+ 13th Sunday after Pentecost – September 7th, 2025 +
Series C: Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-35
Beautiful Savior Lutheran
Milton, WA
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
There’s a phrase made popular by the Navy SEALs and military operators. Embrace the suck. Lean into the suffering. The pain. agony. suffering. Accept that life is not always easy days. Get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable.
Hearing today’s words from Jesus in Luke 14, it seems that the military took a page out of Jesus’ discipleship field manual.
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. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
This is Jesus’ words to his disciples. To you. To me. Bear the cross. Lean into his suffering and our own. See the pain. Agony. Suffering. Call it what it is. Accept that life as Jesus’ baptized saints is not always full of easy days. Be uncomfortable living a sinful fallen world. Be uncomfortable living with the devil whispering soothing lies in your ears and flashing his saccharine temptations before your eyes. Be uncomfortable with the wicked wolf, crouching at the door of your heart.
Embrace the cross.
This is what it means to be the baptized saint and disciple that you and I are called to be and named by Christ. You belong to Christ. You are beloved in Christ. You are brought into Christ’s house. Christ bestows his gifts on you. Yes, even the gift of his cross.
Embrace the cross.
Following Jesus is costly. It means dying – dying to self, dying to you and I love, dying to everything that is our life. It means renouncing literally everything you have and everything you are or think you are. To be a disciple is to bear the cross.
And sometimes the cross stands right in the middle of our lives. It’s a sword that cuts right through families, dividing husband and wife, father and mother, and wife and children and brothers and sisters. Family arguments over a baptism. Disagreements about where to go to church, or whether or not to go to church at all. Different and dangerous paths of life your children or grandchildren head down knowing you did not raise them that way.
To be sure…life might be easier… If you didn’t have you didn’t have to explain to your family why you spend your Sundays and holidays in church. Or if those awkward and tense and uncomfortable conversations with family members and friends about your faith in Jesus simply went away. Or if, instead of embracing the cross, we gave into and embraced our sinful desires instead. Avoid the pain. Tap out. Find a detour around the cross.
And if we’re honest with ourselves…that sounds tempting. No pain. All gain. An easy life. And it might be…for a while. At least until the hangover of the darkness gives way to outer and forever darkness. Following Jesus is costly, but not following him, is even more costly. For apart from Christ and his ross, there is no life. Only darkness. Despair. And never-ending death.
Still we wonder, “what does Jesus mean when he says to hate father, mother, spouse, children, brother, sister?” Hate is a strong word. But this isn’t the emotional variety, like the 2-minutes of hate in 1984, or today’s version that rages like a wild fire across social media and the daily news cycle. It’s an older use of the word. To hate, or to give preference. Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. One chosen over the other.
Jesus’ words sound strange because you are taught to love your parents, your husband or wife, your children, and your siblings. And that’s true and good. The one thing Jesus says we cannot do, is that we cannot love them more than Jesus or they will become an idol. As important as God’s gift of family is, even these relationships are not given priority over following Jesus in the way of faith.
Jesus calls us to hold our lives – along with everything and everyone in them - with the dead hand of faith rather than the death grip of idolatry. Lose your life in Jesus, and you will save it for eternity.
What are we to do about “father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife, brother and sister”?
Embrace them in the cross. Before anything else, we must become brothers and sisters in Christ. Husbands and wives are first of all brothers and sisters in Christ. Fathers and mothers are brothers and sisters in Christ to their children. The most important blood relationships is the blood relationships in Christ as blood-bought brothers and sisters, purchased and won by the Blood that redeems the world from Sin and Death.
To embrace our family in the cross looks, at least at first, like letting go. It means standing and waving goodbye as your children go off to middle school, high school, or college. It means walking your daughter down the aisle. It means letting your son leave his father and mother and form his own household. It means that sooner or later, death will part even the two that have become flesh, and you find yourself sitting by their bedside as they breathe their dying breath to rest in Jesus.
To embrace our lives and our family’s lives in the cross means letting our grip and hold go, knowing that Christ’s embrace from his cross is far stronger. And his blood is thick enough and his grip tight enough to hold all who belong to him. And in all this letting go, we don’t lose but gain as we are in Christ. Nothing and no one is ever lost in Christ who is our life.
Jesus is right. Being a disciple is costly. And the hard truth is that you and I cannot pay it.
So what’s a baptized saint to do? Embrace the cross.
Yes, it kills. Yes, there’s sorrow and suffering. Persecution and Pain. Denial and Death. But in the end…resurrection. For Jesus’ cross isn’t just one way. It’s the narrow way. The only way. To live apart from Christ is death. To die in Christ is your life.
Embrace the cross. Because when you do, you’re in good company. Jesus embraced the cross, for you.
Jesus took all of the things that suck in life. All of our pain and agony. All of our suffering and sorrow. Ever callous sin. Every false comfort we’ve chased after. All the hurt we have done to others and all the hurt we have received. Every bitter, excruciating cross we’ve borne and will bear in this life. Jesus went up that hill outside Jerusalem. Jesus leaned into the nails and wood. Jesus embraced all of the suck that you and I and this fallen world could throw at him. Jesus endured and embraced the cross...for you.
And in doing so, Jesus embraces you as you bear the cross and follow him.
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment