Friends, I want to be honest with you. I've spent this week in one of the pleasures of my own life and vocation as I get to spend a week literally just wrestling with the words of Jesus. Going like, you've got to be kidding. What does this mean? Does this even apply? How does it work in real life? Conversations again and again, wondering what this could possibly mean to our own and my own spiritual practice. What could this mean to our practice as a community? Do these words shape the way in which we want to live together?
[00:46:53]
This struggling with the words or wrestling with the words of Jesus, surprisingly, in many ways in which the gospel always does, kind of had this churn, this moment of pushing against or wondering, how do I deal with Jesus saying you need to hate something? And in that push, finding within it a deep, soulful invitation. Finding within it a graceful, a grace-filled examination of my own way of being in this world.
[00:47:30]
So before you are potentially kind of churned off by the words of Jesus, I want to invite you to turn on towards wonder, to being curious about an invitation. And I'm not here to tell you what that invitation is. That's between you and the Spirit. To turn on an invitation to maybe what Jesus is asking you to examine, to notice, to live deeper into.
[00:48:09]
The paradox is that below the surface of giving up everything, sell all of your possessions, sell everything you have, is an invitation to finding everything, including life itself.
[00:48:59]
First, I believe, is this examination, as Brian talked about in our confession, and we don't get, we don't pre-game and set all this together, but I was glad he said something. It is an examination of idols. Looking at what is an idol, and what does Jesus point to, to this, at this moment, to the idols? There's several ways to see it, but Jesus seems kind of clear in the very beginning, is that for a long time, and even into our culture today, there is a pretty clear idolization of family and possessions.
[00:49:31]
And Jesus wants to call out our good intentions, but suffocating idols of the perfect family and worldly possessions. Filling our needs. Now we know that Jesus doesn't actually follow his own sayings and rules. He actually doesn't hate his mother, brothers, sisters, and those around him. We see the relationship he has with Mary, and how she is with him to the very end. We see his relationships with his brothers and his sisters, that his brother James continues on to live in to his own discipleship and helping build the early Christian church. And in the early Christian church, we see his love, his deep love for his cousin John.
[00:50:04]
Jesus doesn't seem to be saying just hate those people, but hate potentially the idol, hate our idealism of the perfect family, the perfect life, and all the perfect possessions that go along with it. Trying to live up to this way of idealism is costing us all way too much. And Jesus is saying, count the cost. Trying to live up to all of those things, all of those perfections within family and with possessions, literally is costing you your life. Is this the game that you want to continue to play? Or do we want to live into the reality of God's messy, down-to-earth, grace-filled, relational way of being?
[00:50:56]
If there's something that I'm learning from my own season of parenting in my own life, it's that trying to be like the perfect parent, I don't even know what that means or looks like, but trying to be the perfect parent is definitely getting in the way of being a present one.
[00:51:57]
The truth is idols are made often crafted from our insecurities. They are crafted from our places where we maybe are the most, hold the most idealism and are the most comparative. Think of where you compare yourself to others the most in this world. It's usually the same place in which our idols are crafted from. They feed on our insecurities.
[00:53:18]
Is there anything wrong with longing to have a healthy family relationship? No. But when it's coming from a place of insecurity, when it's coming from a place of idealism that it's never going to be able to live up to, Jesus seems to be calling it out, saying it's not worth the cost.
[00:53:59]
Not only that, but to all. Jesus is well aware that the worship of family, however you may define it, is definitely exclusive. Has been, will be, and will always be to those who are single, orphan, outcasts. It doesn't matter. Our white picket fence that we imagine is there to separate us from other people. And Jesus says, I want no part of that. I want part of the kingdom of God, in which all of humanity sees each other as brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, cousins and cares for one another. Because we come from the very life of God.
[00:54:20]
On a deeper level, as the large crowds gather around, Jesus is warning us against the gravitational pull towards this idol that we're all pulled towards, of popularity and false security. The compulsion of maybe the false self, as one says it. Jesus may have been the worst marketing agent you could ever imagine in history. He is often telling people, after healing, please don't tell anyone. And his hardest teachings, like this one, often come when the sentence begins. A large crowd began to follow Jesus. Next thing that happens, the hardest teaching.
[00:55:04]
This movement towards that which is popular, that which is easy, that which promises us security and all the answers to life. That if we just work on our breathing and our cold baths, everything will be fine. Jesus says, no, that's not where it is. It's in something deeper. And so he points to these idols.
[00:56:08]
To all of this, Jesus approaches with a surgeon-like knife to cut to these idols, to these impulses, to this compulsiveness that we all have. Yet are scared to say it and share it with one another. And so he invites us, with tenderness, with grace, the word hate literally means to turn from, to turn from those things that seem to control us at a soul level and towards something else.
[00:57:59]
A second invitation in wrestling and struggling with this, a second invitation is potentially maybe just to be a friend of the disciple. My favorite preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor, began a sermon with this passage from Luke, and she says this, If any of you came this morning believing that you were a disciple of Jesus Christ, then I guess you know better now. Of course, I may be wrong. Has anyone here cut yourself off from your entire family so that there was no one to hold you back from doing whatever God wants you to do? Has anyone chosen a purpose for life, for your life, that is so publicly critical of the church and the state that there's a good chance you're going to be killed for it? Has given up all your possessions, all of them, so that your time is used to spend buying, maintaining, and protecting stuff, protecting all the stuff that is now free to give to God? God, do I see any hands? I don't think so, she says, and you don't see mine either.
[00:58:38]
Barbara Brown Taylor points that if we're honest with ourselves, most of us are less like disciples and more like what she calls friends of disciples. And Jesus made it clear to follow him to Jerusalem at this moment in his life, to follow him into the very heart of the empire, into the religious structure and oppression of the day, would cost a disciple absolutely everything in their life.
[00:59:48]
There are countless others whose names we maybe look up to and see these disciples who literally knew that they had to give up every, thing. The rest of us, the rest of us, as one commentary says, are something a good deal more humble than the disciples in this sense. At our best, we are friends of the disciples. And like friends, we may exalt and support the disciples where we can. And like friends, we may be inspired and even haunted and driven to follow their example immediately in fragments, in moments, in chapters of our lives. This following of Jesus at its core is not about us and our glory.
[01:00:50]
Friends of the disciples should remember, yes, to take up Jesus' word, take up your cross, to love your neighbor. And remember that the gospel is given freely to all of God's friends. And so, like what Jesus says to a majority of people, return to your home. Declare how much God has done for you. Your faith has saved you.
[01:01:41]
I've spent so much of my life and much of it in what is kind of now being called maybe the evangelical world in shame, worried that I'm not doing enough for God. I've heard the inspiring messages of being disciples and missionaries and leaving everything. That I've been so focused on what I'm not doing for God that I've missed literally the diamond in the rough which is here. Who I am. And the reality that I long for for my kids, for my neighbors, for my enemies, that every single one of us is beloved of God. And we are enough.
[01:02:09]
Strangely enough, my friend Tim hugged me as I came to the church and he said, Will, I just want you to know that you're enough. So that's an awkward way to hug someone. But I think I needed that today. Jesus isn't saying, Be, don't be inspired. But it's okay to be where we are. It's actually welcome. A lot of these people are the ones who are following Jesus right where they are. Inspired by the disciples, inspired by him, together as community, not as heroes changing the world around us.
[01:02:57]
The final invitation is one that almost doesn't seem to be there, but we know it's there because of what comes after this passage. And it's an invitation to grace. The truth is, when we read this passage, when we lay out the plans, when we look at how many soldiers can we bring to the war, whatever it may be, the bar is just way too high. This can't actually be done.
[01:03:35]
Quit sin managing your life. Thinking, okay, if I just do this a little bit and this a little bit, I'll be okay. Jesus is inviting us to a place of deeper surrender instead of more control and perfection. The bar is too high. We literally can't do it on our own. And so we receive the invitation of grace, of life in Christ instead of just life for Christ.
[01:04:27]
After chapter 14, when Jesus scares everyone away, chapter 15 in Luke is Jesus telling of three parables of going after a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a prodigal son who returns. The chapter throughout Scripture has been used more for people to know that I am loved and received by God and I can just return to that place and be at home and at rest in the love of God.
[01:05:00]
Jesus holds this paradox together. An invitation to examine our idols, to be friends of the disciples, an invitation to grace. Friends of God, welcome back. In the busyness of our fall schedules and the onslaught of just powerful and painful news that we take in. May we hear deep within us an invitation that is flowing from the very grace of God. An invitation to life. No messy life, but to life and to life in its fullness.
[01:05:30]
