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“Cheap
Grace”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: Luke 14:25-33
“So therefore, none of you can become my disciples if you do not give up
all your possessions.”
DEAR SISTERS AND BROTHERS we have just heard one of those mind boggling,
shocking passages that really grabs our attention and causes an
enormously real question. Jesus has just said “Whoever
comes to me and does not hate father
and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes and even life
itself, cannot be my disciple.”
“What in the world does that mean?
Who could be Christ’s disciple?
What is he talking about when he uses this word ‘hate?”
Then, after we have these thoughts, we realize that there must be some
kind of meaning that is somehow hidden deep within these words, and we
need help in trying to hear what God is saying.
Friends, we all need help in a situation like this; myself, included.
But, I am going to lead you through my way of analyzing this holy
text and pray that we may all hear what God is telling us.
Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. He
knows why God the Father has sent him to this earth.
He knows that he is going to give up his life, and suffer the
death of a torturous crucifixion for the atonement of humanity. His
mindset was “Thou he was in the
form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be
exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born
in humanity. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and was
willing to became obedient to the point of death—death on a cross.”
He is surrounded and followed by a large crowd of people,
probably hundreds, if not thousands.
They are probably talking and laughing and playing with each
other. Yes, they have heard
of this Jesus, maybe even seen some of his miracles and heard some of
his teaching. But, they
think he is on his way to Jerusalem to become the emperor of Israel and
lead their nation to become the super power in the world.
Jesus is not condemning them; he is not judging them in that kind of
way. He is confronting them
with the shocking words to show them that they may be following him,
physically, and have some interest in what he is about, but they really
do not know it. He is
sharply communicating to them that they are not his disciples.
He is not saying he does not want them as disciples.
He is not saying that they will never be disciples.
He is not saying that they are not capable of being disciples. He is showing them that they do not really know, in their
hearts, what he is here for.
My thought is that many high school teachers know what it is to realize
about one of their kids, at the end of the semester, “He may have been
on the roster and attended the class all the time, but he was never a
real student.”
We are not being called to question whether we are Christians.
We are not to question whether we belong to God.
We are not to question whether God loves us with divine love.
We are not to question whether we will be with God, in Christ for
eternity. We are not to
question whether we are right with God. We are not to question even whether we are good.
Every single one of us, because of Jesus Christ, and what he has
done for us, should be totally free to stand up, look in our own eyes
through the mirror, and talk to ourselves, by saying our name and then
“…you are good.”
At the same time, if we can see ourselves in this crowd and what Christ
is saying to them, and to us, we may hear Christ telling us that who he
is in our lives and how we relate to him, and what it means for us to
belong to him is not to be defined by how we see things in the world.
Logically, a way to reword verse 33 is “If you do not give up all your
possessions, then you cannot become my disciple.”
You know I’m a math teacher.
In logic, p => q is the same thing as –q => -p. This
means, another way to say verse 33 is, “If you can become my disciple,
then you do give up all your possessions.”
Every one of us can and is becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ, which
means that God will lead us to wear we give up all our possessions.
God leads us to where we continually realize that our life does
not belong to us. It
belongs to God; where we even pray, “Lord I do not want my life
anymore.” Of course, that
is not a suicide type prayer; that is a recognition that our total
lives, all our decisions, all our desires, all that we seek should be
given to us by God.
We are to let the same mind be in us that is in Jesus Christ.
And when the Bible reads that Christ emptied
himself, in Philippians, it is a picture of the Son of God before he
came down through the heavens and was born into our humanity.
The picture is that He was embracing God the Father.
He was hugging God the Father, and when He emptied himself, he
let go of God, our heavenly Father, and passed down into the trenches of
what it means to be a human being.
God the Father, so loved the world, that he sent his only begotten Son.
The only begotten Son, so loved the world that he let go of His
heavenly Father and became a man who was to be killed on a cross.
And the Holy Spirit so loved the world, that even though the
Father sent His Son, and the Son emptied Himself by coming into the
world, and their original togetherness changed for all eternity, that He
kept the Father and Son united in their love and adopted the whole world
into their love.
The Lord of our lives let go of his greatest possession so that he could
come to us, become one of us, and take us back into the relationship he
has always had with God the Father.
The Son is back with God. He
is back at the right hand of God, and God has his arm around His Son.
But, now his Son is also a human being, loving God the Father and
being loved by God the Father with the mind and emotions of a human.
Why? So that He can
share that with us.
To “give up our possessions” means to realize that we do not hold
onto anything. Literally, we are not in control of anything or anyone.
We are held on to. And we are controlled by the same Holy Spirit who kept
together God the Father and God the Son when the Son emptied himself and
came into our hearts. We
are embraced by the Holy Spirit of God.
One area that we may apply this whole way of thinking and seeing God’s
truth in a newer and deeper way is to realize that we as a congregation,
as a flock, as a Spiritual family in the relationship Jesus has with God
the Father in the Holy Spirit, we are being held together by God and for
God’s purpose. And we do
not posses the church. We
do not take control or keep control of where God is and what God is
doing in the church.
The church is not the pastor.
The church is not at 400 E. Mulberry St.
It is where each member lives their daily lives.
The church is a resident alien. Our
citizenship is in Christ.
Each of us must get in touch with a sense of God’s call in our lives.
And God does have a call in each one of our lives.
Grace is not cheap. It
cost God the Father the life of His Son in human death.
Let us pray…
Amen
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