Here is yesterday’s sermon about the cost of following Christ.
Luke 14:25-33
Give Up All Of Your Possessions To Follow Christ?
There has been a lot of talk of war this week. Our Government was defeated in the Commons when it urged elected members to support an offensive strike in Syria. At the G 20 meeting President Putin said he would support the elected Syrian Government if there was support for the rebels and President Obama is seeking support from congress on the same issue. The world is discussing a little area of the Middle East, parts of which Jesus would know in his life time.
Jesus is still on the way to Jerusalem.
He is travelling and during this time he sets out the cost of discipleship. He urges those to look at the costs of going to war. What king going to wage war against another king will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with 10,000 to oppose the one who comes against him with 20,000 he asks. And Jesus points out it is better to jaw jaw than war war. And he points out to those crowds travelling with him that they cannot become his disciple if they do not give up all their possessions. After those words it is likely that many of the crowd slipped away and returned to their homes.
In a time of declining church attendance, it is strange to think of Jesus deliberately discouraging the large crowds. In typical Jewish polemic he makes clear that allegiance to him must come before everything else. This is not a call to neglect others, but to let them go and trust in him and that way we will receive them back with interest.
Jesus calls us to a relationship of love, but the scholar Adam Welch writes that love’s bonds are the most enduring and the most exacting. If we consider that statement we will probably agree.
Let me remind you that at the time of Jesus the only people in Palestine to carry crosses were those on the road to their own execution. They were dead men walking. Here in Luke the call is not to take up or carry a burden, but to lay down one’s life. To let go all concerns that might get in the way of following Jesus; to let go of the good for the sake of the best. The theologian Bonhoffer wrote ” When Christ calls a man, or woman, to follow him, he bids them come and die”.
Do not under estimate the cost of discipleship. If we only go half way we will make fools of ourselves and miss God’s goal for our life’s maturity. We cannot control God, but must submit to his demands if we are to know his love. And this includes a final goodbye to our possessions as we acknowledge that they are to be used for his glory and not for our comfort.
AMEN
Rev’d Edwina Wallace.
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