Seriously, Jesus?

Scripture: Luke 14:25-33

"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 my disciple.”
“None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”

Seriously, Jesus? You don’t really mean that LITERALLY, right?

I have always found it very interesting that people are willing to build whole theologies, codes of conduct, even laws, based on one little piece of scripture they find that fits neatly into their lives and worldview.

But when it comes to sayings like this… we suddenly don’t want to take Jesus literally anymore.
Maybe he didn’t really mean it the way it sounds.

He’s using hyperbole, right? Just exaggerating.

He doesn’t expect us to give away EVERYTHING to be his follower, does he?  Because that’s ridiculous.

But… what happens if we actually do take Jesus seriously?

I mean… it’s not like this is the only place he talks about giving everything up - whether it’s family obligations or wealth - and following Him.

In fact… let me run through the places just in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus says something pretty similar.

Back in Luke 9:59-62
To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Or how about Luke 12:19-21…the parable of the rich fool...
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Or the parable of the faithful and unfaithful slave…
From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded. (Luke 12:48)

Of course there’s today’s text: None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

Or Luke 16:13
No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

Or if we continue on into verses 14-15
The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him. So he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.

Then there’s the parable of the rich man and Lazarus and the great chasm between them that cannot be crossed. (Luke 16:19-31)

There’s Luke 18:18-27 - sell all that you own and follow me. For it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.

How about the story of Zacchaes in chapter 19?
Or the widow’s mite in 21?

And this is just Luke’s gospel.

As Pastors we know how tough these words are to hear, because - well, let’s be honest, we don’t like hearing them any more than you do. So we try to avoid these difficult texts. Except, here’s the thing… if we try to avoid these texts, we have to avoid pretty much the entire Gospel of Luke. It’s everywhere.

So if we can’t avoid it… how can we spin it?

So then we spend a lot of time jumping through theological hoops and gymnastics to not have to take Jesus seriously here.

“Oh, this is just hyperbole, he’s trying to make a point, he doesn’t mean this LITERALLY…”
And, to be fair, it actually IS hyperbole… when he says to hate mother and father, etc. he doesn’t mean to actually “hate” them, because clearly that flies in the face of the whole “love one another” command.

But he is trying to get our attention and make a point that he is VERY VERY serious about.

Discipleship. Commitment. Trust.

That these things need to be more important than even your family and friends. Which... is where most of us draw the line and say "nope, that's not happening."

Jesus told us earlier back in chapter 12, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.”

Hmmm… Sensing a theme here.
I think Jesus means this. I think he’s serious and actually is demanding, and expecting, that if we want to truly be his disciples, to follow him, we will do this.

We will trust him.

We will not worry. To quote the Disney movie Frozen, we’ll “let it go…”

Because Jesus is telling us discipleship is radical. It’s demanding total allegiance. He is stating that if you’re going to follow him, you’ve got to be all in. It’s not just a weekend endeavor. It’s not just another task, not just another check list or thing to do on our crazy list of everything else that demands our time.

Again… there’s a reason Jesus was not popular among the leadership.

This is not just a way of thinking and believing… it is a way of living and being. It becomes who you are.  It is your identity.  That people know you first and foremost as one of Christ’s disciples.  It is a question of who do you belong to… God or the world? Who rules in your life? Christ? Or the world’s demands?

Now our world does not like it when something tries to demand total allegiance. Especially when we belong to so many things, whether it’s our jobs, careers, homes, hobbies, sports, our families, our kids, our friends, even our health.

So anyone who wants to be the sole and defining “thing” in our lives that says “Hey, you need to put me first,” just sounds ridiculous. There’s a reason the rich man walks away sad because he is still too attached to his worldly possessions to be able to just go, “OK, let’s go, Jesus.”

Because this is not about adding one more thing to your plate. Think of it more like your diet. Your spiritual diet. When you’re eating burgers, pizza and nachos and you throw a salad in, you’re not actually being healthier by throwing the salad in. You’re just throwing something in on top of something else.

That’s not what Jesus is telling us to do.

Discipleship is not “just one more thing” on top of everything else.

It’s about replacing the burgers, pizza and the nachos with the salad. It’s about disconnecting yourself and your identity from worldly ambitions and possessions and stresses and replacing it with being about the business of proclaiming God’s Kingdom.

But then the question is why? Why does God want to demand this total allegiance from us? Is he really that needy? Is he just some little tyrant God who needs to feel like he’s THAT important? No. He demands it from us because he knows WE NEED IT. He knows we cannot be free to do his work in the world UNLESS we are able to detach ourselves from the things of this world. To be able to release anger, resentment, worries, stresses…when all these things encroach in and have equal weight… they weigh us down. Stress us out.

What is the biggest stressor in almost everyone’s lives? Money.

It ties into everything… it ties into how happy our relationships are. What’s the number one cause of divorce? Money fights. Will I have money for a roof over my head, will I have money to put my kids through college, will I have money for food, will I have money for the nice things I want. Can I pay my hospital bills? Will I have money for a vacation.

So we run ourselves into the ground, we neglect our spiritual lives because we are so busy consuming and being consumed by worldly things. We start eating chips on top of that salad.

Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom of God had come in him. Eternal life is not just a future event.
It starts RIGHT NOW. Right here. Jesus did not come just to give us comfort about an afterlife later on. It’s about the here and now and how we live and who we are and just our general state of being.

“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)

Jesus knows when we let it go, when we change our priorities, when trust and turn everything, and I mean everything, over to God… it doesn’t matter. If we TRULY BELIEVE that eternal life is real, and that it came in Jesus Christ, and that it is right here, right now, and whether we live or die, whether we live in a nice house or on the street, whether we have exactly the right job or career that we want, ultimately does not matter because all of those things are just things that tie us down, distract us, and make us miserable.

Those are all the things that Jesus says will wind up on the burning trash heap outside the gates of his holy city.

So as you leave today… ask yourself, what does it mean for you to live a joyous life where the Kingdom of God is a reality in your life right here, right now, where when Jesus says “don’t worry about your life,” you’re able to go, “OK.”

Think about how will you relate to others in your life when proclaiming God’s Kingdom and doing God’s work in the world, to answer your calling and use the gifts he has given you to serve your neighbor, becomes your number one priority? What changes will happen there?

I’m not saying it will be easy. The first disciples knew it wasn’t easy. Matthew had to stop being a tax collector because it wasn’t consistent with his identity in Christ. Paul had to stop being one of those “rich Pharisees” because killing Christians and stuff was antithetical to his calling as a disciple of Jesus.

Their identities literally had to become wrapped up in Christ and not themselves or their worldly endeavors. Peter, Paul, Stephen, and countless others gave up their lives. Why? Because they knew--eternal life was already theirs. They were already living the joyous life where the Kingdom of God was their reality right then and right there.

They were truly free in Christ.

Christ calls US to be free in him as well. He knows, that the only way to be free, the only way to truly be his disciple, to truly follow him… is to be willing and able to shift all your priorities, go all in, and say, “Here I am. Where are you sending me?”

And it will only cost you what you will ultimately lose in the end anyway.