“The Cross: The Cost of Being a Disciple of Jesus”
Luke 14:25-35
9/9/07
If I could list the three most important
things to me, I think they would be the things Jesus mentions in
today’s Gospel text: My family, my life, and my
possessions. (Friends aren’t listed, but they might be
included under family, since my closest friends are like brothers to
me.) And I would guess that for you too, the most important
things in your lives could also fit into these categories: your
family, your life (which includes your health and well-being), and your
possessions.
And these are all good things. They are, in
fact, gifts to us from God. But in today’s Gospel text
Jesus talks about hating them, hating family members and even our own
lives. He talks about bearing the cross and renouncing all we
have, which is tantamount to hating our possessions. So, which is
it? Considering our family members, our lives, and our
possessions as gifts to us from God for which we can give Him thanks,
or considering those things as objects to be hated and rejected?
The answer is a good Lutheran response: both
simultaneously. “How can this be?” you ask.
Well, as long as these gifts of God don’t become our idols and
take the place of God as that which we fear, love, and trust in above
all things, then these gifts can be considered good things for which we
can give thanks to God. But when these things become our gods and
become more important to us than God Himself, His Word, and His
Sacraments, then they must be hated and renounced as things which
hinder us from following after Jesus and receiving the eternal gifts
that He would give us.
So, we can love and enjoy the gifts of family, life,
and possessions on the one hand, when they are received for what they
are - gifts of God, given to us out of His fatherly divine goodness and
mercy, without any merit or worthiness in us. On the other hand,
they’re things that can become hinderances to receiving the gifts
of forgiveness of our sins, eternal life, and salvation through Jesus
Christ, when we fear, love, and trust in them above God. So when
Jesus talks about hating our family members, our lives, and our
possessions, He’s not saying that you must go out and kill your
father or your mother, or that you must commit suicide, or that you
have to give everything you have to the poor. Hatred here is not
an emotion but an attitude that you are to have. It concerns how
you are to consider things like your family members, your life, and
your possessions when they are compared with God, His Word, and His
Sacraments. How does a comfortable, suffering free life, for
example, compare with knowing Jesus, hearing His Word, receiving His
body and blood in His Holy Supper, and following Him as His
disciple? Is such a life more important than these? Would
you be willing to renounce your life for Christ? What would you
do if someone threatened to kill you unless you denied Christ?
How about your family or friends? Are they more important to you
than following Jesus? And your possessions... Would your
world and perhaps even your faith in Christ crumble if the Lord took
everything away from you, as He did with Job? It’s easy to
say that nothing takes the place of Jesus and His Word in our lives,
until one Sunday morning comes along and we decide to sleep in or do
something else rather than come to church where the Lord is delivering
His Word and His forgiveness to us. That’s where the rubber
meets the road. What do we put before Him then?
And so, if we look at our lives honestly, we see
that we are the ones who have tried to build towers, towers of
faithfulness and obedience to Jesus, but we’ve failed to consider
the cost of such an undertaking. We’ve failed to take into
account what it takes to finish the job, and we’ve discovered
that we don’t have enough to complete it ourselves.
We’re poor in spirit, as Jesus says, and we’ve put our
families, our lives, and our possessions before Him many times.
But this is actually a good place to be: recognizing that you
don’t have what it takes to be a disciple of Christ, that you
can’t do it on your own, that you don’t have the necessary
materials for building yourself up in Jesus. And that’s
just where He wants you to be: realizing that what you have is
insufficient for the task He’s laid before you of denying
yourself, picking up your cross, and following Him. He wants you
to see that it’s not you who’s the builder of this tower,
but He is. He’s the One who laid the foundation with His
perfect obedience and His sacrificial death on the cross.
He’s the One who set you upon this foundation at your
Baptism. And He’s the One who builds you up on this
foundation, using the tools of His Word and Sacraments. When you
are sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to His words like Mary was
doing, Jesus is doing His work of building you up. But when
Martha tries to hinder Mary, when things like family, friends,
possessions, and even your own life get in the way of hearing Jesus,
receiving His gifts, and following after Him, then they must be hated,
rejected, renounced, and set aside as hinderances to the construction
that the Lord is doing in your life.
Your family members, your life, and your possessions
can also be viewed as things which would hinder you from obtaining the
victory in battle. Taking another honest look at our lives again,
we discover that we don’t have sufficient power to prevail
against our enemy. We have been weakened by the gods and idols
we’ve trusted in, and so we can’t stand when our enemy,
who’s stronger than us, attacks. But in this parable,
who’s the enemy? It could be Satan, because after all we do
war against him daily, and our only weapon against him is the Word of
God. If our family members, our lives, or our possessions hinder
us from hearing that Word, we have nothing with which we can combat
him. But there’s no terms of peace with the devil.
He’s a murderer. He takes no prisoners. His goal is
to kill. Which leads us to consider the possibility that the King
who comes to do war with us is God Himself. The Bible does speak
this way, saying that we were at one time enemies of God. Jesus
wants you to consider that if you rely on your false gods and idols,
you make God your enemy. And He’s someone you cannot
overcome. You will fall before Him. You, a sinner, will not
be able to stand on that Day of Judgment when Christ comes to do battle
on the earth. Considering, then, that you in and of yourself are
too weak to stand before the holy and righteous God, the only option is
to ask for His terms of peace. You’ll find that those terms
are met in His Son, Jesus Christ, who by His bloody cross has worked
peace between you and God. He is the only One through whom you
have peace with God. You can’t work this peace yourself,
nor can your family members, friends, or possessions. Only Jesus
can and has.
Now through Him there is no longer any warfare
between you and God. Your sins have been answered for. God
has completely spent His wrath on His Son. Your sins are
forgiven. You’re at peace with God. He’s no
longer your enemy. But your enemies are now the devil, the world,
and even your own flesh. And the weapons they will use to turn
your heart away from your Savior are the very gifts He gives you to
enjoy - family, life, and possessions. And so, to keep these
things from distracting you from Him, Jesus lays upon you the
cross. Now, the cross is a burden; it’s an instrument of
death. Jesus died upon His cross, and He has laid the cross upon
you at your Baptism, so that you might be united with Him in His
death. The cross for the Christian might be any number of
things. It might include physical suffering and pain. It
might include emotional or mental suffering and pain. It
definitely includes the persecutions, troubles, and temptations that
the devil and the world throw at you, but it also includes the trials
that God gives you. It’s everything that God uses to
crucify the desires of your sinful nature, so that you might not turn
away from Him in unbelief. With the cross, God puts you to death
so that He can raise you up to newness of life. We
shouldn’t see the cross as punishment from God, since Jesus has
taken the punishment for our sins upon Himself on His cross.
Instead, we ought to see the cross as discipline from our loving
Father, who refuses to let anything, whether it be our family, our
lives, or our possessions, entice us away from following our Savior,
who leads us not only to His cross, but also to His resurrection.
So, Jesus gives us a warning: Like salt, which
if it loses its taste is good for nothing and thrown out, so we, whom
Jesus has made to be the salt of the earth, if we lose our saltiness,
if we are no longer being salted by the Word of God, if we fall away
from Christ and no longer believe in Him, follow Him, hear or do His
Word, then we too will be good for nothing and be thrown out - out of
His kingdom and into the pit of eternal destruction. Be on your
guard, then, that none of these things - neither your family/friends,
your life, or your possessions - hinder you from following after
Jesus. Confess and repent of those times when you like the rest
of us have put your family, your life, and your possessions before
Christ and have made them your gods. But then hear again your
Lord’s absolution that He forgives you for doing that. His
blood cleanses you of this offense as well.
Then, with the Spirit’s help, deny yourself,
pick up your cross, and follow Jesus, your crucified and risen Savior,
keeping Him and His Word always before your eyes. And no matter
what kind of suffering you might have to endure in this world, you can
know that your Lord suffers with you, that He works through your cross
for your good, and that He gives you the strength through His Word and
Sacraments to bear your cross. Through your Baptism Christ has
joined you with Him both to His cross and to His resurrection.
The glory is coming, when the cross will be taken away on the day Jesus
returns for you. In the meantime, what He began building at your
Baptism He will continue until He completes it. And the peace
that God has worked for you in Christ He will continue to deliver to
you, so that no matter how many battles you might fall to, you can know
that the victory over the war is yours in Jesus. Amen.