Pentecost 13 – 2019
Luke 14:25-35
Marian Free
In the name of God who ask nothing less than all we have to give. Amen.
Earlier this year a father and son went missing on Cradle Mountain. Grave fears were held for their safety as the weather had closed in and there had been a heavy snow fall. If you stay in a youth hostel anywhere in Tasmania you will be confronted by posters that warn you that the weather in that state is variable and can turn bleak without warning. It would be unwise, the warnings suggest, to set our on a walk unless you are adequately prepared. Even on a sunny, summer day there is no guarantee that it will not turn bitterly cold or even snow, or that visibility will not be seriously reduced. A wise tramper, even if only planning a day trip, will at the very least take a sleeping bag and more food and drink than needed. Better still, that hiker will also pack a tent so that if they are caught out, they will at least have shelter and warmth until the clouds lift or the snow stops falling. Fortunately the father and son duo were no novices. When they realised that conditions had changed they simply set up camp instead of taking the risk of trying to make it to the next shelter. They were found unscathed because they had been prepared for all eventualities.
Today’s gospel acts as a warning for those who set out believing that following Jesus is like a walk in the park. Like the posters in Tasmanian youth hostels, the gospel warns would-be disciples that the journey is not one to be undertaken lightly and should only be entered into if one understands the terrain and is prepared, not only for the journey, but for its possible end.
Jesus has ‘set his face towards Jerusalem’. The turn of phrase suggests a steely determination and an awareness of what awaits him there. The large crowds who follow him have no idea what lies ahead. They have presumably been attracted to Jesus by his healing miracles, his compassion or his teaching. Whatever their reason for following, Jesus needs to warn them that being a disciple is much more than basking in his reflected glory, taking comfort in his compassionate nature, reveling in his revolutionary teaching or rejoicing at his humiliation of the religious leaders.
From the moment that he ‘sets his face towards Jerusalem’, Jesus has made it absolutely clear to any who seek to follow him clear that becoming a disciple involves a radical re-orientation of their life. It is not something to be undertaken lightly because discipleship means giving up everything that matters – family, possessions and even life itself. Discipleship, Jesus insists, means putting God at the centre of their life and seeing everything else from that perspective.
This is not the first time that Luke’s Jesus has insisted that a follower give up their family, or at least make them second to him and it is not the first (and it will not be the last) time that he encourages the disciples to make life-changing decisions about their possessions. Not only must Jesus’ followers be prepared to relinquish everything that they hold dear, but, Jesus insists, that they should not even bother starting out on the journey if they are uncertain as to whether or not they can go the distance. There is no point in starting, he claims, if they are going to fall by the wayside or need rescuing simply because they have started out ill-prepared, unaware of the conditions or of the nature of the path that lies ahead. Once again, this is not a new theme for Jesus. When he first set out on this journey, Jesus demanded that “the dead bury the dead” and that one should not “turn back having their hand to the plough” and warned future disciples that he ‘had nowhere to lay his head.’
Indeed, throughout the gospel, Jesus tells his would-be followers that being a disciple is no guarantee that the path will be smooth or that they will be protected from hardship and grief. In fact, he suggests that the reality of discipleship may well be just the opposite. Being a disciple is as likely to lead to degradation and humiliation as it is to recognition, to apparent failure as it is to lead to success. Those who follow Jesus must be prepared to share Jesus’ fate. They must bear the consequences of following to the point of being willing to ‘take up their cross’ should that be their fate.
It is quite clear that the only way to truly follow Jesus is to relinquish our dependence on everything else – our identity, our self-interest, our need for self-preservation, our ambition, our pretense, our false conception of the world and our need for control. Most of us, I believe, make a faltering start on our journey. Despite Jesus’ demands and the warnings the gospels have preserved for us, few of us surrender everything all at once. Our lifetimes are a process of gradually letting go of all that stands between ourselves and God – possessions, friendships and family, achievements and so on.
We do know know the road ahead, but we cannot say that we haven’t been warned. Let it never be said that we did not know what we were getting into or what is required of us and let us hope that at the end we will not be found to be holding on to anything but will have given ourselves (heart, souls and body) entirely into the hands of God.
Swallowsrest 