As we come to the Word of God today, I would like you to take a moment to reread this section from yesterday’s reading in Luke 14:
Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “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. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
In the midst of all the healing and teaching that is taking place, Jesus takes time to talk about what it means to follow Him. The passage we just read from yesterday, Luke 14:25-33, we see Jesus is addressing the crowds that come to hear Him teach. Word has spread around the countryside that Jesus was a great speaker and healed people. Everyone was flocking to hear and see Him; much like some of the celebrity pastors and speakers that we have in our own Christian faith (but without the God being man factor). Today we see Him address a rich man, an individual who seems to have all the right motivations and wants to sign on to this discipleship thing:
And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said, “All these I have kept from my youth.” When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” But he said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” And Peter said, “See, we have left our homes and followed you.” And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.”
Here Jesus is addressing much the same thing. First we had a whole lot of people who were “following” Jesus, wanting to hear His speak and be inspired by His teaching. Now we have a wealthy young man who has says that He has lived a good life, keeping to all of the laws that were laid out for the people of Israel. In both cases, Jesus lays out what it means to truly follow Him and, at least in the case of the rich young rule, that cost seems a bit too high for him.
So what is the cost of discipleship? Well, too often we talk about how Jesus tells the man that he has to sell everything and give it all away in order to follow him. While I don’t think that this is a call for us to live without a house, job or means of providing for ourselves, for indeed these things are a gift of God as His way of providing for our needs, Jesus is talking about the priority that these things need to take in our lives for us to be followers of Him. At other times Jesus has said that someone “cannot serve two masters,” yet another example of priority and orientation in our lives. What Jesus is truly saying here is that the cost of discipleship is our very lives.
What metaphor does Jesus use to talk about discipleship in Luke 14? The cross. We need to take up our cross. Later on in the New Testament Paul picks up this idea talking about how we need to die to ourselves (the desires of our flesh) so that we may rise again in Christ. We see this theme come up in baptism, salvation, and the Christian life over and over again in Scripture. The cost of discipleship is our lives. Not physically giving up our lives, but as Paul writes in Romans 12,
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Eugene Peterson describes discipleship as “a long obedience in the same direction.” I think this is a very apt description that goes well with what Jesus has to say here. In our current cultural context, with the mega church movement in full swing, we see people flocking to these large churches to hear really good speakers. Now, I believe that good ministry takes place in churches like Mars Hill and Willow Creek just as they do in many small churches. I also think bad ministry takes place in these places (as it does in smaller churches too). People come to hear the newest, the latest and greatest… or perhaps the go because they have always gone and just need to check their Sunday worship of their “spiritual checklist.” This can happen in either church. The problem and the fact of the matter however, is that this is not the discipleship that He had described here. Going in and out of Sunday morning worship is not what Christ has called us to, it is not the whole of our Spiritual lives. If it is… we aren’t doing it right. We are called to something greater, to take up our cross, to a long obedience in the same direction… and to help bring others along with us as well!
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