Pentecost 16 – 4
September 2016 – Year C
Grace to you and
peace from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The text for
this meditation is written in the 14th Chapter of the Gospel
according to St Luke: Verses 25–35:
25 Now great crowds accompanied him,
and he turned and said to them, 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father
and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his
own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down
and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able
to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to
finish.’ 31 Or what
king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and
deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against
him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he
sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all
that he has cannot be my disciple.
34 “Salt is good, but
if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? 35 It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure
pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
In recent
years the religion of Islam has been in the news a lot. One of the sad results of this is that every
so often we hear about honour killings.
Honour killings happen when someone kills a near relative for breaking
some part of Islamic law. For example: A
young member of the Islamic community seeks asylum from Sharia law by
immigrating to the west. The head of the
family, usually the father, comes to the west and kills the youth. The father feels justified because this young
one has rebelled against the teaching of the Koran and deserves to die. Very often the death is the death of a young
woman who had simply adopted the culture of the west by doing such radical
things as getting an education, learning to drive, wearing clothing that
exposed her face to the public: Things that we accept as normal and appropriate.
For
centuries, under Islamic Law, as guided by the Koran, conversion to any other
religion is punishable by death. Some of
the religious refugees from Islam to ‘free world” countries have become ordained
priests and pastors in Christian denominations.
I have had the opportunity to hear presentations by some of these men
who grew up in Islam. They have to be
careful. There are places they cannot go
even in the “Free World” countries. They
have to make sure that they take random routes back and forth from their
churches to their homes. It is not safe
for them to be too predictable. They
have relatives who would consider it an honour to kill them for turning their
back on Islam and taking up Christianity.
Islam is
one of the more extreme religions for persecuting those who convert to other
religions. Never the less, there are
many religions who order their members to cut off all ties to relatives who
convert out of the faith. While the head
of the family will not physically murder the convert for leaving their
religion, they often declare their children dead when they convert to
Christianity. If they live in the same
community, they will treat them like a common stranger when they meet them on
the street. The love of father, mother,
son, or daughter gets replaced by a cold emptiness in such families.
It is
easy to see how Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel apply to people like this. Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and
wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he
cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not
bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” With these words, Jesus taught that we must
be ready to turn our backs on our families in order to remain faithful to
Him. He is saying that the love we have
for our family members should look like hatred when compared to our love for
God. Our love for God may even put our
lives in danger.
When we
look at the history of the Holy Christian Church, we see the blood of the
martyrs spilled on almost every page.
The Holy Spirit inspired the writer of Hebrews to describe the martyrs
with these words. [Hebrews 11:35-38]
Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again
to a better life. Others suffered
mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they
were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats,
destitute, afflicted, mistreated … wandering about in deserts and mountains,
and in dens and caves of the earth.
These martyrs demonstrate their willingness to give up their lives
rather than give up on Jesus.
Whilst most
of us do not have to worry about family members out to kill us because we are
Christians, there are times when our family ties cause friction with our
Christian faith. There are times when
our own family members, rather than respecting our beliefs, will attack
them. They will tempt us to abandon the
teachings of Christ in order to maintain peace in the family.
This goes
straight to the First Commandment: “I am the
LORD your God, ……You shall have no other gods before me.” This is
God basically telling us that we should fear, love, and trust in God above all
things. Anyone or
anything that we love more than we love God is an idol. That includes our father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters; and even our own
life.
Jesus
also said, “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be
my disciple.” Our cross is the
hardship we endure simply because we are faithful to God’s Word. It is the attack that the world mounts
against us simply because we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the
Living God.
The world
hates the Children of God and will use all its resources against us. Sometimes our own family will turn against
us. We must be ready to cut off ties to
father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, rather than
be unfaithful to Jesus. We must be ready
to lose our lives rather than be unfaithful to Him.
The question is: Can you do that? ……..No you say! Well neither can I … I simply don’t have the
resources to conform to Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel. In fact, the parables that Jesus tells after
these statements tell us that we don’t have the resources to carry them
out. Our attempt to surrender all in
order to be faithful is like a man who starts a tower he can’t finish or like a
king with ten thousand men who is facing a king with twenty thousand. The world will overwhelm us if we try to
carry our cross in our own power. We do
not have the power in ourselves to deny our family or our life and follow
Christ. We can’t do it alone.
Fortunately,
we are not alone. The Holy Spirit
inspired the writer of the book of Hebrews to say, [Hebrews 4:15]
“We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses,
but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Jesus is our high priest who experienced the
same attacks that we do and triumphed over them.
Did the
world use Jesus’ family to attack Him?
Listen to the words that the Holy Spirit inspired Mark to write: [Mark
3:20-21] Then [Jesus] went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that
they could not even eat. And when his
family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out
of his mind.” Later on Jesus said, [Mark
3:34-35] “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God, he is my
brother and sister and mother.” Jesus Himself had to deny His own family in
order to remain faithful.
Jesus
Christ was also faithful to His cross.
His cross was not just a metaphor, but the real thing. His death was not just persecution for being
faithful. His death was the sacrifice
that made us part of God’s family. You
see, when Jesus endured His cross, He was making sure that there was one cross
we would never have to endure – the cross we earned with our own sin. Jesus Christ endured the cross of our sin so
that we don’t have to. He took all our
sins onto Himself and paid the debt for those sins. By His faithful suffering and death on the
cross, He triumphed over sin, death, and the power of the devil.
We know
that Jesus successfully defeated His foes because death was not able to hold
Him. He demonstrated His triumph by
rising from the dead and ascending into heaven.
His resurrection and ascension contain the promise that He will return
and raise us from the dead so that we might live with Him forever.
Jesus
offers His triumph to all people through the Holy Spirit’s gift of faith. By faith, the Holy Spirit adopts us into
God’s family. He promises us that we
shall always be together. Before Jesus
ascended to heaven He said, [Matthew 28:20] “Behold, I am with
you always, to the end of the age.” He also said, [Hebrews 13:5] “I
will never leave you nor forsake you.”
His triumph means that He is always by our side. He will be always be with us while we live
here on this earth, and, when our time here is over, we shall live forever with
Him.
Evil has
no conscience. It will attack us with
all its resources. It will attack us
through family and friends – even through our own body. Evil will even try to convince us that we are
in the wrong when we remain faithful to Christ and His teachings. In spite of this, we need not fear, for the
Holy Spirit works and sustains faith in us and works through us to give us the
strength to remain faithful in spite of the world’s persecution – even if it
means we lose family and friends – even if it means death because of our faith.
In the
rite of confirmation, we hear these questions:
Do you intend to hear the Word of
God and receive the Lord’s Supper faithfully?
Do you intend to live according to the Word of God, and in faith, word,
and deed to remain true to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, even to
death? Do you intend to continue
steadfast in this confession and Church and to suffer all, even death, rather
than fall away from it? We never
answer these questions with a simple, “I do,” because we can’t. Instead we answer, “I do, by the grace of
God.” For it is only by the grace of
God that we can be faithful to God even if the world threatens death or our
family and friends ridicule us. By the
grace of God, the Holy Spirit will keep our faith strong. God will be with us here in time and we will
be with Him forever in eternity. Amen
The love
and peace of our Great Triune God that is beyond all human understanding, keep
your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen
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