A considered approach (Lk. 14:25–33)

How did you become a disciple of Jesus? Do you even consider yourself one?

Many of us didn’t have much of a choice, having been baptised as infants and brought to church every week by our parents. There are a few of us, though, that didn’t come into the church that way.

It’s somewhat rare in the Lutheran Church, but not everyone grows up in it. Being a disciple of Jesus was not a given for some of us here today. You might’ve been baptised or christened in another denomination before wandering away for a while and then somehow stumbling across us. Or, maybe Christianity was not something you had ever considered until God intervened in your life in some way.

It may not seem like it when we share very similar stories most of the time, but we all have our own story. We all came to be disciples in a different way. Here we are today, and we’re thankful for that.

Have you ever tried to pitch the faith to someone? Tried to convince them to give it a go? Usually, we’re not that forward about it. If asked what our plans for the weekend are by the person at the checkout, we might mention church, but that can be about it usually. Maybe you’ve had more of a go at it yourself.

It seems like Jesus would make a terrible politician. His policies involve higher costs and lower wages, less home ownership and more dependence on others, and separation from family. Being a disciple of Jesus is more demanding than rewarding. It’s more sacrificial than beneficial. Why would anyone want to join a cause like that?

Our Christian faith is not an easy thing to sell to someone. That’s probably why we tend to be a bit less forward about it with people—it’s very likely that we’ll get a polite “no” or even a more aggressive one.

In his popular commentary on Luke, British theologian NT Wright has this to say:

Supposing, instead of a politician, we think of the leader of a great expedition, forging a way through a high and dangerous mountain pass to bring urgent medical aid to villagers cut off from the rest of the world. ‘If you want to come any further,’ the leader says, ‘you’ll have to leave your packs behind. From here on the path is too steep to carry all that stuff. You probably won’t find it again. And you’d better send your last postcards home; this is a dangerous route and it’s very likely that several of us won’t make it back.’ We can understand that. We may not like the sound of it, but we can see why it would make sense.

Jesus isn’t trying to sell discipleship at all. He’s letting the people know what they’re in for. It’s going to be hard. You will have to be prepared to give up anything at a moment’s notice for the sake of the kingdom. Large crowds followed him everywhere, but did they know what being a disciple meant? The Twelve were struggling to understand his talk about crosses and suffering as it was. Little did they know that he was calling them to follow him even there.

Jesus has a couple of analogies today which are fascinating. The first is about an unfinished tower, and the second is about an impossible war.  

An unfinished tower

Olivia’s favourite TV show, and I quite like it too, is Grand Designs. When a person or couple takes on the task of building themselves a custom-designed home, there are two things that happen in 99% of episodes: they go over-time and over-budget. They often spend years planning, researching, and discussing, but it always seems to be more demanding than they first thought, even if they were thoroughly prepared.

This is a pretty good reflection of what discipleship is like. An average person who is considering becoming a Christian should first sit down and figure out whether the Christian faith is for them. After all, if you’re going to be serious about it, it will impact on every day of your life and your weekends will be forever interrupted by church services.

For those of us that didn’t get a chance to consider the cost of becoming a Christian, but instead had it forced on us, maybe that was a good thing. If we’d had the chance to stop and think about it, maybe we wouldn’t have bothered. If one year-old Mitch had sat down and mapped out his life, particularly with the very real possibility of becoming a full-time pastor like his father, he might have decided on an easier way of life. Too bad for him, his parents had him baptised at just over a month old. I wonder if it was the same for you.

However, you got here and you’re here now. As baptised children of God for some time, you understand what being a disciple costs through lived experience. Our baptism into Christ is the foundation of our tower called faith. It’s on that sure foundation that our lives are built, one brick at a time.

There are some very sad episodes of Grand Designs when the budget blows out too much and the home never gets finished. How embarrassing and shameful that would be for someone. People would drive past that ugly, unfinished building every day and wonder whose fault that was.

I used to live in Mawson Lakes in northern Adelaide. On the most prominent corner in the town centre, there was this huge unfinished hotel sitting there for years. I think it’s still sitting there, although some progress might finally have been made. No one touched it for months and months because of financial problems (this was before the pandemic, too). They even tried to sell it off at one point, I think.

What is all of this meant to say about our faith? Jesus is telling the crowds to carefully consider what they’re signing up to by following him. I guess that means we should do the same. A tower of faith would remain unfinished if a person walked away from it and gave up because it all got a bit hard, like the weeds in the Parable of the Sower that shot up quickly and then perished in the hot sun.

This tower analogy could be applied to a church community, too. Together, we need to understand the demands and challenges of being a Lutheran Church in today’s social climate. We need to understand who we have and what their capabilities are. We need to be realistic about the ideas we have for programs and events because those things require people—us—to run them.

At St Martin’s, were going through a process of strategic planning, which is precisely that. We’re surveying the land we’re sitting on and the structure that already exists there, we’re identifying what kind of tower God is calling us to build and how it will be used, and we’re counting the cost for all of that to happen (all figuratively speaking, of course).

It is good to do this careful research because it means we can do some serious activity within our capability. It means we can engage in mission in a sustainable way. It means we can be a church according to who we actually are rather than what we think we should be. The last thing we want, and God wants, is an unfinished tower and an inactive church. We have a Vision Team that is leading this process, but it is something we are all involved in together with the aim of building a tower the way that God has in mind for us. 

An impossible war

The second analogy that Jesus uses is a king that sits down and discerns whether his ten thousand men can match another army twice the size. A good king is one that doesn’t act on instinct, but carefully measures every decision for the benefit of his kingdom.

Living as a disciple of Jesus is a battle against evil. There are times when practicing your faith requires a fight. We don’t go looking for opportunities to attack others who aren’t like us, but we defend ourselves and each other when we need to.

There was a time when having a go at the church was unheard of and frowned upon. The Christians were the ones who ran hospitals, started schools, and helped the poor. Even if they didn’t share its faith, they respected what it did. 

Things have changed. Now, people openly attack the church and the Christian faith with little to no consequence. Quite often, people rally behind those who do this. There are articles written, tweets tweeted, and interviews shared that pull apart our institution and the faith we stand for. How do we respond?

We are not called to retaliate. That would be to fight twenty thousand with ten thousand. The voices against the church are generally louder than those for it. We’re outnumbered, although maybe not as much as it appears. Still, our public response as Christians says a lot about the message that we preach. The Word of God is spoken just as much as it is practiced.

We need to think carefully about how we relate with a society that can, at times, be directly opposed to us or at least unsupportive. To do that, we need to know what’s out there.

What are people engaging in? What do our neighbours and the people around town think about God and his church? Are they spiritual at all or is that all irrelevant for them? Asking these questions and investigating a little bit goes a long way in sharing the Gospel in a way that might actually be received.

Some of you report to me conversations you’ve had with a friend or neighbour who isn’t Christian but maybe on some stage of the journey towards it. We often get a bit stuck with those people, but some of you are brave in pointing them to the Gospel that you know. I encourage you to keep having those conversations and keep steering people in that direction. If you think that friend or neighbour would blatantly refuse, what do you have to lose? The worst they can say is “no,” but they might be more open than you think. There are times when we come in expecting war, but it doesn’t end up that way.

A victorious king

We are disciples of a victorious king. The war between good and evil continues to rage on and we see it happening at times, but the result has already been decided. Jesus has already won the victory over death and that doesn’t change. By your baptism, that victory has become yours, and so you live in that victory day after day. With the power of Christ, ten thousand can beat twenty thousand any day.

We are also inhabitants of a tower that is strong, long-lasting, and has solid foundations. Our faith isn’t built on something we did or decided—it’s built on Christ who laid his life down for us. Every challenge we face in life, every Bible passage we listen to and absorb, every consumption of his body and blood adds another brick to our tower of faith. He is the surveyor, the architect, the builder, and the cornerstone.

Jesus, the leader of the great expedition, calls us to follow him. The path of faith is dangerous and demands our whole self, but the destination at the end of that path is worth the cost. We follow a leader who has been there before and can guarantee safe arrival if we trust in him to get us there.