Text of Sunday Sermon

Luke 14:25-33

Greater Than All Other Loves

James Sledge                                                  September 5, 2010

Not being from Ohio, I sometimes find the obsession with all things Buckeye a bit much.  And so I don’t usually mention OSU in sermons.  But I think that the experience of having a favorite sports team may be of some help in understanding what Jesus says to us today.

When we have a favorite team, say the Buckeyes, we feel affection and loyalty for that team.  Perhaps it’s because we grew up in a family that always supported that team.  Maybe we went to school there.  Maybe we just liked the colors of their uniforms.  But whatever lies behind our affection and loyalty, we support and pull for our team.  We cheer when they are winning and we suffer when they lose, which accounts for why winning teams tend to have more fans that losing ones. Who wants to suffer all the time?

But there is a counterpart to the affection, love, and zeal we feel for our team.  There is a corresponding lack of affection and love for their opponents.  A few Buckeye fans take this to ridiculous and sometimes unhealthy levels, but even the most modest, polite fan knows that pulling for your own team means pulling against the other.  You don’t actually have to hate the other team, but you certainly have to like them less than you do your own.

Jesus says something similar when he talks about what it takes to follow him. 
When we decide that we want to be his disciples, that we will give our loyalty to him, Jesus insists that it has an impact on all our other loyalties. 

Now admittedly Jesus’ words about hating father and mother come across a little like the most rabid sort of Buckeye speaking about Michigan.  But that is mostly because something gets lost in rendering those words in English.  The word in Luke’s gospel can mean “hate,” but in the hyperbole filled style of Middle Eastern speech, this is actually an emphatic way of saying to love the other less.  Jesus does not say that we need to feel genuine hate for our families or our own lives.  Rather he says that following him requires all those other things to take a back seat to loving Jesus.  If there is any sort of conflict, any need to choose between the two, we have to pull for Jesus ahead of all others.

There may be a way to speak of this that doesn’t sound quite so negative.  When a person grows up, falls in love, and gets married, that demands some adjustments in relationships that may have previously been the center of someone’s life.  This usually happens so naturally that we scarcely take notice of it.  But leaving home and marrying means a certain severing of ties and loyalties to one’s parents.  For many of us this didn’t involve any conflict or anything resembling hate, but nonetheless, our primary loyalty shifted to our spouse. 

And if you never thought about how absolutely necessary this shift is for a marriage to work, simply recall that marriage most all of us have seen where this shift didn’t happen.  Such marriages sometimes produce letters to Dear Abby complaining about how his or her relationship with Momma is still number one.  When a person can never say “No” to a parent for the sake of a spouse, that marriage is destined for serious trouble.

As I said, most of us know this almost instinctively.  Only the most callous, maladjusted sort would get married and insist on still dating old girlfriends.  When you get married, when you fall in love, they are new ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends.  The new relationship demands the giving up of some things if it is to work.

And speaking of giving up some things, there’s no avoiding the topic of money.  Money is often cited as the number one factor in failed marriages.  Sometimes this is simply a matter of money trouble causing so much stress that the strain damaged the marriage.  But more often the issue is how money is spent.  Sometimes a spouse is unwilling to give up, or at least cut back on, an expensive hobby or expensive tastes for the sake of the marriage.  When spouses are unable to put the needs of the relationship or partner ahead of their own, that makes a long marriage very unlikely.

Jesus speaks in much the same way.  Money and things are a huge barrier to walking with him. No doubt many of you have heard that Jesus speaks more on the problem of money and possessions than he does any other topic.  But we Christians have had a very long time to massage Jesus’ words, to domesticate them and cage them in a religion that often seems to be more about morality and right beliefs than it is about what Jesus actually said. 

But the Bible tells us that before Jesus’ followers were ever called Christians, they were known as people of The Way.  In other words, their identity was shaped more by the manner in which they lived than by the set of beliefs they proclaimed.

Many of us in the Church desperately need to rediscover this.  We need to return to the roots of the faith, to reengage in The Way Jesus shows us, a life shaped and ordered by loving God and loving neighbor, a life than is drawn deeper and deeper into the life of God, a life that transforms all our other relationships and loyalties.

I was in my mid-thirties when I had the first stirrings of what might be termed a mature faith.  And only in the last few years have I begun to discover a deepening relationship with God that can, for brief moments, dwell in the embrace of divine love.  And all along the way, the need for my love of Jesus, my love of God to supersede other loves has been a challenge.  When I went to seminary at age 35, I had a career.  Shawn and I had a house payment and two little girls.  Questions about ultimate loyalties, about loving Jesus more and loving others less were not abstract theological questions.

As with all relationships, I still have to work at this.  Sometimes when I am wrestling with what God is calling me to do, I realize that my pleas to God for guidance, for direction, contain an unspoken “as long as it doesn’t cost me anything, as it includes a good salary and a nice location.”  Sometimes my own comfortable, familiar life and routines make it difficult to risk falling too in love with Jesus.

What about your walk with Jesus, your life in God?  Where does it fit in the various loves and loyalties of your life?  Does it look anything like what Jesus asks?  The love and loyalty Jesus demands is no petty jealousy.  It is nothing less than the desire that each of us discover the joy of the deepest, most wonderful love we have ever known.  Jesus is speaking the language of a lover, and so our own experiences of love may help us here.

When you give of your time doing what you think Jesus wants you to do, when you put your money in the offering plate, what lies behind that?  Are these obligations like community service hours now required by most high schools?  Are they your share of making sure we keep the lights turned on and salaries paid here at the church?  Or are they the joyful experience of one lover giving something precious to the other?

If you’ve ever fallen deeply and passionately in love, you already have a pretty good sense of what Jesus is talking about when he speaks of loving everything else less.  But if you’ve never experienced falling in love with Jesus, I don’t know that someone can preach you into that, anymore than they could preach you into falling in love with anyone.  It will help if you spend time each day reading and reflecting on Scripture.  It will help if you spend time in places where Jesus can be found, among the needy, the sick, those needing comfort, acceptance, hope, or a kind word.  It will help if you begin to shape your life to be more like his.  But in the end, it will only happen when you open yourself, risk yourself, to the passionate love Jesus already has for you.