What does this story tell you about your story and the story of Jesus that are different than you assumed?
by Doug Pagitt
Gospel Reading: Luke 14: 25-33
For Sunday, September 5, 2010: Year C - Ordinary 23
Most everything about this Gospel story strikes me uncomfortably.
Pushing Them Away?
First, it sounds like Jesus wants to thin the crowd. Why else would the story be set up with “Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said...”? It seems to me that the opening salvo from Luke is letting us know that Jesus wanted a smaller crowed than he currently had.
I want a faith that is bringing people in, not pushing them away. I want Jesus to “welcome the little children” and all others, not tell people they should go away.
Bad Examples?
Secondly, I don’t like the examples Jesus uses to compare and contrast with “discipleship." He seems to be saying that these two men have it right and that Jesus’ followers are to be more like them.
You see, in our day building developers and war planners are not moral standard bearers. I have a hard time taking building practices and accounting as the picture of my personal faith choices. I have no empathy for the struggle of a king who wants to go to war and needs to make sure that he has enough resources to overcome the enemy.
I know that I am suppose to be asking myself what I am willing to give-up or willing to carry as a burden from this story -- at least that is how it has been explained to me dozens of times in the last 25 years.
Getting Unstuck
Unfortunately, I get stuck on the details of the setting.
Telling people not to follow, managing money and employees, and becoming more like a warmonger are the attributes I feel I need to leave behind in order to follow Jesus. Those are the crosses I need to bear. And the rationale Jesus uses for this consideration is that one will be humiliated: “everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'”
If it is true, as I have heard, that in Jesus' day to leave one's family was to leave one's system of self-preservation and support, then managing my own image, being well organized for building and fighting is the kind of self-reliance I need to leave behind. Or is it?
The Hardest Question
What does this story tell you about your story and the story of Jesus that are perhaps different than you assumed?
When it comes to these sorta-formal, non-personal, psueo-professional introductions Doug likes to refer to himself self as a social and theological entrepreneur (something he would never do if you were to meet in person). Doug is the founder of Solomon's Porch -a holistic missional Christian community in Minneapolis. Www.solomonsporch.com. For more on Doug and his latest book, Church in the Inventive Age (sparkhouse press, 2010), check out http://dougpagitt.com/.
