Luke 14
In chapter fourteen, Jesus goes on the offensive. By the time we get to the end, Jesus has said some seriously offensive things, and offended an awful lot of people.
The first audience is a crew, I presume, of prominent and respectable religious men. Their fundamental problem is pride, and Jesus wastes no time deconstructing their view of themselves. He instructs them to take the lowest places at the feast. At first brush this makes sense; let the host call you up to the better place, rather than ask you to move down for another guest. But what if the seats fill up, and the host doesn’t give you another seat? Picking the worst seat every time isn’t good for your self-esteem, and the conversation is pretty dull down at that end of the table.
I follow this reasoning all the time. Serve others, but don’t be a doormat. Give generously, but don’t be stupid. Make sure things are fair. And to me, together with the group with whom he was eating, Jesus says, “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
I’ve found that taking the lowest seat at a table, figuratively speaking, is not especially difficult for me. But if I end up at the bottom every time, it starts to be a real drag. I like serving quietly, but I want someone to notice. A war goes on in my head, sometimes quietly, sometimes violently, between the part that just wants to do right, and the part that wants to be noticed for doing right. That latter part is pride, and it has to die.
Some time later, Luke notes that “Large crowds were traveling with Jesus”. Jesus turns to them and says,
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters - yes, even his own life - he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
Maybe Jesus should have talked with a church growth consultant first, because those are not words that bring people in. Lest we forget, “carry his cross” does not mean that we shoulder some difficult burden as service to Christ. In Roman times, people who had crosses to carry were universally nailed to them and were dead shortly thereafter.
Then he launches into a series of examples about building towers and marshaling troops, making the point that every activity has a cost, and that to embark on a mission without knowing the cost is disastrous. His point here is not to dare his listeners and ask, “do you have what it takes?” The question is whether they have counted the cost, whether they are willing to pay the price, because the price is… everything. “Any of you who does not give up everything he has”, Jesus concludes, “cannot be my disciple.”
This audience, like the first, has a problem with pride. The latter group’s pride is not the pompous, self-aggrandizing pride we associate with the first group; it’s a more subtle pride of clinging to self-worth and refusing to shoulder one’s cross. That pride is all too alive in me, and Christ must weed it out of my heart if he is to reign there.
