Counting the Cost
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Are you sure about this? Jim and I were staring at the beginning of a 14 mile hike with over 6,000 feet of elevation in front of us. It wasn’t the first or the last time I had heard this question. Nor was it the first nor the last time I had decided to head off on some trail all while hearing the words of my husband asking “Are you sure about this?” He wanted to know if a) I actually knew where we were going and b) if I had considered the cost.
If you have ever hiked, then you may notice that there are signs beside each trail head that have a detailed list of what the trail is like. It will give you mileage indicators, whether the path is rough or smooth. It will also give warning signs to consider like sheer rock facings, iron rungs, exposed cliffs, and steep incline. Do not hike this if you are afraid of heights, which by the way I completely am. Sure, I say while blowing right past it. I don’t take time to survey the costs, much less pause to consider them.
Today we find Jesus looking around at the large crowds around him and wondering if they have really given it much thought. They had heard of his miracles. They had witnessed the healings. They had listened to his stories. Jesus was going places. The Messiah was going to become the new ruler of the empire and they were here for it ! What’s not to love?
But Jesus isn’t about mass popularity or even a wide fanbase. Jesus is about discipleship. He turns to the crowd and he doesn’t exactly give a Hallmark speech. He gives some hard words. Let’s hear them again once more. “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife, and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”
Ouch. These are words that sting. They are words that put a bad taste in our mouth. Jesus, did you have to say it this way? Couldn’t you have said it another way? Ever heard of sugar-coating?
We don’t like this scripture because it seems too harsh. We look all around it and through it searching for an easier interpretation, for a way out.
Hate our family? What on earth? Well, maybe it is easier for some of you, but what about loving one another? The word here for hate is miseo and it means to have a strong preference towards something. Jesus isn’t saying that we should hate our family, but that our devotion to God should come above all else, even family ties.
We have to remember that during this time, family was Everything. Family determined your entire status in life. Where you would go to school. Who your friends were. What kind of trade you would learn. Who you would marry. How much money you had. To turn your back on your family was to, as Jesus said, “to hate even life itself.” To tell this culture to prefer God above their own family would have seemed ludicrous, like telling someone to take a test they haven’t studied for or to jump out of a boat when they don’t know how to swim. It is ripping out your safety net, your sense of identity, your everything and asking you to replace it all, to risk it all, with a dependency upon God.
The point here is that Jesus is calling us into a new family, the very family of God, and this family cannot function well if everyone is still worried about their pride, their status, their possessions, and their reputation.
Sometimes we want the benefit of being perceived as a Christian more than we want the lifestyle of one. We want to be #blessed, but maybe today we need to listen, to hear Jesus ask us “are you sure about this? This is what it takes to be my disciple.”
He says if you were a builder, would you not sit and draw out the plans, make sure you have the materials, and build everything to code less you leave it unfinished? Or if you were a king waging war against another, would you not sit down and consider your army, if you had enough to win the battle, or think of how many lives are at stake to lose? My dad just started teaching Kenley to play chess and I can remember as a young girl when he taught me and he would always ask me to think through each step. More than once he would say, “are you sure you wanna do that?”
Jesus isn’t interested in unfinished discipleship. Jesus is interested in those who are ready to build the kingdom of God, those who are in it for the long haul, who don’t quit.
The new catchphrase in the working world right now seems to be “quiet quitting” on the heels of The Great Resignation. This is the concept of no longer going above and beyond at work but doing enough to get by. No extreme 60 plus hour weeks. No over-the-top anything. Just doing the bare minimum. I feel like many of us have been there in that space over the past few years. Little more than surviving.
But I wonder if sometimes the church allows itself to slowly, quietly quit. Bare minimum. And maybe our life in God has just felt like one more thing. And so we shove it to the side, an hour here, giving a few dollars there. Slowly our life in God is stretched thin and tentatively scheduled only after everything else has taken its place on the throne of our lives.
This is what theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace. Dietrich knew this well as one who tried to walk faithfully amid World War II and the Holocaust. He said “cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” He said “Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.”
Are you sure about this? This is why discipleship is hard. Genuine discipleship will destroy your idols because our lives are only meant to follow the One. I’ll never forget getting the call to come and serve here, before I even knew it was here. It was about 9:00 at night, completely unexpected. I was told that there was an opportunity to serve about an hour from Tupelo. That really narrows it down.
Suddenly it felt like my world was spinning. New house. New town. New job. New schools. New people. In four months?
As God intended, I had signed up for the Festival of Preaching in Jackson and left the next morning. I’m not sure I caught much of what Bishop Sharma or Bishop Swanson said because I cried straight for three days. I couldn’t control it. My spirit broke open and I became a complete soppy mess. Unable to form complete sentences, fog my contacts up type of mess. What would this mean for my marriage, my friendships, my children, my parents? I had all of these family ties. This was my all I had ever known.
At one point during those three days, Bishop Sharma stopped and said that she felt like we needed to have an anointing, that sometimes we needed fresh oil for the journey ahead. And so I get in line and Bishop Swanson is standing there and his hands are so large it felt like the hand of God grabbing onto my skull. And he smears my head with oil and I just fall down at the altar. Still sobbing.
“Are you sure about this God? It feels like a lot.” I kept hearing, “sell your possessions and follow me. Do you trust me?” It feels like too much. God said “my grace is sufficient for you. Do you trust me? Do you trust me?
Wouldn’t it be great if discipleship were certain? That we could calculate our steps and know where we would land? But maybe counting the cost isn’t about the certainty of the journey but about surrender to the One who invites us on it? Bent over an altar covered in tears, mascara, and oil, I began to surrender. In saying yes to deeper discipleship, we make room for Christ to open deeper channels of grace. We make room for Christ to return to where Christ has always belonged in our life.
Are you sure about this? Oh I am sure about the One who can heal a wounded soul. I am sure about the One who calls me by name. I am sure about the riches of boundless grace, of new mercies each morning, and of the transformation of forgiveness. I am sure that God is with me throughout. I am sure that even when it is hard and I am stumbling, that Jesus is worth coming back to, again and again. And so I come to this table, again and again, to remember what God has done, to share in the cross of Christ, and to commit to follow.
I don’t have oil with me today, but I can offer you some fresh bread for the journey, some fresh wine, the body and blood of Christ. When you come to the table, I hope you will count the cost. I hope you will lean in and listen. “Do you trust me?”