The Courage to Commit – Luke 14:25-33

In the beginning of chapter 14, we find Jesus being challenged by a Pharisee over the issue of keeping the Sabbath holy.  The religious leaders had spent much time trying to solve the issue of how to honour the commitment to keep the Sabbath holy and at the same time showing love and compassion for their neighbours and themselves.  They were concerned that they would not offend God by making a mistake.

In an attempt to show Jesus to not be a true teacher of the Law of God, they brought a man with a disease to the place where Jesus was dining on a Sabbath.  Naturally compassion for the man’s condition led Jesus to heal him. But this was against everything that the religious leaders were teaching people to believe. Now Jesus   sincerely believed that it was not against the Law of God to relieve the suffering of someone who crossed your path regardless of which day of the week it was. And so the challenge he put to those who were there was to ask themselves what they would do if a child of theirs were to fall down a well on the Sabbath Day. Would they pull the child out or leave the child until the next day?  What parent would be so hard-hearted as to let their child suffer for the sake of the Law.    But to pull the child out on the Sabbath would have brought   condemnation from the religious leaders and probably would have led to the person being banned from the temple.  In the religious climate of the day, those listening to Jesus were in a no-win situation. Their desire to do everything by the book had trapped them.  They could not act from their hearts but only from their heads.  And as much as they would have wanted to follow Jesus’ lead, their fear of condemnation from others in the community caused them to be silent and probably pray that a situation such as Jesus described would never come to pass.

We need to remember that while Jesus came to fulfil the Law and the Prophets, his understanding of what that meant was different than that being taught by the religious leaders of the day.  Jesus’ teaching went beyond the established letter of the Law. Jesus was reminding the people of the words of the prophets who longed for a time when the word of God would be written on the hearts of the people and not just on tablets or doorposts. Jesus was echoing the words of the prophet Micah who declared what the true sacrifice was to be: To do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8).

The people always believed that God had created them as a union of body, mind and spirit. They were always encouraged to love God with all their mind, all their heart and all their understanding; but that love had become truncated by a book of rules.  Now rules are good to provide structure and guidance but when rules bring harm, the rules need to be re-examined.  The rules under which the people of God were living in Jesus’ day had caused them to lose sight of the heart of God and they had failed to be led by the Spirit of God.  They had frozen God in time and failed to recognize that their God was a living God.

The message of God coming through Jesus was one that challenged   what they understood was expected of those who declared themselves to be believers. Those who chose to listen to Jesus and started to follow the way that he was teaching were finding themselves in conflict with the religious authorities but also in conflict with others in their social circles – family and friends

Sometimes we think that this was just a situation that occurred in that time but this conflict continues even today.   The decision to be a believer, the decision to follow the teaching of Jesus, the decision to be guided in our daily life by the Spirit of God in this time requires a courage that has not been seen for a long time – at least not in our country.  Growing up in the 1960s, it was rare to encounter someone who did not belong to a faith community.   To not go to church on a Sunday was the exception, not the rule.  Even if there was something better to do or even if it wasn’t the most exciting place to be, you went.  In the school system, in the workplace, in the fabric of society, there was less diversity of thought or belief.

But today things are very different.  There is a greater diversity in terms of belief systems and ways of approaching life.  There is a greater openness to living with and alongside different ways of ordering society and life.  Today faith and following a belief system is not something that everyone follows and certainly not in the same homogeneous way.

To be a believer in God as revealed in Jesus Christ requires courage because that decision will no doubt lead us to make choices that will be challenging to others in our community, social circle or family. The freedom we cherish to believe in God and to worship God will cause us to have disagreements with others.  And as much as we would welcome an open dialogue with those who find their truth in other belief systems, we will run into people whose tolerance for our faith is limited or non-existent.  We may even get to a point in our society where our belief system is deemed unacceptable by the society at large.

The question that this will raise for us is whether or not we are prepared to continue to be faithful, whether or not we are prepared to suffer for our faith.  As much as we may find the opposition to Jesus ridiculous, we need to remember that Jesus’ teaching was challenging for the religious leaders of that day and caused some of them to question everything they had been taught by the elders of previous generations.

Jesus’ instruction to the people of that day to think carefully about the cost of following him and his teaching was a caution to be aware that making the decision to be a disciple of Jesus was not something to be lightly considered. Following the teachings of Jesus  was not   something that you did today but abandoned when a conflict arose, it was something that you committed to body, mind and soul for the rest of your life.

Are we prepared to follow God no matter what? Would we be prepared to sacrifice everything for the sake of the truth that God has shared with us? Would we turn from family, friends, even the loss of a job for the sake of our faith?  These are questions that we need to ask ourselves every day as we strive to follow Jesus.

AMEN