220925 Sermon on 1 Timothy 6:6-19 (Pentecost 16) September 25, 2022

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I’d like to begin today by talking about something that Paul mentions in our Epistle reading. Paul mentions that Jesus made the good confession before Pontius Pilate. So what was Jesus’s good confession?

When Jesus was brought before Pilate, Pilate asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus’s answer, his good confession, was, “Yes. It is as you say.” Jesus’s good confession was that he is the king of the Jews.

John’s Gospel tells us more of Jesus’s good confession. Jesus also said to Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I would not be handed over to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from here.”

Pilate responded, “You are a king then?”

Jesus answered, “I am, as you say a king. For this reason I was born and for this reason I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Pilate said to him, “What is truth.”

You can tell that Pilate is not impressed, which is not surprising. Jesus was already bruised and bloodied by this point from his treatment at the hands of the chief priests and scribes. Pilate knew that Jesus did not move in high society, because he himself was from high society. Jesus had no entourage with him, no supporters. The crowd that was there seemed only able to cry out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Pilate took pity on what he imagined to be a delusional man. Many times over Pilate went out to the Jews and said, “I find him not guilty. He doesn’t deserve death. We’ll give him a slap on the wrist and call it good.”

It’s easy for us, also, to think like Pilate. Just look at him in your mind’s eye. Jesus couldn’t have been serious. He’s helpless and powerless. He can’t be the king of the Jews. Caesar is king of the Jews. Caesar is the one who conquered them, and he would come and conquer them again. Jesus doesn’t even have an army.

So it goes. We have our own ideas of what works and what doesn’t work. What works is money, power, politics, guns, and so on. Jesus had no money. He seemingly had no power. He was horrible at politics and coalition building. He didn’t even own a gun. Looks like this won’t work. But Jesus’s claim that he is the king of the Jews is the very thing that Paul identifies as his good confession. Jesus, despite appearances, is the king of the Jews.

Jesus being king of the Jews means that Jesus is the king of the people of God. Jesus is the true Son of David. He is the one who fulfills the Old Testament prophecies for a Savior. He is the suffering servant who was crushed for our iniquities, wounded for our transgressions. By his stripes we are healed. The placard above Jesus’s cross is true. Pilate had a sign made for Jesus’s cross written in all the major languages of that region so that everyone could read it. It said, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” There, on the cross, the king was reigning and ruling. Admittedly, it is a strange way to reign and rule. He’s not bossing anybody else around. He gasps, gurgles, and cries out. But this is how he is the good King, laying down his life for the sheep. By his death all sinners are redeemed.

The truthfulness of Jesus’s good confession continues on. He remains king. Paul says in our reading that he will come again when the time is right. Paul calls Jesus “the blessed and only ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or is able to see. To him be honor and power forever! Amen.” Jesus reigns and rules at the right hand of God the Father in majesty unapproachable, in power unequaled. We sing about this almost every Sunday, a hymn to Jesus: “Thou only art holy; Thou only art the Lord. Thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father. Amen.” Jesus is the greatest! This is the good confession.

The reason why I wanted to start today with the good confession that Jesus is the king of the Jews is because it helps us get a correct frame of mind for the other things that Paul says. We have our own ideas of what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to being king. So also, what Paul says concerning our happiness contradicts what we think. More money has to be right there at the top of the list for what would make us happier.

But Paul says: “Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we certainly cannot take anything out. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be satisfied. Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge them into complete destruction and utter ruin. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evils. By striving for money, some have wandered away from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains.”

Then, at the end of the reading he says, “Instruct those who are rich in this present age not to be arrogant or to put their hope in the uncertainty of riches, but rather in God, who richly supplies us with all things for our enjoyment. Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share. In this way they are storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.”

According to a very practical, common-sense mindset Paul’s words about riches can look improbable, to say the least. He says we’ll be satisfied if we have food and clothing. He says the desire to be rich is a trap. He says it produces many harms that pierce us straight through. He says that riches are uncertain! That’s quite the whopper. If we take anything as being certain it’s riches. Instead he says that we should put our hope in God, who richly supplies us with all things for our enjoyment.

All of these sayings of Paul can look poor and weak. They can look as shabby as Jesus looked before Pontius Pilate. Pilate asked him, “You are king of the Jews?” So also these instructions concerning money can appear to be the opposite of happiness, goodness, and so on.

But the good confession is that Jesus is the king of the Jews despite appearances or expectations. So also your happiness will be fulfilled contrary to expectations. It will be not by desiring to be rich. That is a foolish and harmful desire. That will plunge you into complete destruction and utter ruin. Do you not believe that? I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t.

How many people believed that Jesus was the king of the Jews? How many people now believe that he reigns and rules from the right hand of God the Father, and at the proper time will come to judge the living and the dead? Then what good will all your riches do you? Riches, which seem so stable and dependable now, provide no benefit then.

Therefore, Paul says, “flee from these thoughts and desires.” Run away from them like you would some dreadful beast or monster who wants to pierce you through with many pains. Notice how energetic activity is directed away from things that we otherwise like to put a lot of our energy into. When we believe that our happiness is tied up with riches, we will go the extra mile to get a little extra for ourselves. Run away from your love of money because it’s dangerous.

Instead, Paul says, chase other things: “Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and kindness. Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of eternal life, to which you were called, and about which you made your good confession.” Note how chasing after being righteous, godly, believing, loving, patient, and kind is wise. It’s foolish to chase riches, because we didn’t bring anything into this world when we were born, and we won’t take anything with us when we die. But by chasing after these other things we are taking hold of eternal life.

Maybe you could say that chasing money, power, politics, and guns is taking hold of this present life. If you want to be king or queen of the world, you can’t afford to ignore such things. But if you are striving to enter into that unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or is able to see, if you want to take hold of eternal life, then you must pursue those thing of which eternal life consists.

Be righteous. Righteousness is God’s gift to you in Jesus. You are righteous for Jesus’s sake. You also, therefore, love what is right and just.

Be godly. Be reverent towards God rather than being reverent toward your own life, your own ambitions, your own achievements.

Be believing. Trust in God in any and every circumstance instead of in money or any other gods.

Be loving. Love, because God first loved you.

Be patient. Persevere. Don’t give up. You will reap what you sow if you do not give up.

Be kind. God has been kind to you, you be kind to others.

The place where all these things come to completion and fulfillment is heaven. By pursuing these things you are taking hold of eternal life. You are entering into what Jesus has purchased for you when he reigned and ruled as the king of the Jews, whose kingdom is not of this world.

So do not be afraid to put into practice the instructions that Paul gives us. If Jesus is not king, if he is not resurrected from the dead, then Paul’s instructions are horrible. I don’t know if worse advice could be possible! But if Jesus is king, if he is risen from the dead, if he is coming again, then there is no more sensible and wise thing to do than to take hold of the eternal life that has been given to you. Happiness and fulfillment does not come from chasing riches. It comes from following the ways of God.

220918 Sermon on being the greatest (Pentecost 15) September 18, 2022

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We have choices when it comes to what we love and what we pursue. We can’t love everything equally the same. There are tradeoffs. If you love one thing, it means that you are going to love something else a little less.

This is true when it comes to money. Usually the tradeoff when it comes to money is relationships. You can love and pursue money—milk it, squeeze it—but that might very well mean that a relationship suffers. In order to get more money out of a person, you kind of have to abuse them. Or, at least, there’s no good deal for them. A good deal for them is a bad deal for you if your goal is to get as much money as you can.

This is why people often prefer to make deals with strangers. You can treat strangers however you want. You probably won’t see them again or have to deal with them again. If they end up dissatisfied, oh well, buyer beware. A deal’s a deal, etc. If you rip off somebody you know, then you might to be confronted by that over and over again. The other party might be angry or disappointed. So if you want to maximize your profits it’s best to deal with strangers so you can squeeze as much out of them as you can.

Getting as much as you can for yourself is one of those things that is hard-wired into us. We want it. Getting the most for as little as possible is good business sense. So that’s good. More than that: it’s the correct thing to do, even the moral thing to do.

This is similar to another thing that is hard-wired into us: love your friends and hate your enemies. If somebody treats you badly, then give them hell. If they punch you, then you punch them right back and punch them harder than they punched you.

But you know that Jesus tells us to love our enemies: “If someone strikes you on the one cheek, then turn so that they might strike you on the other.” Do not return evil for evil, but overcome evil with good. Jesus overturns the morality that seems to be hard-wired in us to hate our enemies.

The same thing is true with our dealings with money. It’s hard-wired in us to get as much as we can for ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with raking it in so long as it’s legal. Everyone has to fend for themselves, and if you happen to fend better than others, then so be it. You are probably just a superior human being. That’s a common assumption, you know. The more money you have, the more superior of a human being you must be.

To that assumption we might respond with what Jesus says in our Gospel reading: “What is highly regarded among people is an abomination in God’s sight.” An abomination is something that is totally disgusting. People highly regard power, pride, wealth, self-sufficiency. People believe that the more money and resources they have, the better off they are. This kind of thinking is disgusting in God’s sight. True greatness is not being rich or famous or powerful. True greatness is following after God’s Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Isn’t greatness what everybody ultimately wants? Isn’t greatness what the world highly regards? This is why you have to smack down your enemies and cheat whomever you can. That’s how you get ahead. Less for others means more for you. But this, too, Jesus turns on its head.

One time Jesus overheard his disciples arguing. He asked them, “What were you arguing about?” But they wouldn’t answer him because they were embarrassed. They had been arguing with one another over who was the greatest. So Jesus called them all together and said, “If anyone wants to be first, he will be last of all and the servant of all.” Then Jesus took a little child and placed the child in the midst of them. Taking the child in his arms Jesus said to them, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me, welcomes not just me but also him who sent me—the Father.”

This is so contrary to the way that we think that it is very easy for people to scoff at Jesus as though he were the greatest of all possible fools. Note that this is what the Pharisees did to Jesus in our Gospel reading today after he was done talking about money. The ways of Jesus are so contrary to how we normally think. Who is the greatest? Folks might answer: Mohammed Ali, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Michael Phelps. How do you get to be the greatest? By ruthlessly, relentlessly serving yourself—cultivating your talents, honing your strengths, burning out your weaknesses.

How different is Jesus’s answer: “If anyone wants to be first, he will be last of all and the servant of all.” Then, so that they wouldn’t miss the point, he picked out some random kid. You should serve this random, powerless, favorless kid. This kid can’t do anything for you. He can’t pay you. He can’t make you rich or famous. The uncouth kid might not even have the manners to say “Thank you.” But if you want to be great, if you want to be first, then you must become last and the servant of all.

Who ever heard of a servant or a slave being great? That’s the opposite of what we think of as being great. But, as Jesus said, “What is highly regarded in people’s sight is an abomination in God’s sight.” Being a servant or a slave is worst in our books, but think of what Jesus is like. He did not come to lord it over everybody else, even though he is Lord of lords and King of kings. He certainly had that right and ability. Instead he came “not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Those who would be great will follow after this Greatest One. The way that Jesus was great was with his love. Jesus loved. God is love. Heaven is love. Hell is absent of love. Hell has plenty of greatness in it. So many of this world’s greatest end up there. Lots of rich people go there. Lots of powerful people go there. Those folks knew how to get ahead, and you can be sure that they haven’t changed a bit. You can be sure that the inhabitants of hell will guard their own interests down to the very last penny. They’ll slit your throat while you are looking. You might very well find a lot of greatness in hell. What you won’t find there is love.

So we need to promote love as Christians. Nobody else is going to do it, I assure you. Everybody else thinks that love won’t work. For example: Loving your enemies. They say loving your enemies is psychologically damaging. Or being generous: Being generous with your buying and selling will make you poor. Poor people are the worst. They are so miserable. Or serving others: Serving others is the surest way to be miserable and unhappy. Sounds like suffering to me. These contradictions of Jesus’s teachings can sound right and quite plausible. It sounds like love, service, sacrifice, and suffering are the problem and not the solution. Isn’t that just like the devil? Make what God has said sound hateful, bad, sinister, no good. That’s how his speech sounded way back when to Adam and Eve too.

Love is not the problem. Love is what saves the world. God is love. Jesus’s life was love by which he justified sinners by taking our place. His life continues to be love. The healing that we all need so badly is not going to come from more money or goods. It’s not going to come from a battle between the sexes. It’s not going to come from loosening all limits and letting everybody go wild with whatever trips their triggers. Healing comes with love—service, sacrifice and suffering for one another.

Think of that wild jungle that is called our schools. Kids are so unbelievably mean to each other that the scars of being picked on can be life-long. What if kids would love the least in their midst? That takes courage, because standing up for the least can make you a target. How beneficial and Christ-like would it be for young Christians to step in and not let somebody get absolutely thrashed in their soul? And let’s not be Pollyannaish about this. There will be a cost. Standing up and helping the least will make the bullies come after you. They will come after you like Goliath the giant. But if you put your trust in the Lord, you’ll be alright—even if you end up with some bruises.

Or what if we loved more in the workplace? Workers won’t work unless they are compelled to work. They won’t go the extra mile. Employers don’t care about their workers. They try to pay them as little as they can get away with. Everybody, bosses and workers, look only to their own interests as they each in their own way are trying to be the greatest. What a difference it would make to love your boss, and for the boss to love you. Satisfaction in the workplace does not come from how much money you get paid. Satisfaction is from the love that is there.

And what of love in the home? What if you set aside your pride and made it your goal to do what is pleasing to God, serving the others who share your home? Jesus says that we should serve a little child. How much more, then, should you serve the one who is not a child, but with whom you are one flesh? You know those little tricks and snide comments and backhanded ways that you can drive each other up the wall. These barbs and punches give you some kind of evil satisfaction, because, after all, they hit you, so you should hit them back. What if you didn’t hit them back?

In all these most important areas of life you always have a choice. You can serve yourself or you can serve God. You can’t serve both, because you are always going to prefer one over the other. And the easier way is always serving yourself rather than serving God. We do not, by nature, like to serve or sacrifice or suffer. That is to say, we do not, by nature, love.

But you have been brought out of the realm of darkness and into God’s marvelous light. You have learned what is truly great, what is truly beneficial. You even know the amazing secret by which evil has been conquered. It has been defeated by love. God is love. We love because he first loved us.

 

220911 Sermon on Luke 15:1-10 (Pentecost 14) September 11, 2022

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There are two main teachings that we have from God. He has given us his Law and his Gospel.

God’s Law spells out everything that we must do in order to be judged as good, righteous, and just. The Ten Commandments are God’s Law. The great summation of God’s Law is that we should love him with our whole heart, soul, strength and mind, and that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. So the Law is always saying, “Do this, and don’t do that.”

God’s Gospel is his message of good news. The word “Gospel” means “good news.” The good news is that God has acted on our behalf. He has not abandoned us to our slavery to sin and our slavery to the devil, but he has redeemed us in the death of Jesus Christ. The good news, the Gospel, is God’s gift of forgiveness and salvation in Jesus.

Our Gospel reading today is especially illustrative of God’s good news. A sheep that has gotten lost is as good as dead. It’s just a matter of time. But the shepherd goes and looks for the sheep. When the sheep is found it is placed on the shepherd’s shoulders, and he goes back to the flock rejoicing. The sheep didn’t do anything to bring about its own salvation. The sheep didn’t follow commands like “Do this, and don’t do that.” In fact, if anything, the sheep didn’t do what it was supposed to do. It wandered off. The shepherd saves the sheep despite the sheep’s behavior.

The parable of the lost coin is similar. The coin’s contribution to what happened is that it got lost. It fell. It couldn’t jump back up into the woman’s purse. The woman goes to work, takes the trouble. So it is with our salvation. Having fallen into sin we cannot work our way back into God’s favor. God goes out searching for us to find us.

He does this by the preaching of his Word. He does this through Christians speaking the Gospel. The only way that anyone can know about the Gospel, can know of God’s will to save sinners in Jesus is by being told it. There are no experiments or math problems that will ever bring about this knowledge.

So we have two teachings that we are stewards of as Christians. We have the Law, which tells us how to live well and be good, and the Gospel, which tells us what God has done for us. These are the two things that we have to share with the world. God’s Law diagnoses our abominable condition. It tells us who we are. Who are we? We are sinners. The Gospel tells us about God. Who is he? His most outstanding feature is that he is the justifier of sinners. He makes sinners right and good by the holy life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Keeping this in mind, let’s turn to a surprising detail that has been recorded at the beginning of our Gospel reading. It says: “All the tax collectors and sinners were coming to Jesus to hear him.” Tax collectors were mean and greedy. They would threaten and extort to obtain whatever they could get away with. The Roman officials didn’t care so long as they got their cut.

It mentions that sinners were coming to Jesus. There’s a pretty admirable list of sinners in our Epistle reading: Sinners are “lawless and rebellious people, godless people, unholy and worldly people, those who kill their fathers and those who kill their mothers, murderers, sexually immoral people, homosexuals, kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and so on.” More concretely you might think of people who are unacceptable according to our moral, social code. You can think of people who have done things that you consider shameful. But you also might remember things that you’ve done in secret. So far as other people know you are respectable, but you probably know something different.

Tax collectors and sinners were coming to Jesus. They were not just coming to watch him perform miracles, but, as it says, “to hear him.” What would Jesus be telling them? We are not told exactly, but, generally speaking, he would be telling them God’s Law and God’s Gospel. God’s Law would have identified them as sinners. God’s Gospel would have announced that they are forgiven sinners. These are not teachings that came out of somebody’s cracked brain. These are teachings that come from God. They are as true as true can be. These tax collectors and sinners were getting hooked on the truth. They wanted to hear it.

This is a wonderful thing whenever it happens. Jesus says that the angels rejoice when just one sinner repents. It doesn’t always happen. In fact, we are quite accustomed to and feel more comfortable with lies and deception to the truth.

We prefer lies to the truth when it comes to the Law because we do not want to be humbled. We want to believe that every bad thing we do is understandable, comprehensible, not a bit reprehensible, but perfectly defensible. This, of course, is ridiculously untrue, but it’s what we want to believe. When the truth of God’s Law comes along, it exposes our justifications of ourselves as the fig leaves that they really are.

Or we might lie to ourselves like this: We’ve done our fair share of wandering, of course, just like everybody else, but we can always come back to the flock if we want to. We’re not lost. We’re not damned. We can stop whenever we want to. We can get better—just like we can always theoretically get in shape. Let’s not start today, of course. We’ve already blown it for today. Tomorrow we’ll be motivated. Always tomorrow. Tomorrow we’ll whip ourselves into shape. The truth, however, that we should gain from this is that we are liars. Oh, how we lie! We lie to others and we lie to ourselves. The Bible says that all men are liars.

The truth is that you have no hope of ever wandering back into the fold. Your wandering will only take you further and further away, even if you look like you’re getting into shape. The further and further you wander away the closer you are to death. The purpose and end of the Law is to reveal this approaching inevitable death. The Law has not been given for self-improvement. The Law is ferocious and untamable. It ruthlessly points out the inevitability of our death and damnation for those who do not keep it.

The only way that God’s Law can be made somewhat palatable for people is when it is not used correctly, when lies are told about it, when people pick and choose which laws they feel they would like to keep and which laws they can safely ignore as if they had this right. Of course, we can lie and pretend about God’s Law until we die and until Judgement Day, but that will be the end of the lying and pretending.

So the thing that we need the most is being saved from God’s Law. God’s Law speaks the truth. It tosses us altogether into the one bucket called “sinners.” This isn’t God’s fault and it isn’t the Law’s fault. It’s our fault. Sinners and tax collectors can rage against that verdict all they want, but the truth is still the truth.

There is another truth, however, that swallows up, you might say, this truth of the Law. God’s truth according to the Law is that you are a sinner and unrighteous. But, as Paul says in Romans 3, “a righteousness apart from the Law has been revealed. It is God’s own righteousness. So it’s not a fake or pretend righteousness. It is the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” This is the righteousness of the Gospel.

If it weren’t for this righteousness of God in Jesus Christ that is freely given apart from the Law, if it weren’t from this Gospel righteousness that swallows up the lack of righteousness that the Law reveals, then people would be better off if they never heard the Law at all. They’d be better off pretending that they are not lost, they’re fine, they can stop whenever they want, they can get better if only the try better, they’ve lived a decent enough life when compared to other people—these truly give people comfort.

The only problem is that they are lies. They aren’t perfectly comfortable—people can sense that they are lies in their heart of hearts. They sense the horror of the truth that the Law reveals—how evil we are, our death and damnation—this is what overcame Judas Iscariot so that he went and hung himself.

This horrible truth of the Law must be followed by the truth of the Gospel, which is superior in a sense. Both God’s Law and God’s Gospel are as true and true can be. But God sent his Son in order to save us from his Law. God sent his Son to find the lost sheep and the lost coin. Once the sheep has been found and the coin has been put back in the purse the wandering and the getting lost lose all the power it ever had. The sinner who is forgiven isn’t reckoned as a sinner anymore. Christians do not hold on to and love the Law with their whole heart. Christians love Jesus who suffered and died to set them free from the Law. The ferocious and divine beast of the Law is precisely what brought about Jesus’s deepest suffering on our behalf when he became sin for us.

So the reason why the tax collectors and sinners were coming to Jesus in order to hear him was because they had tasted the truth. The truth is scary, but it is also wonderful. They got hooked on the truth. This ironically put them much further along than the Pharisees who otherwise lived very respectable lives.

In fact, the Pharisees’ lies about themselves were perhaps more persuasive than the sinners’ and tax collectors’ lies to themselves. The Pharisees could more easily convince themselves that they were not lost. They certainly weren’t as lost as those losers whom Jesus was eating with. This also meant that they felt very little need for a shepherd to take them upon his shoulders and bring them back to the flock.

Often the Christian Church gets depicted as being pharisaical. A lot of times that depiction is accurate, because not everybody understands the two great teachings of Christianity very well and how they relate. This depiction of the Christian Church is that Christians love to judge other people—homosexuals, for example, to take a hot button issue today. No, that is not our endpoint, just as it was not Jesus’ endpoint either. God’s Law, indeed, condemns homosexual lust and activities just as it condemns other evil things. It does no good to tell lies about God’s Law.

But the endpoint is to live in the righteousness of God that is apart from the Law—the righteousness of God that comes through faith in Jesus Christ. No matter what sins anybody might be afflicted with, the endpoint is confidence, comfort, joy, and thankfulness to Jesus for suffering and atoning for all those sins. The goal is not that everyone should be sad and sullen, being tortured by the ferocious Law and by their own guilt. That’s a surefire way to end up like Judas either physically or spiritually. The goal is a good conscience coming from God’s own powerful divine truth in the Gospel.

Live in Jesus and his righteousness. He takes away all shame and guilt. He destroys death. He closes hell. He opens heaven. He does all of these things for sinners like you. He wants to be with you and to eat with you.

220904 Sermon on Luke 14:25-35 (Pentecost 13) September 4, 2022

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When the introductions are made on Wheel of Fortune, the contestants almost always talk about two things. They talk about their family, and they talk about their job. One’s family and one’s livelihood are very important parts of who we are.

In our Gospel reading Jesus seems to attack both of these sources for our identity. Our identity is precious to us. Jesus makes us choose between being his disciple or holding on to our identity.

Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” There’s Pat’s question about our families. Jesus also has something to say about our livelihoods: “Any one of you who does not say farewell to all his own possessions cannot be my disciple.” Let me add that the word for “possessions” here is much larger than just money and property. A more literal translation would go something like this: “Any one of you who does not say farewell to his own being or existence cannot be my disciple.” Jesus is laying claim to all of us, our entire being. Another thing he says in our reading is: “Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

This strikes us as being very negative. There are some very negative words like “hate,” “say farewell,” and “carry your cross.” The other side of it, of course, is the possibility of being Jesus’s disciple. We hardly ever think of that. The goodness of being a disciple of Jesus must be such that these very important and precious things in our life are not the highest good. The one thing that cannot be dispensed with is being Jesus’s disciple. Everything else can go.

A rock-solid conclusion that we must draw from Jesus words is that there is no such thing as being a casual Christian. A casual Christian will never put up with such demands. If there is a conflict between family and faith, family comes first. But what Jesus is saying is that such a one is not his disciple. Or what if a person’s job makes demands upon a Christian that the Christian cannot agree to with a good conscience? If you will not say farewell to your livelihood you cannot be his disciple.

This is very useful to know in our day because you certainly aren’t going to hear anything like this from anywhere else. The widespread assumption is that being a casual Christian is perfectly acceptable. If ever a conflict arises between being a Christian and familial obligations, or in order to get a good grade, or to keep your job, or even recreation commitments, all these other things not only can come first, but probably should come first. We tend not to think anything of this, but if we were to think about it we’d realize that a very powerful confession of faith is made by our actions. When everything else in the world comes first and being a faithful disciple is only when it is convenient, you are making your confession before the world and before God where your loyalties lie.

On the other hand, so-called fanaticism or so-called extremism in popular understanding is when your commitments towards God are allowed to have an impact on your life. This is very strange, very bad. Over the past 20 years or so a lot of the villains in TV crime shows have been screwy Christians who aren’t like the rest of the population. They can’t be trusted because who knows how they will act. The rest of the population knows what life is for. Life is for making money and spending money. Anybody who doesn’t have that as the purpose for their life is strange and dangerous. I could almost imagine one of those TV villains quoting Jesus after doing something dastardly to his family: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

This reading, therefore, is very useful in the sense that it can teach us something we don’t already know or already believe. Our people are so much more thoroughly catechized by what they learn from TV than from anything they might learn from the Bible or from church. Everybody already believes that family has to come first, then the job, then the cabin, then, if there’s time and out of the goodness of our heart, we’ll offer the leftovers of our life to Jesus. And he should be grateful that we are such good people that we offer him even that! That, I would say, is the widespread mentality.

So when Jesus says you must hate your family and say farewell to the life you imagine you’ve created for yourself if you want to be his disciple, this totally blows out of the water the thinking that we otherwise might have. Discipleship to Jesus is higher and holier and we must not toss it aside for even the best and most wholesome that this life can offer. Wherever Jesus leads, we will follow. That’s what it means to be a disciple. A disciple follows the master.

Therefore we should count the cost. Jesus says:

For which of you, if he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, everyone who sees it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build, but was not able to finish.’ Or what king, as he goes out to confront another king in war, will not first sit down and consider if he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if he is not able, he sends out a delegation and asks for terms of peace while his opponent is still far away.

If you are only going to give the leftovers of your life to God, then you might as well not even give him that. If you were going to build a tower with what you have laying around at your house or in your garage, that’s going to be a pretty pathetic and ugly tower. You might as well not even build it because it probably isn’t going to be worth anything anyway.

So also casual discipleship isn’t worth anything either. In the life to come casual disciples of Jesus will look stupid. “Look, they thought they were Christians even though they never followed Jesus.” Either you are his disciple or you are not. There’s no half way. Either you are looking for Jesus to take you to himself or you are making the most of this life. If you are making the most of this life, then you will never be willing to sacrifice anything that you really care about because that will decrease your quality of life. The best that can ever be hoped for are the leftovers. Maybe you’ll use the stuff that you have lying around, but you certainly aren’t going to go out and buy building materials with the money that you could otherwise use to increase your standard of living.

The way it is now is the way it was then and vice versa. At the beginning of our reading it says “large crowds were traveling together with Jesus.” The fact that there was a large crowd seems to be what prompts Jesus to say that the cost of being his disciple is very high. And true to Jesus’s words, this crowd ended up being unfaithful. In each one of the individual lives of this crowd something happened where they quit following Jesus. We don’t know what those things were. For one person it was this. For another person it was that. Maybe some of them followed him all the way to the cross, but then they couldn’t believe in the resurrection.

So it goes also with us. One person never even learns that being a disciple of Jesus requires anything more than possessing a tiny nugget of knowledge about him. A better informed person tries to be his disciple by learning from him, receiving his sacrament, attending church, but the cares and pleasures of this life draws him away. There are other things he’d rather do with his time than hear Jesus say stuff like he says to us in our reading today. Another person continues on as a Christian until he is forced to choose between doing what is right and doing what is easy or appears to be loving or what seems profitable.

Like the three kinds of soil in Jesus’s parable about the sowing of the seed, the call to be Jesus’s disciple comes to nothing. But it might not seem that way to the persons that I’ve described. Maybe, in their mind, their tower is fine. Maybe they even still come to church. But all they are doing is honoring God with their lips, while their hearts are far from him.

This is where Jesus’s words can be very helpful to you. Don’t deceive yourself about the nature of being Christ’s disciple. If you aren’t willing to be faithful to Jesus rather than be pleasing to your family, then don’t pretend that you are Jesus’s disciple. If you won’t say farewell to your quality of life so that you can be a disciple of Jesus, then you better keep  all of that for yourself and enjoy it before your life ends.

But if you have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, then dedicate yourself to him anew today. Jesus says in another place, “Truly I tell you that no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the Gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.”

Note how Jesus says that when we have left behind things for the Gospel that we already receive in this life a hundred times as much. We have brothers, sisters, mothers, and children with our fellow believers. We have a home in God. We have a field in which we may work. Jesus does say that there are also persecutions—this is not some unrealistic fantasy. But persecutions are never as bad as the devil would have us believe. And then, in the age to come, we will receive eternal life.

Jesus’s words in our Gospel reading today can sound horribly negative, and they always and forever will sound horribly negative to every scoffing unbeliever. But Jesus is not stingy. He has not come to take good things away from us. He comes to take bad things away—idolatry, impiety, covetousness. These things hamper life more than we realize. Instead, as Jesus says, “I have come so that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”

With the new life in Jesus, with the forgiveness of all your sins, you are entering ever more fully into life if you continue as his disciple. As he burns off the dross, purifying you, he makes you strong to enter eternal life where love is all in all. This is something that never can happen casually. It involves heat and pressure, bringing about a transformation. Jesus never means evil for us disciples—only good—but we have to trust him.