It's About to Get Real

Luke 14:25–33 is one of Jesus’ hardest teachings: discipleship has a cost. But what if the cost isn’t about giving up everything we love — but about letting go of ego, advantage, and comfort so that real love can take root? This sermon explores what costly love looks in practice — from Paul’s letter to Philemon, to our own choices today. Following Jesus isn’t cheap or easy, but it isn’t joyless either. It is grace that redefines us, frees us, and calls us to choose life again and again — for ourselves and for the world.

Transcript

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You're listening to The Word on Baker Street, a podcast from Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Bakersfield, California. Each week we share the good news of God's love through the sermons from our Sunday worship. Wherever you are in your journey, you are welcome here.

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The holy gospel according to Luke. Now large crowds were traveling with him, and he turned to them and said, Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you intending to build a tower does not first sit down and estimate the cost to see whether he has enough to complete it. Otherwise, when he has laid the foundation and is not able to finish, all will see it and begin ridiculing him, saying, This fellow began to build and was not able to finish. Or what king? Going out to wage war against another king will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose one who comes against him with twenty thousand. If he cannot, then while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all of your possessions. The gospel of the Lord. Let us pray. Loving God, may these words in all of our meditations draw us closer to you today. Amen. I'm guessing some of you are wondering, well, I wonder what she's gonna do with that. You know, I often like to start my sermons with a little bit of life banter and find a point, point of humor in the lesson, but uh wow, it's hard to even joke about even a little bit after that reading. Jesus isn't messing today. I mean, I kind of just wonder, you know, is Jesus just kind of hoping if all of these people that are following him will just simply just go away? And uh because this kind of sounds like the kind of thing that would scare people off. I I will say that I do find Luke 14, 33, the very last verse of this reading, uh quite useful. I keep it in my, kind of like in my back pocket for all of those those folks that accuse me of being a heretic because I believe the Bible is the inspired word of God and not the literal word of God. Uh they will tell me that that I'm picking and I'm choosing which scriptures I'm willing to follow, and then I so I'll be like, okay. Luke 14, 33. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. And then I just kind of wait. Do that, and we can talk. Of course, it doesn't make these verses of Jesus, these words of Jesus, any less challenging. They were meant to challenge. And Jesus, he's looking out at this large group of people who are following him. People who actually thought that he really could be the one to overthrow the Roman government and set up some kind of new rule, like the way David was a king. And and now he's letting them know that to really follow him it's going to involve something more than they might be bargaining for. It involves the possibility of alienating family and and friends who can't understand or support the commitment that just kind of seems so foolish. That discipleship, it has a real cost to it. Jesus says count these costs before making this commitment. Just like a builder must count the cost of construction before they begin a project. I I certainly wouldn't call this the best church growth strategy. Church growth experts, they tend to think that uh, you know, find find the things that you're doing really well and make them easier and a lot of fun for people to participate in. And yet here crowds, I mean thousands of people are following him. Crowds so big that sometimes they have no idea how they're gonna feed these people. Will they get something to eat? You know, and Jesus, he doesn't look out at this crowd and turn to his disciples then and say, This is so great. But what can we do to keep all of this going? What how can we get more people? You know, how do we keep them happy and wanting more, wanting to bring their friends next time? Instead, he turns to the people and he warns them. He tells them something like, you know, this this journey we're on right now, it's about to get real. If you really want to keep coming, you gotta know right now this is not going to be easy. There might be some real sacrifices involved. Now, a lot of Bibles title today's portion of scripture as the cost of discipleship. And it's certainly even one of the things that came to my mind as I was reading it, and while I don't think the point of the scripture is to abandon everything and everybody that we know, I do think Jesus wants us to understand that this is going to cost us. And it won't cost a little, it'll cost us a lot. In the end, it will cost us everything. Dietrich Bonhoeff put it this way, and very clearly. He says, When Christ calls a man, he bids him come to die. Which I'll be honest, every time I hear that, I kind of have this. Any other way? Please. The thing is, the way of Jesus is the way of the cross. If anyone to be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up the cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who want who lose their life for my sake will save it. The cost is real. Now, Paul knew this when he wrote his letter to Philemon. That was our first reading today. It's this private letter from Paul to this man named Philemon, and it's about another man named Onisimus. And Onesimus was Philemon's slave. He ran away, and he somehow found Paul and he became a Christian. And now Paul is sending Onisimus back to Philemon, and he writes, receive him no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, as a beloved brother. I mean, that is radical. And in the Roman world, slavery was a backbone of society. Philemon had every legal right to punish Anisimus, to brand him, to imprison him, to even kill him. The safe, convenient, expected choice would be to treat Oniissimus as property. But Paul appeals and he says, on the basis of love, welcome him as you would welcome me. Paul even offers to pay whatever Omissimus owes. Paul is asking Philemon to let the gospel rewrite relationships, to give up his pride and his power and his privilege, and to let go of what is convenient and choose costly love. Jesus says, following me will cost you, and Paul says, this is what it looks like. It costs you pride and it costs you status and control and convenience. And Philemon has to choose. He has to choose if his discipleship is real. And will he cling to these comforts of social norms or will he live out and into this costly love that redefines Onesimus as his brother? And that's the same choice Jesus gives us. You know, I'll admit I like things that are easy. I keep a list of projects hanging around that I even call low-hanging fruit. These are things that include like changing a light bulb or uh tightening a doorknob, something easy that I can do to make me feel like I've I'm getting something accomplished, something done. And anything that doesn't cost too much time or money to accomplish. And most of the time I want discipleship to be like that too. Just lots of low-hanging fruit to pick. Quick, painless, efficient. But Jesus keeps messing it up. Because the gospel isn't about convenience and it's about love. Real love is never cheap. It costs time and it costs energy and it costs vulnerability. It costs letting go of pride and power. And following Jesus means we're going to be asked to serve people we don't like. To forgive people that we would much rather avoid. To sit with people we don't understand. And to see people that the world ignores. That's the cost. And that's why today matters, why God's work, our hands, Sunday matters. It is not simply a cute little slogan. It's not merely this service project that we have that we do each calendar year. It's a reminder that discipleship shows up in flesh and blood, in sweat and in labor, in real acts of love. When we pack our compassion kits today for our roadside neighbors, and when we hand them out, when we work in our community garden, or when we show up at a city meeting, or at the ICE detention center, as an advocate for marginalized people. This is God's work. And it's through our hands. And it may not seem dramatic, but it's what real discipleship looks like. It's costly love in action. Let me be clear that we don't do these things to earn God's love. God's love is already ours. It's unshakable, unconditional, abundant. We serve because God's love has already redefined us. The same way it redefined Omnisimus and Philemon. We serve because Christ has already carried the cross, already paid the ultimate cost and set us free, free to choose life, moment by moment, in the here and in now for us and for all of those around us, doing what Christ would do despite the cost. Life is full of choices, of counting costs, of weighing them. The cross is not unique. The cross illustrates what life is. And to carry your cross is to carry the choices and the burdens and the realities of life. Every day we make choices. And the question becomes are the choices we make through the lens of our commitment to follow Christ. And in them, do we show a commitment to a way of life that is about bringing the kingdom of God here and now? I mean, that's certainly what it meant for Jesus. And that's what it means to live out what we pray. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And that kind of discipleship might very well put us in conflict, if not with our family members, certainly with the expectations of many of those around us. And so the question becomes you know, how is choosing the cross, how is that a way of choosing life? I think it's all too easy to think of the cross as what gives us eternal life after we die. And while it's true, that we are alive in Christ, baptized into his death and resurrection, given the gift of grace that we can never earn, never repay, and simply cannot lose. It is also true that that gift brings with it daily choices, moments where we can choose life in the here and now for us and for those around us, doing what Christ would do despite the cost. And what does that look like? For young people, it could mean standing up to for a person who's being bullied, even if their friends stop talking to them. For all of us, choosing life might mean speaking up when we hear someone going on about how God hates LGBTQ people. Even if a friend or a neighbor is doing this and you really don't feel like getting into it. Choosing life might mean befriending an undocumented person. Because they are our neighbors, and our greatest commandment is to love God and love our neighbors. Choosing life, choosing the cross means doing the loving thing, perhaps the unpopular thing, the Christ-like thing, even if it means someone's gonna turn against us. It's not simply this promise for the future. The cross is a promise for today, and living into that promise means choosing life, choosing to be Christ's witness, choosing to be God's hands in our broken world. Beloved, choose life, bring healing, bring hope, bring love to all of God's children, be God's hands and do the work that will transform the world. Because it will. Amen.

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Thanks for listening to the Word on Baker Street. If this message has spoken to you, share it with a friend. More sermons and reflections can be found at emmanuelbakersfield.org. May God's grace and peace be with you today and always.