13th Sunday after Pentecost
Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jesus is giving us some difficult words about discipleship today. I am hearing two major points this morning.
This first point is: Jesus needs disciples who will be committed for the long haul. “What king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace.”
Reading that, how can we not think of President Putin? He started his war with Ukraine over 6 months ago. He thought he could swoop into that country and take it over in a matter of days. Yet he miscalculated. Big time. The result is terrible loss and destruction and trauma.
Every time I hear Jesus’ words about building a tower and making sure you have sufficient funds to complete the project, I see in my mind’s eye the famous cathedral of Cologne, Germany. It is the tallest twin-towered church in the world, a huge gothic building that towers over the city.
It was begun in the year 1248, but eventually the city ran out of money. Attempts to complete the building didn’t get under way until the 19th century. For 600 years, it looked like this.
The half-finished structure dominated the city scape and gave testimony to some very poor planning and commitment.
Our gospel reading tells us that Jesus is getting really popular; large crowds are not just flocking to him, but travelling with him and following him. That’s a good thing. The more people join Jesus’ kingdom movement the better.
However, Jesus doesn’t want these people to follow him with blind enthusiasm. He wants them to know and ponder what discipleship will mean for them and then make a decision.
We do this kind of deliberating in other parts of life. For example, when you have a child that wants to join a traveling sports team, you sit down and calculate what this will mean. Can we afford the fees? Are we willing to give up most weekends?
Or when you are offered a new job, you consider: Do I have the necessary skills? Am I willing to put in the hours? Am I okay with working the least popular shifts for the first couple of years?
This is the kind of deliberation Jesus wants us to bring to our discipleship. He doesn’t want people to get all excited and sign up, only to run out of steam.
Like when kids want a puppy. They beg and beg and beg for a puppy. The parents will tell them how much work it will be. The puppy needs to be walked and fed and brushed and played with every day, for as long as it lives. And the kids promise to do all that. The puppy arrives, and the kids are all over it. They do everything they promised - for a couple of weeks. Then they run out of steam. The puppy isn’t new and exciting any more. They need more and more reminders to do the chores. Often, it is in the end the parents who take care of the animal.
Jesus doesn’t want this to happen to his disciples. He doesn’t want people who join a new congregation and enthusiastically sign up for all kinds of ministries, but then get tired and withdraw. That’s not good for the disciples who might feel like a failure. That is not good for the other church members who will be disappointed and have to deal with the gap in service. And it is not good for the kingdom of God because Jesus’ mission isn’t being carried forward.
To avoid such frustration and disappointment, Jesus warns his followers to be ready to commit for the duration. Discipleship is not a sprint, but a marathon.
The second point Jesus makes is: Disciples need to be willing to sacrifice. There is a cross involved. This is what Jesus says: Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. 27Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
Hate. What does Jesus mean when he requires that disciples hate their family members? Doesn’t that fly in the face of Christian family values and of the call to love everyone, even enemies, that we hear everywhere else in the gospels? This text is a good reminder why it is not a good idea to quote Bible verses without looking at their wider context, and why we need to take scripture seriously, but not always literally.
It is quite common for biblical texts to contrast two choices with love-hate language. Wisdom books in the Old Testament urge us to love truth and hate falsehood, for example. To love one thing and hate the other means placing a clear priority on the chosen thing.
Jesus wants his followers to make discipleship their priority. It needs to be more important than family ties. As wonderful as a loving family is, there will be times when the call to follow Jesus will clash with the call to love spouse or parent or child, and in that case, discipleship will have to come first.
Here is an example from my own life. It was the night before my confirmation. These are big events in Germany where I grew up. The house was full of company. We were just about to gather in the living room for an evening of family fun when the phone rang. A member of my father’s congregation was dying and requested last rites. My dad took his Bible and anointing oil and left.
I was very upset that he left the family to do his ministry. I am sure it was hard for him, too. Yet he followed Jesus’ call. And of course he was needed at the bedside of a dying person a lot more urgently than in our living room. He brought God’s love to a person in dire need of it. He made the right choice.
Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. 27Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. A pastor who knows his Greek points out that Jesus isn’t saying “you are not allowed to be my disciples”. Jesus is saying, “you won’t be able to be my disciples; you won’t be able to do it”.
This points to a truth that is really, really important to keep in mind here: Jesus is not stating what you must do to earn your salvation or your slot among his disciples. Those are given to us by the grace of God in baptism. What Jesus explains is how this baptismal grace and calling shapes our life.
The same is true for our reading from the book of Deuteronomy. Moses is speaking to the people of Israel right before they are entering the Promised Land. He puts before them the choice between life and prosperity on one side and death and adversity on the other side. Moses urges them to choose life.
This choice is put before people who are already the covenant people of God. These are the people God freed from slavery and sustained for 40 years in the wilderness. They just celebrated another covenant ceremony. And they can literally see the Promised Land on the other side of the mountain range they are on. All these are gifts from God.
The question is how they will live within this relationship with their gracious God. Will they choose life and prosperity, or will they choose death and adversity? Another translation stays closer to the Hebrew text: Life and what’s good versus death and what’s wrong.
In the Bible, life means so much more than just being able to breathe. Life means well-being, joy, safety, peace, being able to thrive. That’s what God wants for God’s people.
That’s why God gave the commandments: to regulate our life within the community in such a way that all people can truly and fully live. That’s why Jesus calls committed disciples who are willing to sacrifice in order to bring the kingdom of God into the world, in order to bless others with life.
This idea that commitment, tough choices, and sacrifice lead to a better life doesn’t come naturally to us. And yet, the more I thought about it, the more examples for this truth I encountered.
For example, last Tuesday I met a colleague for the first time in two years. During that time, she has lost 70 pounds. Two years ago, she decided that she was too young to have all these health problems and aches and pains caused by her weight, so she changed her eating habits and began exercising. It needed strong commitment. It required sacrifice. But now she is so much healthier and happier, has more energy, and just exudes joy.
Another example: The nation of Pakistan is dealing with terrible flooding. A reporter spoke to a rural farmer, perched with his family on a levy surrounded by water, and told him that human action is causing such climate disasters. The man was surprised to hear that and then asked: “If what people do makes this happen, why don’t they stop doing it?”
Good question! We know why Pakistan has monster monsoon rains, why the Rhine and Rhone and Colorado Rivers are lower than ever, why ice bergs are melting and sea levels are rising. Doing something to curb the damage would require sacrifice and commitment and tough choices. Too many people are not willing to make them. Yet we know that if we did, life would be better all over God’s creation.
We are God’s beloved children, people of the covenant, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. That is God’s gift to us. That will never change.
Now we have a choice as to how we live within that covenant. My prayer is that we are willing to head Jesus’ call: that we be committed disciples, willing to make tough choices and sacrifices that put Jesus first, and in doing so chose life. Amen.