Normally we expect Jesus to look upon the crowds and have compassion upon them because that is His normal response when they gather around him. But today, as Jesus feels them drawing in close, he immediately begins to teach them. And while we hoped that this would be an easy message to bear, sadly as Jesus draws the people in, the message is harder.
It is filled with images that require reflection and consideration. Family. Friends. Losing your life and the cost of following Jesus. Bearing the cross. He offers it all in this passage.
Everything circles around a primary question: What does it take to be a disciple of Jesus?
Other questions will come up. . . Questions like, what is the cost of following the Lord? Or what is the cost of discipleship that God asks each member of the Body of Christ to pay as they ‘take up their cross and follow me?’
But the first question, ‘what does it take to be a disciple of Jesus’ this question lives at the center of Luke 14.
So, today let’s walk through this text and see if we can find a way to work with hard passage and determine what answer Jesus offers the crowd that presses upon him.
Move 1--hating others?
As Jesus looks out at the crowd who gathered around him, he says a strange thing. . . or maybe a thing that seems out of character for Jesus. We can imagine his followers, his friends, and those familiar with his teaching, raising their eyebrows at what he says. . . “If you do not hate your father and mother, and indeed the remainder of your family and friends, then you cannot be my disciple.”
That does not sound very much like Jesus or the gospel that he has taught them. He has always been straightforward, but. . . this straightforward? This divisive?!?
These words seem out of character for Jesus. While we know that he will turn over the tables of the money changers (in Matthew 21 and Mark 11) and be outraged by their actions, Jesus does not often appear angry at anyone. Yet in one sentence, Jesus seems to upset the entire balance of the family and of our expectations of him. So, I want to address the first question that comes to everyone’s mind as we read this famous section.
Does Jesus truly want us to hate our family?
And the clearest answer that I can give is--NO.
So, what does Jesus mean by saying this???
While the word that we read in our Bible is hate, and that is an accurate translation of the Greek text, perhaps to fully understand what Jesus is calling the crowds to become, we need to consider a more nuanced definition of the word that he chose to use because the word is richer than we realize.
You see, as we think about what Jesus asks each of his followers (potential and actual), the Messiah asks us to make the moral choice to aligns with God’s word. As we listen and discern God’s message, we must make a choice at every turn. This is a choice that happens in every encounter and with every person. It happens at every instance of our day, and it cannot be avoided.
Two chapters from now, Luke will record Jesus saying that we cannot serve both God and money. Once again, Jesus presents us with have a choice; a choice that we must make. A choice that we will make. A choice that we do make.
Again, this is both a theological choice and a moral one. And by not choosing, or by deferring the choice saying that we choose, but not actually declaring our position, we are actual choosing.
Then there is the Old Testament occurrence of this word (for hate) which takes the moral understanding of the word and adds another layer to it—an example of this is found in Malachi 1.
In that passage God is speaking and the prophet says, “I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.”[1]Again, hate… but going into the New Living Translation listen to the difference that we can discover. And notice the choice. “I loved your ancestor Jacob, but I rejected his brother, Esau.”[2]
Now we hear a difference; we feel a difference.
Does God truly want us to hate anyone? To drive anyone away? Or does God want us to love him supremely and have the proper priorities when it comes to friends, families? That one sounds more of a moral choice. Should our loyalties align in a similar manner as they did with God? Perhaps Jesus is saying something like:
Love your mother and love your father. Love your family. Love your life for it is a gift from God that is to be used for the glory of the Lord first and foremost. But love me more than these things and by doing that you become my disciple for you place me above all other things in your life—things that can distract you and things that you elevate above me. The things which do not save your soul.
For we know that God loves us all. And it seems out of character for God to love only one of the children of Isaac and hate the other—even if the other child sold his birthright for soup.
Move 2- saying good-bye
For being a disciple of the Lord does not mean that we leave behind all the people that God placed in our lives as if they are no longe of any importance because we come to worship and confess our faith. For it was God who put these people in our lives in the first place.
It was God who called us to care for our community as it was God who put the seed and fire in our hearts to evangelize and spread the message of hope. Rather, once again, to be a disciple of the Lord is to align ourselves with God and with His mission first.
Instead, we say good-bye, if you will, to things that distract us from the overall mission and message of the Lord. And there are many things in this world, in our everyday life that distract us. They drive us away from God—some obvious and some more discrete. They call us to click on them. Linger over them. Whisper about them when the other person is not in the room. But they are there… always there. . . inviting us away from God.
Say good-bye to them.
Luke 14 tells us that we must be aware of the appeal of them and we must be mindful of them—just as a builder would be mindful of the needs of his or her overall building project or as a king is mindful of the cost of going to war.
We must be mindful of where or energies and resources are placed because they are not always placed properly with the Lord and with the gospel that he preached and taught to us. For if we are not careful, we place our allegiance and our loyalties in places that take us further and further away from God—sometimes without us even knowing that it is happening.
But again, Christ call us to a different path.
Christ calls us to follow where the mission and message lead us while saying good-bye to the things that could distract us from the work of the cross. And that message and its mission will lead us away from some people, but it will not tell us to hate our family, but rather by placing God at the center of our lives, everything else falls into perfect place.
For there are indeed a great many things which can, and which do, distract us from God’s message. Things which we are to say good-bye to… things which we are to reject because each of them takes us away from God and they rob us from being the people that God calls us to become.
Move 3- the cost
One of the details that gets left behind in this story is that the cost of following Jesus will be different for each person.
Jesus tells the crowds, and the established disciples who hear these words, that they must all decide how much they are willing to say good-bye to, willing to reject, in order to serve the Lord. Individually.
And Jesus also never says, ‘it will be this much.’ Rather he invites us all now into that place where we stop and think about what it means and what it looks like as a church, and as people, to take up our cross and follow the Lord in this moment and in context that God sends us into after our worship time is complete.
For one final point that is true beyond a doubt: if we are unwilling to count this cost, if we are unwilling to do this work, then we will not be disciples of Jesus.
Conclusion
We all seek to be disciples of Jesus. For we all have been called by the Lord in some fashion or another as we know that God has given each of us gifts according to His will.
I wonder what it looks like, and what the places in your day are, where God asks you reject one self-elevated priority in favor of him? Can you say good-bye to that thing, even if everyone else is embracing it and championing it as popular today?
For if you do, I believe you are on your way to becoming a disciple of the Lord.
DM
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