September 7, 2025
William G. Carter
Now
large crowds were traveling with him, 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.
Looking out at the congregation today, I have only one question. Where did everybody go? Last Sunday, the room was full. We printed over two hundred worship bulletins, even though it was a holiday weekend. There was only one bulletin left. We had a big crowd. It was wonderful.
But where is everybody today?
Oh, I know. Every Sunday is not a revival. Last week was a special event with its own magnetism. We don’t always beef up the choir with Roman Catholics. Nor do we normally welcome guests from California, Massachusetts, Brooklyn, Binghamton, or Allentown. All viable reasons.
But I must wonder: do you think all the people who were here last week found out about our scripture lesson?
According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was on the move. He was followed by “large crowds.” Enormous crowds! And he spins around and shouts to them all, “You can’t follow me unless you hate your family, carry the cross, and give up all your possessions.” Sounds like he wanted to thin out the herd. Trim away the dead wood. Pare down the inflated membership roll. Travel only with the True Believers, not with the Hangers On.
But what a way to do it!
It sounds like Jesus was not interested in church growth. You can’t build a congregation, much less a movement, by making the admission more restrictive. Imagine the congregation, service organization, or country club that extends its arms to say, “You all come! Everybody is welcome!” And when the masses come through the door, a second announcement is made, “You can’t stay unless you meet our stringent requirements.” That’s no way to enlarge an organization, but it is a way to clarify who is worthy of being there.
Jesus turns toward the large crowd following him and says, “Hate your family, carry the cross, and give up what you have.” After hearing him say this, I’m not surprised anybody sneaks out. So, let’s explore each of those requirements.
First: “Father, mother, spouse, children, brothers, sisters – you must hate them.” And yes, it does say “hate.” These are people bound to us. We don’t choose most of them, which means from time to time they are going to drive us crazy. Does anybody here have a completely peaceful family? No, I didn’t think so. But hate them?
Household irritations are a common occurrence, whether we air that dirty laundry in public or not. Two sisters may borrow one another’s clothing without permission. The brother might be an annoying know-it-all. Mom may hover while Dad ignores, all common situations. And then if you are blessed to have a spouse, well, there could be differences in opinion on everything from tidiness around the home, to the importance of changing the oil in the car, to how you discipline the kids.
God has created each of us with our own particularities and peculiarities. That’s a gentle way of saying none of us are identical, not even sets of twins – and certainly not the triplets. But to hate them? That seems over the top – which is exactly the point.
See, Jesus spoke as a first-century Jew. In that Semitic culture, choices were very clear. It’s either this or that. There were no gradations in between. Which is to say, if you want to follow Jesus, you can’t let your following be affected by what your family thinks. Either you’re in or you’re out.
Some of you are here today, while members of your family are sleeping in or going to brunch. You chose to make the commitment, and God bless you for it. And that’s not to say your family members are not following Christ, too. Maybe they are tired, or going through a slump, or they have mixed feelings about sitting for an hour in a room like this surrounded by people like us. Whatever.
Four decades of pastoral ministry has taught me to lean into graciousness. As for ourselves, we don’t live our spiritual lives for other people. As for others, God is not finished with anybody yet. The point is you have to be clear. That clarity increases the closer we get to Christ. It is possible to keep loving our families, working for their benefit, saving for their futures – and to still distinguish between who they are and who Jesus is.
That’s what he means when he says “hate.” He wants to shock us into deciding if it’s him or them. That’s the distinction he imposes on each of us. And it’s direct.
Second, he says, “You have to carry the cross.” What cross – his cross or the cross? Curious, isn’t it, that Luke and the other gospels put a phrase like this before the story of the crucifixion. It almost sounds like the Gospel writers are reading the cross of Christ back into our story of discipleship. That it’s a symbol that defines how we are called to live out our faith here and now.
Obviously, he’s not saying all of us will be nailed to wood by Roman soldiers. That old practice is long-gone, thankfully. But what is the cross? There are several interlocking answers.
· The cross is a call to self-sacrifice. We set aside our will to do the will of God.
·
The
cross comes when we do the right thing in a world that doesn’t want us to do
the right thing.
·
The
cross is given to us when we speak truth to people who are living by lies.
·
The
cross comes as punishment when we expose evil and name it for what it is.
Just think of the stories of Jesus. He was punished
for being a good person.
Yet he remained good in spite of his punishment. The cross
means all of this.
And there’s more.
·
The
cross exposes the meanest intentions of people – and then it cancels those mean
intentions.
Those
who put Jesus on the cross heard him pray, “Father, forgive them.”
That’s
the answered prayer on which every human life depends.
·
Therefore,
the cross is the deepest expression of grace. We killed the Son of God, and God
didn’t retaliate.
This
means forgiveness is always possible. Unless we’re still nursing the grudge.
· And the cross means there is a new world, a new way of doing things, a new dominion which we call the kingdom of God. What that means is this is God’s world, not the devil’s world. There’s a lot of evil, meanness, and corruption still lingering about. But we don’t belong to that. We belong to God.
I think of the apostle Paul, writing to a church in Turkey, and concluding his letter by saying, “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.”[1] Then he says, “The only thing that matters is a new creation. That’s everything.” It’s not a new creation far off in the future, but right now. We belong to God. We live out of the love he has for all of us.
Yesterday, my friend Jim and I attended a funeral for one of our clergy colleagues. Tom was a man with a big heart. Sadly, that big heart of his gave out on the day before he was going to marry off his son and new daughter-in-law. It was a shock for the family and all his friends. But there was a taste of New Creation in his obituary. It quoted what he said when he began his last pastorate. Listen to this:
As I look at humanity, I can only describe the human personality as designed for relationship with something from which it has been separated. Christian reconciliation, the realization that God in Christ has become human and in doing so unconditionally accepts us and helps us. That is my basic theological starting point.[2]
The cross reconciles us to God, and through God with one another. There it is. Carry that. Even if an evil world hates you. Just live like Jesus – connecting, forgiving, loving, giving yourself away for the sake of others. That’s what it means to carry the cross.
Third, he says, “You can’t become my disciple if you don’t give up all your possessions.” Wait – is that an echo I hear? Jesus has been saying something like this ever since he started out on the road. There’s something about having a lot of stuff that slows you down. And here, it’s even more stark. He calls us to give it all up. Everything. Every nickel in our pockets, every shirt in the closet, every book on the shelves. Every everything.
I dug into the text to see if I could soften it. Not a chance. It says what it says. Then I submitted to reason: if we give everything up, we are empty handed, defenseless, impoverished, and naked. Reminds me of a rich boy. You could call him Frank. He lived a few years ago and lived quite well. Then he had a series of spiritual visions that shook him up. He began to perceive the wastefulness of his opulent lifestyle, the way he tossed his father’s money around. Until one day, he stripped off his clothing in front of the local bishop, vowing a life of poverty.
I said his name was Frank, but you might know him as St. Francis of Assisi. For him to follow in the way of Jesus, he had to let goods and kindred go. All his stuff was bogging him down. So, he had to unload what he had as a sign of what he aspired for his soul.
Again, it sounds like an early Christian hymn about Jesus. “He had equality with God,” sang the church, “but figured that equality was not something to be clutched, so he emptied himself, becoming like a servant.”[3] It’s this movement of downward mobility that is held up as the model. Becoming like a servant by giving up all the stuff you’re carrying around.
Now, if that sounds difficult, it is. It’s the third time I’ve mentioned that in a sermon in the past six weeks because it comes up that frequently in the Gospel of Luke. Luke is the gospel of relinquishing, of letting go, of giving up power and prestige – and of course, unloading all our possessions. First time this came up in a sermon this summer, some of you reported how good it felt to clean out your closets. But we are called to keep at it, to keep letting go, in order that we can acquire more of Christ.
In fact, if you look in the back of my Subaru out in the parking lot, it’s loaded with stuff I’m dropping off at a friend’s garage sale. And the more I get rid of, the more I realize I still have. Relinquishing is long term work. Apparently, we are born with sticky fingers. We attach ourselves to everything.
But that’s precisely why Jesus is exaggerating – “Give up all our possessions”? Really, Lord? If we did that, we would have nothing left. And his response is, “No, if you gave it all up, all you’d have left is me.” And this is the Gospel truth, the day is coming when we will give it all up. And will he have him? Or better, will he have us?
Because that’s the bottom line.
When all is said and done, it is only Christ that can save us. Only Christ who
will keep us. Not our money, not our safety, not even our families as nice as
they are. Only Christ is worthy of all our hearts, all our wills, all our
hopes, all our hearts. And so, the church at its simplest will sing:
Jesus,
priceless treasure,
source
of purest pleasure,
friend most sure and true:
long my heart was burning,
fainting
much and yearning,
thirsting, Lord, for you.
Yours I am, O spotless Lamb,
so
will I let nothing hide you,
seek no joy beside you!
[1] Galatians 6:14-15
[2] Obituary for the Rev. Dr. Thomas
William Blair. Online at https://www.wmhclarkfuneralhome.com/obituary/thomas-blair
[3] Philippians 2:6-7.
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