Luke 14:25-35       “Half-Price Crosses”

     In a jewelry store window of a large shopping center, a sign was posted which read: “Crosses for sale, half-price.”  Think for a moment about the implications of such a sign.  In our culture it means very little to wear a cross.  People wear lots of jewelry these days, including crosses, around their neck, on their fingers, in their ears.  For thousands of people, the cross is just one more popular piece of jewelry without any clear symbolism.  Even when a celebrity or major sports figure wears a cross, who of us automatically presume that they’re making a faith statement?  Perhaps a fashion statement, but not a faith statement. 

     Contrast that with some cultures where today the cross can cost you everything.  In Nepal, for example, where 75 percent of the population is Hindu, there was a congregation of four Christians in his small village when Rajan expressed a faith in Jesus Christ.  After that, however, a persecution campaign encompassed all areas of Rajan’s life, all because he converted to Christianity.  He lost his family.  His neighbors dug up his crops, causing him to lose a whole year’s income.  He was even forced to leave his home and village.  Villagers took every opportunity to make life difficult for Rajan, including fining him 6,000 rupees (about $100, a large sum in Nepal) when some water from his field inadvertently spilled onto a neighbor’s land.  Crosses are not cheap everywhere.

     Jesus said, “If anyone wants to be my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross dally, and follow me.”  In that context, a cross refers to some suffering or sacrifice that you undertake voluntarily out of love for Christ and concern for other people.  Carrying a cross won’t earn you a ticket to heaven.  Those tickets are free gifts from God, paid for by Christ on a cross.  But if you’ve received that free gift of salvation, gratitude will create an inner compulsion to carry crosses for Christ’s sake.

     Now for a challenging question: Where in your life, or mine, is there any cross-bearing?  Where is there any suffering or sacrifice for Christ or other people?

     In today’s Gospel, Jesus is in the latter stage of his three-year earthly ministry.  In fact, he’s on his way to Jerusalem where he will be executed.  Among the general public Jesus is at the height of his popularity.  Great crowds are following him because they’ve seen his miracles and heard his teaching.  Also, they like the way he puts down the self-righteous big-shots.  But Jesus can tell that most of these people don’t understand him at all.  Their loyalty is thin and shaky.  They think he’s headed to a coronation instead of a crucifixion.  They think they’re following a conquering hero; they have no idea that Jesus will be a suffering scapegoat for the world’s sin.

     So, in a heart-to-heart talk with the people, Jesus says, “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.”  We can imagine that people’s jaws dropped and their eyes opened wide and they whispered to each other, “Did he just say what I think he said?”  We need to understand at this point that it was the custom of teachers in the first century to overstate things in order to make a point.  For example, Jesus also said, “If your eye causes you to sin, yank it out.”

     Also, please note that in the Aramaic language which Jesus spoke, the word for “hate” means literally “to love a great deal less than.”  So, Jesus was really saying, “Unless you love me a great deal more than anything or anyone else, you cannot be my disciple.”  In fact, that’s the way the gospel writer Matthew renders this troublesome statement.

     Then Jesus added: “Don’t start anything unless you have first considered the costs and are prepared to meet them.”  He goes on to give a couple of examples.  First, he says, no one builds a watch-tower in a vineyard without first checking to make sure he can afford to buy the materials.  Otherwise, he’ll build half a tower, then run out of materials, and become the laughing-stock in the community.

     In a similar way, no king takes an army out to fight a rival army without first considering whether his army is strong enough to win.  If he isn’t strong enough, he sends his secretary of state to ask for peace terms.  Then Jesus turned to this crowd of fair-weather followers and said, in effect, “Before you continue following me, you better consider whether you’re willing to pay the price.  If you’re just here because you think it’s all fun and games, go home.  If you stick with me, it’ll cost you.”

     In verse 27 we read: “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.”  Crosses involve suffering and sacrifice, and no one likes to suffer or sacrifice.  In 1916, Georgia Tech played a football game against a team from the tiny law school of Cumberland University.  Tech was a powerhouse and rolled over Cumberland by a score of 222 to 0.  In the process the Cumberland players got roughed up pretty badly.  Toward the end of the game, the Cumberland quarterback Ed Edwards fumbled a snap from center.  As the Tech linemen charged, Edwards yelled to his running backs, “pick it up, pick it up.”  The fullback yelled back, “You pick it up; you dropped it.”  Suffering and sacrifice, even for a good cause, are seldom attractive.

     What is your cross?  There are crosses all over just waiting for shoulders to lift them.  Your “Opportunities for Faith Participation” booklet is full of them.  On which crosses are you willing to put your name? 

     The legendary pastor Halford Luccock asked his two granddaughters one year what they wanted for Christmas.  They responded, “Give us a world.”  Puzzled by such a request, he asked their mother what they meant.  She explained that they wanted a globe.  So, that’s what he bought them.  But on Christmas morning when the presents were opened, he could sense that the girls were a little bit disappointed.  One of them said, “We were hoping it would be a lighted world.”  “Oh,” said their granddad, “I can fix that.”  So he took the globe back to the store and traded it in for one with a light inside.  When he gave the lighted globe to the girls, they were thrilled.  Later, Dr. Luccock told a friend about this experience, and then commented, “I learned something from this experience.  I learned that a lighted world costs a lot more.”

     If we want to light up this world for Jesus Christ, it will cost us more, in sacrifice for sure and perhaps in suffering.  But look what it cost our Savior on the cross.  In the words of the old hymn, “Must Jesus bear the cross alone, and all the world go free?  No, there’s a cross for everyone, and there’s a cross for me.”

                                                AMEN