Renouncing all you have to Be Jesus' Disciple; Luke 14:25-33

"Now large crowds were travelling with him; and he turned and said to them, 26 ‘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. 27 Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 28 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? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, 30 saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” 31 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? 32 If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. 33 So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."

Introduction

If grace is something too good to be true, this passage appears at first glance to be almost too bad to be true. We can quickly mute the effect of the harsh word "hate" in v. 26 by explaining it in terms of life-priorities, but if we do so we run the risk of missing the Jesus whom Luke presents. For the third time in three chapters Jesus has either said or done something that is so arresting or provocative that we ought to rename him as a result of this passage--Jesus the Provocateur. I will argue below that there is a reason for his words in 14:26, but before we get there, we should realize that Jesus' statement in 12:51 about not bringing peace and his actions on the sabbath in 13:11, when the leader of the synagogue really did have a point (i.e., Jesus was "stealing his thunder" in his precincts--it would be tantamount to someone not scheduled standing up in a congregation on a Sunday morning and deciding to deliver the sermon) mean that we have a Jesus here who is really pushing the envelope. Let's not rush to domesticate Jesus lest we miss his message, his passion, his demands.

So, how do we approach this passage? On the strictly formal level, we can divide it into three demands or renunciations: (1) one renounces one's family; (2) one renounces one's life--by bearing the cross; (3) one renounces all that one has. To help us focus our minds on the importance of these decisions to renounce, Jesus tells two parables in 14:28-32 about "counting the cost"--stories which are unique to Luke's Gospel. Thus, we can assume with all of this that Jesus is laying down in no uncertain terms what it means to follow him. I could understand if many people want to "get off the bus" at this juncture.

In the comments that follow I want first to address what Jesus is doing with these "overstated words" (the overstated "word" in v. 26), then turn to an exposition of the three areas of family ties, the cross and renouncing possessions. I will begin with a story from our own day that helps me understand the passage.

I. Jimmy Carter and "Apartheid"

Former US President Jimmy Carter wrote a highly controversial book in 2006 entitled Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. In the wake of the book, whose title tended to ratchet up the animosity towards him so much that about a dozen members of the Board of the Carter Center in Atlanta resigned in protest, Carter once again became a household word--at least for a few months! The "popular" reaction to Carter's use of the highly charged word "apartheid" (taken from the history of South African politics from 1950-1995) was that Carter had "overspoken," that he was confused in his historical rendition of what happened in Palestine, that he was too "pro-Palestine." At least, that was the dominant reaction to his book.

But, after talking with my friend Lance Woodbury, a skilled mediator and consultant for family businesses, I now see what Carter was doing. As Lance explained to me--it is the job of a mediator or "neutral" (as they are called) sometimes to get discussions that have languished off to a start again by being provocative. Carter, as well as most thinking Americans, believed that in the wake of 9/11 and the War in Afghanistan and Iraq, the historical problem of Israel/Palestine had been ignored. This is a problem which had occupied large portions of American Presidents' mental space since 1948. By use of the term "apartheid," Carter was trying to "get the ball rolling" again, to bring peoples' focus back to the Israel/Palestinian problem as central to "solving" the issues of the Middle East. Carter used mediatorial overstatement in order to get the pendulum moving again, to get things off dead center.

Note what has happened since Carter's book came out at the end of 2006. The Bush Administration has resumed talks with both Palestinian and Israelite leaders. In fact, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is in Israel today as I write. One can say that the crack mediator Carter pulled off exactly what he was trying to accomplish--to get the Israel/Palestine issue on the "front page" of the paper again.

That is Lance's explanation of Carter's title and what he was trying to accomplish in the book. And, it not only sounds convincing to me but it helps illustrate my approach to Jesus' words in Luke 14:25-33. Earlier in the chapter Jesus had already tweaked people by teaching that when you give a feast you should invite the people who can't repay you. By so teaching Jesus was challenging the ethical system of his day. Then, in 14:15-24 Jesus takes a further, and more radical step, by saying that those who were invited to the feast and refused because of more pressing obligations, would not ever taste his feast (14:24). In other words, Jesus is winnowing his hearers or followers in the immediate context of 14:26. He has too many who are hanging on probably because of the catchy teaching or the miracles. He has too many people who want to fit Jesus "into their tight schedules" rather than make Jesus and commitment to him the central value of life.

In 14:25ff., then, Jesus continues the winnowing process. Like Gideon fighting the Midionites, where an army 32,000 men was too large, so Jesus approaches the crowds (14:25) with a series of demands which are designed to cut down the number of those following him (see the fascinating story of Gideon in Judges 6-8). People must have thought that Gideon was crazy to eliminate several thousand willing fighters before a crucial battle; but it was the "lean and mean" fighting force of 300 which defeated the foe. People, likewise, must have thought Jesus kind of daft for laying extreme demands on his hearers, but I think that Jesus was looking for a cadre of "fighting people" who would take his message to the end of the earth and try to live it faithfully.

With these context-setting points, let's now turn to the text of Luke 14:25-33.

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