http://www.box.net/shared/8e30nzbgtv
For your convenience, the manuscript I used is also provided below:
The Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time; September 05, 2010
Park Avenue Presbyterian Church; Des Moines, Iowa
Texts: Jeremiah 18: 1-11
Psalm 139: 1-6, 13-18
Philemon 1-21
Luke 14: 25-33 *
“Luke: What’s In Your Wallet”
--} Luke’s Jesus appears to be a direct assault on us and our values this morning. In what is clearly unique and pointed language, Luke employs a trifecta of double-negatives to tell his story:
Jesus says, “Whoever does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. [If you do not give up all your possessions, you cannot become my disciple.]”In fact, it’s such an assault, it sounds a lot like Ben Baldanza—the CEO of Spirit Airlines who told congress last month that “bringing luggage on vacation was not essential to travel”—that his airline was “helping the poor fly” by charging up to $45 for passengers to place a carry-on bag in the overhead bin. And while many people were “outraged” at the idea of having to pay as much as $45 to stow what is essentially an oversized purse, few detractors seemed to recognize Jesus standing in quiet agreement—eying our possessions with a tsk, tsk of disapproval.
The problem is, most of us DON’T hear or see Jesus that way at all.
While today’s reading from Luke’s gospel is unmistakably difficult, when we stumble across this collection of sayings, even the most ardent of believers wants to doubt its literalness. Before you believe the Bible is completely, infallibly true, you have to check your wallet—because here’s a passage that all the biblical literalists out there hope and pray isn’t right! None of us really believe it’s particularly Christian discipleship to have to hate our families, carry the crosses we’ll die upon, and we’re liberate ourselves from our “things”—especially our houses, cars, investment accounts and i-phones—no matter what the Bible tells us Jesus says.
Perhaps that’s why most sermons you’ll ever hear on this passage have to do with other things, like “measuring the cost of discipleship,” or implying that with such a “burden to bear” we’d better redouble our efforts to be ready to pay for it—or else!” Such sermons make us try harder, work longer, toil and strain for what I believe Jesus says is rightfully “impossible.” Because no one seems to ever want to admit that Jesus means what he says in verses 26, 27, and 33—“if you do not hate, carry, and give up… you cannot be my disciple.” And this isn’t the only place Jesus challenges us by saying things like this!
We Americans have always treated “faith” like a work; as if “discipleship” had some kind of special designation with salvific results. That is if we focus on becoming “disciples,” and work hard at it, we can be saved. And so to hear Jesus threaten that we somehow “cannot be his disciple,” makes most of us cringe. But notice instead how Luke seems to have created this story from several of Jesus’ sayings. Verses 26, 27, and 33—the part about “if you do not, you cannot”—seem to go together; but the other sayings about “estimating, measuring, and first considering” are just smooshed into the middle, as if they belong, when they really don’t.
As harsh as it sounds, I believe Jesus is really trying to tell us, “you cannot be my disciples.” This sounds completely antithetical to our way of life—and it is. Just as much as giving up all of our possessions or hating our families! Jesus isn’t talking to the disciples, he’s talking to the crowds; and he isn’t offering them delusions of grandeur, he’s proclaiming—it would seem to me—that because they are prone to estimating, measuring, considering first, and planning,” that they won’t make good disciples. Discipleship and the Kingdom of God can’t be analyzed and measured thusly; the ministry of the Kingdom of God can’t be estimated and planned for that way.
As strange as it seems, Jesus appears to be asking the crowds to consider something different—not to measure the “cost of discipleship,” but instead to be empowered followers in a new kind of life. We often think “disciples” are those who follow Jesus to the cross and his death; but we often forget that none of the so-called “disciples” died with Jesus. What if Jesus were re-defining “discipleship?” So that the Christian community isn’t just about retracing the routes of suffering and death, but is instead called to move boldly away from the cross into new life? If so, what might that new life look like?
I think Luke’s point is that it would be about “counting the cost”—as if we could afford to pay it. Instead, Luke seems to be showing us what Jesus did, who Jesus was, and the possibilities of living in the ways he teaches. Jesus healed people, fed them, taught, worked, but still had no place to lay his head. Jesus doesn’t ask us to only be LIKE him, but to share the things we witness him doing and teaching—so that hearts and lives might be changed like ours have!
Luke’s suggestion for believers and followers comes in stark contrast to Matthew’s vision where believers are commissioned to “make disciples.” For Luke, “making disciples” isn’t the church’s goal; but instead, believers and followers are called to “be witnesses.” And what Luke has in mind isn’t our learning to be like Jesus as much as it is giving witness to who Jesus is and what he does: healing people; feeding people; going bravely to Jerusalem and taking on the establishments of his day, but falling victim to cultural and societal norms, suffering and dying but being raised. Luke wants “followers” to become witnesses—to tell Jesus’ story, to share Jesus’ good news. And it’s in this way that Luke’s Jesus hits us the hardest—challenging our assumptions about faith and church with hating our families, cross bearing, and possessions.
But we don’t recognize the voice of Jesus, do we.
This last week when word came that a second oil platform had exploded in the Gulf of Mexico and as Hurricane Earl began churning toward the East Coast, surely you saw the same pictures I did of people clamoring to “save their possessions;” and I bet most of us still drove our cars to church this morning. In the face of Jesus’ words, our culture and society teaches us that we can have more and more and more, and that “possession” is nine-tenths of the law.
But we don’t think Jesus was right, do we.
Because as the politicians scramble for the best sound bites, trying to prove who has “family values,” most of us only sigh, “here we go again.” And where Iowa seems destined to be forced to talk about constitutional amendments against same-sex marriage, health-care and education that should be denied the children of undocumented workers, and whether or not it’s fair to talk about a candidate’s personal life as a part of the campaign—few of us are brazen enough to remind folks about Jesus’ words of hating parents, spouses, children, and life itself, might make the campaign easier!
Nor do we want to end up like Jesus, do we.
So on this holiday weekend, even though the plight of “laborers” and the job-less are at all time lows, when we’ve ended combat operations in Iraq but still stand by soldiers fighting, being injured and dying in Afghanistan, we surely don’t want our cookouts bothered by Jesus reminding us about the uneasiness of bearing the burden of the cross.
So consider this.
Recently in the mist of our privileged and busy lives as Americans, we’ve heard about devastating floods in Pakistan. There’s been flooding in Iowa along the way, too—we’ve seen the pictures and probably know folks personally who’ve been affected. But when it’s all the way on the other side of the world, the pictures don’t do us justice. Numbers recently compiled by the United Nations indicate that more than 20 million people have been affected by the flooding in Pakistan. 20 MILLION—that’s more than the 2004 Tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake in the same region, our own Hurricane Katrina, and the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti—combined!
Think of this, that while each of these disasters individually garnered huge headlines and accompanying all-out fundraising campaigns, the response to Pakistan more recently has been muted. While people are clinging to life by their very fingernails, in our comfortableness, we have more concern about the security of driving our cars and protecting our many possessions! And we dare to think things like language and religion are the things that divide people!
What might happen if we gave Jesus’ words a little more credence—and we began loving more people than just our own families, were willing to bear more burdens in common, and lost our grip on only SOME of our possessions to pay for it all. Jesus says, doesn’t he, that if we weren’t so attached to our families, if we weren’t willing to die in so many ditches, if we weren’t so hell-bent to possess so much, we might actually be able to bring along the Kingdom of God!
Today, I think many of us will see or hear that television commercial for the credit card with the ugly Vikings or other who dare asking us, “what’s in your wallet.” Because if you carry the right card, buying, spending, possession, even “hoarding” can result in more fun—you too can vacation with Vikings!
But Luke’s Jesus seems to be asking too, “what’s in our wallet.” He isn’t checking to see if we’re carrying a card that will identify us as “disciples of Jesus.” Instead, Jesus wants to see inside our wallets; because if there’s anything else in there aside from lint… we should be telling the world what we’ve witnessed in Jesus Christ. If you open your wallet, truly, and you’ve got lint, congratulations. You win a prize. But for the rest of us… anything but lint, and we need to be giving witness in all we do to the life of Jesus. [With our money, with our families, with those who are bearing burdens.] So that this world can be healed, fed, and afforded the values of the Kingdom of God.
--+ Brothers and Sisters, God sent God’s son, the Christ; while we greet him in joy, he challenges our assumptions about life and living. The bread of heaven calls us to be witnesses to God’s love, to share the sacred cup with brothers and sisters in need. It doesn’t require our faith, but rather, to be followers of Jesus. The cost isn’t high, but the words are hard; the deeds and lessons should be more than our possessions. AMEN.
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