Sept. 9, 2007. Luke 14:25-33.
Like many children, I grew up in awe of my father. At no time or place was this more apparent than at the grocery store. It was not his deft decisions in selecting flavorful the freshest fruits or the greenest vegetables. That’s because anyone who knows my mother knows that any choices that involved more than a carton of milk or box of cheerios were hers and hers alone. But what enamored me most when we went Krogering for cheerios and milk was Rex’s ability to answer questions. You see, my father, was born and raised in Sevierville, where he has lived almost his entire life. People knew him as a child and watched him grow before there very eyes. So when the local boy grew up to possess a powerful judicial mind, his friends and neighbors couldn’t resist the desire to ask him their most pressing legal questions. “Judge, let me just ask you about this, it’ll only take a second…” And so it would begin, and twenty minutes later it would end. There was no legal question that my dad couldn’t answer. He discussed DUIs and domestic disturbances with diplomatic aplomb and tackled tort challenges with a smile on his face. It was amazing.
About 15 years later I found myself really wishing I had my dad’s ability to answer the questions. I was in Washington D.C., visiting Alan, an old friend, when he posed a question. Wanna-be theologians are often as easy targets for this type of thing as sitting judges. But before getting to the question, let me tell you about my friend Alan. Alan is a rising star in the legal profession. Fresh out of the University of Virginia law school, he spent the last year clerking for a federal judge and will spend the next as a lawyer in an international tribunal. His intellectual talents have yielded him financial reward – he can easily afford his $2100 a month apartment, because for the first time in his life the son of two educators has disposal income instead of institutional debt.
As we sat on the couch reminiscing about the longago days of our youth, Alan posed the question. “If I really believed what I say I believe,” he began, “why shouldn’t I sell all I have?” Now there’s a question that will flip the room upside-down. The beauty of an earnest heart asking questions driven by his faith was there, but that sentiment didn’t answer the question, and he was looking to me to solve his quandary. “These are the times that try men’s souls”, Thomas Paine wrote. Pastoral responsibility was staring me straight in the face – and I wanted to crawl under the couch.
The Gospel text this morning, in which Jesus lays out the conditions for discipleship is one of those that makes you understand where Mark Twain was coming from - “It’s not what I don’t understand about the Bible that bothers me. It’s what I do understand.” Jesus doesn’t mince words. Plain talk is best understood and Jesus lays it, and us, out. To become my disciple you must hate your family. To become my disciple you must, hate life itself. To become my disciple you must sell all your possessions. Take up your cross, and follow me to Jerusalem. Hate your family. Hate your life. Sell everything. Follow me to suffering and death. A model for church growth this is not.
Christians have been avoiding the radical demands of this text for years. Those of us who want to talk about social implications of the Gospel like to play Jesus, hammering the crowds! How can you be a Christian and drive a BMW? People are starving. The command is to sell all you have, not sell out! A second option is even easier. They say, “I mean, you can’t take that text literally. The shelters would be even more overcrowded. Welfare would be out of control. Families would fall apart. And the last time I checked, the Ten Commandments said honor your mother and father, not hate them.
But the problem is that we can neither play Jesus nor ignore the passage’s stark literal demands. We can’t avoid one simple fact: We aren’t Jesus; we are the crowds. This is a text about who Jesus is, who we are, and how we fail to connect the two. The crowds, like us, are attracted to Jesus. There’s just something about him – the way he teaches them, the way he welcomes them, the way he speaks things to their hearts in a way they have never experienced before. But Jesus declares that he isn’t looking for a following; he’s demanding followers.
He doesn’t want people to serenade him in the sunshine only to disappear after dark. This call to discipleship accommodates no middle-ground, no sitting on the fence, standing on the sideline, flip-flopping, cut-and-run or any other cliché you can come up with. The cost of discipleship is not cheap, but Jesus is looking for disciples who will pay it. To spell it out: the cost of discipleship is an all-or-nothing commitment that relativizes every other aspect of our lives. Family obligations, economic stability, employment security and a host of other comforts and commitments no longer dominate. This is why Jesus warns his following to count the cost. He wants them to know that to follow him means to embrace a life of suffering that the culture screams: Run while you can! But its not enough to know the cost, but to understand what following Jesus requires, and then to join him on the road to Jerusalem. Don’t stop to bury the dead. Carry Your Cross. Don’t stop to kiss your family goodbye. Carry Your Cross. No one with one eye on their life, their work and their family and only one eye on Jesus is fit for the Kingdom. Only those who devote their whole lives to Jesus and follow him to the Cross.
The parable of the Great Banquet immediately preceded this call to discipleship in Luke’s Gospel. In the parable, a man who we are to infer is Jesus, invites people to a great feast. The first ones invited refuse to come. One has to tend to property. Another to his animals. Another to his family. The man responds by inviting the poor, the lame and anyone else who will come, but those who denied the request, Jesus tells them and us, will never taste his dinner.” Connecting these two passages helps us get the fullness of this stark demand that Jesus lays out. Jesus is asking the crowds one of those “Who do you say that I am?” questions that he loves so much. If the answer is that he is the Son of the Living God, then they will sell all and follow him. In other words, there is no reason to devote yourself to Jesus and the expense of everything else if you aren’t convinced that he is literally God with us. But if we believe that he is, then we are to devote our lives to following him. Only in losing ourselves and in giving our lives can we gain a life, he says. You can’t taste the feast without taking up the cross.
The problem with being a people of the Book, is that the words it contains are not mere speculation, but words that force us to examine our lives and the lives of those around us. To call one’s self a Christian, or a follower of this Jesus, means to examine our lives in light of this stark call to discipleship. If you will permit me, I think this text particularly has something to say to Kern Church right now. The Gospel always examines us, but counting the cost seems to be the only appropriate action for a church asking and struggling with what it means to be a “Kingdom Church”. From what Jim tells me, this dangerously titled Bible Study will be one that examines what it means to a community of people that follows Jesus by focusing not on what you want, or what the advertisers, sociologists or church growth strategists tells you to want, but on what the Gospel requires of you. If you will permit me, first let me commend you. These are the questions the Gospel demands to ask, and too few people actually raise them. So, give yourself a hand for asking the hard question.
But since you let me commend you, let me also warn you. Know what you are getting into by taking on “Kingdom Church”. The Bible tell us that pointing towards a Kingdom-driven church does not mean affirming our own ideas about how the world should look, but in imagining what John Donahue calls, “a world that points beyond itself and back to God.” And as Jesus so forcefully warned us, this is painful. And if you are faithful to this calling, earnestly wrestling with, thinking about and enacting what it means to be point not to yourselves or even your own church community, but beyond the world and to God, this will hurt, and hurt a lot. Becoming a Kingdom Church might mean stretching your own theological imagination to praise God by practicing your faith in ways that you aren’t comfortable with. Becoming a Kingdom Church might require you to open your facilities to people you don’t like. They might be the Scouts. But they also might be people you wouldn’t want your boys or girls near. Becoming a Kingdom Church might mean letting go of pride in your tradition and history and anticipating a bold future in following Jesus.
Becoming a Kingdom Church might mean a lot of different things. But the Gospels tell us that if you want to know what a Kingdom Church looks like, look to one – the Holy One in fact, Jesus the Christ. But be warned, his answer is not the easy one. He will call you down the path of discipleship - the one that will take you places you don’t want to go, but ultimately will lead you to life truly lived and a feast that will not cease. See friends the truth that we want to believe but have such a hard time with is that true life comes from giving ourselves to God and each other. It’s not in hoarding our money or protecting ourselves from change or clinging to our families or friends when God calls us somewhere else. The path of discipleship is an invitation to the eternal banquet and life with God, and Jesus tell us we can’t reach the end without walking the path.
You may have forgotten by now, but I suspect you have a lingering question…Daniel, you never told us how you answered Alan’s question. Well, first I stumbled around for a few minutes, tripping over my tongue – as anybody who participated in my Sunday School class here saw on a frequent occasion. But after this, I tried again. I said Alan, the financial question is there, but the truth of the matter is that Jesus doesn’t demand your money, he demands your life. Any thing, any possession that prevents us from following him, has to go.” We looked at each other, bewildered at what we both suspected. “Of course, the hard part isn’t in the knowing, but in the doing.” So my prayer this morning is that God will give me and Alan and Jim and all you fine people in this place the strength to count the cost and the courage to live into and towards God’s kingdom by following Jesus down the hard road of discipleship that leads to the elaborate feast that has no end. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.
