September 7, 2025

Year C-I, Proper 18

Luke 14:25-33

[Philemon 1:21, Psalm 139; Deuteronomy 30:15-20]

My sister in Christ and colleague, the Reverend Deacon Catherine Costas, once opened a Good Friday sermon with the observation, “It’s hard being a Christian.”

I must agree with that.  But why is it? 

What makes it difficult, when we have the baby in the manager, the rabbi on the mountain top telling us who are blessed – all of us – who heals, and teaches, and tells us of a better world that is here and now?  Why, when some of us as children, had the blue-eyed, blond hair Jesus looking down at us from our bedroom walls with the sacred heart glowing in his chest, protecting us while we slept?

Why?

It is how we respond to Christ that can make it difficult.

Hate life, your family, and friends, if you want to follow Jesus?  Give up all your possessions?

Now, indulge me for a moment for the Christian Mythos geek that I am as I pick apart the back story.

The author of Luke, it is believed, wrote this gospel between the years 80 to 85 CE, some fifty years or so after the resurrection, and ten years, give or take a year, after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem.  It is also believed that this work was a Christian-to-Christian endeavor.  These scripture sentences may have been cautionary advice to the author’s contemporary Christians: to follow Jesus was going to be, and at times, difficult, and against what their society expected.  It was going to throw everything they knew on their head, and it was deadly. They must recognize that the true cost of discipleship was expensive – not in terms of coin, but in what one must give up; you just don’t leap into something that cannot be pursued to its end. Jesus tells his contemporary followers that such rash action puts one in a position of ridicule, like someone who doesn’t do the research for building a tower or realistically consider what resources it would take to lead an army.   They had better be prepared for the coming reality—resistance, backlash, and persecutions. Death.

Back to that word, “hate.”  

How do you reconcile “hate” with the central aspect of Jesus’ teaching and message, that of loving one another as ourselves and as Christ loves us,  to love God, to love our enemies?

The use of the word “hate” may be one of two things, or both.  First, it could be Semitic exaggeration—an idiom that means “love less than.”  It could very well be hyperbole for the uncompromising dedication and loyalty Jesus requires of his followers.  This was a crowd of people who came to him and were enthusiastic, and probably had no idea what would transpire in Jerusalem.  His response to them is, “think about what you’re about to do and decide if you’re going to stay with me.”

How should we respond today?  Consider this: if you were to make a list of all those you loved, God and Jesus should be at the top.  Loving them makes all else possible.  What possessions should we give up?  Our need to acquire, to be the first at everything, the most successful, give up our prejudices and hatred, are a start.

Loving God and Jesus makes all else possible. 

Who else should we love?  Our enemies.  Now more than ever. 

Another response is obvious: giving to those in need – those coats, sweaters and rain boots in the back of the hall closet that haven’t been touched since the kids moved out, a sack of groceries from the produce store, reading to someone, listening to someone.  Speaking up for those without voices.  Speaking out against tyranny.  Let our voices be heard. And here’s the best – praying with someone.

Yes.  It is hard to be a Christian on most days of the week that end in ‘day.’  When it seems to be too much, when your inner voice says, “I can’t do this today,” or “I’m too tired of this,” take a breath and remember that what we’ve been called to do is a gift.  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “The call to discipleship is a gift of grace and that call is inseparable from grace.” 

That grace comes from God and Jesus and nothing will take that away from us.

Accept it with all your heart, mind, and soul.

©2025, Rev. Dn. Ellen L. Ekström