I find it interesting that, after Jesus tells his parable about the banquet, when he's being followed by a crowd, he doesn't turn around and say - “hey!  I'm so glad that all of you are here today.  I just love it when lots of people turn out to hear my message!”  Instead, Jesus turns around and tells the people how hard it is to follow him.  It's almost as if his goal is to thin that crowd out a little bit.  Imagine what happened to that crowd after Jesus spoke those words.  Imagine the uncomfortable silence, some people wondering what on earth Jesus was talking about.  I'd imagine a few of those people giving up in disgust, gathering their stuff and heading for home. 

Here's the thing: most preachers you'll meet aren't looking for that sort of response when they preach a sermon.  Most of us are looking for far more positive reactions from our congregations.  Maybe that means we aren't always very faithful preachers, I don't know.  But I can tell you that, when I first read this morning's lectionary text a few weeks ago, my first reaction was to sigh.  This is not a text that I would have chosen.  It's a text that makes us uncomfortable to read, and that means it's a text can be uncomfortable to preach. 

The Christian tradition is full of hymns and stories about how wonderful it is to feel close to God.  As a church, we celebrate the ways that Jesus walks with us, talks with us, and calls us his own.  We sing about the ways that he draws us nearer and nearer to himself, and makes himself our friend.  We look at that cross, and contemplate how deep and how wide God's love must be; we give thanks for Jesus’ willingness to die on that cross, that we might know the extent of God's love for all creation.

All of this is important; we should sing and celebrate and remember all of these things.  After all, it is only because God reaches out to us, it is only because God first loved us, that we are able to answer Christ's call to discipleship.  And yet, today's text suggests that God calls us to do more than feel thankful.

How many of us come into this sanctuary, look at that cross, and think: “that is what I am asked to bear”?  How many of us look at that cross, and hear Jesus saying “whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple”?  How many of us look at that cross and count the costs of discipleship? 

Don't get me wrong.  I am not pointing any finger at you.  Part of my own discomfort with preaching this text comes from the fact that, frankly, I don't consider the costs of discipleship all that often myself.  If I am to be honest, then I have to admit that I don't think very much about what it means to carry Christ's cross.  If I'd been in that crowd we read about this morning, I'd be as tempted as anyone to decide that Jesus simply didn't know what he was talking about.  But since I'm your preacher, I don't get to do that.  Since we can't just ignore the text, let's return to Luke's gospel.

Jesus tells a parable about a banquet, and about the excuses that were offered by those who wouldn't come.  People had new property they had to check out, they wanted to make sure their investments had been good ones, they had relationships that needed their attention.  But clearly the master, the one planning the banquet, was very displeased.  Fine, he says.  If you have better things to do, don't come.  And so he opens his doors to the poor, the outcast, the blind and the lame – those who aren't burdened with anything or anyone that might distract them from the celebration being offered.  The banquet, of course, is Jesus’ way of talking about the Kingdom of God.  It's a parable that's supposed to make us wonder whether our blessings of economic security and family relationships really are blessings at all, or whether they are liabilities, distracting us from the good news of God's Kingdom.

And just in case the parable isn't direct enough for you, Jesus then sums it up again, in very plain language: “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.  Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be disciple.”  Jesus ends up concluding, “None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” 

What do you do with those words, in your own life of faith?  What do these words mean for us as people who are genuinely trying to figure out what it means to be a Christian?  Do we take Jesus’ words literally?  Do we assume that he was just joking?  If Jesus were standing right here, preaching this sermon instead of me, would he say, “Oh, I was exaggerating.  You don't really need to take me so seriously”?  That would have made for a much simpler sermon, wouldn't it?

Let's say that we all agree that Jesus’ words should be taken seriously, that he wasn't just joking.  Even so, I'm not sure that it's such a good idea to take him 100% literally, and hate our parents and spouses and siblings and children.  After all, this is the same Jesus who said that the second greatest commandment was to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, the same Jesus who said that love has no greater expression than a person who would lay down their life for their friend.  Jesus’ words about hating our families are difficult in part because we don't want to hate our families, but they're also difficult because they seem to contradict so many other things that Jesus said. 

To be honest with you, I've really struggled with what I should say in this sermon this morning.  I'm not entirely sure of the best way to make sense of this text in a way that is more concerned with being faithful than with making it easier to accept.  I'll be curious to hear from you folks about how you wrestle with these difficult words.  For now, I can only take my best shot at offering an explanation.

In today's text, Jesus makes a big deal about ownership.  He says to the crowd, if you want to be my disciples, then give up all of your possessions.  The Greek here is sort of strange – there are words that are used to mean “possessions” or “belongings” or “stuff,” but Jesus doesn't use any of those words here.  Instead, the word he uses is a little more abstract.  It describes something that exists as yours – something that is at your disposal, something that you can use as a means to an end of your own choosing.  So, maybe one way of summing up Jesus’ words is this: you need to be willing to give up all the things that are there for you to use, all the things that are at your disposal, if you are to be my disciple. 

To put it another way: if you see your possessions as being there just for your benefit, then they will prevent you from following Christ.  And if you see your parents or your spouse or any other person as being your possession – that is, if you see other people as existing for your own benefit – then go ahead and hate them, because that sense of possessiveness isn't really love, anyway, and it will keep you from being a disciple of Christ.  Our sense of possessiveness is something that we must give up if we are to be a disciple; it is, perhaps, the most difficult cost of discipleship.

I have a good friend named Gary Kriege; he's a United Methodist pastor working as a counselor down in Phoenix.  About four years ago, he said something to me that I have always remembered.  His words went something like this:  “Sara, one of the hardest things for us to do is to treat other people as fully human, as separate individuals whose lives are every bit as complex as our own.” 

As our conversation continued, the full impact of what he was saying became clear to me.  There is always a great temptation for us to deal with other people as extensions of ourselves, to act as if other people somehow exist as a means to an end.  This is what makes it so hard for us to truly love people as Christ would have us love them; this is what makes it so difficult to truly lay down our lives for one another: we live in a world that teaches us to see other people as one more way of getting what we want. 

In other words, our problem is that we've come to see our lives as our own.  We think of other people in terms of their relationships to us.  We think of our stuff as something we've earned.  As I was preparing this week's sermon, I stumbled upon these words from a Lutheran pastor:

Our fallenness might be posed in terms of the problems we have with possessions. Think of the things that are most dear to us: mother and father, spouse and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself. Couldn't our problem be defined as wanting to possess these people? We don't want to simply live our lives as gift, we want to possess our lives as something we earn. We cling to our lives. These sayings, then, would carry a similar message as, "Those who cling to their lives will lose them, and those who give up their lives for my sake will gain them." Life is not something to grasp after. It is something to give away and then receive back as a free gift. This goes for our relationships, too. Those we love are not something to cling to, they are something we have to be willing to give away, in order that we might be able to receive them as gift.[1]

I'd like to return for a moment to Jesus’ words about carrying his cross in order to be his disciple.  The cross is a place of crucifixion, a place of death.  It is a place of rejecting so many of the world's values in favor of a willingness to truly give of ourselves, without asking anything in return.  Maybe part what it means to carry that cross is that we are asked to give up our sense of having a controlling interest not only in our belongings, but in our relationships with other people.  Maybe part of what it means to carry that cross is to be willing to die to our own selfish sense of self-interest, and to experience Christ's resurrection in us as we open ourselves to the life that God intends for us.

So many of Jesus’ other commandments make sense only if we start with this willingness to give up our possessiveness, both of stuff and of people.  His commandments to us about loving our enemies, and praying for those who persecute us... we can't even begin to comprehend these commandments – much less obey them – if we live as though other people exist for our benefit.  We can reach out to our enemies in love, we can turn the other cheek, only if we're willing to love as Christ did on that cross... it's impossible to do those things if all we can think about is what's in it for us. 

The road of discipleship is not an easy one, and none of us can know where it will take us.  After all, loving without selfishness is a risky business.  But the road to discipleship begins, I think, when we are willing to be governed by our love of God and our love of neighbor, and not by our own sense of self-interest.  The road to discipleship begins when we are willing to come and celebrate God's kingdom, without being distracted by the need to control or possess those people and things that surround us. 

In that spirit, I invite you to our celebration of communion.