Expensive

Luke 14:25-33 (Philemon 1-21)

Sometimes I wonder if Jesus really wants to have a happy, functional church. Or wants to have a church at all. 

Today is one of those times. I mean, it’s parish ministry Sunday; the day when the church “season” ramps up, and the invitations to classes and ministries and events and fellowship suddenly multiply in the announcement page. The day we try to make it easy and exciting to get involved.

And here’s Jesus proclaiming: If you don’t give up everything, and I really mean EVERYTHING, you can’t be my disciple. If you don’t hate your family – don’t hate your community of identity and support and purpose – if you don’t hate your own life… if you don’t give that all up, then you can’t be my follower.

Oh, Jesus, we’re trying to recruit and support and and encourage disciples here. Why do you have to make this so hard?
Who’s going to sign up for something so expensive?

Jesus doubles down with this story about building towers and counting armies: Figure out your costs, so you know if you’re going to finish before you start. Know what you’re signing up for.

It’s good practical advice but lousy church marketing.

And that, I am very sure, is exactly how Jesus meant this.

Because Jesus doesn’t want a church. Jesus wants it ALL.

It’s the whole world that Jesus has come to save. Every single one of us:

you, me, everyone not in church this morning, everyone mad at God at the moment, everyone who’s already given up. Every everyone.  

Jesus has grace, love, hope for everyone.
But he really doesn’t want us to take that lightly.

Jesus wants us to know exactly how much the love of God is worth. Wants us to know how inexpressibly valuable are the abundant life of God’s kingdom, the depth of generous friendship with Jesus, and the gift of salvation from ourselves, and from the evils, despairs, and petty crap more powerful than ourselves.

You can’t buy that with dollars or diamonds, platinum or pure gold.

You can’t buy it at all, of course. You knew that already.  All that salvation and hope and love are gifts, given by God with no preconditions and no return receipt.

Jesus is using strong language about hating our families to get us to take this seriously.
Not to get you to call up your mother and announce that you hate her; not to quit on your spouse or your kids today, but to shock us into realizing that NOTHING, not even the most important, most loving, healthy, fundamental-to-my-identity things are worth more than the gift of transformative, healing, hope-filled relationship God is trying to give us.

But receiving all of that gift is, one way or another, going to require us to let go of a lot of other things and relationships we hold on to – often good and valuable in themselves, but that can get in the way when we hold on to them as the source of our identity and purpose, instead of finding identity and purpose in the love of God.

So you or I might have to give up trying to prove our worth with all the things we do; give up the drive of success in work, school, or sports; give up the sense of rightness and righteousness that we get from finding someone who shares our views on the issues of the day; give up measuring our value against social fantasies of romance, connectedness, or family values.

The specific sacrifices will differ from person to person, but it should shock you; it should scare you – a lot or a little – that Jesus tells us today that we’re supposed to hate, to give up, even our life itself – that first gift of God.

It scares me.
It’s a spine-tingling reminder that the love and purpose of God that Jesus invites us to share as his disciples is actually worth even more than my whole life.

Which makes me choke a little bit; both because that’s an overwhelming sense of gift, and because I’m not at all sure I’m ready for or capable of giving up that much, even as I receive that much.

I suspect I’m not alone in that.
So it has helped me this week to remember that Jesus doesn’t generally say this the very first time you meet him.

By the time Jesus says this to the crowds following him around, he’s miraculously healed many of them, their friends and loved ones. He’s fed them better than they could feed themselves. He’s taught them – taught us – to hope: to genuinely expect love and salvation and generosity and joy – not just at baptisms and weddings and the start of a school year, but – when the news and world and Facebook are overwhelmingly full of destruction and death and unsolvable disasters, and all our work seems hard and fruitless.

By the time Jesus says this to the crowds who are drawn to him, who’ve already started to leave things behind to follow him – he’s already awakened their desire, our desire, for the more that God promises: the world of generous justice, honest, open love, easily shared healing and abundance, and peace within our hearts that none of us can ever manage to achieve on our own.

Now he wants to be sure we know how much that’s worth, and to invite – no, challenge – us to put our treasure where our hopes are, to gladly turn over our whole hearts and lives, not just our dollars and things, to be filled with God’s love which is greater than our love.

So if you’re sitting here today, and you honestly can’t see how your relationship with God is worth giving up your most important anything, then hear this shocking challenge of Jesus’ as God’s invitation to you to learn more, to give Jesus the opportunity to heal you, feed you, inspire you, fill you with hope. Find out what it is that might really be worth all this.

And if you have already begun to fall in love with the promise of Jesus, begun to long for the more that God invites us to share, have felt some of that healing, that holy hope stirring your heart even when the news is terrible and problems seem unsolvable… If that’s you, today, listen carefully to how Jesus is inviting you to risk a BIG commitment of your heart, time, treasure, or love.

That big commitment might be to helping others find healing, heart-food, or hope through one of the ministries of Trinity – or in a way that Trinity hasn’t tried. Or it might be a commitment of radical forgiveness and re-imagining of relationships, the way Paul asks his friend Philemon to welcome as a brother the runaway slave who robbed him. Or perhaps as you’ve begun to feel the longing, you’ve also begun to feel the shape of the way Jesus is asking you in particular to commit your heart, your life, your all.

And if you happen to be one of those who has already counted up the cost, already handed over the whole of your heart and life to Jesus’ mission and God’s love lived out in the world, I hope you hear Jesus affirm today just how much that gift is worth, just how much it can transform and heal and renew you and your loves and life.

And all of us can hear one more thing in Jesus’ expensive, challenging words today. Because while Jesus is entirely serious about how much being close to him will cost us, Jesus is even more serious about how much this is worth, not just to us, but to God.

All of us – skeptics, dreamers, committers, in-between – must hear the assurance that Jesus has already counted the cost of the love of God that Jesus pours into and around and through us. Hear that Jesus himself has already counted the cost of your salvation, of all of our salvation, healing, renewal, and Jesus will not run out of the vast, expensive grace and hope, or the generous, unshakeable love we need, until the entire world is whole in the heart of God.