Sermon manuscript:
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.
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