In January of 2003, Pastor Kevin and his feisty little wife Monica bought an old motorcycle for a thousand bucks. It was a classic 1978 Honda Goldwing in reasonably good shape. In addition to all the fun factors, Monica and I thought it would give me good opportunities to spend more time with men in the church and local community, several of whom owned motorcycles. It was a ministry tool! In the end, we ended up crashing that old bike, very nearly killing ourselves on the thing and learning some very valuable lessons in the process. For the next few weeks, I’d like to ponder those lessons.Open your Bibles to Luke 14:25-33 (page 954 in your pew Bibles). Jesus was spending the Passover in a Pharisee’s home. He intentionally violated a strict interpretation of Sabbath law by healing a man right in front of them. He taught very bluntly about true humility and who will get to enjoy the great Kingdom of God banquet to come. And then, turning to the great crowds attracted by his miracles and growing celebrity status, Jesus made it crystal clear who his disciples actually are. In one of His most “seeker insensitive” and seemingly arrogant sermons, Jesus completely crashed the bike of His audience. Listen closely to what He said…
Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even life itself—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples. Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.
Our LORD Jesus was not interested in Nielson ratings or popularity polls. This Jesus thing has never been about getting a large number of people into a building. In this passage, we see our LORD Jesus recognizing the teeming crowds for the superficial lemmings they often are. Jesus saw a bunch of people who showed up for their free motorcycle ride. Jesus saw a bunch of people hoping to get a good deal on a cheap bike; people there to get their hair blown back by a cool magic show or enjoy a free meal from a few loaves and fish. They were gathered there to see the new celebrity or maybe to experience an exciting new politician or flashy religious revolutionary willing to stand up to the powerful. Jesus saw a mob for what it was and He very deliberately and directly crashed their bike. Jesus crashed the fantasy.
William Barclay tells the story of a famous professor talking with another professor as a proud young man walked by. As the young man passed, the second professor turned to the first and said, “Wasn’t he once a student of yours?” And the first professor wisely, scathingly responded, “No, he attended many of my lectures, but he was never my student.”
Jesus isn’t ever interested in just getting a lot of people coming to the lecture. Jesus was and is now always looking for disciples; people who fully understand and fully embrace what they are signing up for when they get on this Christian motorcycle. Jesus is looking for disciples; people who understand and fully embrace three great discipleship affirmations.
First of all, Jesus got so feisty and direct in this passage because He wanted people to understand that there is a singular priority in this life. There is a priority. Our LORD Jesus is looking for people who will put Him first and first always. Unless we give up all, we cannot follow Him! Unless we place Him first above and beyond all, we are not His disciples.
There can be no underestimating how scathingly controversial these statements were. Jesus told a people, weaned on the fourth commandment to honor our parents, that they must hate not only their parents but their entire family if they wish to truly follow Him. He said they must place their allegiance and devotion to Him above everything in life, even their own life. And what is worse, our LORD Jesus actually said they must embrace their cross, very possibly the most hated symbol of oppression known to that audience, if they wished to be disciples.
But Jesus wasn’t talking about some new sort of angry rejection of family, friends and God’s best material blessings. Jesus was the one who most famously taught us to love even our enemies. This hate/love conversation was simply an idiomatic, Jewish way of discussing true priorities. Unless Jesus is first, unless Jesus is singularly important, we are not disciples.
It is not politically correct for me to interfere with your priorities, right? Who am I to think I have the right to tell you what your priorities are supposed to be? We’re all supposed to very deeply respect and honor the values and priorities of the people around us, right?
Wrong! I’m sorry, but that very popular, superficially sensitive idea just isn’t biblical. This passage completely crashes that bike all over the highway. This passage, and so many others like it in the Gospels, completely destroys the idea that our LORD Jesus came to earth to be somebody we politely add to our already busy life. Jesus isn’t some dietary supplement we take once a week to be healthy. He isn’t some shiny, but entirely optional piece of chrome we’re supposed to find a place for on the handlebars of our Harley. Unless Jesus is first and foremost in our lives Jesus is not discipling our lives. There is a priority here. This is the first affirmation of any true disciple of Christ. How this Jesus priority expresses itself in each of our lives will vary wildly according to our gifts, but there is only one highest priority for a disciple.
And if we cannot embrace that first affirmation, we will never embrace the second. Not only does a true disciple correctly embrace the priority of Christ, a true disciple also embraces the cost of following Him. A true disciple understands we don’t just put a key in this bike and ride; there are costs involved. Jesus says discipleship is a big-time building project, sort of like that huge amphitheater which collapsed and caused 50,000 casualties a few years ago. This is a very dangerous battle against a much larger enemy, sort of like the battle Herod Antipas lost a few years ago. There are costs to be considered here. There are costs to be counted.
When I bought my motorcycle, I was only thinking of nice, relaxing summer rides through the woods with my sweetie and some good friends. I had not fully counted the cost. I knew there might be some rebuilding, but I had no idea of the time, effort and costs involved. Yup, that’s my motorcycle! Yup, that’s the motor sitting on the table there. As a side note, you’ll notice my friend Dean is smiling much more broadly than I am in the picture. Dean counted the cost much better than I. There was a cost.
There is always a cost. Don’t we almost intuitively understand that? Monica and I are now in the process of buying a house. Well…guess what I’ve been doing furiously over the last several days? I’ve been counting the cost! I’ve made four exploratory trips to Home Depot!
When I stood before a justice of the peace in Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1986 and declared my undying love for Monica, I fully accepted the cost of that decision. It wasn’t some shallow business deal or contractual thing. And after almost 23 years of marriage, we are only now beginning to understand and embrace the full costs a genuine marriage miracle demands.
When disciples make Jesus our singular priority, there will always be costs. Thursday morning, I went over to the Children’s Home Society to see the hats and gloves for children project several of our Elim ladies are involved in. While I was there, Helen Sandberg told me of an elderly woman who knitted at least one pair of mittens for this project every single day of the year. That cost something. There is some obvious, costly discipleship there.
On Tuesday, my pastor friend Ron Saari from Central Baptist took me to lunch to introduce me to Juan and Laura Salazar, who run a drug rehabilitation center in Juarez, Mexico. Laura, who grew up at Central Baptist, fell in love with Jesus and a guy named Juan and now pays a dear cost to follow Jesus. She lives, serves and follows Jesus in a very difficult context.
As German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught us so eloquently years ago, there is a cost of discipleship. If Jesus is our singular priority, there will always be a cost for following Him.
Last Sunday morning, our Misfits class discussed a Catholic priest named Father Damien. This man lovingly and graciously served for years among lepers in Hawaii, knowing full well the risks he was taking, until he himself was killed by the disease. There is a cost of discipleship.
This week, our Hope Avenue ministry received a bunch of shoes, clothes and money from the Sanctuary group at Crossroads Covenant Church in Cottage Grove. It seems their teaching pastor, Brad Kindall, at the close of his message, called people to sacrifice the shoes on their feet that morning, go home barefoot in the cold, so our Hope Avenue folks would not.
There is a cost of discipleship! Almost every single one of these guys died a violent death. Do we get it? They all paid a price. While we are all invited to come along, we don’t ride this bike for free. It cost Jesus everything and it will cost us everything. There is a cost.
This all sounds great so far, huh? Hate your family, count the high cost – die a violent, ugly death in some Nazi or Roman jail cell or Hawaiian leper colony – what’s not to like? Why would anyone sign up for any of this? Where’s the power of your sales pitch here, Jesus?
Look again at the final three verses of the chapter. In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples. Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.
There is a priority. There is a cost. And disciples fully and happily embrace both the priority of Christ and cost of following Him because we understand there is also a risk.
But a disciple understands the true nature of that risk. If we refuse to make Jesus Christ our priority, if we refuse to accept the inevitable costs of discipleship, we run all sorts of risks. We can argue theologically about the exact nature of those risks but, perhaps the worst risk Jesus describes here is the simple risk of losing the meaningful life God has planned for us. By refusing to accept the priority of Jesus and the high costs of discipleship, we risk losing our opportunity to go really fast on the motorcycle. We risk the opportunity to know what it means to love somebody so much you miss her while you’re at work. We risk the sheer pleasure of knowing some little kid in the state of Minnesota will have warm fingers because of us. We risk the thrill of seeing a Mexican drug addict become a pastor or some Hawaiian leper experience the love of Jesus just once in his life. We risk losing the opportunity to make a difference in the world around us. By refusing to accept the priority and the truly high costs of discipleship, we ironically risk losing all the most exhilarating possibilities of life. We risk losing our saltiness. We risk losing our value to the planet. We risk never becoming all we were created to become. We risk finding ourselves tossed aside, worthless and irrelevant at the end of it all.
A disciple understands these risks. A disciple understands that only those willing to lose their lives will find them. As the Christian martyr Jim Elliot so faithfully and beautifully said over fifty years ago, “He is no fool to give up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
A disciple correctly understands the true risks of discipleship.
If you’re just here for the lecture this morning, don’t be surprised if Jesus crashes your bike somehow. If Jesus really isn’t first in your life, if you’re refusing to accept the high costs of discipleship, don’t be surprised if God takes drastic measures in your life to help you understand the terrible risks you’re taking by rejecting His call.
May Jesus truly be first among us!
Amen.
