Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-october-17-2022
Luke 9:57-62
The Cost of Following Jesus
57 As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”
58 Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
59 He said to another man, “Follow me.”
But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
61 Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”
62 Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”
If you’ve been reading these Reflections with any regularity, or if you’ve been worshiping with me, you’ve probably heard me make the distinction between disciples and church members. In the church of our time, being a church member is a pretty low-cost endeavor. You can attend worship once in a while, and drop a few bucks in the collection box, and if anybody tries to pressure you to get serious about being a disciple, you can just take your business elsewhere – to a church that will ask even less of you.
But judging by the teachings of Jesus, discipleship is meant to be different. Being a disciple means making a commitment to be actively engaged in learning from a master. And that means learning in a way that makes a substantial difference in the way you live.
That’s the part of discipleship that so many people find disturbing. There’s just no getting around the fact that when Jesus calls people to a life of discipleship, he calls them to a complete break with the lives they’ve been leading. You might remember that in one of our Reflections last week, Jesus said that following him means being willing to “lose your life” for him. For those who wanted to be his disciples, their discipleship was to become the highest priority in their lives. It would become their identity, more central to ‘who they were’ than even family ties.
It seems to me that in this passage, Jesus makes three points about the life of real discipleship.
First of all, the life of a true disciple will almost certainly include making sacrifices. And those sacrifices will be both material and emotional. Following Jesus is not a way of life that carries much material benefit. It can even make you feel like a stranger – an alien – in this world. Jesus says even wild animals and birds can feel like there’s a place for them, while the followers of Jesus can feel like outsiders from the culture around us.
The second thing about genuine discipleship is that it’s urgent. There will always be reasons – and even good reasons – to put off making a real commitment to discipleship. In today’s reading, the second prospective disciple wants to wait until he’s buried his father. Jesus refuses that request, which seems a little harsh, but the Bible scholars say the point might be that the man’s father probably wasn’t dead – or even on his deathbed. They say what the man was probably asking was an OK from Jesus to stay at home until he had inherited his father’s estate. So the man’s motivation may have been financial gain rather than family loyalty.
But in any case, the point Jesus seems to be making is that the true follower has to be willing to commit now – not sometime in the future. ‘Someday’ can too easily become ‘never,’ and the chance to follow Jesus can be lost. And Jesus no doubt knew what church scholars are just discovering: The longer you wait to make a commitment to discipleship, the more likely it is that you’ll never do it.
The third point Jesus makes about true discipleship is that it disrupts our earthly relationships. Jesus warned that he would be the cause of division in families – that he would come between some believers and those they cared about the most. This is a hard truth, but people of real faith sometimes tell me that friends, business associates, even members of their own families discourage them from being “so religious.” People talk about their faith, and friends and family roll their eyes and say, “Oh no, not that Jesus stuff again!” The sad truth is that some people are forced to decide who their primary allegiance is to: Jesus or their family and friends.
Our circumstances are more complicated, because most of us have been more-or-less raised in the church, so we tend to think of ourselves as disciples of Jesus. In our time and place, following Jesus usually doesn’t mean leaving home or walking away from family responsibilities. But even for us, this passage makes a hard point: that there is still a cost to discipleship. If you’re really living a life of discipleship, it almost certainly will cost you something.
Let’s pray. Lord, you know that nearly all of us have tried to practice our faith in a way that doesn’t threaten our worldly interests – our material comfort, our standing in the community, our relationships with family and friends. But now, we invite you to call us to greater commitment to following Jesus, and a greater willingness to bear the cost that goes with that commitment. Amen.
Every Blessing,
Henry
(The other readings for today are Psalms 57 and 145; Micah 2:1-13; and Revelation 7:1-8. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.org, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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