Discipleship Costs Even More Than HS2 (Luke 14.25-33)

Before I looked at the readings for this week, I prayed, please God, please just let it be something easy. Something like, they shall know you are my disciples by your love, or treat others as you would like to be treated. Or even something uncontroversial. Jesus spoke to his disciples saying “kittens are quite nice.” But no. We’ve got two quite difficult passages from scripture this week.

I’ve also got to say if I’m being honest with you folks, I really struggled to get my head around the Gospel passage this week, I don’t know about you, but the idea that Jesus tells us to hate other people just boggles my mind! It seems totally out of character with the Jesus I know and love. What the actual heck is going on here?

Jesus’ point is a simple one. Discipleship costs, and we should be aware of that. Discipleship which lacks commitment is useless.

If you’re an athlete and you don’t train, and eat nothing but cheeseburgers, you won’t win the race. If you’re a chorister or a singer and you don’t practice, you won’t get better at singing. If you’re trying to improve any skill it takes practice and planning. 

Likewise, if we don’t make an effort to follow God, to carry our cross, then we won’t know the fullness it can bring us. Being a Christian disciple places obligations on us, and we should be aware just what the cost of following Jesus is. If there’s no cost to us, we’re not doing it properly.

But what do I mean? It’s not just about money, but about personal cost too.

One upon a time, there was a government that decided it would be a good idea to create a new train, but not just any old train, a train that could go faster than other trains had ever gone on that island.

This amazing train would connect the people who lived in the North and Midlands to the people who think they’re the centre of the universe in the capital. Fantastic thought some! Other people grumbled saying, this is a lot of money. What about us in the East, our trains are over thirty years old!

The work started, but the government had failed to work out a proper plan, and there were massive delays. The cost rose from 62 billion to 81 billion, and members of the government had to go on the TV to explain what was going on. It was all very embarrassing.

This is completely hypothetical modern day example of the watchtower story from our bible reading today. They’ve failed to count the cost, to plan, to do the sums.

They’ve failed to recognise that they may have started something they don’t have the resources to carry out. Now they’ve got part the way through, and they look ridiculous.

Discipleship costs. Jesus is warning the crowds that are following him, and telling the twelve, to be his disciple takes guts. There’s a cost to discipleship. There’s no use embarking on a journey if you’ve not put petrol in the car. If they’re not willing to think about what it will cost them, to recognise that there will be sacrifices that have to be made. That if they leave half way through they will look ridiculous, like the builder of the tower.

In the early church there were those who financed the work of Jesus, who bore the financial cost, and down the ages there are those who have born personal cost too.

Take for example the theologian Deitrich Bonhoeffer an Anti-Nazi dissident in the 1930’s. He refused to collaborate with the Nazi regime in the way that many other German Christians had. He was arrested and ended up being executed in Flossenburg concentration camp tragically only two months before the end of the war. He said “Salvation is free, but discipleship will cost you your life.” It certainly did for him.

There are still Christians around the world who are bearing the cost for their faith, where being a disciple of Jesus can cost them their lives.

I often wonder to myself if I would have the same commitment to God, and to being a disciple if I lived in that context.

When Jesus talked about hating father, mother, wife and children etc, he doesn’t mean, despise your parents or beat up your younger brother or sister, as appealing as that might be sometimes. (Sorry elder siblings) He’s using an exaggeration here. What he really means probably isn’t hate in the way that we would describe it, but ‘love less than’. He’s saying that whoever values their own security, their own family, more than a relationship with God, will struggle with the cost of discipleship. That person will be unable to be a disciple, not because Jesus doesn’t want them, but because they aren’t able to bear the cost of discipleship.

It’s a tough thing for us to accept. Our society talks a lot about success, we talk a lot about it here too. Sacrifice is not something we’re encouraged to do. We’re encouraged to spend, buy, have what we want, when we want it. Here Jesus is saying clearly, to follow me you’ve got give things up, to sacrifice parts of your life.

In the words of the 20^th Century mystics Saint Mick Jagger and Saint Keith Richards “you can’t always what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might get what you need.”

We should not, and cannot as Christians do whatever we want. I mean we all know that from Sunday School, it’s very clear that the Christian faith places obligations on all of us. We should not buy whatever we want, and act however we want.

This is part of the personal cost to us. Sometimes that will make us look a bit strange to the rest of the world. In a world of Amazon when you can get whatever you want delivered ASAP, we sometimes have to say no. What about the cost to others? What about the cost to the planet?  

As Christians in our context here in Norwich, we need to ask ourselves what does our Christian faith cost us? How do we carry the cross in our community? In our jobs? At home? What sacrifices are we willing to make in our lives to be disciples of Jesus? How do we show that we are disciples of Jesus in our homes?

It starts with us. Bonhoeffer said “your life as a Christian should make non-believers question their disbelief in God.”

Being a visible disciple is not banging the drum about how great Jesus is all the time, that’s not going to attract anyone, but being prepared to be different.

Do we model something different in our lives? Do we pray at home or think about how God would view our actions? Do we pray with our children, or talk to them about the questions that life and the Christian faith throw up?

Perhaps that’s one step, just setting aside five minutes a day in the business of it all, to sit with God and pray, to know he is with us. I’ve heard people say, I’m no good at prayer. Well, none of us are, especially if we don’t practice, if we don’t work on it. Prayer isn’t about having the right words, or knowing what to say, in fact a huge amount of my prayer life in ministry is going into a situation and saying; Lord, I just want you to know, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing here.

Being a disciple isn’t just about what we do, but who we are. The disciples are told to carry the cross, not in a literal sense but in a life that reflects the life of Jesus Christ.

We’re challenged, all of us, to live a life that reflects the teachings of Jesus. A life of compassion, courage, forgiveness, mercy and non judgementalism. A life that is in relationship with God, where we can strive to be all that we can be.  

Salvation is free, but discipleship will cost us our lives. Bearing the cost is part of our commitment to God. What costly thing could you give up?