Luke 14:25-33

13th Sunday a. Pentecost | 4.9.2022 | Lk 14:25-33 | Paul Bieber |

Luke 14:25-33: Revised Standard Version

²⁵ Great multitudes accompanied Jesus; and he turned and said to them, ²⁶ “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. ²⁷ Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple. ²⁸ 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? ²⁹ Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, ³⁰ saying, ‘This man began to build, and was not able to finish.’ ³¹ 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? ³² And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace. ³³ So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”

also Deuteronomy 30:15-20, Psalm 1, Philemon 1:21

Daily Surrender

Grace, peace, and much joy to you, people of God.

On his way to Jerusalem and the cross, Jesus teaches about the cost of discipleship. The Cost of Discipleship is of course the title of a famous book by the Twentieth Century Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (I myself would say pastor, theologian, and martyr, but there are those who would deny him that last title because of his political engagement.) In that book, Bonhoeffer writes, “When Christ calls a man, he calls him to come and die.”

That’s rather bracing stuff. Perhaps it helps to put into perspective Jesus’ hyperbole about what discipleship might cost. Jesus is not calling us to hate those he calls us to love, but Jesus’ person and proclamation do bring division, as we heard a few Sundays ago. Following Jesus might cost you your family. It will cost you your life—perhaps not as a martyr, but Jesus teaches that the cost of discipleship is the surrender of your life.

This surrender is not the same thing as Buddhist detachment, leading to enlightenment, nor ascetic self-denial, making you a sort of spiritual avatar. It’s much more basic than that. Jesus’ person and proclamation bring division, and the line of division runs not only through a single family but through a single person. To say that we are called to hate our own lives is to say that we must abandon our will, our self-seeking desires, all that curves me in on me and away from God and neighbor. We must surrender.

That’s the only way to make sense of Jesus’ “So therefore. . . .” He tells us to count the cost when building or going to war—to make sure we have enough resources to succeed in our venture. But then he says, “So therefore” you must renounce all that you have to be his disciple. In other words, when we count the cost, we will find that we do not have enough. We will never have enough. Our lives are an endless quest to have enough, to secure our lives through having enough, being enough. But when we honestly count the cost of our venture of self- constructed, self-sustained life, secure against any threat, we discover that we do not have enough. We will never have enough.

What, then is the way to make the choice between life and death, prosperity and adversity, which God places before his people in Deuteronomy, the choice that Psalm 1 and the Didache call the Two Ways, one to life and one to death, the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked?

Jesus’ person and proclamation show us that this choice is the same paradoxical invitation to find our lives by losing them that Jesus places before us time and time again. If I miss the paradox, then I might find my Christianity quite compatible with the satisfaction of all my desires. But that sort of Christianity would be a dreadful religion, because all my desires can never be satisfied. I will never have enough. Every day will be irritatingly unfulfilled, counting the cost and coming up short.

The alternative is to heed Jesus’ call to be his disciple, to follow him, to come and die.

The alternative is the daily surrender of the dreadful religion of “enoughism”—and, liberated by that surrender, to take up the cross and follow Jesus on his self-emptying, self-offering, self-giving way to his cross and his empty tomb. With our lives joined to his death in Holy Baptism, we come to his table offering our selves, time, and possessions as a sacrifice of praise. In his grace, we receive our lives back, transfigured, joined to his risen life. And our hearts are refreshed in him.

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

—

The Rev. Dr. Paul Bieber

San Diego, California, USA

E-Mail: paul.bieber@sbcglobal.net