JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS ....NOT

Little Johnny came home from school one day and said to his dad: “Where did I come from?” His Dad cleared his throat, went a little pink, and began in huge mind numbing detail to explain to Johnny all about eggs and sperm and boys bits and girly bits and all the mechanisms of fertilisation and gestation and birth and the whole thing. After about 20 minutes he paused for breath and to wipe the sweat from his brow. “Only the reason I ask” says Johnny “is because Michelle in my class says she comes from Birmingham...”

Sometimes we can get hold of the wrong end of the stick, sometimes we can leap to a conclusion which might seem obvious to us, but it wasn’t what the other person had in mind. Quite a lot of the time I think that applies to the words of Jesus and what are known as the hard sayings of the gospel. It works both ways: sometimes we realise that something which seems relatively innocuous turns out to involve us turning our world upside down, and other times when we flinch at a particular saying we actually realise that Jesus meant something different than what we thought...

So what are we to make of this hard saying about the cost of discipleship? Jesus said we must hate our relatives - even our own life - and give up our possessions if we wanted to follow him... what do we make of that one?

How about that as an advertising slogan:

• Come to church where everyone hates their families

• Come to church and give away everything you’ve got

• Come to Church and learn to hate your own life...

• ‘cos if you don’t, you can’t be a Christian...

That ought to have the punters flocking in.... Is this what Jesus meant? Are we supposed to take his words literally?

Part of engaging with this gospel is about how we understand language. And why it is that when we come to the bible we feel a need to take everything so literally...? Christians have always acknowledged that the bible contains story and history, poetry, biography, metaphor, image and simile and a whole host of different types of literature and styles of writing - all of it designed to tell the story and show how much God loves us and what he’s done to reach out to us...

So when we read the bible we must bear in mind that there are many different types of literature within it’s pages. After all we take that on board in our everyday language. Listen to some of the things we say to each other:

• I’ve told you a thousand million times not to exaggerate!

• You are as blind as a bat, as deaf as a post

• I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.

Over the summer one of the CDs we took on holiday was the Proclaimers, and one of the favourite tracks we all sang at the top of our voices as we wound through the twisty turny roads of the Apilles Hills was “I’m gonna be” which contains the great lyrics:

“I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more, just to be the man who walked a thousand miles to fall down at your door...”

Did they mean it literally?

We use language all the time in a way we understand, but which might not be immediately obvious to an outsider....

When we come to the scriptures we have to try and get into the mindset of the culture from which the writings came... the context in which Jesus spoke, the reason that Luke recorded the story.

Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem and towards his passion. It doesn’t take much reading of the gospel to realise that most of the crowd and even his disciples had failed to realise exactly what was to come next. He’d told them often enough and in plain uncomplicated language, but they still thought that at the end of journey to Jerusalem lay an Empire.

Jesus the king would kick out the Romans and establish his kingdom in the City of David - Utopia, the Kingdom of Heaven - whatever - and no doubt those who had followed him and been loyal would get their reward. But those who have ears who have been listening closely so far would have realised that whoever followed Jesus was not on the route to worldly wealthy or glory or fame or riches..

What lay at the end of the journey to Jerusalem was not a paradise of worldly success, but desertion, pain, torture, betrayal, broken friendships, crucifixion and apparent despair. What was required of those who followed Jesus towards Jerusalem was loyalty, a sacrifice of the dearest things in their lives, and suffering like that of a man crucified... THIS was the cost and the outcome of following Jesus... And so, in the plainest possible way Jesus tries to spell out what it would mean to those following him...

Jesus says: “Think what it’ll cost you - a greater loyalty than your family; and your possessions will no longer be your own... get half way and give up your discipleship and you run the risk of being like a foolish builder or a conquered king..”. Jesus lays it on the line: there are no half measures in the kingdom of God.

I had a youth group leader in the church I grew up in who used to say that he was “conned into the kingdom” - he was told that if he gave his life to Jesus all his problems would be over... so he did and got a barrow load of problems and thought for ages that he was doing something wrong...

We do people a disservice if we try and water down the gospel, and for Luke’s community it was clear that being a disciple was a radical thing - it would affect all of the disciple’s life, things would be turned upside down in the world’s eyes: discipleship was countercultural and would be like swimming against the tide.

The word “hate” is exaggerated talk to make a point. When speaking of the cost of discipleship in Matthew’s gospel Jesus says “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or his daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me...” (Mt 10.37)

It’s less stark than talk about “hating”, but that’s still pretty tough teaching. How many of us could claim to love Jesus more than the most important Human Being in our lives - parent, spouse, partner, child, friend....? Jesus is still demanding complete and total loyalty, in front of anyone else... Allegiance to him must come before all else. This is tough teaching, and no less so for having made away with the literal command to hate your family or life and give away everything you have...

Those who want to follow Jesus must weigh the cost. Disciples must be ready and willing to renounce their possessions. It’s not a command for every disciple to give away everything, because the call of Jesus means different things to different people in different circumstances. For me it’s meant becoming a priest, for you it might mean being an architect, or self employed, or a homemaker, or a teacher or offering hospitality or being church warden or reducing your spending on clothes to support Caring & Sharing whatever.

In the gospels we see the call of Jesus meant different things to Zaccheus; to the rich young man; to Matthew the tax collector; to the paralysed man lowered through the roof; to the children Jesus blessed; to the haemorrhaging woman; to the penitent thief....

I can’t say what the call of Jesus will mean on your life. But when we look at the gospels we can see that those who responded positively, who responded most fully, most honestly and most convincingly were those who allowed Jesus to have the priority in their lives. Those of whom it might be said that Jesus came first in their lives.

There are two other truths within this passage:

1. That is is possible to be a follower, or an observer of Jesus without being a disciple. I was at the CA college with a bloke from Liverpool who used to talk about “Church-ians” rather than Christians - people who liked the idea of Jesus, but were not so keen on the discipleship... The crowds who followed were shouting “Hosanna!” on Palm Sunday as Jesus entered Jerusalem, but by the end of the same week the same crowd were shouting “Crucify!”... Jesus challenges us to count the cost of our discipleship. It is possible to admire Jesus from a distance but still not let him into our lives, or try and keep him on the fringes.

It used to be said that If Jesus is not Lord of All, Jesus is not Lord at all... The passage shows us that it is possible to be a follower, or an observer without being a disciple.... and may be the challenge to us is about moving from being a follower, an observer to being a disciple. It’s the same challenge to us about how to move tourists into becoming pilgrims - something of what we were thinking about yesterday as the church was open for the Sussex Historic Churches Ride & Stride.

2. We are reminded to count the cost of discipleship, and warned that it will cost us everything.. the parable of the Pearl of Great price, the treasure buried in the field etc. all suggest that the cost of discipleship is high.

The only people who carried crosses in Jesus day were those who were about to be executed - dead men walking. So the call is not actually about carrying burdens, but about laying one’s life down - to let go of all that might hinder being a disciple of Jesus - to let go of the good for the best. In The Cost of Discipleship Dietricht Bonhoeffer said: “When Christ calls a man to follow him, he bids him come and die”.

There’s no getting away from it: the passage is a hard one. It’s not one to sweep under the carpet and forget about. It does demand from us a rethink about our lives and it challenges us that when we say we’re Christians, or disciples of Jesus, that we ought to look at our lives in the light of these hard sayings and ask how, honestly, we think we’re living up to these hard and difficult sayings of Jesus....

Fr Andrew Perry

Rector, St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea