✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
Luke 14,25-33 3513
5. Sonntag nach Trinitatis 050
Commemoration of St. Paul
30. Juni 2013
1. Grant, O Lord, we beseech Thee, that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered by Thy governance, so that Thy Church may joyfully serve Thee in all Godly quietness; through Jesus Christ our Lord (The Book of Common Prayer). Amen.
2. Now great crowds accompanied Jesus, and He turned and said to them: „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. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying: „This man began to build and was not able to finish.“ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be My disciple.“
3. It is not easy to be a Christian disciple in 21. century America, for we live in perilous times and among a pagan culture. The world does not tolerate those who run contrary to its wisdom and correctness. The world does not understand why someone would reject the wonders of the world for the call to be a disciple of Jesus.
4. The call of discipleship, the call to follow Jesus, is a call from our old life of sinful separation from God the Father into a new life of redemptive reunion with God the Father through His Son, Jesus Christ by the working of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and minds. Disciples of Jesus are called „the Church“ from the Greek noun εκκλησια [1] which means „those called out“. In your Holy Baptism, the Triune God called you out of darkness into the Light. The Triune God has adopted you into His family.
5. The Triune God called Abraham out of his country and his family. He promised Abraham a son and the world’s savior. Yahweh called, and Abraham followed. The Son of God called Simon Peter, James and John, and they followed Him. Jesus called Matthew from his tax collecting vocation, and he followed Him. The Triune God called you in Holy Baptism, and you now follow Him.
6. The call to follow Jesus is not without cost. Jesus says His disciples must bear their own cross and follow Him. Jesus says His disciples must renounce everything to follow Him. This cost is nothing less than what Jesus made known to first Abraham and later the apostles. Abraham left hearth and home to follow Yahweh; the fishermen left their boats and nets to follow Jesus. Matthew left his wealthy job and followed the Christ.
7. Dietrich Bonhöffer comments on the cost, when he writes: To follow in Jesus’ steps is something which is void of all content. It gives us no intelligible program for a way of life, no goal or ideal to strive after. It is not a cause which human calculation might deem worthy of our devotion, even the devotion of ourselves. What happens? At the call, Matthew leaves all that he has—but not because he thinks that he might be doing something worth while, but simply for the sake of the call. Otherwise he cannot follow in the steps of Jesus. This act on Matthew’s part has not the slightest value in itself, it is quite devoid of significance and unworthy of consideration. Peter, James and John simply beach their boats and go ahead (Bonhöffer 120).
8. Jesus therefore tells us to count the cost of following Him. We must deny ourselves. „To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only Christ who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self-denial can say is: Christ leads the way, keep close to Him“ (Bonhöffer 195-97). We must bear our own cross. „When Christ calls you, He bids you follow and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow Him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time – death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at Christ’s call. Jesus’ summons to the rich young man was calling him to die, because only the man who is dead to his own will can follow Christ. In fact every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts“ (Bonhöffer 199-200).
9. Jesus calls us out of this fallen world into His perfect world. With a new identity comes a new attitude and world view. Our Christian values grate against those of the world we have left behind. For all its lip service to freedom of religion and speech, the corrupt world does not tolerate those who follow the beat of a different Drummer. Christians who protest gay marriage and think such unions are wrong and sinful are called bigots, homophobic and unloving. Such are the tribulations Christians face from the world.
10. „The call of Jesus teaches us that our relation to the world has been built on an illusion. All the time we thought we had enjoyed a direct relation with men and things. This is what had hindered us from faith and obedience. Now we learn that in the most intimate relationships of life, in our kinship with father and mother, brothers and sisters, in married love, and in our duty to the community, direct relationships are impossible. Since the advent of Christ, His followers have no more immediate realities of their own, not in their family relationships nor in the ties with their nation nor in the relationships formed in the process of living. Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize Him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through Christ, through His Word, and through our following of Him. To think otherwise is to deceive ourselves“ (Bonhöffer 217-18).
11. We follow Christ to His cross and ours. The Apostle Paul proclaims: »The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved the cross is the power of God. The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men« (1. Corinthians 1,18.25). To follow Christ is to set the world as our adversary, but Christ has overcome the world (John 16,33). Thus, the Apostle John proclaims: »For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. Our faith is the victory that has overcome the world. The one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God overcomes the world« (1. John 5,4-5).
12. 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). 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 to Calvary or they must turn aside from the Divine plan of salvation, abandon Christ, deny His cross and attempt another path to salvation; but these other paths always lead to damnation and hell. Jesus tells us that if we want to be His disciples, then we must take up His cross and follow Him. This offends people who want the Christian life to be a journey devoid of trials and tribulations.
13. 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 intense suffering, but Jesus took up the cross as His own, 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 and are loathe to put into the offering plate our fortunes, 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 for Jesus stands in our place. Christ and His merit has earned righteousness, justification and sanctification. Christ gives you His merit and righteousness so that you are justified and abounding in good, holy works before God the Father by grace alone. God the Father is favorable to you with His rich and manifold blessings because of Jesus Christ.
14. 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. Our heavenly home awaits us; come, and follow Jesus there, for He has born the cost. His burden is light, and He shares it with you. Amen.
15. Let us pray. O God the Father, You have made known Your salvation and have revealed Your righteousness in the sight of the nations through Your Only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ; send Your Holy Spirit to guide us along the path of discipleship so that we do not become overwhelmed with the high cost that discipleship demands from each of us. Amen.
To God alone be the Glory
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All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
Bonhöffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Copyright © 1995 Touchstone.
ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern.
[1] A gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place in an assembly for the purpose of deliberating.
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