St. Luke 14:25-35
Divine Service
Pentecost 15 (Proper 18)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

I am sure that most of you have heard the phrase “Blood is thicker than water.”  This phrase means that the welfare of our family has top priority over other considerations.  We generally use this phrase to explain a decision or an action – especially if that decision or action is unusual in some way.  Families are the basic building blocks of society and family bonds should be very strong.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that there is one circumstance that must reverse this saying.  Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”  When the water is the water of baptism, it should have priority over the blood of our earthly relationships.  When the water is the water of baptism, God adopts us into His family.  God makes us His sons and daughters.  We have a new family in Jesus Christ.  In today’s Gospel, Jesus teaches us that our relationship with Him has priority over all other relationships including the relationships of our earthly family and even the relationship we have with our own life.

Let me illustrate this with an example: A certain man grew up in the Mormon Church.  Through a variety of circumstances, the Holy Spirit worked the true faith in this man’s heart and he realized he had to leave the Mormons.  A few days later, when he came home, his house was empty.  The elders of the Mormon Church had moved his wife, his children, and even his furniture to an undisclosed location.  He never saw them again.  He had continue life without his earthly family because he was a member of God’s heavenly family.

A classmate of mine was a man who had grown up in – and hoped to return to – India.  He told us that when his great grandfather became a Lutheran, he became as a dead man to his earthly family.  His parents wrote him out of the will.  He was no longer welcome at family gatherings.  If a member of his earthly family saw him in public, they treated him as though he was not even there.  They were more polite to complete strangers than to him.

Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”  Then as if this was not enough, he went on to say, “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”

When Jesus talks about bearing a cross, He is not talking about the normal hassles and problems that afflict us daily.  Yes, it can be frustrating when the kids don’t behave.  It can be harsh when a disease strikes us down.  Unemployment can be frightening.  These are all hardships caused by sin and we should not minimize them, but they are not crosses.

Our cross is the hardship we endure simply because we are faithful to God’s Word.  It is the attack that the world mounts against us simply because we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

A short time after the Soviet Union broke up; there was an Easter special on T.V.; and a part of this Easter special came from a Lutheran church located in the former Soviet Union.  As I watched the special, I noticed that the Russian choir stood behind a large hole in the floor of their church.  I learned that the Communists had confiscated this church building and converted it into an athletic center.  During Communist rule, that large hole had been a swimming pool.  When the Soviet Union broke up, they had returned the church to the congregation, swimming pool and all.  For me, that empty swimming pool became a symbol of the cross that congregation had borne under the persecution of Soviet dictators.

When we look at the history of the Holy Christian Church, we see the blood of the martyrs spilled on almost every page.  The Holy Spirit inspired the writer of Hebrews to describe the martyrs with these words.  Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life.  Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.  They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated – of whom the world was not worthy – wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. [Hebrews 11:35b-38]

So what is Jesus telling us in today’s Gospel?  He is saying that the world hates the Children of God.  He is saying that the world will use all its resources against us – even our own families – even our own desire to survive.  Jesus is telling us that His disciples must be ready to cut off ties to father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, rather than be unfaithful to Him.  He is telling us that we must be ready to lose our lives rather then be unfaithful to Him.

Can you do that?  I’m not sure that I can … I’m not sure that I have the resources to conform to Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel.  In fact, the parables that Jesus tells after these statements tell us that we don’t have the resources to carry them out.  Our attempt to surrender all in order to be faithful is like a man who starts a tower he can’t finish or like a king with ten thousand men who is facing a king with twenty thousand.  The world will overwhelm us if we try to carry our cross with our own power.  We do not have the power in ourselves to deny our family and follow Christ.  We can’t do it alone.

Fortunately, we are not alone.  The Holy Spirit inspired the writer of the book of Hebrews to say, [Hebrews 4:15] “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”  Jesus is our high priest who experienced the same attacks that we do and triumphed over them.

Did the world use Jesus’ family to attack Him?  Listen to the words that the Holy Spirit inspired Mark to write: Then [Jesus] went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat.  And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, "He is out of his mind.”  [Mark 3:20-21] Later on Jesus said: “here are my mother and my brothers!  Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.”  [Mark 3:34-35] Jesus Himself had to deny His own family in order to remain faithful.

Jesus Christ was also faithful to His cross.  His cross was not just a metaphor, but the real thing.  His death was not just persecution for being faithful.  His death was the sacrifice that has made us part of God’s family.  Jesus Christ actually withstood the wrath of Almighty God against our sins while He hung on that cross.  He took all our sins onto Himself and paid the debt for those sins.  By His faithful suffering and death on the cross, He triumphed over sin, death, and the power of the devil.  In His triumph, He rose from the dead and ascended to heaven.

Jesus offers His triumph to all people through the Holy Spirit’s gift of faith.  By faith, we receive adoption into God’s family.  He promises us that we shall always be together.  Before Jesus ascended to heaven He said, “behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  [Matthew 28:20] He also said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” [Hebrews 13:5]  His triumph means that He is always by our side.  He will be always be with us while we live here on this earth, and, when our time here is over, we shall live in heaven with Him forever.

Evil has no conscience.  It will attack us with all its resources.  It will attack us through family and friends – even through our own body.  In spite of this, we need not fear, for the Holy Spirit works and sustains faith in us and works through us to give us the strength to remain faithful in spite of the world’s persecution – even if it means we lose family and friends – even if it means death because of our faith.

In the Lutheran rite of confirmation, we answer these questions:  Do you intend to hear the Word of God and receive the Lord’s Supper faithfully?  Do you intend to live according to the Word of God, and in faith, word, and deed to remain true to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, even to death?   Do you intend to continue steadfast in this confession and Church and to suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from it?  We never answer these questions with a simple, “I do,” because we can’t.  Instead we answer, “I do, by the grace of God.”  For it is only by the grace of God that we can be faithful to God even if the world threatens death or our family and friends ridicule us.  By the grace of God, the Holy Spirit will keep our faith strong.  God will be with us here in time and we will be with Him forever in eternity.  Amen.

+ SDG +

Sermons | Sermon Archives