Counting the Cost

After my mom died, we had to move Dad into a facility nearer to us. But that left the house that they had lived in for many years. So, my brothers and sister and I all went to Tennessee to attack Dad’s house, to see if we could get it to the state where it would look presentable to someone who might want to buy it. It was a daunting task. But we chipped away, bit by bit, load by load, five trips to the recycling center in town, four trips to the Resale Shop off the courthouse square, and one big truckload to the dump on the edge of town. At the end of the week, the place was transformed. It looked like a real house instead of the dumping ground it had become. We had a sense of accomplishment, a sense of bringing order out of chaos, a sense of moving forward to the next chapter in all our lives. “Good has been done here,” as Bob the Tomato has been known to say in the Veggie Tale videos we watched with the kids years ago. Good has been done here.

Wait, did I say dumping ground? That’s a bit unfair. I mean, sure it seemed like junk, and a lot of it was junked. But it was more; it was memories, years and years of memories. It was life lived, not just one life — my mom now resting in the arms of her savior or my dad, now unsettled in a new place back in Indiana, whose life had been turned upside down in a matter of days. Yes, they were present in all the detritus of those two from whom we all sprang; but there were more, lines of family back through the years, farther than we could countenance as we sifted through the piles, family we knew in the dim recesses of experience and family we had only speculated about, heard stories about, and even family we didn’t recognize, and couldn’t pin down as belonging to any particular branch. There was family galore, family abundant—some long gone and others lost in the busyness of living a life apart; some a Christmas card acquaintance at best. But family.

Not just family. Those memories included family of a different sort—families of covenant and not blood, of faith and not shared history, except for the history of now, or of at one time. There were representations of churches in many states and eras, groups and structures that jangled dim recognition, and others that rang clearly even through our weary fog. There were representations of gatherings of people from eras long gone, with funny hair and clothes that seem too outdated to be retro. Yet, they were smiling and holding on to one another, closer than people usually are in most places, like they genuinely enjoyed one another’s company, as if they belonged together in a way deeper than shared DNA—as if they would be there for one another when push came to shove, no questions asked.

We didn’t know most of them. At least we didn’t know their names or what church they came from or what era they belonged to. We didn’t know if we were alive when the photos were taken. Yet we knew them. We knew that they had been a part of the church, part of the flock, part of the family of followers, of disciples. Because in addition to the joy, there was a seriousness about those faces. And rightly so.

Then Jesus comes along and tells us to hate our mothers and fathers in order to follow him. Um. Can I go back to cleaning out the house? Why did he say this? Was it because there was a large crowd following him? Did he turn around and get scared by all of them and then think, “What can I do to thin the herd?” Why does Jesus have to make it so hard to follow him? He says, “Follow me,” but we’ve got to leave everything behind to do so. Why? Why can’t we add it to our long list of other interests? Our overfull schedule of appointments and good deeds? Why can’t Jesus be satisfied with giving him what time we have to give? At least that’s something, right? At least we’re giving it a try. When we can. When nothing else is going on. When the kids aren’t in town. When we haven’t been out too late the night before and that dopey pastor put the real worship service at an hour before God gets out of bed! Surely that ought to count for something.

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (14:26). Um. Not going to happen. Let’s be honest here. It just isn’t. At least in the usual way we understand those words and that experience and those emotions. We’re good at hating, frankly. But this list isn’t the one we use to list the objects of our hate. Okay, maybe moments we get angry enough at them. Maybe we know of those whose home experience is so terrifying that hate is the only human response to the abuse and neglect they have received. But that’s not most of us. And it seems to me that there are other places where Jesus tells us to love and care for one another, to forgive over and over, to not condemn, to . . . Well, you get the point. This passage doesn’t jibe with our overall understanding of what Jesus asks us to do. It just doesn’t.

So, we have two possible responses. One is to just pretend we didn’t read it. I know, you smiled at that one, didn’t you? We say, “We can’t do that!” But we do it all the time. We pretend Jesus didn’t say a lot of things that he said. We just focus on the doable stuff, the stuff we like, the stuff that affirms us as we are. And bleep over the unpronounceable words in the larger text. But, and let’s be clear, I’m not advocating that approach. Even though I’m as guilty as any.

This leaves us with response number two: go back to the text and wrestle with it a little while. Maybe there is something there, a hint, a translation error, an editorial gloss we can undo and get back to something that lets us breathe a little bit better. Or, failing that (and believe me, I hunted for a long time for something like that—no luck), we listen again, trying to find some meaning that is escaping us. We wrestle, like Jacob at Jabbok’s Ford, and risk coming away with a limp because we’ve seen the face of God.

Skip ahead. We’ll come back to that sticky verse. The bulk of the passage is two parables about making plans, about counting the cost. One is a king going to war or preparing for a war that is coming and deciding whether he can wage this war or he needs to sue for peace. The other is a construction worker who is building a tower and needs to know whether he has the means to finish it. Jesus is clearly asking the large crowd behind him whether they really want to make this journey, whether they want to fight the battle that is coming, whether they want to build the tower that he wants them to build. Are you in or not in? And let’s be clear, it isn’t going to be a walk in the park. This is a battle for your own and everyone else’s soul; this is nothing less than the construction of the kingdom of God going on within and around you. Are you committed to this transformation? Are you willing to invest the blood, sweat, and tears it is going to take?

“Sure,” we shout, confident souls that we are. At least right now, in this moment, safe and secure from all alarms. But when the going gets tough, then what? When we stumble and fall, then what? When tragedy strikes, then what? That’s what he is asking us to consider. And when we sober up to the reality of the question, we can say, “We want to. But what will it take?” And he’ll answer, “Give up everything. Everything. Every thing. Father, mother, wife, children . . .” Everything is a daunting list. Your own life. Your pride and greed, your gifts and talents, the things that give you joy, and the things that make you roll your eyes and sigh. Everything. Give it up.

You can’t be serious. He can’t be serious. Ah, but he is. Give it up. And follow him. Carry his cross on which hangs father, mother, wife, children, you own life . . . Everything. Here’s what he asks: “Don’t love them with your love; love them with mine. Don’t cling to people or things because they meet your needs or serve you. Receive them as a gift from the one you follow.”

Because we can’t love them like they need to be loved. We can’t even love them like we want to love them. But in his love, we can love the way he loves. Compared to his love working through us, ours is feeble and broken and selfish and temporary and almost looks like hate. So, give that kind of love up. It doesn’t serve. Instead, we can love as he loves. We can see through his eyes; we can serve with his hands. Then when we pick up, in his love, those we call family, we find more than what we thought we had. Then when we begin to build, we might actually finish, even as we are being finished in him.