“NOT A BAD EPITAPH”

Luke 14:25-23

Why are you here this morning? Of course, I’d like to believe that you’re here for the preaching. Dave and the choir would like to believe that you are here for the music.

But we all have been around long enough to know that may not be the case. Some of you probably came because of the breakfast.  It was good, wasn’t it? 

Maybe some of you came because your wife (or husband) insisted – “Just this one Sunday, honey.” Maybe some of you came because the 49ers don’t play till tomorrow night and you aren’t in any danger of missing any of the game. J

You could have slept late - lots of people do. You could have gone to the beach (ah, heck, we’re doing that next week) or played golf.

But perhaps you are here in worship because you are trying, in your own little corner of the world, to follow Jesus, be a disciple.

And it is my job to help you do just that...primarily by exposing you to God’s instructive word in scripture.

But wait until you hear today’s gospel lesson!

Let’s read Luke 14:25-33

Hmm. Not exactly a “warm and fuzzy church growth” text, is it? I wonder what the pastor nominating committee would have thought if when I meet with them (it was exactly six years ago today)...  If when they asked me a question about church membership, I had responded to them like this:

“Well, the first rule is you must hate your father and mother, your wife and children, your brothers and sisters--yes, even your own life.

“Then you must be prepared to die for the cause. As Jesus has said, ‘Anyone who is not prepared to give up EVERYTHING cannot be a member.’”

Can you imagine?  I can imagine their response: “Well, thank you, Rev. Coop. Don’t call us, we’ll call you!”

Is that the kind of church that would appeal to you? I’m guessing not. I’ll bet most of you would be drawn to something more in the vision of Norman Rockwell:

A third grade Sunday School class full of little girls with blond pigtails and little boys with slingshots in their back pockets, all of them bowing their heads in prayer…

Families lined up in a comfortable pew in a sanctuary graced by the spectrum of light filtered through stained glass … you get the picture.

But then this morning we hear Jesus: unless we hate our families, carry our crosses, and give up all our possessions, we cannot be his disciples. You willing to do that?  I’m not!

As one commentator said, “If Jesus were in charge of say, an average sort of congregation, I figure there would be only about four people left there on Sunday mornings, and chances are those four would be fooling themselves.

“Jesus would greet newcomers by saying, ‘Are you absolutely sure you want to follow this way of life? It will take everything you have.

“It has to come before everything else that matters to you. Plenty of people have jumped in without counting the cost, and as you can see they are not here anymore.

“Oh… and by the way, if you succeed - if you really do follow me - it will probably get you killed. Tell you what, why don’t you go home and think it over? I would hate for you to get in over your head.’”

Whoa!!! Does that sound like Jesus?

So what are we dealing with here? How are we to understand this morning’s passage? Well, the first thing is to look at the context. The passage starts out by saying, “Large crowds were traveling with Jesus...”

This itinerant rabbi had become popular, and suddenly, like a rock star, the groupies had begun to gather. They had heard about his preaching and teaching; they had especially heard about his miracles; they wanted to get close to this incredible character and experience the unusual energy that seemed to surround him. 

There were others, some of the more serious ones, who no doubt thought that perhaps this indeed was the Messiah the nation had longed for, the one who would deliver them all from the hand of the Roman legions. Everybody’s mood is upbeat, positive, expectant…

Of course, Jesus is less than encouraging. He tells them their high hopes may be writing a check that reality cannot cash. You see, there is more to this disciple business than meets the eye.

He suggests that they go home and do some serious thinking about whether or not they are ready for such a commitment.

To tell you the truth, I suspect many who heard him that day were as puzzled by what he said as you and I are. I mean, what is all this about hating our parents, our children, even our very lives?

The best way to understand it is to realize that Jesus was using a figure of speech we do not use anymore.

In Aramaic, the word we translate “hate” has nothing to do with an emotion. It was a way of expressing priorities. 

So if I say, “I love Cal and hate Stanford” (or vice versa), it would not mean I feel actual hostility toward one school or the other, but simply that one of those was my first choice.

In Jesus’ day, the way you stated a preference was by pairing two things and saying you loved one and hated the other. It had nothing to do with feelings. The issue here was priorities.

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. He knows what lies ahead. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, Luke knows even more. When he wrote his gospel, Christians were already being persecuted for following Jesus.

To have a Christian in the family was dangerous for everyone, because the Romans were thorough. If they found one believer in a household they would arrest everyone, so it really was true that turning toward Jesus sometimes meant turning away from your family, whether you wanted to or not.

Once you made following Jesus your first priority, everything else fell by the wayside - not because God took it away from you, but because that is how the world works. YOU make the choice.

A while back Will Willimon, Dean of the Chapel down at Duke University, got a call from an upset parent, a VERY upset parent. (I may have shared this story before).

“I hold you personally responsible for this,” he said.

“Me?” Will asked.

The father was hot, upset because his graduate school bound daughter had just informed him that she was going to throw it all away and go do mission work with the Presbyterians in Haiti.

“Isn’t that absurd!” shouted the father. “A BS degree in mechanical engineering from Duke and she’s going to dig ditches in Haiti.”

“Well, I doubt that she’s received much training in the Engineering Department here for that kind of work, but she’s probably a fast learner and will probably get the hang of ditch-digging in a few months,” Will said.

“Look,” said the father, “this is no laughing matter. You are completely irresponsible to have encouraged her to do this. I hold you personally responsible,” he said.

As the conversation went on, Dr. Willimon pointed out that the well-meaning but obviously unprepared parents were the ones who had started this ball rolling.

THEY were the ones who had her baptized, read Bible stories to her, took her to Sunday School, let her go with the Presbyterian Youth Group to ski in Vail.

Will said, “You’re the one who introduced her to Jesus, not me.”

“But all we ever wanted her to be was a Presbyterian,” said the father, meekly. Hmm.

Do you want to be a Presbyterian? Let me change that … do you want to be a Christian?  Then you need to put your life in His hands.

Jesus calls us to trust him and to put Him first. Jesus calls us to give up everything that would distract us from living the Christian life and follow him.

Why? So we can experience God’s great love for us. And so we can be on the “same page” as God. Lives that are going in a hundred different directions at once aren’t likely to go in God’s direction at all.

That’s why Jesus says our focus has to be Him.

And when our focus is on Jesus, our lives change.  We are more in tune and we hear differently.  We hear God’s call to us to get out of our complacency and do something. 

Like what???  Well, for some it could mean leaving the comforts of home for service somewhere on the other side of the globe.

It could mean a ministry in a rundown neighborhood in East San Jose. It could mean getting up early on a Saturday morning to participate in Habitat for Humanity. It could mean teaching Sunday School or helping with the youth group.

Or it could mean something as simple as making certain you are here for Sunday School from week to week because you know that the Greek word we translate as disciple really means “learner.” Bottom line – being a disciple makes a difference in the way we live.

President Harry Truman once made a trip to the old west town of Tombstone, Arizona. Ghosts of the famous and notorious alike crowd the streets of Tombstone -- people like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.

When Truman returned from Tombstone, though, he didn’t talk about the legendary heroes. Instead he recalled the words engraved on the headstone of a simple man buried at Boot Hill. The inscription read: “Here lies Jack Williams. He done all he could.”

That should be on all of our tombstones. We are called to take up our cross and follow Christ. We’re called to put Christ first in our lives and serve him to the best of our abilities. It’s called discipleship. 

But, there is a danger in real discipleship.  The danger of discipleship is simply this - it changes you.

Suddenly, you see the world through new eyes, the eyes of Jesus. You see needs and you want to fill them; you see hurts and you want to heal them.

The danger of discipleship is that it changes you, and keeps on changing you...for now and always.

Not a bad way to be.  Not a bad epitaph. 

Amen!