It's A Stretch

The Holy Gospel According to St. Luke, the 14^th Chapter

Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.  For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'  Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand?  If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace.  So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

There are two ways to handle this text.  Deep theological, scholarly analysis… or talk about cars.  So, my first car was a 1971 Plymouth Barracuda.  It looked very, very cool… as long as the hood was closed.  Because under the hood was not the 383 engine it deserved but… a slant six.  For you non-car people, the 383 is hefty, hefty, hefty… the slant six is whimpy, whimpy, whimpy.  Why didn’t it have a 383?  Well, I weighed the pros and cons of fuel economy, cool factor and all the rest and then I LAID OUT THE COST.  After I did that, none of the rest really mattered because… I simply didn’t enough money.  I couldn't stretch that far to buy one!

In today’s Gospel, Jesus turned around and clearly laid out the cost of being a disciple.  Lots of folks were following Jesus because, well, Jesus was cool!  He fed folks, healed people, cast out demons, calmed storms, walked on water… It was just really cool to follow Jesus and see what happened next! 

But just following Jesus for what you can get out of it, or for how good it makes you feel, or how cool it looks isn’t REAL discipleship.  It wasn’t way back then and it isn’t today either.  So Jesus turned to the crowd and laid out the REAL, very hefty price of discipleship.  But, before we talk about that I want to make sure we’re clear that discipleship is NOT the same as salvation.  

Salvation, eternal life, going to heaven or chowing down at the eternal banquet… whatever you call it… is a gift from God.  Salvation doesn’t cost you or me anything at all.  Jesus lived, died and rose, and in some mysterious way, God, in Christ GAVE you, me and all of creation eternal life.  It’s a no strings attached gift.  Salvation, is God’s thing.  

Discipleship, though, is our thing!  Discipleship is how we RESPOND to God and all that God has given us.  And being a REAL disciple… THAT’s gonna cost you BIG!!  Jesus warned the crowd that discipleship would cost them literally their whole life; all of it, every part of it… heart, hands, time, wallet.  All of it.  And it would cost everything you have, every single day.  No weekends off.  No retirement.  At the end of a perfect day of discipleship you will have nothing left. 

When I weighed the cost of putting a 383 into my Plymouth Barracuda I discovered that the price was enormous.  In fact, even if I took out all my savings, sold my stereo and cashed in my savings bonds…  I STILL didn’t have enough.  The cost was MORE THAN everything I had.  

Discipleship…REAL discipleship… also comes at an enormous cost, BUT the difference between the price of discipleship and the price of that big block V8 is that, even though the cost of discipleship will cost you literally EVERYTHING you have, the Good News is that unlike that new engine, it won’t cost you MORE THAN you have.  So the question becomes, just like it was for the folks Jesus was talking to is, are you ready to spend everything you have, your entire life, on discipleship?  Is following Jesus, giving of yourself entirely to God and God’s mission in the world what you are ready to do with your life?

It sounds like a lot.  That’s because it IS a lot.  It’s EVERYTHING.  But even so, I’ve met quite a few folks over the years who try to do just that every day of their lives.  And the truth is there are countless people in our world, waiting and looking and hoping for something… for someone important enough, worthy enough, life transforming enough to follow right now!  ACTUALLY, I believe everyone, to one degree or another, longs to do this… to be a disciple.  To walk a journey to find purpose, discover hope, to find the thing, the One, who lead our lives toward real meaning and worth.  In that way we’re all some sort of disciples and the question then becomes how far are you willing to stretch today and tomorrow and the next day toward being a REAL disciple of Jesus?    

You’ve seen folks stretching in their discipleship.  Jesus tells us and shows us what it looks like.  It looks like looking for the Holy in everyone you meet, even when you have to look REAL hard.  It means not loving your family any less but loving the world that much more!  Including your enemies!  It means talking TO people instead of about them.  It means giving your time and your money and your heart to people and places that can’t pay you back and might not even appreciate the gift.  It means opening your wallet to generously and overwhelmingly fund good things that in no way will benefit you and doing that so completely that the people around you stop seeing you so much as they see the light of Christ shining through you.  That’s stretching toward being a REAL disciple.  

It sounds pretty intimidating.  Impossible even.  But here’s a secret.  Nobody stretches 100% of the way.  Mother Teresa (who is being made a Saint today) only got to about 89% on the disciple-O-meter, but then she also had years and years of doubt and darkness where things weren’t nearly that good.  On a really good day I MIGHT get to 17%… on a GOOD day… rounding up!  The Apostle Peter, got to a 93% for a minute and was able to take a couple of steps on water but right after that he sank down to a subsurface percentage.

Discipleship is INCREDIBLY gigantic stretch!  It’s within our reach, but that reach demands nothing less than EVERYTHING we have and because we’re human, we’ll all inevitably fall short of that full reach.  But still, it’s worth the stretch… not just as a thank-you to God for all we have been given, but also because Jesus taught us that as we make that stretch toward discipleship; as we love God more completely and love our neighbors more sacrificially… we begin to more and more live into God’s gift of salvation… that abundant and amazing life that God has given us as a gift.  

The cost of discipleship is a GIANT stretch, but God has called us together to support one another on this journey of stretching toward discipleship.  Together, we’re learning, we can stretch farther than we’ve ever stretched before on our own and together, I am confident that we will continue to stretch toward discipleship and the light of God’s love will shine more brightly through us into the world.  Amen.