This sermon was delivered to St Oswald’s, Maybole, Ayrshire, Scotland on the 5th September 2010; St Oswald’s is a Scottish Episcopal Church in the Dioceses of Glasgow and Dumfries.
The readings for today are: Jeremiah 18:1-11 Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17 Philemon 1-21 Luke 14:25-33
“Please join me in a short prayer from Psalms 19:14, and ”Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer. Amen.
Introduction
These were horrible scriptures again this morning: first from Jeremiah, the wailing prophet of the Old Testament; and secondly from Jesus Himself saying some very harsh and disturbing things in our Gospel message; but there was still something exciting and magnetic about the personality of Jesus that drew the huge crowds wherever he travelled.
I think His personality grew from the relationship He had with God through prayer; prayers which anointed Him with power and authority; where He could speak the word of God right into the people’s hearts. … I believe also that Jesus knew and related to his listeners, talked the same language as them, with no highfalutin ministerial tones.
Yes, there was and there is something very captivating about Jesus; and His message; however that being said it is very important to note that not everybody who followed Jesus that day were there for the same reason.
a. Some followed Him because they were curious onlookers;
b. and some were spies from religious and governmental leaders; who wanted to see what Jesus was saying and doing so that they could report back to headquarters.
c. others came for healing and deliverance, and
d. some just came for hope for the future.
e. yet others followed after Him because they had committed themselves to being His disciples and to gleaning some new life direction; from every message he preached.
In our gospel teaching today, we hear that a “large crowd” was travelling with Jesus. Now Jesus was not a church programmer as we know it. He did not trap or entice people to follow him; nor was he pedantic over his sermons, making sure that each one was practical and uplifting; to bring people back to time and time again; nor was he pedantic about the hymns they were singing to make sure they were easy and appealing to the largest group possible.
Jesus wasn’t a church programmer, or manager or secretary, because Jesus wasn’t calling crowds or trying to fill a church; Jesus was calling disciples. … Jesus wasn’t concerned with being popular; He was concerned with helping people transform their lives; leading people toward eternity, and not the temporal things of the moment.
When Jesus saw this crowd in today’s reading, his instinct was not to wow them; but to make each person aware of the cost of being His disciple; and it is this awareness of the journey that brings about the transformation in us.
Jesus tells this crowd that unless they can detach completely from everything they are holding onto, emotionally, and physically, they can never really be his disciples; and thereby never reap the true rewards.
Now, when I use the word disciple in this context of today’s reading, I'm not speaking exclusively about the 12 disciples who were first called out by Christ and whose names we know. … I'm speaking about the masses of people who joined Jesus as He went from town to town preaching His message; and I am also talking about His followers today.
Now I do not know what all the followers in the Gospel message this morning believed about Jesus, but they all have one thing in common: they had committed themselves to following Him, and to learn from Him as He journeyed along.
In that context, Jesus addressed them in no uncertain terms about what a disciple entails; emphasizing the difficulty of discipleship by using two very strong "cannot" statements:
1. First He says, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters-yes, even his own life; he cannot be my disciple."
2. Secondly He says, "And if anyone does not carry his own cross and follow me they too cannot be my disciple."
These are extremely strong words; and I wonder if we should list them with the words from my sermon a few weeks ago, and put them all on our notice board outside the church. Everyone is welcome to join us, but you must hate all your family, and then carry your own cross like the criminal you are; and then give up everything you have worked hard for. With a wee post script at the end, we would love to see you.
No, let us look at these verses and see what they are really saying.
The first thing that Jesus says here is, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters-yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple."
Now I have some good news for you here, Jesus spoke in a language called Aramaic, and the language itself lacks the necessary grammar to exactly define the comparative senses in terms such as 'more than' or 'less than'. Instead it tends to express two things which may be comparative of different degrees like 'first' and 'second' as extremes such as 'first' and 'last'.
In this way love and hate whilst appearing as opposites are in fact comparative verbs, and are in fact related, but to much lesser terms such as 'love more' and 'love less'. We can therefore change the word hate for the term, “love less than”.
So the word hate actually tells us that the love we have for our closest family members, compared to the love Jesus demands from us, looks almost like hatred.
In short, if God and His kingdom are given the proper all consuming love that Christ expects from us, then the highest and best of all other loves, like your friends and family, will seem to be in a far distant second place.
And if you wondering why we should show God such love, then as the bible says, God is love, and we are His children. Your calling to be a disciple of Christ is to give a life of unconditional love towards God and other.
I can accept that, because think of the love you will receive from in return; and if God loves you, who can be against you.
Secondly, Jesus says, "Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple."
I'm sure this demand also must have taken away the breath of some of the people among that crowd following Jesus; it certainly frightens me.
In all likelihood, most of that very crowd must have witnessed the public shame and humiliation of a condemned criminal carrying his cross through the city streets to the place of execution; just as Jesus would do when He took our shame, and humiliation upon Himself to that same cross.
I am sure those people got this picture really fast, and were shocked to find Jesus making such demand of those who wanted to follow him; but the answer to this demand is rather simple when we understand the context in which these words were spoken; and I must say, there are two ways of looking at this picture of carrying your own cross.
First: many in that crowd had been looking forward to the dawning of the new era they thought Jesus would bring; a new era that was imminent and looked as though it was here.
The kingdom of heaven was at hand, as Christ had said but they wrongly assumed that to mean, that an age of victory over the Roman occupying forces was just around the corner, and that peace was about to be secured.
How wrong they were, but you can understand their thinking as violence and domination was all they knew, and they thought Jesus was simply the man to destroy all their enemies and take over Himself. They would then be well positioned beside Jesus, once Rome had fallen.
So to the crowd who were thinking this; Jesus was basically saying, "If you are only looking for a victory over Rome and a cheap ticket to glory, you are not going to find it with me, and you do not understand what I am all about”.
The life of my disciples will have its moments of suffering and difficulties; it is not a free trip along easy street as many modern evangelists like to promote."
Secondly, there is another way of looking at carrying your own cross, and that is the one many people today think off when they here that expression. They think it means that we are to continually show the world that we are in true penitence for the sins we have committed, and that we are totally ashamed of them, for having committed them.
I must mention this, because many people have been led to believe this, and have actually been taught this using scripture from the Old Testament. Basically they have been encouraged to let the world rub their noses in all their shameful deeds; and many people would like to do that to us, given the chance. But notice, in this passage, Jesus did not say that we were to carry our own cross with shame. I will say that again, Jesus did not say that we were to carry our own cross with shame.
Jesus died a painful death for us, to save us from our sins; and thus save us from ourselves. If we are wallowing in our sins, we are no use to ourselves; we are no use to our friends nor our families. If we are wallowing shamefully in our own sins, then we are of no use to God Himself.
God had to send Jesus, to free us from that destructive Sin, the Sin that Satan keep reminding us off, and can you see why? While we are so caught up in ourselves, Satan can safely leave us to our own devices; as we are of no threat to him.
This can be a very difficult message for some people to grasp, or even believe, but it is one of the first and main victories that Jesus won for us on the cross. Jesus needed to set us free from our own sins, so that we become free to be a disciple with Him. We must therefore never to wallow in shame. Through Jesus we are free from Sin; (but not free to Sin).
This is good news? Two thousand years or so after Jesus lived on this earth, there is still something exciting and magnetic about Him and what he achieved on that cross. It can only be the power of God behind His word, and the authority with which He calls us to serve Him even now.
Discipleship can be demanding; discipleship can also be delightful and very rewarding. If you would choose to follow Him, then come with all you are; and come with all you have; and He bless every single thing in your life.
Amen.
