Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Luke 14:25-33
Wow. Okay. Saying, “Thanks be to God,” was a bit hard on that one, eh?
Well, right off the bat, it’s important to note that the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke can sometimes tend to hyperbole. He exaggerates in order to get people’s attention. We know this because in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says it a bot more reasonably, “whoever loves mother or father, or son or daughter, more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:37) Jesus’ point is not about hating our family members, but about loving and following him more than we love our family. We can still love our family, and we should, just not more than we love God.
Which is not to say we have an easy out. What Jesus is saying is still hard, because what he’s saying is, essentially, that putting God first will get in the way of some of our relationships. Following Jesus and carrying our cross will get in the way of some of our close, meaningful relationships––with family or with people as close to us as family. Jesus is warning us that there is a cost to being his disciple.
But what does that mean––following Jesus and carrying the cross? We like to use this phrase a lot in church, especially when we want to sound like serious, committed Christians, along with words like discipleship, but what does it actually mean? What is this “thing” that gets on the way of our close relationships?
Well, it is as simple, and as challenging, as living in our baptism, every single day. If you were baptized in the Lutheran church, the pastor asked you or your parents something similar to, “Do you renounce the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises?” And you, or an adult on your behalf, said, “I do.” In other words, you were asked if you would refuse to follow the devil, turn away from the promises of success and wealth and glory that will never be realized, and actively reject participating in any scheme of evil or hatred that might come before you.
This is what it is. Living in our baptism, following Jesus, carrying our cross means saying no to any action that would compromise the integrity of God’s goodness. It means saying no to any decision that would lead to the suffering of others, it means actively refusing to participate in the abuse of power, it means living as if we really are children of God, made so through God’s gracious act in baptism, because we are.
But wow, is this hard. There is a cost to this way of living. There’s a cost to ourselves, personally, because sometimes it means giving up opportunities for profit, or advancement, or success. If getting ahead involves climbing on someone else’s back, or pushing someone out of the way, or cutting in front, then we have to say no. If our gain means someone else’s loss, we have to say no. If us having more of something means someone else has less, and they need it more than we do, then we have to say no. When we are brought up onto the highest peak and are offered an entire kingdom in exchange for a few words of obedience to evil, then, like Jesus, we have to say no, and give up any hopes of being the one to rule the world. We have to go back to our small corner of the house, and say no to glory and success and admiration. There is a cost to living with integrity and to making the well-being of others a priority, day after day after day, not just in church, and not just at home, but in the classroom, in the office, on the streets, in the online forum. There is absolutely a personal cost to following Jesus, and you should know that up front. You will not become famous following Jesus.
There is also a relational cost. And this is really what Jesus is talking about. You see, when we choose to live in our baptism, when we choose to follow Jesus in our daily living, in every decision we make and every action we take, there is a good chance we will disrupt the relationships we have with others. Because the sad reality is that there are people who want out of their relationships what they can get for themselves. These people rely on us to put their interests first, to follow them, to love them above all else. And these people might be family members––mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. They might be close friends, or co-workers or business partners, or spiritual leaders. They might be classmates, or on the same sports team or in the same clubs as us. And they may tell you they love you, and need you, but what they will mean is that they love you and need you for what you can do for them. And so, when we choose to follow Jesus, to put God first, rather than our relationships with others, then often those other relationships fall apart. Jesus says it earlier, you cannot serve two masters. Sometimes, saying yes to God means saying no to someone else. No to their hatred, no to their pettiness, no to their desire to use us for their glory. And then we are accused of not loving them, not caring about them, of abandoning them, of hating them. And the relationship falls apart. All because we made the choice to follow Jesus in our daily decisions. So, yes, there is a cost to being a disciple.
But here’s what God does as we make that choice, day after day after day. This is from the Gospel of Luke, only a little bit after the reading we just heard, “Then Peter said, ‘Look, we have left our homes and followed you.’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not get back very much more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.’” You see, Jesus does actually call us to love our neighbour, not to hate them. We are called to serve others. It’s just that we serve them best by following Christ first. Through you, God gives life to others and to the world whenever you act with integrity, whenever you renounce the forces of evil, the devil and all his empty promises, whenever you choose to serve rather than to rule, whenever you live in the baptismal promise that you are children of God, inheritors of light and love.
Because the true cost of carrying the cross and being a disciple of Jesus, the final cost when everything is done and calculated is this: new life. We can never forget that the cross ends in resurrection. The life that Jesus gave up was transformed into resurrection life, eternal life, life that cannot be conquered by death. The life and relationships we die to when we reject the devil and power and glory are hollow, not actually worth holding onto, and in baptism God makes us dead to them in order to give us new life, true life, life worth living. Even the relationships that we choose not to nurture, that wither because we will no longer compromise our baptismal calling, that fall apart and die, those relationships will receive new life, true life in Christ. It may take time. It may take a lifetime. But our relationships are shaped by the people in them, and when you are given new life through Christ, when you experience transformation through discipleship, through following Christ, through carrying the cross, your relationships will, too. The “hate” will be transformed into love.
Jesus’ words to hate those in our life and to follow him are both death and life for us and those we love. In a way, they are both a threat and a promise. They are a threat to ways of living and relating that rely on competition, one-up-manship, us-or-them ways of existing. And they are a promise of life-for-all, of love that wins, of meaningful ways of relating to others that truly bring joy and peace to everyone. They are a promise and guarantee of God’s life for you, the true cost of following Christ. And for this we can easily say, “Thanks be to God.” Amen.
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