Sermon Tone Analysis
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Hearing the Call … the Cost
LUKE 14:25-35
9 October 2022
Rev’d Chris Johnson
This morning we come to the third sermon in our series in Luke’s Gospel on Hearing the Call
and our title today – ‘The Cost of the Call’.
One of the things you have to say about Jesus is
that he spoke the truth forthrightly without any sugar coating.
He came proclaiming the
good news of the Kingdom, and it is indeed good news, but He wasn't afraid to talk about
the cost of accepting the good news and joining the Kingdom.
Most organisations these days are guided by public relations and marketing departments
carefully crafting their communication to emphasise all the positives and dismissing any
negatives.
Can you imagine a politician sacking their public relations department and addressing a
crowd exactly as it is, “If you vote for me there is going to be higher taxes to pay for all my
promises.
The industry you're working in is not my priority and you may lose your job.
And
what's more I want you to join my political party to achieve this great vision.
You will have
to leave your family and friends and go wherever the party sends you until we have won
victory throughout the land.
-How many people would join the cause?
-How many people would vote for that politician?
But isn't that what Jesus is asking people who want to join his movement?
Jesus is saying it'll
cost you everything.
You have to be prepared to leave family, hate your own life, and carry a
cross.
And back in those days a cross wasn't just a nice piece of jewellery it was a cruel
means of torture and execution.
Jesus was asking people who wanted to follow him to lay it
all on the line.
But imagine for a moment, rather than a politician calling for people to deny themselves;
it was the leader of a great expedition.
Imagine a remote village in the Highlands has been
struck by a terrible earthquake.
People's homes have been destroyed, many have died and
most of the survivors are suffering terrible injuries.
Food supplies are dangerously low.
The
people need help.
The earthquake has made the track into the village extremely dangerous.
The expedition
has to forage its way along where the track used to be, to bring food and shelter and
medical aid to the villagers cut off from the rest of the world.
The leader announces to the
volunteers, “If you want to come you will have to travel light so that we have maximum
provisions for the villagers.
What’s left of the track is very steep and dangerous, and it is
likely not all of us will return.
Write your last words to your loved ones and post them home
now.
Are you up for the challenge?
There's no time to delay, come follow me and let's save
these poor villagers before it's too late.”
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In that circumstance we can understand the call to commitment.
We can understand the
need to count the cost and to be ready for sacrifice.
Jesus of course is much more like this second scenario than the first.
He is proclaiming a
wonderful Kingdom in which people are saved,
-saved from the ravages of sin,
-saved from the pangs of death,
-where no one has to feel threatened anymore, or be victimised, or go without, or suffer in
any way.
-A place of God's Shalom, God's peace.
But Jesus is saying there is a cost to joining this Kingdom, joining his movement.
You have to
put him first in everything, including family.
Jesus in fact uses the very strong language of
“hating family” compared to our allegiance to him.
The Jewish rabbis had a tradition of using exaggerated language in order to make a point,
and that's what Jesus is doing here.
In other places Jesus taught people to honour their
Father and Mother.
And parents should love their children.
In the normal course of life this
is the right thing to do.
There will be crunch times, however, when you have to pray hard
and make a choice.
A Christian family contemplating missionary service has to count the cost of moving away
from parents and taking grandchildren to places where they won't see their grandparents so
often.
I'm sure the Collings family had to carefully weigh that up when they accepted the
call to Moranbah, when they had many family in Sydney.
Or likewise with the Lovell family
hearing the call to serve at the George Whitfield College in South Africa when they have so
many family and friends here in Australia.
Or Margie Grainger serving in Thailand.
There is a
cost for her but we are also aware of the cost for Phil and Margaret with their daughter so
far away.
I also think of the horrible circumstances in so many countries around the world at the
moment where Christians are martyred.
In many cases these people have the opportunity
to renounce their Christian faith, embrace the faith of their attackers, and they could go
back to their families.
They choose to hold on to their faith in Jesus Christ.
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