Luke 14:25–35

15th Sunday after Pentecost

²⁵Now great crowds accompanied him, 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?

²⁹Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,

³⁰saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.'

³¹Or 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?

³²And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

³³So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

³⁴"Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

³⁵It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

Few of the things Jesus taught are more difficult than what is in our text today. These seem at first glance to be an assortment of non-connected statements, which are hard to understand. They seem to go against what we have always been taught and at best are counter-intuitive.

However, the key to this passage is found in the first parable which Jesus includes here: if any man sets out to build a tower he first sits down to count the cost to see if he can complete the job. It is about counting the cost. The cost of what?

The cost of discipleship! Three times in this text Jesus says that unless a man fulfill a certain requirement, he cannot be his disciple. Jesus is talking about being his disciple and more specifically, what it costs to be his disciple.

First we must determine who are his disciples? A disciple is someone who attaches himself to a teacher and follows him around to learn from him, both by his teaching and his example. Disciples are students, learners, catechumens. Yes, some of the disciples were also called to be apostles, but not all were. There were many disciples of Jesus, students, catechumens, but only 12 of them were apostles.

Here he is talking to and about the disciples; all who hear and learn from his teaching. All who follow him on his journey. So this text applies just as much to us as it did to the people who were with Jesus that day.

But let’s get a glimpse of what was going on for those disciples. They were following Jesus on his way to Jerusalem. He was going to Jerusalem to fulfill his purpose and accomplish his goal of our salvation. As he neared the holy city, opposition toward him would increase. He would be rejected, despised, hated, reviled and finally whipped and murdered. Those following him would be subjected to the same hatred and ridicule that he would encounter.

Moreover, even after his death his disciples would be persecuted, beaten, imprisoned, and murdered all because they were his disciples. Right down to today this is the case. The world rejects the Savior; it denounces the cross; it doesn’t believe the resurrection. His followers even today suffer ridicule, mockery, are thrown out of renounced by their families, beaten, persecuted, arrested and thrown in jail, and often put to death all because they refuse to deny the name of Jesus.

Jesus was preparing his followers for what was to come. He is preparing us for what is going to happen in our life time as well. He was asking them if they were ready to be his disciples. Were they ready to pay the price? When your friends, family, the government, the king and all of society hate you, desert you, persecute you, make fun of you and even throw you in jail and execute you, are you ready to pay the ultimate price? Are you ready to leave your family if need be to remain faithful to Christ? Are you ready to bear your cross, to suffer their torments? Are you ready to give up everything you have to follow Jesus and remain faithful to him? This is what he was asking them; this is what he is asking us.

There is a parallel here between these three statements about discipleship and the seed that fell on various soils in another of his parables. Jesus first statement was that if anyone does not hate his father or mother of wife or children or brother or sister or even himself he cannot be his disciple. This parallels the seed that fell on hard soil, a pathway, where the birds came and ate it before it had a chance to sprout. For sometimes we place our family and relationships so ahead of Christ and do nor become his disciples in order not to offend them. That is especially a problem in societies today where a son or daughter who becomes a Christian is disowned by the family, or even turned over to the police because they are a Christian.

The second statement Jesus makes that no one who does not bear his own cross can be his disciples, is like the seed which fell on rocky soil. It sprouted and took root, but the sufferings, the persecutions, the crosses that we must bear as Jesus’ disciples caused them to turn back.

Likewise, the third statement that if anyone refuses to renounce all that he has he cannot be his disciple compares to the seed that fell on thorns, which also sprouted and took root, but the worries and cares and pleasures of this life came and snuffed out his faith.

Jesus then challenges us with the question: are we ready to pay the price of discipleship? Are we ready to give up everything we have if necessary, family, friends, fortune, possessions, comfort, enjoyment, pleasure to be his disciple?

Unfortunately, though we might say we are, in reality we would most likely become like the man who started building a massive construction project and then got halfway finished and ran out of money to complete the project. In our emotion and excitement of the moment we are ready to rush into war with the banner of Jesus, ready to fight the enemies of Christ who attack us and persecute us, but when we are standing in front of the magistrate faced with prison or a death sentence all of our bravado and boldness just melt away.

We may speak proudly, act boldly, and rely on our strength, our intelligence our works but we aren’t nearly as strong as we think. We trust too much in ourselves. We think much to highly of ourselves. We give ourselves too much credit.

This is human nature. We rely on our self. Some even think that by our own good works and human efforts we can earn or merit God’s grace or love. Most of us are tempted to think that we can be pleasing to God, and if we fall short, we only need to try harder, read another self-help book on holiness, or make a goal to be more righteous and stick to it. That tendency is deep inside each of us. But for that reason Luther says that even our good works are often mortal sins. Notice he does not talk about our evil deeds, things like adultery, murder, stealing, lying and so forth. These are too obvious. Common knowledge tells us that these things are sinful. But he is talking about our good deeds; the things we are proud of; the times we think to ourselves, “Look what I have done! God must be pleased with me today.” Those times when we make bargains with God and say, “If I just tithe a little more, won’t you help me with my financial problems?” Or, “If I love my neighbor more, God will do such and such for me.” And so forth.

If this is what we think about our good works, they do become mortal sins, because this is nothing more than rejecting the grace of God and trusting in ourselves. It is the same as saying, “Christ, I don’t need your death on the cross because I can do it myself.” It is self-righteousness, pride, arrogance and ultimately rejecting Christ and his free offer of forgiveness and salvation.

So being the sinful humans that we are, God has to do something to rescue us from ourselves. God himself goes to war with us and brutally attacks our sin. His ultimate and decisive attack on our sin came on the cross of Jesus. For on that cross Jesus was bearing our sin. And in our baptism we are drawn into his cross and slain with him. Our sin comes under attack and is slaughtered on the cross of Jesus. That is why his cross is our salvation. Sin is destroyed by Christ’s death. and the wrath of God is turned away from us. Because Jesus Christ lived in perfect obedience to the law and fulfilled its demands and laid down his life for us, God lays down his anger and ends the warfare against us. The cross of Christ is our only defense against God’s wrath. The cross justifies us, and being justified by faith we have peace with God. The cross of Jesus Christ makes peace between us and God.

And in the resurrection of Christ we are raised to new life; we are created new; we are new creatures. First God must slay us on the cross of Jesus in order to raise us to new life. It is like a man who looks for a house to buy. But he can find none that pleases him. So he buys an old, dilapidated house, tears it down and builds a new house in its place; a house that meets his criteria; a house that is pleasing to him.

That is God. He came looking for people who please him but couldn’t find among men anyone pleasing to him. So he takes us sinners, hangs us on the cross in the person of his Son Jesus Christ and attacks us with his full vengeance and fury. He destroys us utterly. Then as Christ is raised, he creates a new man in us. A new person totally and completely pleasing to him. Pleasing to him because it is his creation. By the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we die to sin and a new man is raised up alive unto God.

He fills that new man with righteousness; the righteousness of Jesus himself. As St. Paul says; “I am crucified with Christ. This life that I live is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The old has passed away and behold, all things have become new.” The perfect obedience of Jesus Christ fulfills the demands of God’s law for us. As Luther states: “The Love of God does not seek that which pleases it, rather, it creates it.”

But this new man still has this sinful flesh attached to it. The sinful pride that thinks that we are capable of pleasing God with our own works. The sinful nature that takes credit for all the good we do and turns faith in God into faith in self. It is idolatry that trusts in self rather than in Jesus Christ. This sinful flesh must be crucified daily and the new man raised up daily in repentance and faith. That is where our crosses that we must bear in this life come in. Our sufferings, our illness, our persecutions, our problems, our sorrows that afflict us, yes even the old age that besets us, are all God’s attack on our sinful flesh in order to put it away and to create and strengthen the new man in us. Our crosses are the fires of God that burn out the dross in order to refine the silver and gold which pleases him; us, his children. We are pleasing to God as refined silver and gold. We are his priceless treasures. He is pleased with us on account of the cross of Christ.

This is what the theology of the cross is all about. These are the crosses that God uses to humiliate us so that he can then exalt us. I found the theology of the cross in a rather unlikely place recently. In Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, Dr. Van Helsing said of his friend Jonathan Harker, “I know that he must pass bitter waters to reach the sweet. He, poor fellow, must have one hour that will make the very face of heaven grow black to him; then we can act for good all round to send him peace.”

That is what Luther was talking about in his commentary on Psalm 50 when he says:

“He who honors himself will be confounded,

He who praises himself will be disparaged,

He who affirms himself will be denied,

He who makes himself beautiful will be made ugly,

He who makes himself strong will be made weak,

He who makes himself noble will be made base,

He who makes himself learned will be made unwise.

He who saves himself will be condemned.”

But

“He who confounds himself will be honored.

He who disparages himself will be praised.

He who denies himself will be affirmed.

He who makes himself ugly will be made beautiful.

He who weakens himself will be made strong.

He who makes himself base will be made noble.

He who makes himself foolish will be made learned.

He who condemns himself will be saved.”

That is our joy and confidence: that “the love of God does not find but creates what is pleasing to it.” He has created us pleasing to him. He has crucified us on the cross to raise us to eternal life in our Savior, Jesus Christ. He has filled us with deeds of righteousness which Jesus has already done for us.

Amen.