To Choose

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a homily for Proper 18C
Text: Luke 14:25-33

familywalk

Listen and read along!

The Choice

This might shock you, but when pastors get together, we talk about you. Not you in the particular. We talk about congregations and what we hear each Sunday as we shake hands. This is often the only time we get feedback about our preaching. And the most common thing we hear, other than it was good, is about the story we told; that the personal story really got to me.

The little anecdotes, the incidentals are remembered, and not the stuff that Jesus actually said.

Not the context even.

We walk away remembering that the preacher collected Spider-Man comics or went to the same summer camp that we did.

I often worry as a preacher that we do this within the gospel itself. Jesus has some really challenging things to say in this passage about discipleship and we might get lost in the examples He uses. These examples of prudence and carefulness. That Jesus is telling us something in general about wisdom—that we as Christians are to be wise.

But these teachings actually say who wouldn’t do this?! They presume that the hearer is wise. Jesus is saying that wisdom and decision are related to discipleship. That we choose to be disciples of Jesus.

So why then do we want to take away our choice about it?

Stealing Choice

Having been raised in the church, I know what its like to go to our weekly Sunday worship service for the sake of going. Not because I was called to go. Not out of a sense of duty or obligation. Not even out of a sense of habit. But because my parents made me go.

That stops working when the parent has no leverage. No car keys to offer or roof to shelter. When I left the home, being forced to go to church didn’t make me go to church. When I went away to Alma College I rarely darkened the door of St. John’s a few miles from campus.

It is also probably true that had they offered a ministry on campus, I might have actually gone. But no matter. Hypotheticals are useless when the most true and factual statement is that I rarely went.

And don’t mistake my presence in this room, in this pulpit as evidence that the natural order is that our children wander off and then come back. How many of our kids are priests? I chose to come back. And in spite of all the church has done to me and all the ways my own denomination has failed me I stand here proclaiming the Good News that Jesus is telling us in no uncertain terms that if we believe that our Christian faith is easy, that the missio dei, the mission of GOD can be turned into a system, then we are not listening to Jesus. We are not hearing Him. We are, truthfully, ignoring Him.

Naming the Stakes

Jesus tells His followers three things about being His disciple.

  1. If you don’t hate your family and carry your very death with you, you aren’t a disciple.
  2. You are wise enough to plan and prepare with regards to your very safety.
  3. If you don’t give up your stuff, you aren’t a disciple.

Tough stuff. And I would understand if you bale out at this point. I think Jesus expects that to happen. Otherwise He would not have tried to turn us off.

Let’s begin by remembering what Jesus actually means by the word hate. It was not used by the Hebrews as the opposite of love, but as the reference to the lesser love. It says in Genesis that Rachel loved Jacob and hated Esau. It means that our first love is not to family, but to GOD. Everything, including our own flesh and blood, must be under that.

Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem, which went through three different dinners with Pharisees. Jesus is heading to His own execution and He is saying those of you who wish to follow me have already chosen to face death. Here’s your chance to bale on me because you might not have understood what’s up. The rest are now choosing this way, this life. This life that embraces our mortality, that has us eat with saints and sinners alike, that has us care for the poor as one of us—as equals or betters to us, that is more concerned with what what GOD wants than what we want.

Jesus is telling us that choosing the life of discipleship is tough, and if it hasn’t been tough for us, then we aren’t really disciples.

Choose

The Good News, however, is that we can choose this life.

A life that means examining our own hearts to make sure that we are choosing to act out of love and not anything else. That includes out of greed and selfishness, a sense of fairness, a sense of obligation, a sense of kindness, a sense of honor, a sense of responsibility, a sense of conviction, a sense of reason, a sense of pride—all of these go below GOD’s command to love.

We can choose to be a disciple of Jesus because in Jesus we find the very means to love GOD through one another.

We can choose to be here because we love GOD and this is the place we most feel called to love GOD through one another.

But most of all, we can choose to participate in the missio dei, the mission of GOD because GOD loves us enough to let us choose.

GOD does this because we are first called to come seek GOD because GOD makes the first move. Because GOD loves us and trusts us and hopes for us. And when we choose to follow Jesus, GOD then shows us how to love like that. That’s why we say that GOD is love. Because GOD’s love is first and ours comes next.