THE ECONOMICS OF FAITH: THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP; LUKE 14: 25-33; WELCOME BACK SUNDAY; 9/8/13; THOMAS H. YORTY; WPC Welcome back one and all; welcome to Westminster, Garrett Martin; welcome to this hour of worship if you are visiting with us today. It s great to see you all this morning! Did you count the cost of being here before you walked through the door? No, I don t mean the time it took you to walk to church if you live in the neighborhood; or the gasoline your car consumed if you drove to church today; or the offering you may choose to put in the plate in a few minutes. What I am talking about is your life how much of your life and my life is required, asked for, called upon if we take Jesus seriously? What is the real cost of pursuing this way of living called Christ-like? Now before you consider me too blunt or anyone heads for the door, let me put these questions in perspective. They are precisely the questions Jesus asked that first century crowd to whom he was speaking in the lesson Bill just read. In fact, Luke makes it clear that Jesus has moved on from a small dinner party at which he was speaking in the verses immediately preceding today s story to a large public crowd he is now addressing Jesus isn t calling the people out to him, he has gained popularity, the people have come of their own accord, there s a buzz on the street about this man who some say brings hope in the midst of the harsh life under Roman occupation and chronic poverty. The people are following him, they want to find out who he is. This is not lost on Jesus; his message is designed as a heads up, as fair warning. He cuts through the rumors, gossip and curiosity and is crystal clear about who he is and what he is asking of any who are considering following him. Blunt, direct, to the point he was introducing them to the cost of discipleship. We do well to consider the cost, especially of big decisions, before we jump in: buying a house, finding a partner, starting a family, sending children to college, switching careers. When my son and I decided to do the Ironman triathlon in Lake Placid we counted the cost volunteering the year before to see the event first then get a guarantee for our participation in this oversubscribed race; a $650 entry fee, hotels, meals, equipment, and the time it would take to train twelve months of daily, weekly, monthly preparation plus the recommended changes to diet and nutrition and scheduling enough rest. I remember looking Ian in the eye after we thought about it, talked with our wives and evaluated the cost of doing an epic endurance event. We each took a deep breath and said, OK, let s go for it! Not counting the cost before we commit can result in regret or worse. I remember the haunting image of a halfway constructed beach mansion we saw in South Carolina deteriorating and exposed because someone didn t count the cost of something a mortgage or career or marriage. President Obama is counting the cost of military action against Syria, I am glad he is. Conversely, I appreciate folks who ve been asked to serve as elder or deacon and tell me they ve prayed, talked with family members and slept on it and concluded they just can t afford to do it right now.
Jesus wants to be clear; he s not talking about intellectual window shopping or an annual financial obligation; he s talking about investing our lives all that we have and are and the returns we can expect depending on the kind of investment we make. His comments are provoked by confusion about who he was and what he was asking. No one seems to grasp what he is acutely aware of the cross and death he will face when he gets to Jerusalem. More than a few, including the disciples, saw following him as a kind of march for social justice: peasants vs. power; laity vs. clergy; Jews vs. Romans. Most that day, no doubt, thought of the spectacle before them as a parade. Oblivious to any conflict, any price to pay, any cross to bear. The crowds swell; everybody loves a parade. Jesus felt a moral obligation to tell them precisely where he was leading them. Celebrities attract superficial and frivolous interest. I can see why famous people, except maybe Bill Clinton, avoid crowds, media and hype. So he doesn t mince words: Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself, cannot be my disciple. It is important to note that to hate is a Semitic expression meaning to turn away or detach oneself from. There is nothing of the emotion we experience in the expression, I hate you. If that were the case, this verse alone would cancel all the calls found throughout the New Testament to love, to care, to have compassion especially for one s own family. Nor is to hate one s own life a command for self-loathing, to regard oneself as a worm, to toss oneself on the trash heap of the history. St. Paul considered self-abasement valueless. Rather detachment is the claim that Christ and the gospel not only take precedence but redefine all the other commitments and decisions we face to marry, to raise a family, to enter a profession, to render service. Thus, this call to detach, to realign with Christ and to reprioritize the competing claims that distract and diminish us is a call, in IT language, to reboot our lives with Christ as our operating system; he guides everything from social to moral to financial to professional decisions. My observation is that we are busier than we ve ever been, partly due to having more options on which to spend our time and money thanks in large measure to the internet; but also partly because there is an increasing, underlying competitiveness that requires preparing ourselves and our children earlier and earlier than ever before. Again, thanks to the internet, we are competing for work and livelihood not just with members of our graduating class or the business down the street but with a world market. And not just a world market but a 24/7 world market in which entire industries change almost without warning overnight. All the more important then to get focused early, to get a jump on the pack, to get trained, to build the right resume, so that we can get the right job, live in the right neighborhood, vacation at the right locations, move in the right circles. It s no surprise that though our lives are well-planned and efficiently carried out not a few of us end up feeling scattered, empty, frustrated, lonely and exhausted as if our spirits were eroding for which that half-constructed home on Kiawah Island, SC is an apt metaphor.
But the call to detach or hate as Luke has it is not an end itself; to become a monastic, a Jesus freak as another generation said; rather Jesus aim is to recruit followers fully prepared to engage the world; to re-attach or, as the gospel says to love. An excellent example of such detachment and reengaged love is what the leaders and those who participated in the 1963 March on Washington did. It is easy to forget what they faced fifty years ago. Most of the nation believed that gradual reform of racial bigotry and hatred was the only way to move forward. Rapid change would make enemies and unnecessarily jolt particularly white southerners into a world they would not be prepared to accommodate. Dr. King s Letter from a Birmingham Jail addresses the most respected leaders of the white southern church who were advocating that black Americans wait patiently for change. Yet, had they not detached from the culture and weight of public opinion; had they not detached from their own immediate commitments to family and friends and future; had they not detached from themselves the way they would be perceived and treated if they pursued a more aggressive call for change and equality the advances of the past fifty years in race relations would never have occurred. Any claims this nation could make for diversity, inclusiveness, and freedom would today be empty. In a recent article David Brooks probed more deeply just what such detachment required of those early civil rights leaders and marchers. They wanted tactics that were both aggressive (vs. passive) and also rooted in biblical teaching. That meant they had to start with renunciation or detachment not self indulgence, then move to love vs. hate. Non-violence is only possible from a position of detachment; Dr. King s nonviolent tactics allowed the leaders to aggressively expose the villainy of their foes, to make their enemies sins work against them as the protesters exposed the vicious forms of excessive use of force (dogs, clubs, fire hoses) without retaliating. By the early 1960s civil rights tactics demanded relentless self-control, the ability to step into fear without striking out, to remain calm and deliberate in extreme circumstances, to exercise nearly complete emotional detachment with utter personal discipline. Befitting what was largely a religious and Christian movement the idea was not only to change society but to work on inner transformation; to reduce the ugliness in the world by reducing first the ugliness in oneself. And it worked. [i] It s not really possible to do a risk analysis with the economics of faith when it comes to investing our lives and well being. From the front end it looks like we re possibly giving up everything; in hindsight it looks as if we ve gained everything. Kierkegaard said we live our faith forward and understand it backward which was another way of saying the same thing. Come to think of it there are no guarantees for any investment stocks, bonds, real estate. You do your homework, weigh the cost, then put your money down. The best you can say is Let s go for it with confidence and faith. Regrettably, in churches with declining memberships and budgets, many people feel that recitals of cost or anything else possibly discouraging to prospective members should be delayed, if not eliminated altogether.
That s not the kind of church we are nor the kind of church we intend to be. You ve heard me refer more than once to churches that have removed the cross from their chancel because it s a negative symbol; or other churches that no longer include the confession of sin in the liturgy because it is a downer. Making this life, the Christian life, a life modeled on that of Christ sound like a walk in the park or the panacea for all your ailments or the sure path to upward mobility is simply not true. It is rather, as we hear today, a partnership with him, a life-long relationship that asks much sacrifice, hard decisions, letting go, letting your yes mean yes and your no mean no, so that we can open the arenas of our living to his presence and power; so that we can participate with him in our own and the world s transformation. Which the salt analogy helps to explain. Perhaps you were wondering what that saying about salt that has lost its saltiness and is worthless has to do with the cost of discipleship or anything we ve been discussing this morning. Jesus is still speaking to the large crowd of infatuated curiosity seekers. Just as salt can lose its savor, so can an initial commitment, however sincere, fade in the course of time. Even with attention and with the nourishment of prayer, reflection, fellowship, and activity, commitments will be severely tested once Jerusalem is no longer a distant goal but a very present and painful reality. And if I ve learned one thing as a person and pastor it is that we all get to Jerusalem. The enthusiasm that placed Jesus before all other commitments cools at the question after his arrest, Are you one of his disciples? Suddenly those other commitments to job and station and family, to making it whatever that might mean in our own heart begs again to come first. [ii] Under pressures both open and subtle, pressures all of us know, salt does not decide to become pepper; it just gradually loses its savor. The process can be so gradual, in fact, that no one really notices. Well, almost no one. It s Welcome Back Sunday; there s excitement in the air; I can t think of a better topic to launch the new year if we are to have any meaningful impact on the quality of life and well being in this community, if we are to attain any degree of deeper self understanding and fulfillment than the cost of discipleship. So welcome back as we count the cost of following Jesus in a time relentlessly focused on short term gain/get mine now and beset not surprisingly with crises, financial woe and the specter of fear that surrounds so many public and personal decisions. I hope and pray that our response in the weeks ahead when we ask for commitment of time, talent and treasure will be, Let s go for it, with our eyes, hearts and minds wide open to the adventure of living a Christ-like life. Amen.
[i] David Brooks, The Ideas Behind the March, The New York Times, August 27, 2013, A19. [ [ii] Fred B. Craddock, Luke a Biblical Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (John Knox Press: Louisville, KY, 1990) 180ff.