Luke 14,25-35. 14. Sunday after Trinity

In the Name of Jesus


Luke 14,25-35
14. Sunday after Trinity, Proper 18C
5. September 2010

O Heavenly Father, whose mere word creates ex nihilo, pour out upon us the Holy Spirit, so that our hearts and minds are attuned to Your word and will. Amen.

Our sermon text for this morning, dear brothers and sisters, is from the Gospel according to Luke where the holy evangelist writes: 25Now great crowds accompanied Jesus, and He turned and said to them, 26,,If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. 27Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. 28For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 33So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be My disciple.“ This is our text.

Twenty-first century Christendom, especially our Evangelical-Reformed brothers and sisters, is focused on numbers. Watch any Christian televangelist and inevitably the camera will pan back and show rows upon rows of filled seats numbering in the thousands or even more than ten thousand. The focal point is front and center on the preacher. Putting the best construction on this means that the goal is to highlight the primacy of the Word of God that is preached. Unfortunately, naïve Christians and non-believers, who struggle with the weakness of the sinful flesh and reason, will interpret this as a focus on the individual so that the preacher becomes a cult of personality in the minds of many people. If you are fortunate, the program you watch might have a bare cross behind the preacher, but a majority of Christian televangelists lack even that unique symbol of Christianity. Finally after the preacher has finished preaching or lecturing, you will be treated with the distinct honor to buy all sorts of books or audio and video media that can help you improve your life.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus walked the countryside and did the exact opposite of many of today’s televangelists. Jesus did indeed gather large crowds, especially as His popularity grew as a prophet, miracle worker, and teacher. The Gospels indicate that at times four and five thousand men gathered to hear Him preach and teach. Add women and children to these numbers and at any given time ten to fifteen thousand people may have gathered in the rolling plains of Israel.

As more and more people followed Him, Jesus then let the hammer drop. Anyone who does not renounce all that he or she has cannot be My disciple. How many of those ten thousand or more adoring followers of Jesus still followed Him after that indicting statement? Shortly after Jesus’ resurrection, the Apostle Paul lists merely 500 disciples (1 Corinthians 15,6) and St. Luke lists a paltry 120 men at Pentecost.

Jesus demands from each one of us that if we want to be His disciples, then we must renounce all our possessions. Jesus is not calling us to a life of poverty, but He is telling us that we must not love our money and possessions more than Him. Jesus is telling us that following Him requires financial sacrifice as we give offerings to His Church to enable the proclamation of the gospel. The gospel takes precedence over our possessions and when the gospel is in danger of being lost, then Jesus’ disciples must give more of their possessions than they originally thought in order to preserve the gospel’s proclamation.

In the Holy Gospels, Jesus proclaimed that salvation is by Him alone, and this caused many of His disciples to leave (John 6,65-69). The Gospel according to Luke records 4 times that Jesus talked about His suffering, crucifixion, and resurrection (Luke 9,21-22.44; 17,25; 18,32-33). Jesus probably spoke about His death and resurrection many more times for it was the foundation of His preaching. Surprisingly, 21st century Christendom does not focus on Christ crucified. I heard one theologian remark that the focus of God in the Bible is the poor, and so Christendom should be about the social gospel of helping the poor. Just because you do a word search and discover the word ,,poor“ and ,,destitute“ appears 181 times does not mean the focus of the Holy Scripture is on the poor. The Bible also talks about the devil, Satan, and demons 158 times, but that doesn’t make the devil the focus of the Bible. The focus of the Bible is God’s plan of salvation history (Heilsgeschichte) by which He intends to redeem every man, woman, and child from sin, death, and the devil.

Nevertheless (Dennoch), you will hear churches and televangelists encourage people with positive thinking, getting all your deserved blessings from Jesus, or trying to parse each verse and word to convince people when Jesus will return again. Jesus and His apostles did not focus on such things. The Apostle Paul told the Corinthian Christians that we apostles and evangelists are only concerned with preaching Christ crucified (1 Corinthians 1,23) and His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15). The book of Acts and the apostolic epistles bear witness to such Christian preaching as well. St. Paul then observes that preaching Christ crucified is a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles (1 Corinthians 1,23).

The cross of Christ offends people, for the cross of Christ is the chief sign that salvation is only through Jesus. Christ has placed the cross as a roadblock on the pathway of salvation, and people must either pick up that cross, make it their own, and journey onward with Jesus or they must turn aside from the Divine plan of salvation and abandon Christ and His cross. Jesus tells us that if we want to be His disciples, then we must take up the cross and follow Him. This also offends people, especially those who want the Christian life to be a journey devoid of trials and tribulations.

Thus, what is usually presented to the masses in American Christendom (from at least the time the Third Awakening from 1850-1900 until the now) is a lowest common denominator Christianity where the preaching is in general terms, such as ,,God“ or ,,Lord“, rather than in specifics like ,,Christ“ or the Holy Trinity. Christ crucified and risen from the tomb is rarely mentioned and expounded upon whereas God’s favor and blessing is mentioned. To be silent on Christ is to proclaim a god that is radically different from the Triune God revealed in the Holy Scriptures. To give mere lip service to Christ crucified without any building upon that momentous act in God the Father’s salvation history (Heilsgeschichte) is to completely misunderstand how and why our Heavenly Father is favorable to us with His rich and manifold blessings.

Christ and His apostolic pastors speak and proclaim in specific terms. Jesus does tell us that He demands the utmost from us. We must put Him first in our lives, we must take up our own cross and follow Jesus to Jerusalem, and we must curb our love of money and possessions and give liberally to Christ and His Church. These words of law are harsh and unrelenting upon our conscience. We do not and cannot live up to these precepts of discipleship. Therefore, Jesus calls on us to acknowledge our faltering steps in discipleship and to repent of our failures to do as He has commanded us.

We fail to forsake family for Christ, but Jesus forsook His mother and siblings to preach the gospel and be our savior. We walk away from the cross and its suffering, but Jesus took up the cross, carried it, and upon it suffered the wrath of His Father as the sacrificial Lamb who bore the sin of the world and paid for that sin in full with His shed blood. We place our possessions ahead of Christ, but Jesus left behind His carpentry business and often had no place to lay His head during His public ministry (Luke 9,58). Therefore God the Father is well-pleased with His Son. Since He is well-pleased with Jesus, then He is also well-pleased with us. Christ and His merit has earned our righteousness and justification. Christ gives us His merit and righteousness so that we are justified before God the Father by grace alone. Our Heavenly Father is favorable to us with His rich and manifold blessings because of Jesus Christ.

Christ walked the path of the cross to Calvary. He bids and urges us to follow Him, for the path of the cross, the path to Calvary, leads to Christ’s death as our Redeemer, leads to Christ’s Resurrection as our Eternal Life, and finds its destination in the Paradise of God which is the dwelling place of the Triune God, the holy angels, and all Christians. Amen.

Let us pray. O Holy Spirit, who preserves the law and gospel for the Church, help us to follow the footsteps of the Apostle Paul and to boast in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that we can understand that the world has been crucified to us, and we to the world, and our focus then is upon Christ Jesus our Savior. Amen.

One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you!

All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27th Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the New Testament Greek Manuscripts, Luke © 1995 by Reuben Joseph Swanson.