Jesus Must Not Want Many Disciples

"Jesus Must Not Want Many Disciples"
Luke 14:25-33


      This is one of those statements I wish Jesus wouldn't have said.  Wouldn't it have been better, when Luke was putting together his gospel, once he came to this story, to just leave it out?  Matthew is the only other gospel writer to include this statement of Jesus, and even then he shortened it to just two verses.  Matthew must have been uncomfortable with such a stringent statement.  Mark and John were so uncomfortable with Jesus words they left it out of their gospels entirely.

        Jesus' words sound so, well, unChristian.  They almost sound cultish, don't they?  Think of all the people who have left families and friends and joined a cult.

        One of my best friends in high school and college joined what I would call a Christian cult.  Tim was one of those natural athletes who played every sport and excelled at them all.  He had a gift and he knew it was from God.  At that time, around 1972, Tim was being talked to by Tom Landry, coach of the Dallas Cowboys.  Tim was a wide receiver, had hands of glue, speed, and coach-ability.

        Then Tim got mixed up with a group who called themselves The Local Church.  They based their beliefs on a Chinese Christian named Watchman Nee.  About the middle of our sophomore year in college, Tim quit football.  Then he quit school.  Then he broke off his engagement to his high school sweetheart.  He said everything about his past was death, and he was putting it behind him.  He was giving it all up for Christ and the shouting hysteria that was called worship at The Local Church.  Tim gave up everything dear to him (including our friendship) for Christ and for his affiliation in that offbeat church.

        I tried to keep track of Tim.  He moved to the east coast to help start other Local Churches.  I heard he had been elevated to the level of prophet in that church, whatever that meant.  I wrote, but he never wrote back.  Or my letters were returned.  Then I lost touch with him.  Sort of gave up looking.  Last I heard, he was married, has two kids, and lives in Idaho or Montana.

        I think about Tim from time to time and wonder.  He took Christ's words literally and did it.  He took what was nearest and dearest to him and flicked it all away, so he could follow Christ as part of The Local Church.  It just didn't seem right.  When I think of our lost friendship, I still feel pangs of grief and loss that I don't exactly know how to deal with.

        I don't know how to deal with that loss because Christ's words are all wrapped up in that loss and grief.  Hard words of Christ.  Words I wish Christ wouldn't have spoken, because maybe I wouldn't have lost a friend.

        Why would God put us in families and friendships and then turn around and disrupt them?  Why would God create such strong bonds of love and then demand that we treat them as if they don't matter or exist?  Why would God create, from the start, marriage and family as the bedrock of humanity, and then have Jesus utter a few words that crushes that foundation?

        As you know, my mom is now with the Lord.  Part of the strong bond I had with her was because of our commonly held faith in Christ.  She helped me get started in the faith.  Over the years that bond got stronger.  How could Christ ask me, while she was alive, to kiss that relationship goodbye?  Especially when the strength of that relationship is because of Christ!

         And I love my children.  Ryan and Kristin are worth more to me than my own life.  No one knows what we have been through together, and how that has created such a strong bond between us.  I would unquestioningly or unhesitatingly step in front of a bullet for either of them.  They are both amazing and wonderful people.  There isn't a day I don't thank God for them.

        I was always afraid of being a father.  I didn't know if I'd be very good at it with the role model I had.  But from the day each of them were born, from that day when they first breathed air and I held them in my big hands and became a daddy, I poured myself into that role with all the love I could.

        I've accomplished some amazing things in the ministry.  I've been given some accolades I didn't feel I deserved.  But I have loved every minute of it, and still do.  As great as living out my calling has been, I have loved being a father more.

        How can Christ tell me that I can't be a true disciple unless I am willing to let the children I love go and turn my back on them?  It is by God that they were even born at all.  It goes against everything that I am, against everything that God has instilled in me as a human being and a human father.

        It seems to me to be the height of child abuse for me to turn to Ryan and Kristin now, or especially when they were children, and say, "Sorry kids.  I can't be your father anymore.  I have to go follow Christ now.  You're on your own.  So long."  I could no more do that than rip out my own heart.

        I saw a lot of ministers when I was growing up and then after I became a pastor myself, who sacrificed their families (and their children especially) on the altar of the ministry.  That somehow they could justify neglecting and abandoning their wives and children because of their "high, holy calling."  When I was talking with Mark Graber's step-father, he said that the kids he knew that were the biggest hell-raisers were minister's kids.  Same with some of the kids I knew in junior high or high school.  And it was because their father's thought they were obeying Christ's words.

        I've told God all along that I would not let even the ministry get in the way of being a father.  When I moved from Colby to Hickman, Nebraska, I told the church in the interview that very thing.  I said, "If there's a conflict between a church meeting and one of Kristin's play productions, or Ryan's basketball games, I'm going to choose my kids every time over the church."  If they didn't like it, I told them not to hire me.  But they did.  And they all said they would make the same choice.  So I found myself in a congregation of rebels from Christ's words.

        It just seemed to me that ever since the time God brought Adam and Eve together and told them to go have children, that the primary way we fulfilled our calling as human beings was to be in a family. That if God intended us to be successful at any one main aspect of life and humanity, it was by loving relationships in the family.  That I fulfilled my calling even as a minister best, by fulfilling my calling as a father first.

        So how can Christ throw a major monkey wrench into all that and demand that I do the opposite?  How can Christ throw out God's primary relationships, instituted from the time of creation?  It doesn't seem natural, in terms of God's nature, imbued in us from the beginning of time.

        I want to throw this monkey wrench back at Christ in the form of a resounding NO!  "No, Christ!  I'm sorry, but I think you're wrong.  And besides that, I just can't do it.  And I won't do it.  So I guess I'm not one of your disciples, if that is how you're going to define what it means to be a disciple."


        This is a weird sermon, isn't it?  A sermon in disagreement with Christ.  A sermon telling you why I think it's wrong to follow this particular teaching of Jesus.  Isn't it my job to defend the Lord, no matter what?

        It's just that this statement of Jesus is too harsh.  It's just too much.  It's right up there with the statement he made that if your eye causes you to sin, you should pull your eyeball out of the socket.  Or if your right hand causes you to sin, you should cut it off.  If we followed those words to the letter we'd all be blind and handless.  Self-mutilation just doesn't seem to be Jesus' way.  Especially if the Cross and Resurrection takes care of our sin, why would we need to be cutting and gouging?  Or turning our back on our families to prove ourselves worthy?

        It's right up there with the Old Testament story of Abraham believing God asked him to kill his only son Isaac as a sacrificial offering.  God asks Abraham to do that.  But out of the other side of God's mouth, God condemns all those other religions around Israel who performed child sacrifices to their gods.  I just don't get it.

        Jesus used a teaching technique called hyperbole.  Using hyperbole involves making some outlandish statement that's never meant to be taken literally.  But using hyperbole may be for the purpose of making a point, or teaching a truth.

        Like Jesus' statements about gouging out your eyes or cutting off your hands.  I don't think Jesus really intended people to do that.  But by making his exaggerated statement, Jesus is trying to get across the fact of how bad sin is, how devastating it is, how malevolent it is.  How important it is to keep yourself free of sin.

        So is this the way we are to understand Jesus' statement about turning your back on family in order to be his disciple?  It's possible.  I'm not sure on this one.  Certainly Jesus' listeners were much more family oriented than we are in our culture where we are becoming more and more separated and isolated.

        But there is a common thread in all the very difficult teachings of Jesus I've talked about so far.  That common thread is commitment.  If you are totally committed to God, if you want to be an absolute 100%, bona fide, blue ribbon disciple of Christ, by those sayings of Christ, then you know where the upper most level of commitment is at.  What I am hoping is that God will allow for lesser levels of commitment, because I just can't make the ultimate sacrifices Jesus is asking for.  My prayer is:  "I'm sorry, Lord.  I just can't.  Please forgive me.  But please accept me just the same."

        I look at the whole scene in which Jesus made this statement and I wonder if He really meant it.  Luke says that a huge crowd was following Jesus that day.  Imagine the kinds of groups of people who were following him around.  People who needed some kind of healing from sickness, injury, deformity, or demonic lunacy.  People who were in the religious establishment who only wanted to mock or dispute with what Jesus was doing and saying.  People who were Hollywood types, who wanted to see some of Jesus' special effects.  And there may have been some people who were genuinely attracted to Jesus and maybe thought about following him as a disciple.

        Is it possible Jesus just got tired of all these people following him around?  So he decided to make a strong statement that would weed a bunch of them out and send them packing.  That Jesus, at this point in his ministry, wanted people following Him who were serious about making a commitment?  So he turned and told them what commitment was going to look like, in the extreme.  If I were there, in that crowd that day, I certainly would have rethought why I was there, and what I was doing following Jesus around, after hearing what Jesus had to say.

        That's what Jesus' statement causes you to do:  assess your own level of commitment.  Jesus has set the scale for us.  We know, now, how high the upper bar is set.   And by that, we can assume the lowest end of the scale is totally and completely walking away from Jesus.

        So I want to know what's in between.  What are the levels of commitment in between those two extremes, and where do I fit on that scale?  That's what Jesus' statement forces me to look at.  Can I move my bar up a notch?  Or a few notches?  I may not ever ring the bell.  If I don't, will Christ understand?  I hope so.  Because I struggle with all this.  And I hope as you have been forced to listen to my rantings, you do to.