Luke 9:57-62
July 15, 2001
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco
Yesterday our daughter, Lauren and her new husband, Dan stood in front of family and friends and made commitments to each other to love each other for better, for worse, for richer, or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part. Before the wedding she was only a would-be wife and he a would-be husband. But today as they jet home to get ready for their honeymoon, they are husband and wife. They followed through with their plans to be married and so they did.
But that is not always the case with us. Good intentions turn out to be disappointments. Long-termed plans end up being filed away. Pledges and vows even in the context of the holy presence of God can hurt us badly when we fail to live up to our promises.
The reason why marriage vows are spoken publicly in front of witnesses is to have the nurturing community support the couple in being faithful to each other throughout life. And since I served as both the “Father of the Bride” and the officiating minister, I’m doing my best to make sure that is happening!
Would-be Disciples
Today’s Scriptures present to us a troubling message. We have three people who want to make commitments to Jesus. Instead of trying to sell people on the idea of being his followers, Jesus went out of his way to discourage these would-be disciples, telling them how hard it would be for them. These people like Lauren and Dan wanted to follow through with the commitments they made. But he wouldn’t accept their excuses to delay their plans to follow him. Didn’t he want more people to be his disciples? If he did, he was certainly going about it in a rather strange way.
The first one comes to Jesus enthusiastically offering himself. “I will follow you anywhere,” he says. But Jesus answers the man, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” He was saying to this first would-be disciple, “If you come with me, there will be no home, no security, but only a life on the move. You will be dislocated all the time.”
In the second would-be disciple who was already recruited by Jesus saying, “Follow me,” the man said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Surely, this was a good enough reason—an obligation to family, the sacred task of a son burying his own father. But no, in what must be some of the hardest of Jesus’ words he replies, “Let the dead bury their own.” He gave no hint of sympathy or understanding. Even the airlines have what they call, “compassion fares” to get loved ones together when a death happens.
And then the third aspiring disciple says, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my house.” Another reasonable request, don’t you think? And again, Jesus’ response is anything but reasonable. “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
So what does this mean? If Jesus was trying to be the successful and popular pastor, he certainly flubbed it.
Popular Church
We in the local church ministry are constantly trying to make this thing called faith, discipleship, and Christianity appealing. We want to make the church easy to get to by providing validated parking. We want easy access to everything so we install a full-size elevator. If we were to proceed with what church growth experts tell us, we want to find out what people want by identifying what they care about.
Being a popular church begins with getting people to come in the door. Then we want to find ways to make them want to stay. So the effective church minister will offer worship that is meaningful and interesting. There will be plenty of opportunities for meeting new people. Children and youth will find church programs that are not “boring.” There will be plenty of opportunities to be engaged in meaningful service to others as long as they fit into people’s busy schedules without inconveniences. And if someone shows any interest of coming to our church, we would not be putting up all kinds of obstacles like Jesus did.
It’s not that any of this is bad. We are doing a lot of this at FCBC! It’s just that what Jesus says is so different, so strange, so unreasonable. Instead of making it easy, he seems to make it so hard. Instead of making his way fit in with our other commitments and loyalties, he sets his way over against them. Instead of asking us to give up on bad habits and addictions that we know are harmful, he asks us to choose him over home and security, our obligations to our family, even family itself.
Jesus, these are hard commitments you are asking us to do! And if you really mean what you are saying, your popularity rating is coming down as we speak.
“The Biblical Family”
Several years ago, the Southern Baptist denomination passed a resolution about “the biblical family.” In part, their resolution called upon wives to submit to their husbands in the same way that the church is to submit to Christ as the head.
To some people, some Christians, the Southern Baptist picture of the biblical family is very appealing. To others, it’s a real turnoff!
In light of this passage, I begin to wonder if the Southern Baptists are inviting people to worship the family, and the particular picture of it contained in this resolution, or are they asking people to follow Christ?
On the one hand, given the disarray of family today, the resolution is appealing. It makes pretty clear how the family is supposed to operate. But what troubles me is that they may be worshipping the family more than they are following Jesus. The kinds of statements Jesus was always making seemed to challenge our loyalty to family instead of supporting and sanctioning it.
Jesus said, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)
Remember back to all those wonderful TV shows of the 1950s? When we watched Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, or Ozzie and Harriet, we thought we were so sure what family meant and how family was supposed to look like.
There’s nothing about that picture of the family that is wrong. Sometimes I am so thankful to see that Joy and I have a boy and a girl and we lived in the suburbs with two cars on the driveway. We were just like Father Knows Best— calling his little girl Princess! But are we worshipping the family or following Jesus?
Submit
Before we entirely dismiss the Southern Baptist resolution on the biblical family, there is a particular word in this resolution that ignited the most controversy. The word is “submit.” I shudder at even saying this word in the presence of this congregation and especially with Joy here! I fear that my popularity rating will do down! Some of you hate it. Others may even like it.
Whatever we may think about wives submitting to their husbands, I will not go there! But I do think that submission, or self-surrender, or self-giving, and obedience are central to the Christian faith. I also believe that these ideas are troubling for many of us modern people. In fact, it’s this radical obedience and self-surrender to Jesus so that there’s no more left of you, that is at the heart of what is disturbing about Jesus’ hard saying.
I can’t buy the Southern Baptists’ claim that wives submitting to their husbands is central to the Bible or the message of Jesus or to the Christian faith. But I do think that they are on to something; namely that submission, or obedience, or a complete giving of oneself to God as revealed in Christ is at the very heart of the Christian faith. This troubles a lot of us modern people.
Jesus makes discipleship a hard thing because he cares about us so much that he wants us to know how important it is to give ourselves in such a way that nothing is left over. He wants us to know how alive we can feel when we are walking with him. He wants us to know how it can breathe life into our weary souls to not be chopped up into little pieces between different commitments and priorities. He wants us to be clear about the one thing that is truly necessary and needful, that all other commitments and priorities in life line up behind him. Jesus makes following him a hard commitment because he wants us to know what it is like to get a hold of our one true necessity.
When Lauren and Dan were planning their marriage service, they wanted it to be truly Christian. And even as they share vows of dedication and faithfulness and exchange rings that visibly show their life-long commitments to one another, they were also making a hard commitment to Christ. To have their marriage bloom and to last a lifetime or for any marriage to last a lifetime, our first priority and commitment must be with Christ. There is no other!
Isn’t that what makes the difference in lives like Nelson Mandela’s, or Rosa Park’s, or Martin Luther King’s, or Martin Luther’s, or thousands of lesser-known Christians? They are clear about their first priority, following Jesus.
The Southern Baptists were, I think, half right. They were wrong in putting the family, or their version of it, at the center of the Christian faith. In the gospels, Jesus challenged those things that we hold dear, even and including the family. But they were right, so it seems to me in their use of the troubling word, “submission.”
There is submission involved in following Jesus. There is submission to God and God’s way that puts all our other loyalties at risk or at least second in importance.
Jesus Cares
Jesus said these hard things to would-be disciples not because he was uncaring, but because he cared enough to be honest, to be demanding, to say up front that following him would costs us everything we hold dear.
Jesus wants us to know that it isn’t about creating a safe, caring environment where people’s needs are to be met. We can all learn to be the “popular church.” Discipleship costs all that we have, all that we love, all that we are. Jesus does not want us to be fooled about that.
The big question for us is whether we want the real Jesus in our life or whether we are willing to settle for a popular Jesus instead. The easy to accept Jesus is like a plastic Jesus. The plastic Jesus is someone who we can keep in a drawer, and every once in a while we pull him out and look at him, so we can feel better about ourselves. The plastic Jesus comes in handy for those people who think they know what they want to do with their lives. Because they pull out their plastic Jesus and use it as a kind of good luck charm to help them get where they want to go.
But the real Jesus in the gospels is something quite different. Because if we allow the real Jesus to come into our lives, he is going to ask us to live life without a home. He’s going to tell us to let the dead bury the dead. He going to tell you that there’s no time for you to say goodbye to your family. He is going to say to you, “I’m on my way to the cross to die, and I want you to come with me.” These are hard commitments!
Jesus said, “Those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” (Mk. 8:35) This is a hard commitment!
Making Hard Commitments
If you make a decision to follow Jesus, it will be a hard commitment. Many people initially made their decisions to follow Jesus but for one reason or another, one excuse or another, broke their commitments to God.
Although you might think that God is disappointed in you, he is not but rather pleased that you are here. Jesus is telling us that we don’t have just one big moment of saying I am a follower, but we have to make the hard decision again and again as other things fight for our attention. This is a life-long commitment to follow Jesus just like Lauren and Dan made a life-long decision, regardless of how hard and difficult it will be, to remain faithful to one another.
Following Jesus has never been for everyone, has it? Nor have the words of Jesus, or Jesus himself, ever been welcomed by the world.
But those who decide to follow Jesus know that true freedom lies in deep and hard commitments. They discover that full living is found in giving ourselves wholly to God. If you would like to be a disciple of Jesus, you will find yourself set over against the importance of home, family, and familial obligations.
Jesus does not ask us to choose him over the worst, but over the best. Amen.
Let us pray.
Gracious God, who at times challenges us with words that we find hard to understand or accept, grant us such grace that we may find the good news of the gospel in the difficult teachings and the hard words of Jesus. Amen.