Count the cost
Readings: Luke 14. 25-33
Following Jesus, being a Christian is free. It’s less about what we have done to earn it and more about what Jesus has done for us. It’s the free gift of God bought at a great price, we often emphasise that. And yet it also costs. Being a disciple means our lives changing, the grace of God is costly in how it changes us. And might that cost be too high?
Have you ever watched Grand Designs? Back when we used to watch more live TV it was one of the programmes I’d look for when hunting for something to watch. It was usually playing on one channel or another. If you don’t know it, the program basically follows a person or family who have come up with an idea for their dream house, usually with some fairly unique aspects and follows their journey building it.
Each episode goes roughly like this. John and Sarah are planning to build an eco-friendly house on stilts in the mountains. They’ve got a budget of £500,000 and no contingency. They’ve got no experience so naturally are planning to project manage the whole thing. We’re planning to live on site in a caravan they say. The house will be finished and we’ll be in by Christmas. December rolls around and all work has ground to a halt, the builder has pulled out and the experimental windows they’d ordered are stuck in customs in Latvia. As work gets underway again timber prices have rocketed. There’s a weird bit where the presenter tries to explain their plans using a bourbon biscuit and a jammie dodger. Sarah’s pregnant. They’re over budget and having to work longer hours on their jobs whilst also working on the house to reduce costs.
Cut to 5 years later. Sometimes it’s pretty much finished, looking wonderful and their vision brought to reality. Sometimes it’s only half built. They’re always a few million over budget.
The program is billed as a feel good show about the ingenuity of the human spirit, people with vision working hard to make it a reality. But what you’ll often see is relationships under huge strain, bank balances burned through, neighbours cross, tempers flared. Once or twice marriages have completely broken down in the process. Occasionally whilst they’ve succeeded in building the house more or less they want rid, either because it’s cost so much they can’t afford to keep it, or because it’s become a monument to the pain and struggle creating it brought. If they’d known from the start how tough it was going to be, I’d imagine many would have walked away.
And this is Jesus’ point as he speaks to the crowds who are following him. If you want to be my disciple, if you really want to follow me properly, count the cost first. Following Jesus has a cost, he makes claims on our lives and priorities, and unlike dodgy lenders, he makes sure the small print is all up front and clear. Whilst he’s got a crowd following him he’s not just going to keep them there by being vague, he wants them to become his disciples, but he wants them also to know what they’re getting themselves into. It will cost, being his disciple will impact their relationships both with friends and neighbours but also with their closest family, it will impact their finances and possessions, in fact it will impact every area of their lives. Are they willing to bear that cost?
He gives us three examples this morning about how our priorities change when we follow him. Our family, our possessions and our very lives.
Family. Following Jesus means loving him above our families. Now in many ways family ties were even stronger in Jesus’ context than they are now, they’re woven into the fabric of your life. And yet Jesus repeatedly challenges our closest relationships. This isn’t a throwaway line from him about hating parents, partners and siblings. This comes up in the other Gospel accounts too and in Luke alone the need to place Jesus before our family comes up another 5 times.
Now it might relieve you to know that Jesus is using hyperbole in that language of hate. It’s a common technique for a Rabbi and comes up a few times in the Old Testament. Contrasting love and hate in order to draw out how much greater the love for one must be in contrast to another. Of course we’re to love our families, to care for them, support them. But, we’re to love Jesus so much more. So much more that you could call the strength of our love for our families in comparison hatred. In fact we are to love him such that should it become a choice of Jesus or family, we’d choose him. If we had to choose between staying loyal to Jesus or our families we’d choose Jesus every time.
And that’s a challenging teaching isn’t it. Would we be willing to let go of parents, of siblings, of children or even our spouse if it came to a head and we had to choose? In the Gospels Jesus is constantly redrawing those family connections and boundaries. Moving them away from nuclear family, as important as that is, and redrawing it around the Church, around his people. And Christian faith does cause conflict in families. That reorientation of life and priorities is noticed by those closest to us and people challenge it.
Now we must be careful to make a distinction between Christian faith and the institutional church. Tension in the family because you’re always doing stuff at church and are never at home because this place is sapping all of your energy isn’t really to be commended. Something is skewed there. But worship, faith, prayer, following Jesus faithfully, it’ll clash at some point or another with members of the family who aren’t Christians. Will we stay the course when it does?
Possessions. At the end of our passage today Jesus makes the rather stark challenge to give up all our possessions. And down the ages some Christians have taken that very literally, most famous among them being St Francis of Assisi. But many others have down the same, whether they be living in religious communities as monks and nuns or others.
You may be relieved to hear that once again there’s some hyperbole here, but here’s the question; if Jesus really did mean this literally would we do it? If Jesus really did mean that the only way to follow him was to sell everything, give the money to those in need and then, and only then would he take us, would we do it? Consumerism has really got it’s claws into us here in the West, the desire to have stuff, the desire to have more. But perhaps more subtly the desire not so much to get more but to keep what we have. It’s mine, I earned it, worked for it, paid for it. But if Jesus asked you to give it away, give it to someone in need, sell it to give the money away, would you? Do we own our possessions or do they in some way own us? Would we surrender our stuff and stay the course?
And finally our very lives. In life we face all sorts of challenges. There’s that phrase ‘we’ve all got our crosses to bear’, and Jesus here talks about bearing our cross. But when he uses it he’s specifically talking about the challenges and the suffering that following him will bring. Not general struggles, struggles brought on by our following him. It’s a picture of death, if you’re carrying a cross through the streets in Jesus’ day you’re condemned to die, your life is forfeit. Will we lay down our very lives for Jesus? Dietrich Bonhoeffer memorably put it ‘When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die’.
And by die we’re not just talking about a willingness to literally be killed for our faith, although that is the ultimate end of it. Rather it’s all the steps on the way to that. A letting go of control of our own lives, a letting go of our own plans and priorities and wants and desires to better follow his call, walk in Jesus’ footsteps. Will we surrender everything about our life to him? Lay it all down and say ‘thy will be done’? Again, it’s a challenging teaching isn’t it. Will you surrender all, your whole life, and stay the course?
And we can make all sorts of excuses about all of these things, choosing Jesus over family, life and stuff. ‘But there’s this’, or ‘this thing means it’s different’ or ‘that part doesn’t count’. Perhaps even now as you think about family, your stuff, your life you’re starting to try and take stuff off the list. But Jesus calls us to place him over it all, to let go of everything if he called us to. The 19th Century British missionary to China Hudson Taylor put it rather pithily ‘If Jesus is not Lord of all, he is not Lord at all’. Are there areas of your life you’d rather not have Jesus involved with, not listen to him in, keep away from his call? Jesus’ challenge to us is to allow him even there. For how can we call him Lord if we do not truly listen or trust him with it all.
So why bother? I’ve given three reasons perhaps you might want to think twice about following Jesus. So why should we? Is the cost worth it? Yes.
Jesus isn’t making these demands because he’s controlling. Because he is a dictator or tinpot despot and requires our complete obedience or he’ll abandon us when we stop being yes-men. No. Jesus makes these calls because he knows where true life is. Being the very author of life himself he knows how best to live, how to have life and have it to the full. And so the calls he makes are to ensure we receive the very fulness of life. Do you doubt me? Then look again at this passage. He’s warning us up front. He’s telling us following him will be costly. If he just wanted control he’d get us to follow him however he could and then turn the screws. But he loves us, he wants this life for us but knows it will cost and so tells us. He warns us out of love for us. And yet he longs we follow anyway. If we don’t follow Jesus in every area of our life, we are in danger of missing out on the life that his Lordship brings. So will we let him bring us life, life in its fulness, surrender all to receive it? If you’re going to follow me he says, truly count the cost, and here it is, so are you in?
God’s grace calls us beyond simply being forgiven, and calls us into the life of Jesus. It’s a life of costly obedience and yet in following we find Jesus truly is the way, the truth and the life. That in this following of him we find fullness of life, the truth that grounds our universe, the Gospel of redemption, and the way to everlasting life, the way home.
My brothers and sisters Jesus tells us don’t start if you cannot finish. Don’t go to war if you don’t have the resources to win. Don’t start building a tower and then run out of money halfway through. Don’t start your Grand Design if you can’t finish it. And it’s not a warning about just not finishing. He warns us because having started we will already have committed stuff. A half built tower has still used up a lot of materials, money and labour. Failing to stay the course will still have cost us stuff in the run up. The money spent on Grand Designs, the relationships strained, the pain endured, it’s all already happened even if the home lies incomplete. If you’re going to follow me Jesus says, know you can finish before you burn through everything only to fall when you realise the price is too high.
It is worth the cost. A life laid down is a life handed back to us more full and abundant than we could have dreamed. It will bring trials and challenges, but at the end of this life is life without end. We cannot straddle this world and the next, keep our kingdom as we seek to enter his. So, for us who have started out in our following of Christ, let us pray for grace to continue in this way, to count the cost of each step we make with him, knowing that he is worth it all. Will we choose him over family, possessions and even life itself? Jesus does not call us down the wide and easy path, and yet in his call to the narrow way we find fulness of life, life without end.
Amen.