2013 08 by Baptists Today

Luke 14:25-35

with Tony W. Cartledge Sept. 8, 2013

Counting the Cost

ave you ever given up on something that seemed way too difficult for you? Running a marathon, for example – is that something you would even consider attempting? Or climbing Mount Everest – is that on your bucket list? What about being Jesus’ disciple? Would you give that a try? After reading today’s text, you might change your mind. Radical demands (vv. 25-27) There is no getting around the difficulty of this text, which contains some of Jesus’ hardest teachings and portrays discipleship as something so radical that very few would even aspire to it, much less attain it. Our challenge is to do the passage justice without watering it down to make Jesus’ demands more palatable, or writing it off as unattainable and thus beyond serious contemplation. Luke observes that “large crowds were traveling with him” (v. 25). The immediate target of Jesus’ teachings, then, was the conglomeration of the committed and the curious, the groupies and hangers-on who had coalesced around Jesus and followed him about. Jesus’ first demand was that those who would be his disciples must hate their families – parents, spouse, children, and siblings (v. 26). What? How do we deal with such an outrageous statement? Are there any interpretive gymnastics that can save us from believing that Jesus actually meant Additional background information online where you see the “Digging Deeper” icon

Luke 14:27 – “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

what he said? A common approach is to suggest that Jesus was using a Semitic hyperbole – exaggerating for effect. Just as we would say “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times” – knowing full well that we haven’t come close to a million – Jesus could say “hate” when he really meant “love less.” That, in fact, is the way Matthew puts it in his version of the same story: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me …” (Mat. 10:37). So, we are not off base in suggesting that Jesus used the word “hate” in a figurative rather than a literal sense. Jesus consistently taught an ethic of love, calling for his disciples to love one another (John 13:34-35), to love their neighbors (Mark 12:31), even to love their enemies (Matt. 5:43-44). It’s inconceivable, then, that Jesus would want his followers to truly hate their families, at least in the sense of harboring hostile emotions or ill will toward those who should be closest to them. Even understood figuratively,

however, the word “hate” is jarring. It demands love and commitment to Jesus at such a high level that love for family will seem like hate by comparison. The bottom line, the unavoidable requirement, is that to qualify as Jesus’ disciple, one must love Jesus more than one’s own family and be willing to act on that love, even if it means leaving family behind. Leaving one’s family is just one aspect of what it means to carry one’s cross while following Jesus, which is the second requirement (v. 27). Here we must again avoid the tendency to dilute this demand by thinking of day-to-day burdens as cross bearing. It’s common in our language to describe a physical ailment or a live-in relative as “my cross to bear,” but Jesus was not talking about being burdened. He was talking about dying. Crucifixion was the Romans’ favorite means of execution, especially for slaves. To make public examples of those perceived as wrongdoers, the Roman authorities would often force them to carry their own crosses to the place of execution.

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