Follow Me                                           Luke 14:26-27 & Luke 9:59-62

When I talk to people about my faith the number one question I get asked is, “You mean all I have to do is believe and accept Jesus and I am saved?” Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. Ephesians 2:8,“For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith…” and Romans 10:9, “If you declare with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Faith, trust and belief and acceptance equal salvation. All the things we talk about; love your neighbor, give sacrificially, share the Word, all this comes out of your faith. Knowing the love God has for you, knowing Jesus sacrifice on the cross is for you, all will flow through you into how you react with others.

Jesus says in Luke 7 verses 41-42, “Two people owe money…one owes 500 denarii and the other 50…(the money lender) forgave the debts of both. Now which one of the two will love him more?” Verse 43, “Simon replied, ‘I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.” When you really know what God has done for you; that love can’t be contained, it will flow out of you.

The second most asked question I get is about these two related passages and I do admit that at first glance they look harsh and cruel. This is why I wanted to look at them today.

Luke 14, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his mother and father, wife and children, brothers and sisters – yet even their own life – such a person cannot be my disciple.”

Fist thing to know when you look at this is the word translated to “hate” is the Greek word “miseo.” Miseo doesn’t refer to the emotion of hate. The word relates to a force, a force that enlarges a space or a force that diminishes what is shared; a force that ultimately leads to rejection or expulsion.

In the context of the verse a better way of describing it is not that you have to hate you mother and father or your brother and sister; but rather in order to follow Jesus you need to be willing to walk away from the family unit in favor of God.

This still seems harsh, but to better understand we need to look at the culture of the time. Jesus is talking to the Jewish people, a people with thousands of years of culture and traditions. Who you were was greatly dependent on your family, if your father was a carpenter you were a carpenter. Their life’s flow was mostly pre-set. You knew when to worship, when the Sabbath was, what you could and could not eat; your religious and secular lives were so totally intermingled they were inseparable. And most import, you knew when and how to offer sacrifices to God to make amends for your sins.

Now imagine telling your family you are walking away from all that to follow Jesus. Remember we said that being Christian can be hard, and Jesus is telling his audience that following him can be hard. To follow him you have to be willing to put him first. To follow Jesus you cannot let family and friends dissuade you. To follow Jesus you have to be willing to give up family and friends.

In Jesus day if you went to your family and said you were following him the reality is you most probably would lose your home, your family and your livelihood. For the most part we may not be put out if we declare Jesus our savior, but it still happens.

And what about the part where Jesus says you have to hate your own life? Miseo applies here too. A force that leads to rejection; we need to be willing to reject things in our lives that come between us and God. We need to be willing to say no to those things we know go against God.

Years ago I was at a training seminar for work in another city. Some of the other guys asked me to join them at a strip club down the street. I told them no, it would be disrespectful to my wife and disrespectful to God. Their response was, “No one back home will know.” I would know. And more importantly, God would know. They didn’t talk to me the rest of the week but being part of the group was less important than being part of God.

Maybe we like to go out and party every Friday night, or lie to build ourselves up. We need to be willing to walk away from our old life to make Jesus the Lord of our new life.

Luke 9:60, “Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.’” A man wants to follow Jesus but wants to bury his dead father first, a reasonable request. Why did Jesus react the way he did?

I don’t think Jesus is being obnoxious here, he is using the situation to show a point. This man says he wants to follow Jesus but he has an excuse not to today, implying that maybe he can         tomorrow.

When we follow Jesus we go where Jesus goes, we do what Jesus says; if we don’t we become “convenient Christians”, that is we follow Jesus when it is convenient to our schedules. This is similar to what is called a “cafeteria or buffet Christian.” These are people who say they are Christian but they pick and choose what they want to follow and they dismiss those things God tells us to do if they don’t like it or if it causes them to give up something in their life they want to hang on to.

Jesus wants us to say an unqualified yes to him and then follow him completely. Of course things will come up in our life like it did for this man but we should not put Jesus off when things happen, we should still follow Jesus. The man in this reading should have said to Jesus, “I will follow you, tell me how to care for my dead father.” We should say, “Lord, I am yours, I am faced with this problem, show me how to remedy it and still work for God’s Kingdom.”

Verses 61-62, “I will follow you Lord but first let me go and say goodbye to my family.” Again, this seems like a reasonable request. Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the Kingdom of God.” Again Jesus seems to be acting harshly but like in the verse before he is using the situation to explain a point.

The problem here is this man is actually looking for an excuse not to follow Jesus even as professes his desire to follow him. We can look at this as a man who is basically trying to make a deal with Jesus; I’m going to do this first, and then I’ll come back and follow you.

What about us? Anybody ever pray like this, “God, get me out of this jamb and I’ll go to church next Sunday.” Jesus is warning us about getting distracted by earthly things and putting him off until we satisfy those desires.

In his response Jesus also mentions looking back. Like I said before, maybe someone likes to go out and party Friday nights. Now that you’ve accepted Jesus you realize it’s ok to have a good time but not to get drunk every Friday night. Jesus warns us not to look back at our life before him with nostalgic longing. If you do you can get pulled back toward that life and eventually pulled away from the way of God.

When we look back with longing we cannot look ahead with joy over our place with God. When we look back to our old life with desire to relive it we lose the desire to move forward. We lose the desire to work for God’s Kingdom.

We have been called by the Holy Spirit to follow Jesus. And as we study scripture we see times like these where it can seem like Jesus is being harsh and on second thought, perhaps he is. Jesus is being harsh because he needs us to know that following him is a life’s calling; every part, every aspect of your life

                       Jesus wants us to know that we can lose family or friends over our faith, that we must be willing to walk away from those things that come between ourselves and God, that we need to stop making excuses for not following him and we need to stop being a cafeteria Christian. And that we need to stop looking back at our old life before Christ with nostalgic longing but with open eyes and with an honest heart to see how we lived separate from God.

And all of this means we cannot let convenience or comfort or past desires distract us from our devotion to Jesus.                 

  Amen.