September 4, 2016 – Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Luke 14:25-33
Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Luke 14:25-33
Choosing Discipleship
Lectionary 23 – September 4, 2016
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
One commentator this week says, “Don’t you just hate it when Jesus says ‘hate.’”
Well, yes! I do!
Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children,
brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.
Whoa. Those are strong words.
And while they are difficult for us to hear,
they do bring Jesus and his personality into focus for us.
They remind us that Jesus was a person of passion and determination and
single-minded focus.
Yes, he was love and mercy and incarnate, and full of forgiveness.
But those things were powered by a very determined personality that was
unflinching and, in some ways, uncompromising.
Uncompromising when it came to being participants in God’s arriving reign of
manna sharing and justice doing and forgiveness giving and peace making.
We know from our close reading of the Gospels at First Lutheran that one of Jesus’
favourite teaching devices was using hyperbole to make a point.
He loves using exaggeration to make a point and get people to listen up.
Which he is clearly using today – for the instruction to hate must stand alongside somehow his
call to love one another in Luke (10:27).
He is calling for single-minded loyalty to God’s reign –
and he is saying that when conflicts arise as a result of being a follower of Jesus,
discipleship is more important than all other human relationships.
No: Jesus is not calling us to hate anyone.
As another commentator says this week, the challenge for us is to take Jesus’ words seriously
without taking them literally – this idea is clearly important to Jesus for
versions of this saying occur five times in the Gospels.
For sure there is a cost to being a disciple of Jesus –
he seems to be saying that if you’re not feeling a cost, you’re doing something wrong!
Jesus moves on to make his point by making a couple of analogies about
calculating the cost of something –
of knowing beforehand what it takes to undertake something.
If you don’t have enough fire-power to wage a successful war,
perhaps it is best to sue for peace before the opening salvo.
And if you’re going to build a tower, you better know what it is going to cost you
so you don’t run out of money before you complete it.
Jesus is inviting us to consider the cost of being his disciple.
It may mean, as it did for him, conflict with his family.
In some countries of the world that is most certainly what it still means.
Here in North America, it may mean something more like people looking at you funny.
Or being misunderstood for a certain type of Christian you do not identify with.
But it may also mean making sacrifices and figuring out priorities and making decisions
that mean you are deciding against spending your money and your time in other ways.
It means understanding what it really takes to build community.
The church is a community.
A community that attempts to reveal Jesus’ love to and for the world.
A community that reveals and shows that love in the relationships between its members,
and that reveals and shows that love in the relationships it has those who are
not its members.
Above all, the church is a community.
And communities do not build themselves.
I am struck most of all in what Jesus says this morning by the building analogy.
As an African Methodist Episcopal pastor wrote recently,
Discipleship entails building. It raises the question,
“Do we have the labor, capital, and desire to build this new community under
the aegis of God’s Spirit?”
That is a key question we must always face – do we have the labor, the capital,
and desire to build this new community?
Because this community of First Lutheran Church, is basically the sum of your choices.
Your choices matter.
At the Canadian Anglican Lutheran Youth Gathering a couple of weeks ago in PEI,
K.T. and I accompanied 7 of our youth on a real community building trip.
I have more to say about this and I will, I think, when we will take some time
later in September to inform the congregation of what we took away from the gathering.
For now, though, I want to tell you about a session we had one morning with a couple of bishops,
one Anglican and one Lutheran.
At one point, one of the bishops acknowledged the challenges our world faces.
Climate change.
Third world debt.
The continuing increase of global conflict.
The massive problem of human trafficking in all its forms.
Continuing sexism and racism abroad – and at home.
In the midst of all this, what can we do? was his question to the 50 or so kids assembled.
Several people raised that point that our individual choices matter.
Where we shop, what we shop for, whether we recycle, whether we compost, and so on.
And those are good points.
Later that evening in our home team time we continued to talk about that.
It seems to me, I said to our youth, that one of the best things we can do is to
continue to build our church, our community of First Lutheran Church,
and that the best thing other Christians can do across the globe is the same thing.
Communities where love for all is a value.
Where peace making is a priority.
Where care for creation is taken seriously in the local context.
Where sexism and racism are exposed and named and dealt with.
Where the vulnerable are valued, the poor are advocated for, and the hungry are fed.
Where inclusion and compassion and forgiveness are not only named but
lived.
We may not be able to change the world – and perhaps that is God’s work.
But we can change the texture and the fabric our lives and our beings and
our neighbourhoods and our workplaces.
But it always means making a choice – to continue to build this particular community.
It entails a cost.
For there is a cost to love.
Love means making choices, every moment of every day.
Even the choice to get out of bed and make it worship is a choice to love and
be in and build this community.
And these choices matter.
When you are in a relationship and you make countless choices to love every day,
you know that those choices will make a difference in the health and well-being of
your relationship.
And it is just the same with the church.
This is a hard day to proclaim good news – but that is what you’re paying me the big bucks for.
So here it is: I think the good news, the gospel, in what Jesus says today is just this:
your choices matter – and they make a difference in the world God is bringing in.
God, ultimately, brings in the reign of manna and mercy – with or without us,
God will find a way.
Love will find a way – and that in itself is good news.
But God so wants to expedite the matter with our help.
God so wants our participation and our gifts.
God so wants us to be in this together with the divine for God knows that
we will find our greatest joy and
our deepest meaning in Christian community building – despite the cost.
The good news is: your choices matter.
Your choices make a difference.
We are seeing this so clearly at First Lutheran Church this year in so many ways.
Your choices to be a church that is committed to youth
is bearing amazing fruit that you will hear about.
And your choices to be a church that is committed to its local neighbourhood makes a
profound difference in the lives of literally hundreds of people.
A favourite ploy of people speaking to congregations and synods about being a church
in mission to ask folks the question: if your congregation closed its doors tomorrow,
would it matter? Would anyone in the neighbourhood notice?
I think at First Lutheran Church we can all answer, Yes. Absolutely.
The closing of these doors would leave a very big hole in this neighbourhood.
And that is because of the choices you have made – the choices you have made with
your time, your gifts, and your financial offerings.
Your choices matter, and they will continue to matter this year.
So let us rejoice in knowing that God is working – and that when we work and that
when we choose to follow Christ we are participating in some much larger work
that we are part of.
Let us count the cost – but let us also count the blessings and the joys that come with
making the decision to continue to build community.
Let us continue to build, let us not lose heart, and together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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