A sermon taken from
Luke 14. 25-33, and preached on September 9, 2007 at
Providence United Methodist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina
by Dr. Ken Carter.
In the gospels there is a constant shift of the lens, from the crowds, to the disciples, and then back again to the crowds. In the history of the gospel, how the gospel would be lived in the world, there is the same shift: the crowds---we thank of mass rallies, events in stadiums, large groups of people, but there have also always been disciples, small groups, monasteries, class meetings, three people praying, two people sharing over a meal. There are crowds, large gatherings of people, and there are small groups of disciples.This is no accident. In the crowd we experience the energy, the electricity, the enthusiasm. And then the question becomes: how do we sustain this?
We find Jesus in the midst of a large crowd, they are following him, he had fed the multitudes, he had calmed the storm, he had taught in parables, he had healed men and women, all of this had attracted a crowd. “Why were they there, this large gathering, this crowd? Why are you here?”
Think about a large crowd you have been a part of. A couple of years ago the Panthers are playing, the game is about to begin, there is a great deal of enthusiasm, some of it even related to what is about to take place on the field! It is a Monday night game. By the end of the evening most of the folks around me are not so enthusiastic. Something has gone wrong, and our team is not doing well. It is almost as if someone has let the air out of the balloon.
We know the feeling, don’t we? We get started in a new job, or join a church, or begin a relationship, or take up a hobby…has anyone here ever purchased a stairmaster? Or bought a boat? There is the initial enthusiasm. And then the question: how do we sustain this?
Jesus poses this very question: It is all about making disciplined choices and taking the right paths. If you are going to build a tower, sit down and count the cost, otherwise you will lay a foundation and not be able to complete it.
This summer we took about eight or nine days and worked on a renovation project on our cabin in the mountains, with the help of a very skilled friend. We planned, or I should say Pam planned, it was all written down on paper, it had been thought through. We were removing walls, creating doorways, big stuff.
I realized, sometime in the middle of the week, that if we stopped now it would be a mess. The framing half way done, a portion of the floor with new ceramic tile, beams exposed, electrical outlets moved or disconnected. Were we to stop there, it would be a mess.
The Christian life can be this way. We get halfway there and we fall away, we lose the enthusiasm, there is no crowd around to cheer us on, or maybe we didn’t count the cost, maybe we didn’t estimate the obstacles. I heard a theologian a couple of years ago respond to a question about the popularity of books in America written by former fundmentalists who are now agnostics, such as Bart Ehrman at UNC-Chapel Hill, scholars who are disregarding most everything that is in the Bible, as professors of religion!
The theologian commented that these books do not find an audience in Africa or Latin America or Asia. In America, he said, there is an enormous “after-market” for post-Christian books: people who learned the language, who got started with the project, but somewhere along the way something went wrong.
What went wrong? We did not consider, at the beginning, what would be required of us. The Christian life, particularly the abundant life to which Jesus invites us, is making disciplined choices and taking the right path: it is doing one thing after another, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year. This is also the way someone becomes an excellent athlete, or accomplished musician, or successful businessperson, or loving parent. Doing what is next: measuring the two by eights, cutting the sheetrock, measuring the tile. It is, to borrow the memorable phrase of Eugene Peterson, a “long obedience in the same direction”. Or, as the Jewish theologian Woody Allen put it, “80% of success is just showing up”.
Listen to the words of Jesus, in Luke 14. 28: “count the cost”. Jesus uses another image, one that is as ancient as the first century and as recent as the news that will dominate our national conversation this week: “What king, about to encounter another king in war, will not first sit down and determine whether his ten thousand men can defeat the twenty thousand he is about to face?” Jesus’ words, not mine. And if not, he sends an ambassador and makes peace.
Everything has a cost: the renovation of a cabin, the execution of a war, the daily decision to be a Christian. Do not rush into it, Jesus says, or it will be a mess. If we do not adequately reflect on what we are going to build, or who we are going to fight, or how we are going to live, we may begin, Jesus says, and “not be able to finish”. He looks at the crowds, at their enthusiasm, they are prepared to run the race, and he asks them, “can you finish this?”
And so, what does it mean to live this out, in our Christian lives? I was impressed with the friend I worked with this summer, with his method, his knowledge, he had a way of doing everything and I followed it. I have tried to think about spiritual disciplines, what John and Charles Wesley called “means of grace”, in the same way. I am not any kind of guru about all of this, and I have not yet arrived. I make mistakes, just as we did that week, for example, when I confused the length and width in one instance. It does make a difference!
But I want to talk about the materials, the tools, and the obstacles. The materials and tools are varied, but these are good ones. The obstacles we encounter will be very similar. The materials we will need are simple and reliable: the Bible, some kind of devotional guide, maybe some other reading, and a few other people. The Bible is an amazing resource. I love the comment of Gregory the Great, of the sixth century:
Shallow enough here for the lamb to go wading,
But deep enough there for the elephant to swim.
Without the Bible, we would be lost. There would be no way to complete the project that is before us, which is to become the person God intends us to be. It is the blueprint.
There are ways to read the Bible, the Voice (our newsletter) gives you a way, you can read in preparation for worship, there are different translations, most of them are very good. The important thing is to use the Bible as a tool, and not to see it as an object that takes up space beside a lamp or a floral arrangement. It is a living word, and if you encountered it earlier in life, and have some stereotype or prejudice about it---it is confusing or boring or irrelevant--- I plead with you to retrieve it, and dig into it.
I remember a humorous conversation with a member of a former church. The latest book had been released and everyone was reading it, including Oprah. It had to do with “four” of something, that is all I remember. And my friend was leaning on me and saying, “you have got to read this book, it has been out for six months!” And I listened, and this is terrible, I know, but finally I asked, “have you read Isaiah lately?”
And she looked at me with a strange expression on her face, and then she answered, “No…”. I said, “you have to go read this book, it has only been out for two thousand six hundred years!” Isaiah. Where else are you going to come across words like these:
Come, let us reason together, says the Lord.
Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow (1. 18).
Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
They shall mount up with wings like eagles
They shall run and not be weary
They shall walk and not faint (40. 31).
Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name,
You are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you,
Or through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you (43. 2)
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
They shall repair the ruined cities (61. 4).
If we are going to count the cost, if we are going to stay with it, we are going to need the Bible. I would add some kind of devotional guide. It could be the Upper Room, which our church makes available, and it is also on-line (www.upperroom.org). I use the Book of Common Prayer. Most days I go through the ritual of morning prayer. If I say the whole service, which takes only a few minutes, it includes a prayer of confession, a Psalm, the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, a time for intercession, and a few printed prayers, collects, some of them as dating back 1500 years.
For intercession, I think of people in the church, issues in the world, my own family, myself, people I am having difficulty with, needs, reasons to rejoice. I have a number of Bibles, ones that I have asked individuals to sign their names in, Disciple classes, Confirmation Classes, the Chancel Choir at Bonclarcken, pastors in Haiti and Guatemala. I pray for these persons. When someone passes, I place a cross beside their name. It reminds me to include the communion of saints in my prayers.
I am being very specific here, and that is what my friend was doing as we renovated our cabin. And of course you can do this your own way. But if you are going to find a spiritual discipline, it will need to be specific. I would also urge you to go deeper in your reading. There are classics of the Christian faith that I would commend, works that have shaped the lives of God’s people throughout the centuries: some of them are about doubt: The Dark Night of The Soul, or the Cloud of Unknowing; some of them are about practical Christianity: The Imitation of Christ, or The Practice of The Presence of God; some of them speak of life as a journey: Pilgrim’s Progress, for example.
These brief books about classic Christian spirituality teach disciplines and methods, and they also point out the obstacles: you are going to have doubts, you are going to become confused, you will be betrayed, you will grow weary. How do we overcome the obstacles? We have disciplines. It is true that disciplines can become rituals, and in time the rituals can lose their meaning. But disciplines are still needed. Jesus was teaching the disciples to count the cost so that they would finish the race. Somewhere along the way, something would happen and they would be tempted to give up.
And that is where the small group, the community, the family is important. The reading of scripture and the use of a prayer book, and getting to know the classics of Christian spirituality, these are exercises that are always done in community with other Christians.
When something really important is at stake, when we are forced to “count the cost”, we don’t want to make that decision on our own. We need the guidance of someone we trust. When the outcome depends on making disciplines choices and taking the right path, we don’t to make those judgments on our own. We need the accountability of someone who has encountered this obstacle and walked this path before us. And when we are tempted to give up, half-way through the project, when we lose sight of the goal, when our bodies are weary, our spirits are afraid, our souls are depleted, we don’t want to wander off on our own. We need the encouragement of those who know us, who love us, who will walk and work with us.
Before you get started with all this, Jesus says, “count the cost”. The good news is that we are not on our own in this project. Paul writing to the Phillipians, urged them to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for God is at work in you” (2. 12-13). The God who began a good work in us would be faithful to complete it (1. 6).
Somehow God takes our efforts, our energies, our showing up, our long obedience in the same direction, even our mistakes---someone has said that God writes straight with crooked lines--and moment by moment, day by day, we realize that the cost is worth the effort. It is costly grace, Dietrich Bonhoeffer the 20th century martyr confessed: costly because it costs our life, but grace, because it gives us the only true life.
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Sources: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship; N. T. Wright, Luke For Everyone; Fred Craddock, Luke (Interpretation).