Ruth 1:1-8, 16-18; Luke 14:25-33
October 17, 2021
- Stewardship and Commitment/Dedication Sunday
One of the first conversations that I tend to have with couples who want to get married is that they really don’t know what they are getting into. I’m going to guess that this might reflect your own experience if you have ever been married. That relationship is one of the great things in life that we tend to undertake without a true grasp of what we are doing. Becoming a parent is similar. No one is really prepared. Of course, this uncertainty opens up the door to all kinds of interesting and unexpected experiences: like the time when I told my wife that it was good to be who she really is and that she should embrace her mistakes – to which she smiled and gave me a great, big hug. Boy, that was nice of her…. That might actually be a conversation that we really have a different way after church today, after that joke.
But the idea is true about much more than just being prepared for marriage or kids. There are all kinds of things in life which have taken us all by surprise from time to time. The longer we live, the more we might expect the unexpected, but even then, it is called the “UNexpected” for a reason. I had no idea last Sunday as I was standing here that within a week I would be recovering from surgery. Our plans, our expectations, are always being challenged and proven wrong. Things change, people change, life changes, and we must figure out how best to navigate. If you had told me twenty-six years ago as I was graduating from Hampden-Sydney that one day I would be the pastor of the Presbyterian Church across town, I don’t think I could have believed you.
So I am wondering how we hear Jesus’ words about preparing and counting costs for what it is going to require from us to follow in his service, given that calculating life’s demands is super difficult, if not impossible….
On the one hand, what Jesus is telling us makes absolute 100% sense. The rational, reasonable Presbyterianism that fills this room agrees with Jesus completely. Only an imbecile would undertake such an important task without the certainty that it is very possible, if not guaranteed. We need to weigh carefully whether being a disciple of our Lord is something we are able to shoulder.
On the other hand, we cannot count how many times our plans been thwarted and our expectations challenged. We have all probably begun some project to only realize that it is going to be a much bigger job than we originally planned. Rachel wanted me to frame a puzzle she had completed (she loves her puzzles), but this particular puzzle was close to four by six FEET. They don’t sell frames for that, so I set out to create one using specialty plastic edging and $100 later I was still not there. It was a much bigger task than I imagined. A life following Jesus could only be exponentially harder to gauge. How do any of us know the demands that we will be asked to meet?
I don’t have to know as long as I really listen to Jesus here. Many hundreds of years before Jesus, Ruth and Naomi were having a similar conversation in a completely different context. In their time, Naomi was trying to get Ruth to LEAVE. She offered her a wide-open door, greased the floor, and gave her a big shove headed downhill. It could not have been easier for Ruth to leave, “Go have a better life, Ruth!” But that was not the life that Ruth wanted. She wanted to follow Naomi no matter what, even to death. Outside of Jesus, this is the most beautiful statement of commitment that two people ever express in scripture. It did not matter what they would face, they would face it together. Ruth’s commitment and dedication to Naomi was perfect. I love this radical dedication.
That is what Jesus is trying to get us to see, also. It is not really about the literal price tag of the cost because the cost is everything. When pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was locked up in a Nazi prison, he had some time to think about what it cost to follow Jesus in WW2 Germany. He even wrote a book about this very thing called The Cost of Discipleship. He was not some armchair teacher talking about the demands of Jesus on our lives, he lived it. If we do not bother to really stick our necks out for Jesus, then there is no need for God’s grace. If we do not really risk ourselves for the sake of the gospel, there is nothing God needs to help us work through. Sure, we are sinful and in need of being restored, but God’s call is into the lion’s den, not into our family den with big screen tvs and comfy chairs. I hear this myself with a wave of guilt since Bonhoeffer gave his life standing up to the evils of Nazi thinking and doing. He died in that Nazi prison just before the end of the war but not before he ministered to the other prisoners and even the guards, some of whom became believers. He walked the talk and followed Jesus into difficult places bearing his cross.
Following Jesus is not really a set of statements – as if simply saying the Apostles’ Creed somehow makes you a Christian. Just like saying “I do” does not really make you married. It is the rededicating and dedicating, again, every day to living out that relationship. Jesus is saying that EVERY DAY we need to take up that cross, again, and follow him. Even more, I believe wholeheartedly that it was all in God’s design for Jesus to be killed in such an ugly and dehumanizing way which was offensive to everyone in his culture. The Jews were forced to walk by countless corpses hanging on crosses all along the way into Jerusalem, even hundreds of crucified people at a time. And the Romans did not stick them way up in the air above you. They were eye-level so you could not escape the brutality of Roman rule right in front of your face. The ugliness of defiance to their rule was looking back at you all along the road, so it must have been absolutely absurd for Jesus to use this image as the invitation to follow. Remember, this is before Jesus had died on the cross, so no one was going to understand his connection to that notion. It was simply offensive. You want to follow me, Jesus says regardless, then you need to become someone carrying your own cross to be crucified. That did not win him many fans in the Jewish world.
But it certainly gets back to the point: to follow Jesus costs us everything. It costs us our egos and pride, our gifts and talents, our resources and possessions, our relationships, all that we are and all that we have is in service to Jesus. He comes first in EVERYTHING. Someone carrying a cross has nothing left but a few more steps, so we have nothing in following Jesus but our steps behind him. Jesus is our everything.
They are not easy steps or comfortable or even nice steps, but they are good steps, the best steps we can take. They may be hard steps, but they are the most worthwhile steps we can take. They may be costly steps, but they are the most blessed steps we can take.
Even though this is a daily decision to follow Jesus, to commit and recommit to be completely in the heart of our Lord, today is a special day when we appreciate how much we are going to participate in this church’s ministry and its work in our community and across the world. We are planning and setting values and making judgments on costs for the next year. This is a time of saying that the ministry of this church is worth our collaboration because it is one small part of the work of Jesus the Christ.
Whether you have any intent to dedicate some of yourself to this church’s ministry for next year, I do hope you will take this moment to rededicate yourself to being that disciple, that follower of Jesus, that you want to be. Rededicate yourself and don’t give up. Do it again and again. The best of our human efforts needs more than a one-time push or even a once-a-year push. We need the Spirit’s daily drive, a daily push to chase Jesus and his ministry until our dying day. All who wish to take up the cross of Christ this day and keep dedicating all that we are and all that we have to the use of Christ Jesus, join me in prayer….
Most Holy and Precious Lord, thank you for the life of your love that brings us here today to celebrate your goodness, your faithfulness, your mercy, and your service. In all the ways that we might give today, do not let us give anything until we have first given our hearts to you. We give our hearts and what those hearts represent: our passion, our energies, our life, our love, our fullness, our time, our connections, our spirits, our health, our ability, and our hopes. Take it all. Take all that we have and all that we are. We give you our hearts. Help us to take up your heart, the heart that walked to the cross. Help us to walk in your steps of sacrifice and service. Help us to walk in your worship and grace. Help us to walk in your humility and sincerity. Help us to step with your radical love this day and every day. Thank you for giving us this day and for making us your people. In your strong name, we pray. Amen.