Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, 09/09/2007

Sermon on Luke 14:25-33, by David Zersen

Now great multitudes accompanied him; and he turned and said to them, "If any one 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 to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel 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 an embassy and asks terms of peace. So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

PURSUING YOUR PASSION

While being a pastor for many years, I observed that among the families who were members of my congregation, there was often a spouse who didn't want to get too involved. He or she may have been happy to help with a youth event (especially if one of his/her kids were involved) or set up tables for a potluck supper or work on landscaping around the church. However, these spouses typically were not regular in worship and would have found spiritual retreats or Bible studies awkward. Sometimes it was a matter of having little theological background and not wanting to demonstrate their shortcomings in a public way.

Often, however, it was a text like today's Gospel lesson that scared them off. These were not passionless people. They could be committed to playing softball or golf. They might love their membership in a local civic club or cultural group. But when they hear a text saying things like "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters-yes, even his own life-he cannot be my disciple," they become very leery about getting in too deep. They stay on the periphery of the church and make observations about the involvement of their family members, but they save their passion for other things.

Understanding Jesus' tactics

As with anything, it's important to understand the background and the context for remarks in order to make a judgement about their meaning. Jesus lived in the Middle East and he had a keen sense of the fickleness of crowds, so it's helpful to understanding his tactics.

In Middle Eastern culture, there is a strong sense, even today, that things are black and white, right and wrong. It is a Semitic mindset to think dogmatically. Within the context of such an oversimplification of life, it's useful to employ extreme language and exaggeration to make a point. Jesus understood this well and was good at it. When he said, "If your eye offends you, pluck it out...," was he being serious? This use of hyperbole as a figure of speech employs a bit of humor. Perhaps not belly-laughing humor, but enough to put a smile on your face. "When Jesus says, "you try to pick the speck out of another's eye, but don't do anything about the log in your own," the contrast is so extreme as to evoke a grin. And when he says "it is harder for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to get through the eye of a needle," you know he's playing with you. Even when he says, "everything is possible for him who believes," you know that there are some senses in which that simply can't be true. But you can try to understand his point in a culture in which things could be more blatant than subtle, more shocking than refined.

This is also true of the language in today's text when Jesus says that you have to hate those closest to you if you are going to love him. And you have to carry a cross in order to be true follower. It is surely clear that Jesus cannot be telling us to hate anyone at all-because he teaches us to love one another. But he is challenging us to see that casual, uncommitted, trivial, passion-free discipleship doesn't help you understand the power of the Gospel.

It is also probably true that Jesus had learned to be leery about the fickleness of the crowds. They can cheer you on with palm branches one day and shout, "crucify him" on the next. But that's to get ahead of our story. There is something about the crowd mentality that doesn't lead to genuine discipleship. Some people like to be where masses are. Sports fans know that the bleachers are filled when a team is winning and much less so at the end of a season filled with losses. My wife and I attended a rally for John Dean at St. Edward's University two years after he had run for president and lost. This time he was able to assemble only 200 people.

Some scholars believe that Jesus' use of hyperbole was a good way to thin out the crowd.

Once people learned that there was a cost involved in being Jesus' disciple, they might think twice about following him. Perhaps there wouldn't be free fish and rolls at every gathering. Maybe nobody would be healed today. Today there might be only talk about hard things, like counting the cost before you set out to build a tower or start a war-both of which had to do with taking discipleship seriously.

It's important, first, to understand Jesus' use of language as well as his grasp of how people think. It's also important, however, to understand the different approaches to love that can proceed from one who has learned to call Jesus' "Lord."

Understanding different approaches to love

"When Jesus calls a person to come and follow," wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer," he calls him to come and die." This sounds like scary hyperbole, and in one sense it is. Certainly, for Bonhoeffer himself, this is what it did mean, quite literally. When in 1939, Bonhoeffer realized that the tide in Germany was turning in favor of a wholesale support for Hitler, including a support from the leadership of the church, he decided he needed to return from the U.S. where he was studying at Union Theological Seminary and follow Jesus by committing himself to struggle against the totalitarian, anti-Christian regime. Ultimately, this led to his participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler. The plot failed, and Bonhoeffer was ultimately executed for his role in it.

Many would consider that an extreme example of discipleship, and many a lukewarm spouse who is afraid of Jesus' hyperbole would say that's a good example of why he or she doesn't want to get too involved in the church. But, of course, in every time, and in every place, there are different kinds of summons to discipleship. What one is being asked to do, another might find impossible. And dying to something doesn't always mean a physical death. For that matter, I would not want to be the one to decide whose concept of discipleship is more worthy or more profound than another's.

For example, speaking of crowds as we did a moment ago, Joel Osteen regularly draws 35,000 people on a Sunday morning at his Lakewood Church, the former Compaq Center in Houston. Millions who also hear him regularly on television love this unassuming, charming, smiling, handsome preacher. He has an upbeat, popular approach that encourages people to love one another in personal relationships, in families, in business settings, and in communities. One can only wonder what would happen if Preacher Osteen tried to thin out the crowd as Jesus did with some strong use of Biblical hyperbole. It's quite possible that the numbers would dwindle sharply. On the other hand, I would be the first to acknowledge that although many call this Christianity Lite, there are thousands in this fellowship who in their own way are seeking to love their fellow human beings with passion. Perhaps they do not feel themselves being called to die in very dramatic ways, but clearly the world is a better place for their loving involvement in their chosen areas of discipleship.

It is certainly true that to carry your cross or to count the cost, both common metaphors now in the English language, means different things to different Christians. There are differing degrees of passion involved. Some are perhaps first getting their feet wet in this business of discipleship, and others have been baptized with water and the spirit. In other words, they have come to know the Gospel's power in their lives. And when the good news of God's love in Christ affirms us to the degree that we know that we are loved, then we are enabled to love others profoundly as well. And this love exceeds the boundaries of cultures and religions because God is calling all of us to be his children.

A powerful example of this love is given in the current #1 fiction best-seller, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Although set in a Muslim context in Afghanistan, the lead character is a kind of Christ figure in this story. Mariam never had much of a say about anything in her life. She was born from an illegitimate relationship and was given away in marriage to a shoemaker who treated her brutally. When her husband took a second wife because the first bore him no children, he was as brutal with her as he was with Mariam. One day, as he was beating her mercilessly with a belt buckle, Mariam hit him over the head with a shovel, ending his reign of terror in their household. She decided to confess to the crime in order to allow the 2^nd wife to escape with her children to Pakistan. Mariam then gave herself up and was executed before a firing squad. There was something sacrificial about her love which came from beyond her and which forever impacted those who remembered her. Laila, the 2^nd wife, later found it important to return to the place where Mariam grew up and sit in the shambles of the remaining building and remember this woman who had loved her so much that she gave her live to set her free.

I wonder, as each of us reflects on it, who summons us to the kind of passion which loves another enough to set them free from something. Surely it is Christ's own love for us, he who gave himself into death that each of us might discern a new way of life that transcends self-centered living. But there are also people in our fellowship and among our acquaintances who display this same kind of love. For me, many of those people have been in the church. They have cared for spouses when humanly they should have deserted them. They have brought food and clothing to people who lost their homes in fires or lost their jobs. They have taken time to speak words of encouragement to wayward youth or adults troubled with addictions. And they have done these things because had experienced Jesus' love and were learning how to call him "Lord."

We have an English expression about choosing your poison, but it's much more appropriate as we reflect on this text to choose our passion. Even those who think their passion is sports or cars or cooking know that such passions do not go far enough. They are limiting in that we can never be fulfilled as human beings through such things. As St. Augustine once put it, "Lord, you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.' Jesus knew what he was talking about when he challenged us to surrender our human commitments, or at least to understand that they can never take precedence over the role that God and his love seeks to play in our lives.

What is the passion that Christ is seeking to engender in you today? Who is it that you are being asked to love more fully? What kind of service are you being encouraged to share in an even deeper way? Not all of us will have the same approach to discipleship, but there is a passion and a love that is seeking to be born in you that is calling you to give place to this day.

Prof. Dr.Dr. President Emeritus David Zersen
Concordia University at Austin
Austin, Texas

E-Mail: djzersen@aol.com

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