Sunday, September 8th, 2013
Trinity Anglican Church, Bradford, ON
The Rev. Daniel F. Graves
Text: Luke 14:25-33
“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
-Luke 14:27
Not too long ago, a friend of mine who is a priest in a
rural setting made the comment, “You know Dan, all ministry has a cost.” What he was talking about was the personal
cost for us as clergy. He meant that if we want to do ministry, we have to
expect that it will take a toll on us personally, that we will have to make
sacrifices that are hard, and that this is a good thing for the sake of the
gospel. His comments especially had to do with how it is sometimes harder for
clergy in more isolated rural areas, and how the costs for a cleric and their
families is sometimes greater than those in urban and suburban settings. The
support networks aren’t there, and sometimes it feels like colleagues in the
bigger, city churches just don’t understand what rural ministry is like. Usually the funding of such ministries is a
struggle, sometimes because of this, it is hard to find good clergy to go to
such places, and the ones that offer themselves do so at incredible personal
cost.
My friend was talking about the more rural areas of this Diocese, but in my years working for the National Church, I met a lot of clergy (and bishops!) from truly isolated places in this country and around the word, and I can say that it is true, that many clergy have indeed sacrificed much for the gospel. I surely count myself blessed to be in this wonderful place in which the challenges we have had to meet have been relatively easy. To be sure we have had to make sacrifices, our shared ministry has had its costs to count, but we are truly blessed.
Today’s lesson from St. Luke reminds us to count the costs
of ministry. The words of Jesus are hard
ones. Unless we are willing to abandon,
nay hate (!) family are we able to follow Jesus? How about giving up all our
possessions? Which one of us is able to
do these things? Is Jesus actually asking
us to do these things?
Perhaps Jesus is indulging in a bit of hyperbole here. He also speaks of the builder who carefully
measures how much the project will cost and does not take on the project unless
he knows he can finish it. He speaks,
too, of the king who first considers if he can win the battle before he wages
the war. Is Jesus asking us to sell all?
Is he asking us to abandon our families?
As I have noted before, and as we have been discovering in
our Gospel of Luke study, we are pretty confident that Luke’s Gospel was written
to a wealthy house church, whose patron was a wealthy householder named
Theophilus. When today’s passage is taken in the context of the whole gospel, I
think things become a bit clearer. Luke
consistently relates stories and sayings of Jesus that encourage those who have
much to use what they have not for their self-aggrandizement, not for their own
glory, but for the building up of the kingdom of God. This means breaking down those social
boundaries of rich and poor, and counting the outcast and the weak as
family. It means using what one has been
blessed with, not in small measure, but in sacrificial measure, to right the inequities
of the world. It means using the power
that has providentially fallen upon them to reorder the world under the
principles of God’s righteousness, God’s justice.
Jesus suggests, throughout Luke’s Gospel, that the poor
already have a leg up on the rich, ironically enough, for they have nothing to
lose. They have nothing that holds them
back from clinging fully to Jesus. They
have nothing that holds them back from following Jesus. They have no investments to worry about, or
great houses to tend. They can follow
Jesus without counting the cost, because the cost of not following him is even
greater for them.
But for those who have much, who have to worry about mother
or father; or for those who have to worry about their homes and their
investments, about their staff or their status, following Jesus is much harder
and the cost is greater. That is why
Jesus says be like the builder who counts the cost of his building project. That is why Jesus says be like the king who
carefully establishes whether or not he can defeat the enemy. The cost of not finishing the building or
winning the war is great. If you cannot
bear the ultimate cost, then do not embark on the project in the first place.
This is why Jesus reveals to them the worst case scenarios
of discipleship. Those who love you most
may hate you for following Jesus, and you may have to say goodbye to them. Now this may not actually happen, but it has
the potential to happen, and Jesus asks, are you prepared for it? We know of
course that the way of Jesus is the way of the cross. If you follow on my way, are you prepared to
take up your own cross? Will you suffer death for my sake as I am prepared to
suffer death for yours?
These may seem like distant questions to us, but there are
many Christians around the world whose families would hate them for becoming
Christians. There are people who have
given up everything to serve Jesus, at extraordinary financial cost. And even in these days we hear of people
dying for their faith. There are Christians still taking up their cross and
dying for Jesus, confessing their faith.
In truth, when we cast our glance a bit farther afield that normal, we
will find these stories not that distant after all.
But what of the cost of ministry here in Bradford? Perhaps the scale is not the same as Jesus
suggests in today’s gospel, and yet, Jesus uses the extreme case to illustrate
inclusively all manner of sacrifice. The
road to recovery in this parish has been a hard one. There is no denying
that. All of you have made sacrifices to
restore this church to a place where it can offer viable ministry that makes an
impact in this community. And during
harder times, you made extraordinary sacrifices to keep this church community
alive hoping against hope for a better day, working tirelessly in faithfulness
to those who built, and in commitment to those who will follow. Most importantly, in the midst of
extraordinary sacrifice, you continued to believe in and follow a loving God
who has never left you, even during challenging times. You continued to believe in God’s mission. You continued to believe in the kingdom
values of the Gospel, even though the cost was great. Together and as
individuals, each of you something of the cost of discipleship.
But there is one other point, a very important point that is
perhaps not so evident from today’s passage from Luke, but becomes clear in
light of the whole gospel story. When we
count the cost of discipleship, we can do so with confidence in the outcome, in
confidence of what we have to give up, that the cost will not be so great that
we cannot bear it, because it is not ours to bear alone. Yes, we must take up our crosses, but only
because Christ has first taken up his. Our
crosses are bearable, because the weight of all those crosses is shared in the
weight of the cross that he carried on his shoulders. And when the weight seems so heavy, when it
feels like we are buried under the weight, like we are in a tomb, and we cry
who shall roll the stone away, the stone is moved, the weight of the cross is
lifted, and the light of the resurrection breaks through!
Discipleship has a cost, to be sure. And it is a cost that
must be counted and faced if we wish to follow Jesus. Yet, we must never think that it is our cost
to bear alone. We must never think that the weight of the cross falls fully on
our shoulders. We will be called upon to
bear our portion, but that portion will be all the lighter when we realize that
we are part of host of witnesses, a company of disciples, each bearing one
another in love through hardship, and bearing us all up, is the one who takes
the weight of the world on his shoulders, Christ our God.
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