Being Sick is the Worst

 Man, being sick is the worst! Try and establish any sort of rhythm with work, family, exercise, etc. and then get some cold or severe allergies and just throw it all out the window. That's one of the excuses why I wrote this later than normal (not that anyone is eagerly anticipating my thoughts, except those who write our Life Group curriculum)! 

Jesus gives a call for anyone who would become his disciple, and then the way Luke retells the story, there are three 'whoever does not...' cannot be my disciple. I called these 'disciple doesn't's' (and always am guessing how many apostrophe's I should include). 

A disciple doesn't love anyone more than Jesus.

A disciple doesn't ignore the cross they are to carry. 

A disciple doesn't cling to that which they possess.

Three interesting concepts, but they're all around three really significant areas of our lives. Relationships, self/power, and possessions. I'm not sure if there's anything else that slips through those three large categories, especially if you interpret them broadly. 

Jesus is painting a clear picture that if we are to follow Him, to be His disciples, we're to reorient how we live every aspect of our lives. He is the most important relationship, He is the authority, and all we possess is His. 

What I think I failed to communicate in preaching this passage is to encourage! All of my main points were around the fact that this call is incredibly hard, none of us will ever perfect it, and it doesn't involve the common notion of health, wealth and prosperity that circulates our nation as the all important goal. 

But what I've percolated on for a bit now (that's one of my favorite words for two reasons... I really love percolating on ideas, driving around with the radio off just thinking, mulling it over... second reason is bc I love coffee and just bought a camping percolator so I can have fresh coffee when we camp!)... where was I? 

What I've percolated on for a bit now is that if Jesus is God, and if God is the Creator of the Universe (including us) and the only all-wise, all-powerful, eternal, fully loving and fully just and fully merciful and fully gracious entity... then these three arenas of life only make sense if they are lived out as Jesus calls us to in Luke 14. 

If God is who God says He is, we are absurd to not love Him so exceedingly, it makes every other relationship look like hate. 

If God is the King over every King, the King's King (I love saying it that way), then we have no authority and we are only admitting we're not in charge as we carry our cross as a statement of fact, not something we can 'choose'. 

If God does own all things - cattle, hills, breath, gold, silver, etc. then us not 'clinging' to our possessions is more of a statement, again, of reality as we can't cling to them anyways. He gives and He takes away. He sends rain and withholds it. He causes the Sun to rise. 

I asked my son yesterday what reasons he could come up with for people not believing in God. Other than other faiths who worship a different deity, the basic answer was that most people don't believe in God, or order their lives around Him, or ... do the three things listed here (hate, carry, cling) because they want to live life how they see fit. I think he's right. 

But if only we could all see (Christians, Christians in name only, Atheists, other theists, alike) that God is God, there is no other - we would be less challenged by a passage like this, and more of a crowd of head-nodding as we agree to the reality that Jesus is portraying.