear if we do, indeed, follow him. None of this is really at stake.

What is at stake is simply this: Are we willing to abandon all false hope, to lay aside all the promises of this world, and give ourselves over entirely into his care and keeping? When we do this, the one who calls us to follow him will, himself, shelter us in the storms, bear us up in our weaknesses, protect us from all those powers that threaten to keep us off-balance. It is a call to hear and trust the word of promise, to gather as his people where he spreads his wings above us through the word of the Lord spoken, shared and sung, to remember the promises he made to us in our baptism, to receive the bread and the cup in which he has assured us that he is present for our forgiveness, life and salvation. To be his disciple is to renounce all that pledges to support us on this earth in order to be held up by his everlasting arms. It is, to use the language Jesus employs elsewhere, to lose our life in order to gain it.

It is worthwhile, is it not, to gain everything God has in store for us by renouncing all the false promises of this world? He who renounced his right to remain with the Father in heavenly bliss in order to bear his cross is the one in whom and through whom we dare to count the cost of renouncing everything that the world tells us is our rightful due - bearing our cross alongside his in order to gain everything that God promises to give us! Ah, yes! God's grace is a costly treasure!

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Retired Lutheran Pastor Hubert Beck

E-Mail: hbeck@austin.rr.com

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