Sermon Sunday September 9, 2007
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to your from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
So are you a disciple??? Do you measure up?? I mean this is what our Lord Jesus is telling you about in this morning’s Gospel lesson. He is essentially telling you the requirements of discipleship. He is telling you what He expects and demands of His disciples. So how do you measure up? How are you doing with this?
Well the first qualifier that Jesus gives comes right away when He says that whoever does not hate their father and mother, their wife and children, their brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be His disciple. Well as I look out at all of you, I see that you all seem to be getting along pretty well with your respective relatives. I mean I am sure that, like anybody, you have your moments when you don’t get along so well with your family, but hate? That’s a little strong.
And, OK when one goes back and looks at the Greek you can see that Jesus probably didn’t actually mean hate the way that we understand it today. He’s not talking about a real intense animosity-laden feeling. What He is talking about is prioritizing your discipleship to Christ before your loyalty to your family. The parallel of this in Matthew probably more effectively illustrates how this would speak to a contemporary culture. In Matthew this qualifier has Jesus saying essentially that whoever loves family more than Him is not worthy of Him.
But to dwell on what Jesus meant by ‘hate’ misses the point. Whether we’re talking about actual hatred of family members or the more contemporarily adaptable translation of loving Jesus more than family we are talking about something that we fail at every day. Daily we place our loyalty to family and friends higher than our call to discipleship in Christ.
So right out of the chute it’s not looking to good. Right out of the chute, you fail. But let’s move on. Lets look at the next qualifier. Next Jesus says if you are not willing to carry the cross and follow Him then you cannot be His disciple. Well you should be ok here right? I mean we all have our crosses to bear right?
Some of you might have illness that you struggle with, or chronic physical pain or difficult family relationships. But is that what Jesus means by carrying your cross? Is that cross-bearing? And I certainly don’t want to belittle those struggles or the importance of them, but again that is not entirely what Jesus is talking about here. Jesus is talking about intentional sacrifice here. He is talking about living out your discipleship to Christ to such an extreme that you are literally putting your life on the line.
Most of the early apostles, not just the twelve, but all of those early witnesses to the Christian faith; most of them were martyred for their faith. When they brought the Christian witness to a new town, often they would face very intense hostility, so much so that they were literally putting their lives on the line and many of them ended up dying for the faith.
Dying to defend your faith is cross-bearing. But even those early witnesses failed at this calling on a daily basis. Even among these heroes of the faith, there were sacrifices that could have been made that weren’t. And so daily you also fail at the call to true sacrificial cross-bearing.
And finally, at the end of today’s Gospel lesson Jesus says that nobody can become one of His disciples if they don’t give up all their possessions. Obviously none of you have done that. You all have homes to live in. And in those homes you have all sorts of different possessions. So, again you all fail. None of you have succeeded in this call to give up your possessions.
So that’s it. We are all completely inadequate for the call to discipleship that we all struggle with. The demands of discipleship are very high. Jesus doesn’t just make it extremely tough, He makes it impossible. The demands to love Jesus more than your family, and to bear your cross to the point that you are willing to put even your lives on the line, and to give up all of your possessions, are far too difficult for you and ask way too much of you for you to have any sort of hope of ever fulfilling them.
Jesus isn’t just giving a motivational speech here. He is showing that God demands that those who would become His followers be able to give up everything. He is showing that God demands perfect obedience. But this has always been the standard. The first lesson for today reminds you of this when it says that if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, if you love the Lord your God, if you walk in His ways observing His commandments, decrees and ordinances then you shall live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.
This is the same standard that Jesus has for those who want to become His disciples; perfect obedience, perfect sacrifice. So why aren’t you doing it? Why aren’t you living the perfectly obedient life? I’ll tell you why, because you can’t. You cannot become a disciple of Christ on your own, left to your own efforts.
But that doesn’t stop God; your Lord, your Creator, your Redeemer. From the beginning of time He decided to be your God. He created your inmost being and He knit you together in your mother’s womb. And He promised that you would have no other Gods beside Him. And He refuses to allow the slings and arrows that the devil throws your way to stop any of that.
And so He sent His Son to fulfill the perfect obedience that you couldn’t and to be the perfect sacrifice that you are not able to make yourself. He sends His perfect and sinless Son Christ Jesus to take all your sin, every last bit of it, with Him to the cross. He sends His Son to defeat death and to thus permanently break down the barriers between you and your Creator, your Redeemer, your loving God.
He sends His Son to make disciples and it is through His Son Christ Jesus that disciples are made. Before ascending to the Father after defeating sin, death and the devil through His death and resurrection, Christ Jesus commands His disciples to go therefore and to make disciples of all nations, and that command is also extended to you today.
But Jesus does not just leave it at that because then He tells them just how disciples are made by following the command to go therefore and make disciples of all nations by telling them how it happens when He says by baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and then teaching them to obey everything Jesus has commanded them. And then Jesus promises that He is with them to the very end of the age.
You don’t need to worry about how to make yourself a disciple of Christ or how to strive to become one because in the waters of baptism you have already been made a disciple of Christ. Indeed in the baptism liturgy it is proclaimed of the baptized that they are made a member of the priesthood we all share in Christ Jesus. And as Christ Jesus continues to come to you in His Word and in the sacraments and in fellowship with each other, your faith in Christ Jesus is nurtured and sustained and you grow in your discipleship.
Being a disciple of Christ is not simply about being a nice person, or being a purpose-driven person or having a transformed life. It is about having new life as a new creation as Paul reminds us in 2nd Corinthians "..if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away, see everything has become new." And only Christ can do that. But praise be to God, He has already done it in you and continues to do it through you.
Amen
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to your from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
So are you a disciple??? Do you measure up?? I mean this is what our Lord Jesus is telling you about in this morning’s Gospel lesson. He is essentially telling you the requirements of discipleship. He is telling you what He expects and demands of His disciples. So how do you measure up? How are you doing with this?
Well the first qualifier that Jesus gives comes right away when He says that whoever does not hate their father and mother, their wife and children, their brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be His disciple. Well as I look out at all of you, I see that you all seem to be getting along pretty well with your respective relatives. I mean I am sure that, like anybody, you have your moments when you don’t get along so well with your family, but hate? That’s a little strong.
And, OK when one goes back and looks at the Greek you can see that Jesus probably didn’t actually mean hate the way that we understand it today. He’s not talking about a real intense animosity-laden feeling. What He is talking about is prioritizing your discipleship to Christ before your loyalty to your family. The parallel of this in Matthew probably more effectively illustrates how this would speak to a contemporary culture. In Matthew this qualifier has Jesus saying essentially that whoever loves family more than Him is not worthy of Him.
But to dwell on what Jesus meant by ‘hate’ misses the point. Whether we’re talking about actual hatred of family members or the more contemporarily adaptable translation of loving Jesus more than family we are talking about something that we fail at every day. Daily we place our loyalty to family and friends higher than our call to discipleship in Christ.
So right out of the chute it’s not looking to good. Right out of the chute, you fail. But let’s move on. Lets look at the next qualifier. Next Jesus says if you are not willing to carry the cross and follow Him then you cannot be His disciple. Well you should be ok here right? I mean we all have our crosses to bear right?
Some of you might have illness that you struggle with, or chronic physical pain or difficult family relationships. But is that what Jesus means by carrying your cross? Is that cross-bearing? And I certainly don’t want to belittle those struggles or the importance of them, but again that is not entirely what Jesus is talking about here. Jesus is talking about intentional sacrifice here. He is talking about living out your discipleship to Christ to such an extreme that you are literally putting your life on the line.
Most of the early apostles, not just the twelve, but all of those early witnesses to the Christian faith; most of them were martyred for their faith. When they brought the Christian witness to a new town, often they would face very intense hostility, so much so that they were literally putting their lives on the line and many of them ended up dying for the faith.
Dying to defend your faith is cross-bearing. But even those early witnesses failed at this calling on a daily basis. Even among these heroes of the faith, there were sacrifices that could have been made that weren’t. And so daily you also fail at the call to true sacrificial cross-bearing.
And finally, at the end of today’s Gospel lesson Jesus says that nobody can become one of His disciples if they don’t give up all their possessions. Obviously none of you have done that. You all have homes to live in. And in those homes you have all sorts of different possessions. So, again you all fail. None of you have succeeded in this call to give up your possessions.
So that’s it. We are all completely inadequate for the call to discipleship that we all struggle with. The demands of discipleship are very high. Jesus doesn’t just make it extremely tough, He makes it impossible. The demands to love Jesus more than your family, and to bear your cross to the point that you are willing to put even your lives on the line, and to give up all of your possessions, are far too difficult for you and ask way too much of you for you to have any sort of hope of ever fulfilling them.
Jesus isn’t just giving a motivational speech here. He is showing that God demands that those who would become His followers be able to give up everything. He is showing that God demands perfect obedience. But this has always been the standard. The first lesson for today reminds you of this when it says that if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, if you love the Lord your God, if you walk in His ways observing His commandments, decrees and ordinances then you shall live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.
This is the same standard that Jesus has for those who want to become His disciples; perfect obedience, perfect sacrifice. So why aren’t you doing it? Why aren’t you living the perfectly obedient life? I’ll tell you why, because you can’t. You cannot become a disciple of Christ on your own, left to your own efforts.
But that doesn’t stop God; your Lord, your Creator, your Redeemer. From the beginning of time He decided to be your God. He created your inmost being and He knit you together in your mother’s womb. And He promised that you would have no other Gods beside Him. And He refuses to allow the slings and arrows that the devil throws your way to stop any of that.
And so He sent His Son to fulfill the perfect obedience that you couldn’t and to be the perfect sacrifice that you are not able to make yourself. He sends His perfect and sinless Son Christ Jesus to take all your sin, every last bit of it, with Him to the cross. He sends His Son to defeat death and to thus permanently break down the barriers between you and your Creator, your Redeemer, your loving God.
He sends His Son to make disciples and it is through His Son Christ Jesus that disciples are made. Before ascending to the Father after defeating sin, death and the devil through His death and resurrection, Christ Jesus commands His disciples to go therefore and to make disciples of all nations, and that command is also extended to you today.
But Jesus does not just leave it at that because then He tells them just how disciples are made by following the command to go therefore and make disciples of all nations by telling them how it happens when He says by baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and then teaching them to obey everything Jesus has commanded them. And then Jesus promises that He is with them to the very end of the age.
You don’t need to worry about how to make yourself a disciple of Christ or how to strive to become one because in the waters of baptism you have already been made a disciple of Christ. Indeed in the baptism liturgy it is proclaimed of the baptized that they are made a member of the priesthood we all share in Christ Jesus. And as Christ Jesus continues to come to you in His Word and in the sacraments and in fellowship with each other, your faith in Christ Jesus is nurtured and sustained and you grow in your discipleship.
Being a disciple of Christ is not simply about being a nice person, or being a purpose-driven person or having a transformed life. It is about having new life as a new creation as Paul reminds us in 2nd Corinthians "..if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away, see everything has become new." And only Christ can do that. But praise be to God, He has already done it in you and continues to do it through you.
Amen
posted by Steve at 5:22 PM
1 Comments:
Again, this one just seems to be lacking great conherency. To tell the truth, it was pretty predicable-in that the law/gospel split was fairly basic and it really didn't convict me. Yes, I've failed, but at least I have Jesus, is what I was thinking. YOu spent alot of time talking about how we fail instead of telling us taht we fail. And when you did that, what Jesus did comes off as Sunday school type stuff-yes, Jesus loves me, the bible tells me so.
Sorry
Post a Comment
<< Home