Counting the Costs

By

Reverend Litton Logan

Scriptures:

Luke 9:51--62 (NRSV)
⁵¹When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. ⁵²And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; ⁵³but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. ⁵⁴When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” ⁵⁵But he turned and rebuked them. ⁵⁶Then they went on to another village.

Would-Be Followers of Jesus

⁵⁷As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” ⁵⁸And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” ⁵⁹To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” ⁶⁰But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” ⁶¹Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” ⁶²Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Sermon:

I remember getting my first car in 1960—a 1956, six cylinder, Ford Fairlane Town Sedan.  Oh, man, was I happy.  I paid $750 for it and my mom cosigned the loan.  The car only had 12,000 miles on it.  Why so cheap, well, the previous owner had committed suicide in the front driver’s seat, and no one else would buy it.  It was a great car.  However, I soon learned that the initial cost of $750 was deceptive.  I had to get insurance.  Insurance for a 17-year-old male, per year, was nearly three times the cost of the car.  After the monthly payments on the car and the insurance, I didn’t have a lot of money left over each month for gas and oil, even at gas prices in 1960.  I guess this was my first lesson in hidden costs associated with having something I really wanted.

          Having served as a pastor in two rural farming and ranching communities, I heard stories from kids in our youth groups about getting their first horse or raising calves and sheep for Four H projects.  They had no idea about what it was going to cost them in time or money.  They didn’t think about having to get up at the crack of dawn to take care of their animals, do farm chores, get ready for school, and get to the school bus on time, and then come home spend hours mucking out stalls, grooming, and tending to their animals.  Most of the kids came to the point where they thought their animals and their projects were well worth the sacrifices and costs.  Several of the kids didn’t think it was worth it and didn’t raise any more livestock for Four H.

Ah, the lessons of life.  I think our Christian faith is a lot like these examples.  Think about it.  Did you ever think about the hidden costs associated with the gift of God’s grace before you made your profession of faith? 

I’ve often wondered if in the beginning Jesus understood all the costs of God’s claim on his life.  In the Garden of Gethsemane just before his arrest, trial, and execution, I think we see clearly the answer to that question.  We find Jesus coming up against some hidden costs of God’s claim on his life and he asks that he not to have to pay them.

In Luke’s Gospel today, we hear a note of Jesus’ profound resignation as he is drawn inexorably toward the uncertainties and eventualities of Jerusalem.  Yet, even though he could have refused the costs, backed out of his commitment, he nonetheless chooses to pay the costs of God’s claim on his life. 

          I don’t think any of us would argue with the fact that God’s gift of grace is free but living in it and living it out in our lives is costly.   And, there in is the rub—what are we willing to pay to place ourselves dead center in God’s will in general and God’s will in particular for our lives.

          In our scriptures this morning, Jesus reaches another milestone in his ministry marked by rejection.  Jesus has returned from the gentile side of the Sea of Galilee, a trip that has made it clear that God’s message of grace, healing, and wholeness is intended for all people, everywhere. Now, Jesus sends his disciples into a Samaritan village—another group of outsiders--to seek food and lodging.  The people of the village for whatever reason reject Jesus and his disciples.  The disciples want to punish the village for their breach of hospitality by calling down fire on it and its people.  In Jesus’ response to the disciples’ wishes to destroy these Samaritans, we see Jesus denounce such notions that personal insults justify personal injury as well as the notion that one may employ any means in service of holy ends.

          Next, our scriptures turn to the three followers of Jesus.  One says I will follow you anywhere.  The second, in response to a question about his commitment, asks permission to fulfill a sacred familial mandate to care for the dead, which was to bury his dead father before following Jesus.  The third follower when questioned about his commitment to the kingdom of God asks permission to take care of his familial responsibilities—put things in order for his family--before he follows Jesus full-time.  I would invite your attention to the fact that it each case the demands of discipleship violates the disciples sense of themselves in the context of their families and the sacrosanct traditions associated with family.

Jesus tells one person that if he follows Jesus he will not have a family or a place to call home—he will be a no-body by society’s standards from no-where.  Another disciple is told that his commitment to the kingdom of God demands he give up his sense of himself as defined by even the most sacred family obligations.  The third disciple is told that his responsibility to the kingdom of God must come before his responsibility to his family.

          Personal identity for ancient people was defined totally in the context of family or tribe.  To say that Jesus was Joshua ben Joseph, the son of the carpenter from Nazareth was more that just saying that Jesus was the son of Joseph of Nazareth, a carpenter, but to fix Jesus in a tradition, a vocation, and a family identity that was integral part of the Jewish psyche and history.  A history that stretched back as far as Abraham.  Jesus’ sense of himself was inextricable for all Jewish history.  His sense of him self was a personification of all Jews before him and after him.  To say that Jesus was the Son of God was to fix Jesus, the man, in an ethnic and religious heritage that stretched back through Jewish history beyond Abraham to Adam and in John’s Gospel to preexistence in God.

          Let me give you a more modern illustration of what I am trying to convey.  As a youngster, anytime I told my grandmother about someone I knew that she didn’t know, or told her about a new person I had met, her first question was, “Who are their people?”  If I couldn’t answer her question, her response was always this reminder, “It is important to know a person’s people. Who their people are often tells you who they are.”  Then she may go on to speculate and wonder about the people of the person I had mentioned.  “Hmmmm,” she would say.  “I wonder if their folks are the So-in-so’s from down in Tallahatchie county, around Sumner or Web, MS.” (According to my grandmother, nothing good ever came out of Tallahatchie County Mississippi.)  Then she would give you summary of the family she thought were the relations of my friend.  However, her words stuck with me—“Who their people are often tells you who they are.” In short, a person was who they were because of where they came from, who their people were, and those things that distinguished their people from among others.

We modern, transient Americans may find these ideas strange. Many of us cannot trace our heritage back more than a few generations.  Most Americans tend to define themselves primarily by their vocations or professions or some other aspect of their individuality such as their prowess in sports or being a member of MENSA.  I think this is partly true because we are so disconnected from our families and the places and the people that helped define us in our formative years.  Some have said that America’s worship of individualism is because we have no real sense of extended family or a personal sense of history beyond a couple of generations and because of our high degree of social, vocational, and geographic mobility.  This theory could account for the fact that some people after years of defining them selves solely as individuals or as members of a profession or vocation, seem to have a need to fix them selves in some personal history.  Learning who we are by where we’ve come from and who our people is now a multimillion dollar a year industry in genealogy.  I am often amazed at modern, highly individualistic, American people tracing their ancestry back to some important founding father or mother of our country or some English or European nobility, who have distinctive histories.

Jesus in effect countermands all such thinking.  Jesus says that the cost of entering the kingdom of God is first to turn one’s back on all that defines them—die to one’s sense of self within the context of this world and take on a radically knew sense of self. One must become as little children totally dependent upon God and ready to relearn how to be a person.  One is to see one’s self as a citizen of the kingdom of God primarily, whose possibilities in the extreme may mean death for the kingdom’s sake.  One is to see one’s self as a child of God primarily and simultaneously as a member of the universal, human family of God.

          The undertone of these passages we’ve heard today repeat the understanding that Jesus’ family--Jesus’ people—those who define him in the world and those whom he defines in the world—are those people who do God’s will.  These passages make it clear that physical locales, human families, or human histories do not define citizens of God’s kingdom.  Citizens of the kingdom of God are defined by their moment to moment relationship to God where ever they are with whom ever they are with, whether in Judea, in Samaria, in Galilee, or in the utter most parts of the world.

          What has being a Christian cost us?  Did we have to give up certain lifestyles that weren’t good for us in the first place?  Did we have to give up certain associations or relationships that would have been harmful in the end?  Did we have to learn how to speak all over again because of our previous vocabulary? Did we have to give up certain unhealthy and unwholesome activities in order to devote ourselves to Christian study, worship, or service?  All such sacrifices are important and helpful in the making of souls devoted to God.  However, the bigger question—the defining question of the disciple of Jesus--is have we so prioritized our lives to such a point that we are willing to give up all that traditionally defines us—our family, our histories, our professions or vocations—and stand willing to walk away from them in a heart beat if God called us too?

          Many in Luke’s community of faith have done just this.  It has costs them all that defined them and that they valued on earth.  Their faith in Jesus may even cost them their lives.  Many in Luke’s church are dead to their families and their communities because of their faith.  They are no-bodies from nowhere.  Luke does not mean that Jesus’ words are simply hyperbole, exaggerations to make a point.  Jesus’ words in Luke are the absolute and final standard for being a disciple of Jesus.  A standard Jesus will exemplify on Calvary.

          As Christians, who are we? As Christians, who are our people?  Before you answer, be careful, there are hidden and unexpected costs to being a disciple of Christ.

          Is it worth it—all this giving up, self-sacrifice, etc., to be a citizen of the kingdom of God?  The empty tomb and the caring community of faith that Jesus commissioned, which sustained Luke’s audience and Christians across the years in times of great peril, struggle, and redefinition, answer that question, according to Luke.

          I imagine there are few of us in the audience to day who have plowed a plot of land with a horse, a mule, or oxen.  As a young teenager, I tried once.  Prior to the days of the Roto-Tiller, there was an elderly black man in our town that plowed gardens with a mule.  One-year dad wanted to have a big garden so he hired the man to plow our garden area.  I watched the old man and the mule work.

The old man had tied the reigns together in a knot, draped them over his head, and hooked one side of the reigns under his right arm so he could put both hands on the handles of the plow.  He guided the mule by voice commands. The mule responded without hesitation.  It was truly amazing to watch these two work.  I finally asked the man if I could plow.  He laughed and said, “Sho, come on, get in here.”  “Here,” being between the plow handles.  I grabbed hold of the handles, polished with years of the old man’s sweat, body oils, and friction.  He draped the reigns over my head, lifted my right arm, and placed the right side of the reigns under it.  He commanded the mule to move and with a slow, deliberate pull, the plow began to move.  I wobbled the plow first to the right, then to the left, trying to plow a straight furrow.  It looked so easy for the old man, why couldn’t I plow a straight row.  The old man laughed at my frantic efforts to keep the plow up right and on-line.  I suspected the mule was laughing too, but I was too busy with my disaster at his rear-end to check.  Occasionally, I would look back at my furrow with great dismay—it was as crooked as a snake.

Finally, I reached the end of the row, the old man said, “whoa!”  The mule stopped.  I turned around and looked back at my row.  I was embarrassed.  I told the old man, “I really messed it up didn’t I?”  He laughed, showing a mouth of missing teeth, and then he said something that has been a reference for me until this day.  The old man smiled and said, “You, tried Mr. Junior, your tried, that’s more than some folks are willin to do.”  The old man went on to tell me that you don’t look at the plowshare biting into the soil as you plow.  You let the plowshare and the mule do their job while you keep your eye on the spot where you want your row to end. “Don’t look at where you at or where you been but where you want to be at the end of the row”, he concluded.

⁶²Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

          We may not get it right each time, that does not mean we abandon the plow—hang in there and keep trying.  Furthermore, we are never to look back at our former lives and question our choices to follow Christ no matter what the costs of discipleship—hidden or otherwise.  Don’t look back. Determine the straightness of your furrow by sighting on Christ who stands at the end of your row.  Do not focus on the plowshare digging into the ground—the immediate--or the forces or powers that propel you down life’s row.  In addition, remember what God’s grace is all about--God’s unconditional love for us as we try, fail, and try again until we get it right.