Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Reading and understanding the
Bible can be challenging. I know this because I hear from people – including
life-long Christians, life-long Lutherans, and life-long members of the
congregation – that reading the Bible is difficult. I also know that reading
the Bible can be challenging from first-hand experience. There are times I have
to scratch my head and wonder, like Luther, was ist das? - what does
this mean? – and I have to dig to find answers, myself. This is especially true
when trying to take a Biblical text and apply it to the modern child of God.
You have such an example in this
morning’s Gospel reading. “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own
father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and
even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Was ist das, indeed. These
words leave us with real questions. After all, this hardly sounds like the
Jesus whom we know and love. Here, Jesus says to be his disciple, one must hate
his father and mother, but what of the 4th Commandment, “Honor your
father and mother”? Or, consider His
words in the broader sense of “hate.” The Bible is filled with passages of love
– love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, or love is the summary
of the commandments. Speaking of hate, Jesus said if anyone is merely angry
with his brother – not hatred, just angry – he is in danger of judgement. On
the one hand, the Scripture says this; on the other hand, Jesus says that and
these things are not copacetic – they do not align, at least, not according to
what we know is true of God’s Word.
So, what is Jesus doing? What is
Jesus saying? Is He changing the Law? Is He instituting new rules? Is hating
mom and dad, brother and sister, son and daughter now a prerequisite to
following Jesus? If so, we’re all going to have to find new places to sit in
the sanctuary next Sunday.
No – no. Jesus did not come to undo the Law and the
Prophets; He came to fulfill them. He’s not tossing aside the 4th Commandment
and stop loving our neighbor. What He is doing, though, is emphasizing the
importance and necessity of following Him first and foremost. He’s using a
rhetorical device, sort of like hyperbole, where one thing is overstated to emphasize
the other. He’s overstating hatred to teach that loving all other people, even
your own self, is secondary to Him. Yes, you love your parents and children and
neighbors, but never at the cost of loving Jesus first and foremost.
Jesus is speaking to the crowds that are following after Him
and the Twelve. Some are there, truly wondering if Jesus really is Messiah.
Some are there with simple faith that is continuing to grow. Some are there out
of idle curiosity. Some are there hoping for a taste of the kingdom they
presume He will bring with power and authority and armies. Here was a Man, a
worker of miracles, a teacher of great parables, so filled with gravitas that
being His disciple, following after Him should be a piece of cake and bring all
sorts of health, wealth and happiness.
Wrong. Discipleship isn’t easy. Whether it’s today’s
prosperity-gospel preachers on television or the glory-hungry crowds that
followed in Jesus’ footsteps in ancient Jerusalem, we do not get to set the
terms on discipleship. It’s simply not possible, not is it permissible, to come
to Jesus with explicit, up-front expectations of what discipleship is and our
anticipations of what discipleship will give to us.
No one can come to Jesus, to follow Him as a disciple, and say,
“Well, Jesus, I want to be a disciple, but I want you to know up front that my
parents are really the most important people to me.” Jesus says you can’t do
that. We can’t say, “I’m excited to begin this new life of discipleship, Jesus,
but I’m not really into suffering, especially if I have to risk my friends, my
job, and my good reputation I’ve worked so hard to attain.” Jesus says you
can’t do that. We can’t say, “I’m willing to give up almost anything, but if my
life is on the line, then I may have to reconsider.” Jesus says you can’t do
that.
You can only be a disciple of Jesus if you allow Him to set
the pace, to guide the journey, to make the agenda. Disciples follow, remember?
You cannot be His disciple on your terms. He will not accept that kind of
discipleship because that’s not discipleship. That’s not following. That’s
trying to lead. You don’t know the pace He will set; you don’t know where the
journey will lead; you don’t know what the agenda will be.
Jesus does. And, when Jesus does tell us what discipleship
will give, it’s not what you expect: it gives the cross. “Whoever does not beat
his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” You don’t know when, or
where, or why you may have to bear a cross.
We’re not very good at cross-bearing. At least, I don’t
think we are as a society, or as a culture, and not even as the North American
church. We’ve been told for so long in our day-to-day routine that we can have
it all at little or no cost and, simply, that’s not true.
Understand what Jesus means when he says “cross.” A cross is
not something you chose. A cross is laid upon you. Likewise, a cross isn’t an
inconvenience, or a result of a bad decision, or a difficult family situation. Heartburn,
addiction to cigarettes, bad grades, chronic pain, even a crabby mother-in-laws
– these are difficulties in life, yes, but they are not crosses as Jesus speaks
of crosses.
What do crosses do? You and I see crosses as jewelry, Bible
covers, artistic focal points. Go back and answer that with first century lens.
How did the crowd hear and understand Jesus’ words that day? They saw what
crosses did first-hand. Crosses kill. They are instruments of suffering and
death. To take up your cross is to take up your death. You can’t follow Jesus
without a cross. His way is the way of death and resurrection. So if you want
to follow Jesus in the way He’s going, then you need to pick up that cross of
yours, and go the way of death and resurrection with Him.
Suddenly, this business of being a disciple doesn’t sound
like so much fun anymore, does it? It's no wonder that many turn away from
Jesus today. They did it then, too. Some will remain, but many – perhaps most –
of the crowds soon began to turn away. It won’t be long that their cries go
from Hosanna to Crucify Him. They don’t like discipleship. They don’t like the
cross. It sounds dangerous, deadly even. The cross was too much to bear.
For most of us, we’ll never be at a position where we have
to make a choice between parents or Jesus. So, it can sound a little
theoretical, these words of Jesus. So, let me tell you the true story about a
man named Edward. Edward grew up in a Jewish home. He want to Synagogue school
and learned Hebrew. His family kept kosher and went to the local temple for
worship, especially on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, making their sacrificial
offerings of fasting and money, making amends with those whom they offended,
and praying God would somehow be merciful for their failings. But, Edward
always felt guilty, empty, and afraid.
In his late teens, he met a Lutheran pastor who told Edward
of Jesus and His death on the cross for the forgiveness of those very sins he
carried. By the power of the Holy Spirit, Edward believed Jesus was the very
Messiah that the Old Testament promised and at the age of 20, he was baptized
in the Triune name of God. Through water and word, Edward became a disciple of
Jesus. But, at terrible personal cost. His own parents denounced his Christian
conversion, first threatening him and then considering their son as dead to
them. When Edward became a Lutheran pastor, no one from his family came to his
graduation, his ordination into the Holy Ministry, or his installation at his
parish. He wrote:
God knew that my time spent among
those who chose to deny Him would not be without pain, but He also knew what
was necessary for me to fully comprehend the grace that He bought for me
through His suffering and death. In declaring the old man dead in baptism, I am
now one with the Lord. Like Him who forgave even His worst tormentors, I have
forgiven those who have called me a Christ killer. I have forgiven the Jews who
have threatened me and my family with bodily harm if I continue to speak of Jesus
as the Messiah and I have forgiven the professed Christians who refuse to
accept that a Jew can confess Christ crucified. There are days when I need to
be reminded of Jesus’ suffering for me. I need to be reminded that He gave His
life for those who reviled Him, called Him names, beat Him, and then nailed Him
to a cross. I need to be reminded that even though I was not worthy, Christ out
of his love for me died and rose from the dead so that all His children could
have eternal life in Him. (http://www.ctsfw.net/media/pdfs/AJourneyfromHopelessnessBalfour.pdf)
Edward’s story leads us to the good news hidden in today’s
Gospel. Jesus bears the cost of discipleship. Jesus bears the cost; Jesus bears
the cross. The cross is deadly – for Jesus. He lays down His life to save the
world. He becomes the world’s Sin. He dies our Death. He did not count equality
with God something to be held like a treasure but emptied His grasp of all that
He had to go to His own death on a cross. Jesus counted the cost of being the
world’s Savior. Jesus counted the cost of rescuing you from your Sin and Death.
And it was worth every drop of His holy, precious blood to save you. He gave up
everything that was His – His honor, glory, dominion, power, His entire life –
and for the joy of your salvation, He set His face to Jerusalem to die. He took
up His cross to save you.
He didn’t ask you to choose Him. He chose you. He baptized
you. There you go: Baptism is the way of death and resurrection. You were dead in
your sins and God made you alive in Christ. You were dead and God rebirthed you
by water and Spirit. He placed His cross upon you, on your forehead and your
heart, in token that you have been redeemed by Christ the crucified. You were
captive to Sin and Death, and God made you free in Christ. Before you believed,
before you were born, before you ever were, Christ was your Savior and Lord and
Redeemer. You didn’t choose Him; He chose you. He laid His cross on you, not to
kill you, but to bring you life.
That’s where you disciples, new and old, need to be looking:
not your cross, but His. This is what it means to trust. That is to say, we
become disciples only by faith. And faith takes us to The Cross where Jesus
died for you.
Lord God, you have called your servants to ventures of which
we cannot see the ending, by paths yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give
us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that
your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (LSB
Collect #193, p. 311)
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