First, Sit Down

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

September 16, 2007

Luke 14:25-35

Reality Check

Many followed Jesus, we are told. Perhaps because they thought he would march on Rome, rally the people and start an insurrection against their hated occupiers. It had been tried before, and would be again. Or perhaps they hoped for healing or forgiveness, or simply because he was the best venue in the area. But Jesus knows he is traveling toward his death, and he apparently thought it was time for truth in advertising. He did not want to be accused of “bait and switch.”

So, Jesus tells them, it is time to “sit down” and consider. Consider like someone building a house, whether she has enough to finish. It would be embarrassing answering the questions of neighbors when the grass is growing up around the foundation. Or sit down and consider like a king would before he went to war against another kingdom, whether he could really be victorious. Better to be realistic about one’s true strength in relation to an enemy than to make matters worse for your people.

The description “sit down” is descriptive. The crowds have been following him, enthusiastic about the new hope which Jesus is bringing. They have been walking with Jesus toward Jerusalem. It is now time to step aside and take stock. This journey to Jerusalem is not a parade, not a show, not a short course in how to find happiness, not a therapy session. The demands of kingdom-work are severe. If you want to be a co-worker, it is only fair for you to know about the costs.

CROSS-TALK

“Cross” talk has a way of focusing the mind. We may envision crosses as ornaments or jewelry, but for Jesus and his followers, it would have been very clear: crosses were instruments of torture and death. Rome used this means every day somewhere in their empire. To take up one’s cross meant that the condemned would be forced to carry the instrument of his execution to the place of execution.

To call Jesus “Lord” is to take the risk that you will be associated with him when his time comes. To be a follower of Jesus might mean that you would suffer the same fate as Jesus. And it would mean placing your ultimate loyalty with the God whose kingdom is at work now in him. This loyalty must trump all other loyalties, be the guiding principle for decision-making, even above family.

HATE?

The New RSV and most other translations render the word in verse 26 as “hate,” a shocking hyperbole used to wake people up and lay out the stark choice. The intent is expressed also in Matthew in a less harsh way: “No one who prefers father or mother, son or daughter to me is worthy of me….” (Matthew 10:37-39) But the import is clear: no other person or thing can be our ultimate concern if we are to follow after Jesus and serve the kingdom.

It is crucial to be reminded that of course Jesus is not calling upon us to hate our family members. Jesus did not start a cult which forced people to cut off relationships with loved ones. The emotion he is expressing is not the emotion found in a bitter “I hate you” to anyone. Jesus calls us to love our husbands and wives and children, our mothers and fathers.

But he is clear that none of these persons, or anything else for that matter, can carry the weight of our worship and adoration. To love our family members, as with our friends and neighbors and even enemies, requires that we first love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. Loving God as revealed in Jesus teaches us how to love each other as fellow pilgrims in the faith. Loving the members of our families is most wisely done as we foster their lives in the values of God’s kingdom.

Yes, there may come times when we will have to choose between our loyalty to Jesus and our loyalty to others, including members of our families; and we may have to suffer rejection, or worse. This would be a part of the cross-bearing that Jesus talks about.

Through the centuries, Jesus’ call to cross-bearing was interpreted to mean that there were extraordinary believers who really were called to sacrificial, risky ministries, but for most of the faithful, such heroics were not required. At best, ordinary Christians paid the few to do the hardest work. But I do not believe this a faithful rendering of discipleship. In Luke’s version of Jesus’ call to sacrificial service, we are called to take up our crosses daily and follow after him. Each disciple is called to practice sacrificial and risky ministry----each within their own arenas of influence. This would include, among others, family, neighborhood, outreach projects, political advocacy, intercessory prayer.

CROSS BEARING AS A WAY OF LIFE

Though it would require hours to unpack her statement, Marie Coombs of Lebh Shomea--- a retreat center near Sarita, Texas-- says that cross bearing is “whatever it costs to be loving toward God, our neighbors and ourselves.” (It would not be a bad discipline to simply begin the day by making decisions regarding all three.)

Perhaps our love of God would cost us hours of time in prayer, opening our heart to pour out our love and our hopes and fears.

Perhaps our love of neighbor would require going the extra mile with someone who is hard to love.

Perhaps our love of our selves would demand that we listen to our bodies and start observing Sabbath rests.

Of course, our costs may be much more obviously risky at times: standing with the poor who have no advocate, facing the rejection of friends or family; pressing for policies which turn around the school drop out rate among people of color; daring to tell another about the love of God which you have found and known in Jesus Christ and in his church, and risk being considered a Baptist by some!

We can be creative in our cross-bearing.

DEMANDS AND PROMISES

Why would anyone continue to follow after Jesus’ shocking words? We may get the idea that discipleship means giving up on happiness. We are not big into delayed gratification either---suffering now for bliss in the next life. We like to emphasize the positive benefits of believing in God.

There are churches which have decided that the cross in the sanctuary is too much of a “downer” for seekers, so they simply remove it. Many of the most popular preachers certainly play up the benefits of believing over its costs. (I cannot imagine any of them saying to their members what Jesus said to his followers in this story today!) This is a tricky business: how to be faithful to Jesus’ hard sayings while communicating a merciful and burden-lifting Jesus for persons who are bewildered and discouraged.

The first bit of wisdom may be to affirm that Christians are not masochists--- people who love to suffer and find ways to do so. If we suffer as a result of faithfulness to Jesus, so be it; but Jesus did not tell his disciples to “go and suffer.” He told them to “go and make disciples” and to be “ambassadors of Christ.”

As we follow Christ, we remember him saying, “I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly.” (Gospel of John) Along with the demand of discipleship, there is a promise of fulfillment. Schubert Ogden wrote, “To have a ‘god’ is to have something that lays upon one an ultimate demand—namely, that one surrender everything else for the sake of this particular thing—and also hold out to one an ultimate promise—namely, of bringing him [or her] to his [or her] authentic existence as a human being, provided he [or she] meets this demand.” (“What Does It Mean to Say ‘Jesus is Lord?’” in The Reality of God, page 194 and 1961).

Our longing for fulfillment is not evil in itself. (I like the way one man wrote of this desire. It is the “passion to seek a qualitative life.”) (Source lost)

The paradox is that a qualitative life is to be found, not by seeking fulfillment as an end in itself, but in dying with Christ in order to live for him. Fulfillment is not so much a project as a product. The only life worth living is a life lived in service to God’s loving vision of a new creation. And this vision requires us to offer to God all our resources and relationships---and then to be faithful stewards of all God gives us to manage There is fulfillment in service, even in strenuous and costly sacrificial self-giving.

A life of service is made possible because we are accompanied by the risen Lord. William Barclay wrote that “the one who called us to the steep road will walk with us every step of the way, and will be there at the end to meet us.”

I also believe that, though we each have our own labors and risks, we have been engrafted onto the family tree that is the church. Though we may walk many lonesome valleys, we are accompanied by our sisters and brothers who walk with us, and by those who have gone before, a “cloud of witnesses.”(Hebrews)

A man lost his young wife. He endured in spite of the agony of grief. His friends told him how his faith must have seen him through the toughest days. To which he replied, “No, not my faith, but the faith of my friends saw me through.” (Told by Roberta Bondi) Or consider my pastor friend Bob, who told me that the only reason he could stay in the ministry was because of those who kept praying for him. When I asked him why, he said, “Because I am, by nature, a born quitter!”

“Faith in God’s compassionate presence can never be separated from experiencing God’s presence in the community to which we belong….When we no longer experience ourselves as part of a caring, supporting, praying community, we quickly lose faith.” (Donald P. McNeill, Douglas Morrison, and Henri Nouwen, Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life, page 61)

FINALLY

Cross-bearing can become the description of the way we choose to look at all of life. It is to “be bound to the radical claim of self-sacrificing love that, in Isaac Watt’s words, ‘demands our soul, our life, our all.’” “To affirm that Jesus is Lord is to affirm that no demand may ultimately claim us except the one demand that we accept God’s love for us and thereby be freed to love all the others whom [God] also already loves.” (Ogden, page 204, italics mine)

Discipleship with Jesus is not an arrangement or a deal we cut or an add-on volunteer opportunity. Following Jesus is a commitment. It is a commitment to keep getting up each morning for as many mornings as we are given, ready to be guided and strengthened by the risen crucified One through God’s Holy Spirit. It is a commitment to stay connected to Jesus Christ as a branch to the vine, and to our fellow pilgrims as a limb to the body. Martin Luther wrote, “The trust and the faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol….For these two belong together, faith and God. That to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is, I say, really your God.” To be committed to Jesus is to cling to and entrust our lives to the God who is made known to us in Jesus of Nazareth.

It is only by faith that we can make such commitment, and faith is possible only because God opens our eyes. As we put feet to our commitments each day, we learn more about Jesus. I have returned to a paragraph from Albert Schweitzer through the years, especially when I was tempted to give up:

“He [Jesus] comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old by the lakeside he came to those who knew him not. He speaks to us the same word, ‘Follow thou me.’ And he sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in his fellowship. And, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience, who he [Jesus] is.” (Found in the concluding paragraph of his book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus)