Other Scripture used:
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Philemon 1-20
Psalm 1
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer. Amen. (Psalm 19:14)
I. Intro
God’s definitely got great timing and an odd sense of humor doesn’t he? My mom is here visiting this week for my ordination, and this is only the second time she’s heard me preach — and the first time since I graduated seminary.
So today’s Gospel reading starts off with “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, … cannot be my disciple.” If there’s any verse in the Bible that preachers try to shy away from — especially when their parents are in town — it’s this one.
The word “hate” means something different from the way we use it today, but I’ll explain that as we get a little further along.
We’re entering the season in the church calendar when the Gospel readings contain what are called the “hard sayings of Jesus,” those Gospel passages that are the most jarring to us, and often the most difficult to interpret.
This is also the season when many senior pastors and priests go on vacation, leaving their junior clergy to deal with the challenges of these particular Gospel readings.
Jesus wants us to expend that extra effort to figure out what he’s really telling us, instead of just taking it at face value, and incorrectly, and then dismissing what he has said as being out of touch.
In our Gospel today Jesus demonstrates for us that there is a difference between salvation and discipleship.
II. Salvation vs. Discipleship
Our Gospel reading begins with large crowds following Jesus, and Jesus being rather unimpressed. He understood that most of the people were merely there for the show. They wanted to see the miracles. They heard there might be food — lots of food. Some were looking for a Messiah who would lead a revolt against Rome, overthrowing the oppressors by force. They wanted to change their situation — not their souls.
So Jesus turned to the crowd, and deliberately preached a sermon guaranteed to thin out his audience. He told them in very definite language that there is a difference between salvation and discipleship.
That difference is quantity versus quality. Jesus wants as many souls to be saved as possible, but true followers face a higher standard.
A disciple is an apprentice, or learner (máèçôÞò). A disciple grafts himself to his teacher, learning everything he or she can by watching the master and doing what he does. The disciple’s life becomes modeled after the master’s. His old life is left behind as he embarks on a new life as the master’s apprentice. We get the word “discipline” and “disciple” from the same concept. It takes an incredible amount of discipline to truly be a disciple.
Yet “disciple” is the most common name used in the Bible for the followers of Jesus. In the Gospels and the Book of Acts, the word appears 264 times.
Warren Weirsbe points out that salvation is ours by coming to the cross and trusting Jesus Christ, while discipleship means carrying the cross and following him.
III. Hate as Legal Term
“Hate” is usually a legal term in the Bible meaning rejection, as in rejecting any claim to property or inheritance. It is also used as hyperbole in comparisons for emphasis. Jesus came, as he said, to fulfill the law not to violate it, and Mosaic Law says to honor your father and mother, as well as loving the rest of your family. So obviously Jesus isn’t telling us to break his won commandments.
For example, in Malachi 1:2-3, we read “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the LORD “Yet I have loved Jacob; but I have hated Esau, and I have made his mountains a desolation and appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness.” (NASB)
The New Living Translation says “I have ‘rejected’ Esau.”
When Jesus is saying we must hate our families, and even life itself, he is using hyperbole to emphasize the point that we must love Jesus so much more than anything or anyone else in our lives, or we will never be able to withstand the burden of carrying our cross each day as we follow him.
IV. Carrying the Cross
Carrying the cross means living as Jesus lived and doing what Jesus did every single day of our lives. It requires a selfless focus on how Jesus would face whatever we are facing at the moment, and how he would expect us to handle it.
Carrying the cross is a humbling acceptance of the unfairness of life, recognizing that peacemaking is more Christlike than making the other person admit they were wrong.
Carrying the cross is accepting blame for someone else’s mistakes without trying to set the record straight.
Carrying the cross is letting people see Jesus whenever they look at you.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran Pastor who opposed the Nazis during World War II, was a founding member of the Confessing Church, and was hanged by Adolph Hitler’s henchmen.
He wrote, “Salvation is free, ... but discipleship will cost you your life.”
We’re not always called to sacrifice our physical lives, but we are always called to relinquish our spiritual lives.
V. Building a Costly Tower
A few years before Jesus began his ministry, in A.D. 27, a poorly built amphitheater collapsed, causing about 50,000 casualties. Also during that time, many wealthy people tried to show off by building their own versions of the king’s palaces — except they often ran out of money before the building was completed, leaving this embarrassing, half-finished project in the open for everyone to see and ridicule.
It seems like common sense to make sure you know the cost of a building before starting its construction, but even in modern times we see that isn’t always the case.
When I was growing up, there was a construction site a few blocks away that was abandoned for years, an eyesore blocking the view of the sunset. As kids though, we used it to climb on and build forts inside — definitely not the owner’s original intent.
Even "smart" financial guys made this kind of misjudgment. In 1989, Donald Trump bought a huge behemoth of a hotel casino that was being built in Atlantic City, called the Trump Taj Majal. He was so overextended in buying it that he was nearly driven into bankruptcy.
The prior owners were Resorts International and Merv Griffin, who had spent about $500 million on the casino before finally selling it to Trump for $288 million, almost going into bankruptcy themselves. Trump had to find investors before his own finances would run out.
So Jesus’ example of a costly tower rings true even today.
VI. War and Folly
Jesus also mentions knowing the cost of war, and whether your forces are strong even to win. The crowd would have recognized that Herod Antipas had recently lost an embarrassing war with a neighboring Roman Vassal. By marrying his Brother Philip’s wife, Herodias, Herod brought about the divorce of his first wife, who was the daughter of a powerful Arabian prince named Aretas. Herod ended up in an Arabian war that started the downhill slide of his reign. This wasn’t just an arbitrary metaphor; Jesus was pointing at the folly of earthly kings versus the wisdom of the King of Kings.
VII. Possessed by our Possessions
And then he points to the stranglehold we keep on our possessions. Trump’s folly is an example of our greed, granted a very large example, but we all love our stuff and don’t like to let any of it go. We rent storage units to hold the stuff we can’t use because we have more stuff than space, instead of giving it to the many people around us who have more space than stuff.
Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch Christian who was sent with her family to a Nazi prison camp for hiding Jews during World War II. Her family had been fairly well off before the war, but when the Nazis imprisoned her, she lost everything, including her sister.
She later said, “I’ve learned that we must hold everything loosely, because when I grip it tightly, it hurts when the Father pries my fingers loose and takes it from me.” (Charles Swindoll, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity, p.114)
We can’t reach out to Jesus if our arms are wrapped around our stuff.
VIII. Becoming Onesimus – a Useful Disciple
Paul’s Letter to Philemon describes a runaway slave named Onesimus. This servant was useless to his master until he met Jesus through the teachings of Paul, and was then described by Paul as being useful in his ministry. The name “Onesimus” is also the Greek word for useful, so it’s rather ironic that a man named “Useful” spent so much time being “useless” instead.
Paul asked Philemon to take Onesimus back as a free man, and charge any cost involved to Paul’s account. I like to picture Jesus doing something similar for us — asking the Father to take us back, accepting us as his disciples and as now being useful to his heavenly plan, having grown from our useless condition of rebellion when we rejected the Father’s grace and sovereignty by doing our will instead of God’s will in our lives.
By devoting our lives to following Jesus, we are made useful again, and we can look forward to hearing our king say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
We can’t be a servant if we think we’re in charge. There’s an old blues song by B.B. King called, “Paying the Cost to Be the Boss.” Jesus is calling us to something different when we carry the cross and follow him. We’re “paying the cost to not be the boss.” Being a disciple means having the discipline to continue following even when things are difficult.
It means getting back up when we fall down; getting back on the road when we wander off it. It’s more than just coming to church one day a week.
Paul Harvey said, “Too many Christians are no longer fishers of men but keepers of the aquarium.”
Do we have that fire in the belly to carry our cross when things get tough?
The other day (Thursday), I met a Marine Sergeant who is recuperating from wounds he received about 14 months ago. The explosion damaged multiple vertebrae, his left hip, and parts of his legs. His entire left side absorbed a large portion of the blast, and his fellow Marines, who were also injured, pulled him out of the vehicle to safety. He has difficulty standing or sitting for long periods of time, and usually has to alternate between those positions as the pain increases. He’s been told he’ll suffer from chronic pain for the rest of his life.
That morning at the hospital, they had their annual POW-MIA 5-K Run. This sergeant completed it. He said he shuffled through the three miles with his cane in about 52 minutes.
To this sergeant, and many others, being a Marine means completing the mission despite any obstacles, pushing yourself past where others would quit, always keeping the goal in mind and pressing ever forward, one small step at a time until you reach victory. This sergeant’s goal wasn’t to come in first place; that would be impossible. His goal was to finish the race and not come in last. And he was successful.
That’s also a model for discipleship. Picking up our cross each day is painful. There are times when we’d rather quit and join our friends who seem to be having a good time doing what we know as Christians we should not be doing.
We endure social stigma for not being part of the crowd; in many other countries they endure much worse. We’re worried about people laughing at us, while thousands of other Christians are tortured and killed for their beliefs in Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, China, Indonesia, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and many more countries.
We think of Christian persecution as having end back in the days of the Roman Empire.
The truth is that more people have been killed for their belief in Jesus Christ in the last 100 years, than in all the other centuries combined.
Despite the beatings, the prison sentences, the torture, the loss of all their possessions, they press forward in faith one painful step at a time, reaching toward their goal of being a disciple of Jesus Christ, of living the way Jesus lived and doing what Jesus did.
Jesus’ message was deliberate. There’s a big difference between participation and commitment. In a typical breakfast of bacon and eggs, the chicken is participating but the pig is committed.
We need to be that committed in our walk with Jesus, following Jesus and his example, to live as Jesus lived and do what Jesus did. We have to pay the cost to not be the boss.
God bless you.
