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October 24, 2010
October 12, 2010
"Follow Me" – Luke 9:57-62
Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to Him, "Lord, I will follow You wherever You go."
And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head."
Then He said to another, "Follow Me."
But he said, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father."
Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God."
And another also said, "Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house."
But Jesus said to him, "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."
We sometimes assume the primary cost of following Christ is that we must walk away from those sins which were once so much a part of our lives. But if we think about it, we should realize this process is not actually a cost, but a gift. What in fact takes place is that the Spirit of God provides us with wonderful freedom from the bondages of lust, of addictions, of pride and anger and complaining and fear. This is miraculously accomplished as we learn to draw upon the grace He makes available.
Nevertheless, there is a cost to be paid. In Luke 9:57-62, we discover the three very specific sacrifices which we are called to make if we are truly to be followers of Christ, "fit for the kingdom of God."
The first of these I will call our need for refreshment. God created us with certain basic physical needs, including the need for sleep, food and water, and an environment that is safe for our bodies. A large portion of our time and attention is given to insuring that we receive at least these minimal comforts. In fact, much of our gratitude toward God is directly in response to His provision of our daily bread and His protection from that which could threaten our well-being.
But as Jesus pointed out, "the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." The path He walked was one of great uncertainty and self-relinquishment. He had no home, no bed of His own, no storehouse of food, no savings in the bank. If we would choose to follow Him, we must be willing to lay aside our comforts and our physical securities.
It's no coincidence that this was the first test Jesus faced in the wilderness (see Luke 4:1-13). After forty days of fasting, He was hungry. Satan then challenged Him to "command a stone to become bread." It was something Jesus could most definitely do, having Himself created the very molecules of which the stone was made. What's more, His hunger was intense. The thought of eating something pleasant may have echoed out from the very roots of His humanity. It was the same thought that had gone through the minds of Adam and Eve.
But Jesus knew that life comes not from what we might eat, but "by every word of God" (Luke 4:4). God had not given Him permission to feed Himself, to solve His own problem (see Isaiah 50:10,11). Instead, Jesus chose to wait without refreshment until the time when His Father's angels would bring it to Him (see Matthew 4:11).
The second point of sacrifice, and the second temptation of Christ, involves the desire for a good reputation. When Jesus asked the man to follow Him and the man explained he must first bury his father, what was at stake was his reputation. Of course a good son would care for his own father. If he left that undone, his family and community would be horrified. How could Jesus expect him to endure such misunderstanding?
When Satan asked Jesus to worship him, the enticement was all the world's submission and all the world's glory. Apparently it was Satan's to give, for Jesus did not question that. But He knew that worship and obedience were due to God alone. He also knew that in the proper time, God would place His Son in His rightful position of honor. Rather than grasping for that honor prematurely, Jesus had already "made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant" (Philippians 4:7). This gave Him the ability to resist the second temptation of the devil.
The third sacrifice to which we are called is the laying down of our relationships. All the third man wanted to do was to say goodbye to his family. How easy would it have been for Jesus to wait those few extra moments. Instead, in what seemed to be a very harsh response, He described this desire, this "looking back," as something that would make the man unfit for the kingdom.
"If you are the Son of God," Satan taunted, "let's prove it! Your Father will certainly take care of you. He's already promised you that." Satan knew that the Father loved His Son with an intensity that was beyond all comprehension. Surely the Father would not allow His Son to die. Surely He wouldn't. . . .
When Jesus challenged His three would-be followers, at every point He was only asking them to accept a sacrifice He Himself had already faced in the wilderness. These were, and are, the requirements of all Christian disciples: the willing relinquishment of refreshment, of reputation, and of relationships. In fact, earlier (in Luke 9:23) Jesus had described this price of obedience with stark clarity. "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me."
What does that mean, to take up our cross? How is that different from simply denying ourselves? I would suggest that the answer can again be found in Jesus' own example. In the wilderness, He denied Himself the bread, the glory, and the demonstration of His Father's loyalty. Those were truly tests which He had to pass. But it was at the other end of His three years of ministry that He actually "took up His cross."
This time He wasn't in a wilderness, but rather in a garden, the garden of Gethsemane. According to the account given by Matthew (26:36-46), Jesus prayed the same prayer three times. "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will."
Why did it require three prayers? We cannot of course know the answer with certainty, but it is very possible that these agonizing decisions of relinquishment represented Jesus' willingness to once again lay down the three things He personally most longed to preserve. When Jesus "took up His cross," it began not on the road to Golgotha, but in those garden moments when He said yes to His Father.
The first thing Jesus knew He was being asked to endure was physical pain--the merging of every kind of suffering humanly possible. It included fatigue, hunger, thirst, cold, the stabbing wounds of the thorns, the torn flesh from the scourging, the searing pain from the nails, and of course the slow, torturous death from suffocation. Every source of refreshment was removed from His human body in those last unspeakable hours.
Then there was a second price He was being asked to pay, that of His reputation. He would be put on trial and accused mercilessly of crime and fraud. He would be mocked and spit upon. He would be nailed to the cross naked before the world. But even deeper than these humiliations, the pure Son of God would somehow have imputed into His being the vileness of all of humanity's sin. In that hour, the holiness which was His very nature would be completely defiled.
But the third price He was facing may well have been the hardest. Jesus knew that in the final moments of His suffering, there would come a point where His Father would turn away from Him. We can never comprehend this severing of the most powerful bond which ever existed, the actual separation of the Eternal Father from the Eternal Son. It was a pain so deep that it caused Jesus to cry out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
These three relinquishments, dear friend, were the cross of Christ. He endured them willingly, because He had chosen to submit to His Father in all things. We must realize, however, that had Jesus not accepted the will of His Father, laying aside His own deep human desires, we would all in fact end up bearing the cross of Jesus. We would all one day suffer eternal physical torment in hell; we would all one day live in an existence of complete humiliation; and we would all be separated not only from our earthly loved ones, but from God Himself.
As the result of His obedience, our crosses are now much, much lighter. Still, as Christ so clearly explained, there is a "daily cross" which each of us who would be His disciple must pick up and carry. How can we know the nature of this cross? I believe we will find it in those occasions where our human nature would demand its own well-being and where it must be deliberately, even forcefully, denied.
An easy-to-understand example is the matter of eating. God truly intends us not only to eat, but to gratefully enjoy the food He provides. Nonetheless, Jesus gave us specific instructions that apply to when we fast, not if we fast (see Matthew 6:16-18). Unless we are able for a period of time to say no to the craving of our stomach (which, we are warned in Philippians 3:19, can actually become our god), then we won't be able to follow our Master when it might cost us a few meals.
While must we hold lightly to our sources of physical refreshment--and be willing to lay them aside as God requires--in other areas we may be called to deny our desires completely. In particular, we should refrain from any form of mental or emotional refreshment which is not centered on God and consistent with His nature. Jesus instructed the multitudes, "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls" (Matthew 11:29). There is a weariness of soul that would drive us to a vast array of secular distractions and amusements. The authentic follower of Jesus will turn instead quickly and only to Him.
The "cross" of a relinquished reputation may be somewhat harder to discern. Most of us unconsciously protect ourselves from the misunderstandings or judgments of others in any number of little ways. The automatic excuses for our failures, the quick diverting of blame, the impulse to establish our value through name-dropping or other subtle boastings--how easily these become part of our daily conversations. From another angle, we may hesitate to speak of Jesus or otherwise appear to be "religious" in those situations where such choices might invite rejection or scorn.
Are we truly willing to be despised for Him? Are we willing to accept ridicule or persecution, perhaps even from our own family and friends? These are not rare possibilities, but in fact promised realities--if we are to take Jesus' words seriously. "Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you, and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man's sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven, for in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.. . .Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets" (Luke 6:22,23,26).
The final cross is always the hardest. God created us with a capacity for relationship that has its origin in the Trinity itself. We are able to bond deeply--with our friends, with our parents and children, with our husband or wife--because God intended these ties to communicate the realities of His love for us. It can even be said that deep interpersonal love is the most sacred force in all creation. How then can Jesus make this disturbing statement, "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14:26)? How can the One who commands us to love also tell us to hate?
The answer lies in the next verse: "And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14:27). The cross is actually a crossroads. We approach it, and we see that we can either turn right or left, or we can "come after" Jesus. On the right and left are what appear to be other viable choices that offer us peace and safety and happiness. Ahead, we face death. We are asked to yield up our rights, our rest, our pleasures, our reputation, our relationships. . .in essence, our very identity.
If this were only a one-time grand event, our sense of the heroic would probably carry us across the line. But instead we reach this place daily, even hourly. The question always is this: "Will I choose something else over Christ?" You see, our gods are those things to which we give our money, our time, our energy, our thoughts, and our emotional attachments. Our theology may be impeccable, but if something delights us more than Jesus, then we have given ourselves to another god.
The solution, however, is beautifully simple. In His death and resurrection, Christ has fully provided everything we need. Here is how Peter describes it. "Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" (II Peter 1:2-4).
"All things that pertain to life and godliness" come specifically through "the knowledge of Him." As we come to know Him, we discover Him to be our provider and protector, our great comforter, and the giver of refreshing rest. As we come to know Him, we discover our complete and unwavering value in His eyes, and are thereby able to join Paul in saying, "Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord" (Philippians 3:8). Finally, as we come to know Him, the sufficiency of His love enables us to release all human ties as the means of our emotional and spiritual support.
Then wonderfully--out of these hundreds of points of dying--there arises new life, life that brings with it great freedom and joy, and the capacity to give and to serve others through the overflow of grace we ourselves have received. As we follow Him, He will lead us into the highways and byways of life, where we will encounter others who need desperately to be shown the way to the foot of the cross.
The call of Jesus is the same to each of us. "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also" (John 12:24-26).
And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head."
Then He said to another, "Follow Me."
But he said, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father."
Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God."
And another also said, "Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house."
But Jesus said to him, "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."
We sometimes assume the primary cost of following Christ is that we must walk away from those sins which were once so much a part of our lives. But if we think about it, we should realize this process is not actually a cost, but a gift. What in fact takes place is that the Spirit of God provides us with wonderful freedom from the bondages of lust, of addictions, of pride and anger and complaining and fear. This is miraculously accomplished as we learn to draw upon the grace He makes available.
Nevertheless, there is a cost to be paid. In Luke 9:57-62, we discover the three very specific sacrifices which we are called to make if we are truly to be followers of Christ, "fit for the kingdom of God."
The first of these I will call our need for refreshment. God created us with certain basic physical needs, including the need for sleep, food and water, and an environment that is safe for our bodies. A large portion of our time and attention is given to insuring that we receive at least these minimal comforts. In fact, much of our gratitude toward God is directly in response to His provision of our daily bread and His protection from that which could threaten our well-being.
But as Jesus pointed out, "the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." The path He walked was one of great uncertainty and self-relinquishment. He had no home, no bed of His own, no storehouse of food, no savings in the bank. If we would choose to follow Him, we must be willing to lay aside our comforts and our physical securities.
It's no coincidence that this was the first test Jesus faced in the wilderness (see Luke 4:1-13). After forty days of fasting, He was hungry. Satan then challenged Him to "command a stone to become bread." It was something Jesus could most definitely do, having Himself created the very molecules of which the stone was made. What's more, His hunger was intense. The thought of eating something pleasant may have echoed out from the very roots of His humanity. It was the same thought that had gone through the minds of Adam and Eve.
But Jesus knew that life comes not from what we might eat, but "by every word of God" (Luke 4:4). God had not given Him permission to feed Himself, to solve His own problem (see Isaiah 50:10,11). Instead, Jesus chose to wait without refreshment until the time when His Father's angels would bring it to Him (see Matthew 4:11).
The second point of sacrifice, and the second temptation of Christ, involves the desire for a good reputation. When Jesus asked the man to follow Him and the man explained he must first bury his father, what was at stake was his reputation. Of course a good son would care for his own father. If he left that undone, his family and community would be horrified. How could Jesus expect him to endure such misunderstanding?
When Satan asked Jesus to worship him, the enticement was all the world's submission and all the world's glory. Apparently it was Satan's to give, for Jesus did not question that. But He knew that worship and obedience were due to God alone. He also knew that in the proper time, God would place His Son in His rightful position of honor. Rather than grasping for that honor prematurely, Jesus had already "made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant" (Philippians 4:7). This gave Him the ability to resist the second temptation of the devil.
The third sacrifice to which we are called is the laying down of our relationships. All the third man wanted to do was to say goodbye to his family. How easy would it have been for Jesus to wait those few extra moments. Instead, in what seemed to be a very harsh response, He described this desire, this "looking back," as something that would make the man unfit for the kingdom.
"If you are the Son of God," Satan taunted, "let's prove it! Your Father will certainly take care of you. He's already promised you that." Satan knew that the Father loved His Son with an intensity that was beyond all comprehension. Surely the Father would not allow His Son to die. Surely He wouldn't. . . .
When Jesus challenged His three would-be followers, at every point He was only asking them to accept a sacrifice He Himself had already faced in the wilderness. These were, and are, the requirements of all Christian disciples: the willing relinquishment of refreshment, of reputation, and of relationships. In fact, earlier (in Luke 9:23) Jesus had described this price of obedience with stark clarity. "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me."
What does that mean, to take up our cross? How is that different from simply denying ourselves? I would suggest that the answer can again be found in Jesus' own example. In the wilderness, He denied Himself the bread, the glory, and the demonstration of His Father's loyalty. Those were truly tests which He had to pass. But it was at the other end of His three years of ministry that He actually "took up His cross."
This time He wasn't in a wilderness, but rather in a garden, the garden of Gethsemane. According to the account given by Matthew (26:36-46), Jesus prayed the same prayer three times. "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will."
Why did it require three prayers? We cannot of course know the answer with certainty, but it is very possible that these agonizing decisions of relinquishment represented Jesus' willingness to once again lay down the three things He personally most longed to preserve. When Jesus "took up His cross," it began not on the road to Golgotha, but in those garden moments when He said yes to His Father.
The first thing Jesus knew He was being asked to endure was physical pain--the merging of every kind of suffering humanly possible. It included fatigue, hunger, thirst, cold, the stabbing wounds of the thorns, the torn flesh from the scourging, the searing pain from the nails, and of course the slow, torturous death from suffocation. Every source of refreshment was removed from His human body in those last unspeakable hours.
Then there was a second price He was being asked to pay, that of His reputation. He would be put on trial and accused mercilessly of crime and fraud. He would be mocked and spit upon. He would be nailed to the cross naked before the world. But even deeper than these humiliations, the pure Son of God would somehow have imputed into His being the vileness of all of humanity's sin. In that hour, the holiness which was His very nature would be completely defiled.
But the third price He was facing may well have been the hardest. Jesus knew that in the final moments of His suffering, there would come a point where His Father would turn away from Him. We can never comprehend this severing of the most powerful bond which ever existed, the actual separation of the Eternal Father from the Eternal Son. It was a pain so deep that it caused Jesus to cry out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
These three relinquishments, dear friend, were the cross of Christ. He endured them willingly, because He had chosen to submit to His Father in all things. We must realize, however, that had Jesus not accepted the will of His Father, laying aside His own deep human desires, we would all in fact end up bearing the cross of Jesus. We would all one day suffer eternal physical torment in hell; we would all one day live in an existence of complete humiliation; and we would all be separated not only from our earthly loved ones, but from God Himself.
As the result of His obedience, our crosses are now much, much lighter. Still, as Christ so clearly explained, there is a "daily cross" which each of us who would be His disciple must pick up and carry. How can we know the nature of this cross? I believe we will find it in those occasions where our human nature would demand its own well-being and where it must be deliberately, even forcefully, denied.
An easy-to-understand example is the matter of eating. God truly intends us not only to eat, but to gratefully enjoy the food He provides. Nonetheless, Jesus gave us specific instructions that apply to when we fast, not if we fast (see Matthew 6:16-18). Unless we are able for a period of time to say no to the craving of our stomach (which, we are warned in Philippians 3:19, can actually become our god), then we won't be able to follow our Master when it might cost us a few meals.
While must we hold lightly to our sources of physical refreshment--and be willing to lay them aside as God requires--in other areas we may be called to deny our desires completely. In particular, we should refrain from any form of mental or emotional refreshment which is not centered on God and consistent with His nature. Jesus instructed the multitudes, "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls" (Matthew 11:29). There is a weariness of soul that would drive us to a vast array of secular distractions and amusements. The authentic follower of Jesus will turn instead quickly and only to Him.
The "cross" of a relinquished reputation may be somewhat harder to discern. Most of us unconsciously protect ourselves from the misunderstandings or judgments of others in any number of little ways. The automatic excuses for our failures, the quick diverting of blame, the impulse to establish our value through name-dropping or other subtle boastings--how easily these become part of our daily conversations. From another angle, we may hesitate to speak of Jesus or otherwise appear to be "religious" in those situations where such choices might invite rejection or scorn.
Are we truly willing to be despised for Him? Are we willing to accept ridicule or persecution, perhaps even from our own family and friends? These are not rare possibilities, but in fact promised realities--if we are to take Jesus' words seriously. "Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you, and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man's sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven, for in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.. . .Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets" (Luke 6:22,23,26).
The final cross is always the hardest. God created us with a capacity for relationship that has its origin in the Trinity itself. We are able to bond deeply--with our friends, with our parents and children, with our husband or wife--because God intended these ties to communicate the realities of His love for us. It can even be said that deep interpersonal love is the most sacred force in all creation. How then can Jesus make this disturbing statement, "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14:26)? How can the One who commands us to love also tell us to hate?
The answer lies in the next verse: "And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14:27). The cross is actually a crossroads. We approach it, and we see that we can either turn right or left, or we can "come after" Jesus. On the right and left are what appear to be other viable choices that offer us peace and safety and happiness. Ahead, we face death. We are asked to yield up our rights, our rest, our pleasures, our reputation, our relationships. . .in essence, our very identity.
If this were only a one-time grand event, our sense of the heroic would probably carry us across the line. But instead we reach this place daily, even hourly. The question always is this: "Will I choose something else over Christ?" You see, our gods are those things to which we give our money, our time, our energy, our thoughts, and our emotional attachments. Our theology may be impeccable, but if something delights us more than Jesus, then we have given ourselves to another god.
The solution, however, is beautifully simple. In His death and resurrection, Christ has fully provided everything we need. Here is how Peter describes it. "Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" (II Peter 1:2-4).
"All things that pertain to life and godliness" come specifically through "the knowledge of Him." As we come to know Him, we discover Him to be our provider and protector, our great comforter, and the giver of refreshing rest. As we come to know Him, we discover our complete and unwavering value in His eyes, and are thereby able to join Paul in saying, "Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord" (Philippians 3:8). Finally, as we come to know Him, the sufficiency of His love enables us to release all human ties as the means of our emotional and spiritual support.
Then wonderfully--out of these hundreds of points of dying--there arises new life, life that brings with it great freedom and joy, and the capacity to give and to serve others through the overflow of grace we ourselves have received. As we follow Him, He will lead us into the highways and byways of life, where we will encounter others who need desperately to be shown the way to the foot of the cross.
The call of Jesus is the same to each of us. "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also" (John 12:24-26).
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