“Possessions & Discipleship” Colchester Federated Church, September 7, 2025, Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Luke 14:25-33)

Jesus is back on the road traveling toward Jerusalem in our Gospel story.  Luke tells us that large crowds are traveling with Jesus and his disciples.  Jesus turns to these folks beside him and explains, “Whoever comes to me and doesn’t hate father and mother, spouse and children, and brothers and sisters—yes, even one’s own life—cannot be my disciple.  Whoever doesn’t carry their own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”[1]

Some of these teachings from Jesus are hard to hear and understand.  If there has been a theme in the Gospel passages we have been exploring over the summer, the theme could be “costly discipleship.”  Because to follow in the footsteps of Jesus does come with joys and costs.  We can continue to ponder that line in the United Church of Christ Statement of Faith: “God calls us into the church to accept the cost and joy of discipleship, to be servants in the service of the whole human family, to proclaim the gospel to all the world and resist the powers of evil, to share in Christ’s baptism and eat at his table, to join him in his passion and victory.”[2]

For Jesus’ earliest followers, the cost of discipleship often meant leaving behind their villages, professions, and sometimes even their families to literally follow Jesus as he traveled from village to village preaching, teaching, and healing.  These folks did feel called to be servants in the service of the whole human family and to proclaim the Gospel far and wide.  It makes sense that their families may have accused the disciples of not prioritizing them or abandoning them.  Though Jesus seems to be saying that following him entails changing your old life.  The past is finished and gone.  Because discipleship is about leaving some stuff behind in order to walk beside Jesus into the new life offered.  Sometimes these decisions affected loved ones, because how could they not be affected? 

Though we can ponder if we should take this literally or if this is more metaphorical.  It is worth remembering that “hate” in the Old Testament is better translated as to “love less.”[3]  So Jesus is not actually telling us that in order to follow him we have to hate our families.  Because how would that align with the central teaching of loving our neighbors?  It could be better understood as challenging his followers to consider their priorities and to be sure that one’s faith is at the center of one’s life. 

Jesus did not have hatred at the center of his teachings.  Just look at who he hung out with and how he brought those on the margins to the center of his movement.  Just a few verses later we will hear, “All the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Jesus to listen to him.  The Pharisees and legal experts were grumbling and saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eat with them.’”[4]  Therefore it is hard to reconcile Jesus of Nazareth who welcomed sinners and ate with them with telling his followers that you have to hate your family and hate your life in order to be my disciple.  A footnote in the CEB Study Bible nicely summarizes, “Halfhearted attempts to follow Jesus, like half-finished construction projects, will only make a person look ridiculous.”[5] 

Jesus shared analogies to make his teachings clear.  If you wanted to build a tower, wouldn’t you first sit down and calculate what that tower is going to cost to build to make sure that you have enough money to complete the project?  Otherwise, if you lay the foundation, but can’t finish the tower, everyone who sees this will make fun of you.  Or what king prepares to go to war against another king without first considering how his army will match up against his foe?  If the king doesn’t think that he can win, he could send a representative to come to terms for peace while his enemy is still far off (to not lose his soldiers in an unwinnable battle).  Jesus ends by saying, “In the same way, none of you who are unwilling to give up all of your possessions can be my disciple.”[6] 

In other words, a person cannot become a disciple of Jesus halfheartedly because that will only lead to abandoning the path or staying and resenting being there in the first place.  The invitation is to let some stuff go in order to embrace the new life Christ offers with open hands and open mind and open heart.  We cannot receive what is new if our hands are full of old baggage that is no longer serving us.  Jesus recognized that for some of his followers this came in the form of possessions, which could represent a clinging to the past.  As Jesus said earlier in Luke’s Gospel, “Sell your possessions and give to those in need.  Make for yourselves wallets that don’t wear out—a treasure in heaven that never runs out.  No thief comes near there, and no moth destroys.  Where your treasure is, there your heart will be too.”[7]  So, what do we treasure?  Where is our heart?

As I was wrestling with this seemingly harsh text it reminded me of the more contemporary “Parable of Immorality” that has been credited to various authors.  I cannot remember where I first happened upon this reflection.  And though it is often used for funerals, the exercise helps us consider our perspectives in the here and now.  I invite you to close your eyes or just gently lower your gaze (whatever is comfortable) as we do our best to picture the scene painted in “Parable of Immortality”:

I am standing upon the seashore. 
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. 
She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and the sky come down to mingle with each other. 
Then someone at my side says, “There she goes.”

Gone where? 
Gone from my sight . . . that is all. 
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side
and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. 
Her diminished size is in me, not in her. 

And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “There she goes,”
there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!”

You can open your eyes once again.  “There she goes” and “here she comes!”  It depends entirely on one’s perspective.  Yes it is a story about life in this world and eternal life in the next.  “Gone where?  Gone from my sight . . . that is all.”  And Jesus was teaching us about the Kingdom of God not just in heaven, but on earth as it is in heaven in so many ways and with so many metaphors.  We are invited to wholeheartedly follow wherever Jesus would lead us.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[1] Luke 14:25-27, CEB.
[2] United Church of Christ Statement of Faith, https://www.ucc.org/what-we-believe/worship/statement-of-faith/
[3] E. Trey Clark, “Commentary on Luke 14:25-33” in Working Preacher, September 7, 2025, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-23-3/commentary-on-luke-1425-33-6
[4] Luke 15:1-2.
[5] Footnote on Luke 14:28-33, The CEB Study Bible with Apocrypha, 143 NT.
[6] Luke 14:33.
[7] Luke 12:33-34.

Photo by Matt Busse on Unsplash