C, Post-Pentecost 13 Proper 18 - Luke 14:25-35 "Counting the Cost"
The Gospel text before us today has a threefold warning written into
it. Three times Jesus says, “If you do x, y, or z, you cannot be my
disciple”. Let’s examine the X, Y,
and Z of why he says one cannot be his disciple.
The first “cannot” word Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and
wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he
cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26 ESV)
Luke records the harshness of Jesus’ words with the call to hate. How can this be? Mathew’s Gospel softens this harshness by
replacing whoever “hates” with whoever
“loves (x) more than me”. So, Jesus’
first call to discipleship is not to love one’s family and life more than
Jesus.
It seems Jesus seeks to scatter us from our relationships. But Jesus walked towards Jerusalem to do
something so much greater than this. He
needs to take us from our family heritage, our culture, and our identity. Then he can awaken us with his life, in the
Holy Spirit, in our eternal heritage with the Father, and in our adopted
identity through his suffering and death.
After this he gives us back to our families, our nation, and our society
as agents of his supreme love.
In our age of individualism and our regression into social tribalism,
Jesus is exposing our idols of pride built on one’s identity; be it race,
class, family. Or, even today as some
think we have freewill to choose what we identify ourselves as! Also, Jesus is laying bare, the shame that
comes from our fallen identity’s narrowness and individuality.
Earlier in Luke’s Gospel, just after Peter confessed Jesus as the
Christ, he also spoke about taking up the cross and following him. Jesus then says, “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of
Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of
the holy angels”. (Luke 9:26 ESV)
God’s intention for us is that being firstly a member of his heavenly
family, like Paul, we confess to the Romans, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for
salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
(Romans 1:16 ESV)
And as Paul says to young Timothy, “Do
your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need
to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth”. (2 Timothy 2:15 ESV)
And the writer of Hebrews says of Jesus and us who allow him to make us
holy, “For he who sanctifies and those
who are sanctified all have one source.
That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers.” (Hebrews 2:11
ESV)
Peter in his epistle to the persecuted church says, “Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let
him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name.” (1 Peter 4:16
ESV)
With the weight of God’s word just heard, are you more ashamed of the
gospel or your family? Is honour before
the world more important than honour before God in his church, including those in this church our shame and
pride would naturally exclude.
Like Paul who formerly prided himself, as a Hebrew of Hebrews, a
Pharisee of Pharisees blameless under the law, confesses to the Philippians,
that hanging onto his former identity is as shameful as keeping and showing
your poo[1].
Jesus calls you to hate your own life like your manure or that which is
cast aside as waste. And he is not just
talking about the things you consider as evil or shameful. But also, the things in which you seek
honour, and deem as good, shaming God to second place.
His call to hate others or love him the most, then flows into his
second impediment statement for discipleship, “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my
disciple.” (Luke 14: 27 ESV)
Earlier in Luke’s Gospel when Jesus speaks to his disciples about those
ashamed of him and his words, the Son of Man will be ashamed on his
return. Just before saying this, he
invites them to take up their cross (Luke 9:23). But here in the second of his “cannot”
discipleship statements his call is not just to “take up” one’s cross but “to
carry” or “bear it”.
This is stronger language again.
The disciples knew to carry a cross was the Roman way of making one
carry one’s instrument of death to the place of their crucifixion and
death. Jesus makes it clear, if you are
going to walk with me, death will occur!
Hate your family, now make a faithful stand which will lead to
death! What?
It’s here Jesus takes a break before pointing out the third reason why
one cannot be his disciple, his learner, or one who truly understands, to do
the will of the Father.
Jesus says, “For which of you,
desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether
he has enough to complete it? Otherwise,
when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin
to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to
build and was not able to finish.”
(Luke 14:28–30 ESV)
Counting the cost of loving Jesus more than anyone or anything! Hating my life so much I would forsake it and
follow Jesus to death! It makes you
wonder, “How on earth can I do this? How
can I make this work?”
The picture of building a tower and being humiliated by not being able
to finish its city, immediately makes us think of the Tower of Babel. The spirit of humanity collectively sought to
work their way up to God, but God confused their language and dispersed them
before they could build themselves up as a collective human god.
As the Babel event rings in our ears, know that just as Jesus says,
those who cannot “finish their towers will be humiliated”, they too will be
shamed like those of Babel whom God mocks.
After they built their tower “up to heaven”, God still has to “come
down” to see what they were doing. They
are humiliated and dispersed!
Surely before you or I work to love Jesus more than our family, social
status, or state, before we seek to die for our sin, we might sit down and
count the cost.
Jesus then paints another picture for us saying, “what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit
down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who
comes against him with twenty thousand?
And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a
delegation and asks for terms of peace.” (Luke 14:31–32 ESV)
We might regard King David as the greatest king of the Old Testament
who battled and overcame hundreds of thousands in battle. Yet before God he cries out, “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and
cleanse me from my sin! Purge me with
hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”
(Psalm 51:2, 7 ESV)
Here is God’s chosen King of Israel, trembling and found short before
God! Crying out for peace before
God! No sacrifice could please God, no
offering could cleanse, nothing he did could recoup the cost! And David knew it!
What is the cost of our unfinished work? Can I pay to have peace within? How can I have terms of peace without God?
This brings us to Jesus’ last hindrance on being his disciple. Counting the cost and seeking terms of peace,
Jesus says, “therefore, any one of you
who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:33 ESV)
The deeds, intellect, and the life one lives, will only bring shame if
we try to use them as a bargaining chip at the table of life and death.
This is well and truly proven by the Israelites, who, on entering the
promised land, heard Moses say, “See, I
have set before you today life and good, death and evil.” (Deuteronomy
30:15 ESV) But they lost their land of
milk and honey, first to the Assyrians and Babylonians, and finally to the
Romans.
God set before them life and death, living a life of good over evil
under the Law. Yet the good they lived
was for themselves, and they lost their land, the paradise of God being with them
in the temple in Jerusalem and received payment for their sin. God’s wages for sin, is always death!
Jesus then says, “Salt is good,
but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for
the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Luke 14:34–35 ESV)
If Israel’s good was not good enough, and our good, is not good enough
either, if our lack of saltiness is too shameful to put on the dung heap,
consider the cost, seek terms of true peace!
Those who have ears let them hear!
Taste and see it is the Lord who is good! No one could follow Jesus to the cross, just
as none of us can make salt, salty again if it loses it saltiness. We lose favour and flavour with God, when we
seek the poopy pleasures of good and evil.
God gives our flavour back, in a cleansing bath in baptism,
rejuvenating saltiness, preserved “with and in” his word. He flavours you once again and delights in
you as his own, with the work of the Holy Spirit and our risen ascended Lord
Jesus Christ. Jesus counted the cost and
paid the price. He was cast out of the city like poo and nailed to the cross,
clean and innocent, in the place of uncleanness and shame.
Now the shame of our sin is not confessing it and repenting. True discipleship relies on the Holy Spirit
to honour God through our confession as sinners being daily forgiven!
As King David said, “Blessed is
the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long. I
acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will
confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.” (Psalm 32:1–5 ESV)
In Jesus Christ, the guilt and shame of your sin is taken away. By allowing the Holy Spirit to bring you daily to Jesus, in confession and repentance, making him your Messiah, is the highest form of worshipping and following God. Amen.
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