It's Your Choice
Posted on Sep 04, 2016 by David Whetter
Grace and peace to you from God, our Creator, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who abides in each of us.
I was reading a story recently that reminded me of the message Jesus was trying to share with his followers in our gospel story today. There was a group of young scouts on a camping trip and near their camp was a high mountain that you could hike up, but the hike was an extremely difficulty 10 mile hike, and it was a very steep and rocky. Not many scout groups actually took that particular hike. Well, one evening, one of the energetic adult leaders suggested to the other adult leaders that for the activity the next day, they should take the kids on that particular hike. Well, the other leaders, who really didn’t want to do it themselves, said, we better see if the kids want to do that. So, this energetic leader called all the scouts together and then pointing to the mountain, yelled, “who wants to hike up that mountain tomorrow?” Well, all the scouts raised their hands and shouted, “We do!” The energetic leader got a big, smug smile on his face as he looked over at the other leaders, as if to say, see, I knew they would want to do it. So, just to make sure the kids knew what they were getting into, one of the other leaders said. that’s great, but I want you to know that it’s 5 miles up that mountain. Suddenly, about half the hands came down. The leader then said, that’s 5 miles each way, to which some more hands came down. Then he said, and oh yea, it is a very rocky and steep hike, too. Upon hearing this, just about all the hands came down. Just then a third leader yelled, “hey, who wants s’mores?” At that moment all the scouts cheered and they all ran to the fire pit.
Large crowds were following Jesus. He was cool. He was speaking to the poor, and preaching bold sermons, and healing the sick, and feeding the hungry, and eating with sinners and everyone wanted to be his disciple. But, just to make sure these followers really understood what Jesus was asking of them, he said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (14:26).
Now, every time I read this lesson, especially the parts about hating your family and selling ALL your possessions, I think to myself, did he really mean that? Isn’t that what all you were thinking, too? Was Jesus serious about hating our families and giving everything up? This is hard, and if it’s true, like those scouts, I’d much rather go eat s’mores than climb this mountain.
But Jesus did mean it. Oh, he didn’t mean it in the literal sense but he did mean it in the comparative sense. The Greek word here is miseo and it literally means to love someone or something less than someone (something) else, i.e. to renounce one choice in favor of another. We use the word “hate” like this all the time today. In my house, Jill will say, “Would you rather have broccoli or brussels sprouts with dinner tonight? To which I reply, “I hate brussels sprouts. Let’s have broccoli.”
Jesus’ words today make us feel very uncomfortable, because he is saying, look, when it comes down to doing the right thing, or doing what is right for you personally, always do the right thing. If it comes down to choosing between my ways and me, or choosing the ways of the world that you so deeply love, choose me.
Choosing God and God’s ways over the ways of the world was not a new idea that Jesus was proclaiming. When Moses was instructing the Israelites in the desert, he said
15See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. 16If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. 17But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, 18I declare to you today that you shall perish” (Deuteronomy 30: 15-18).
Ironically, this freedom to choose life comes through the freedom to choose obedience to God. In other words, we are free to choose bondage to God and life or bondage to sin and death. Either way they will be bound to something, but the choice is ours. Now Satan, the great deceiver, has done a good job of deceiving us into believing that the ways of this world are what is best for us, but I have to ask. How are these ways working? If you have read the newspaper, watched the news, talked to someone out of work, or who has lost their home, or who is trying to navigate the insurance industry to get good healthcare overage, I think you will agree that the ways we have chosen are not so life-giving.
Today, Jesus says, if you want to be my disciple, you must “carry the cross and follow me” (14:27). In other words, disciples are those who are willing to give up their stuff, their ways, their preferences, so that all might partake in God’s kingdom that is to come. To be able to give up all this, we have to be able to honestly answer the question that Jesus is ultimately setting before us today, “Do you own your stuff, or does your stuff own you?” The answer ultimately depends on how you choose to live your life. Ultimately, what Jesus is saying is that if you choose to be his disciple, the cost to do so isn’t cheap.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor who publically lead an anti-Nazi movement in Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s. In his well-known book, “The Cost of Discipleship,” he noted a major issue for many in the church, the notion of cheap grace. That is, we Christians, particularly us Lutherans, love to proclaims God’s forgiveness of our sins so strongly that, if we’re not careful, we will begin to believe that it doesn’t matter what we do, because God will always just forgive us and we eventually get to the point where we ask, then why worry about doing the right thing? To overcome this false notion of “cheap grace,” Bonhoeffer, like Jesus in this gospel story, challenged people to count the cost, to realize that accepting God’s grace also meant accepting a life of service and sacrifice. Bonhoeffer not only wrote this, he lived it. You see, the ultimate cost of his stance against Hitler and Nazism was that he was arrested in 1943, eventually placed in a concentration camp and executed by hanging in 1945 just two weeks before U.S. soldiers liberated his camp.
Today, we are invited to count the cost of following Jesus. Like those scouts who at first wanted to hike that mountain before realizing the ultimate cost, Jesus stands before us telling us what it will take to go with him up the mountain. But there is a difference, you see, Jesus is not only telling us how hard it will be, he is promising to go with us, and even carry us if need be, up the mountain. Today, Jesus says, to be my disciple you must be willing to die for me, but also, know this, in death, Jesus promises to raise us to new life, in this world and the next. So, today, and every day, the choice is ours. Will we choose life and prosperity, or death and adversity? Amen.