Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 7, 2025

Sermon

Rocky Supinger
Senior Associate Pastor

Psalm 1
Luke 14:25–33

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I was teaching Confirmation at the church I served in California (if you’re not familiar, Confirmation is a process that invites young people — eighth graders here, but these were ninth graders — who were baptized as infants or who come to church because of their parents’ faith to make their own profession of faith and become active members of the church), and I really freaked out a group of students. 

Here’s how I did it: I told them what being a member of the church involved. 

Since Confirmation involves deciding if you’re going to say “yes” to faith for yourself and become an active church member, I thought it important to discuss what church members actually do. 

Conveniently, there is a part of our Book of Order (which is the part of our denomination’s constitution that describes how our church is ordered and why) that describes “The Ministry of Members,” and I thought it would be a simple exercise just to read that to them and then, you know, to discuss it. 

So I read to them that 

Membership in the Church of Jesus Christ is a joy and a privilege. It is also a commitment to participate in Christ’s mission. A faithful member bears witness to God’s love and grace and promises to be involved responsibly in the ministry of Christ’s Church.

So far so good. But there’s more: 

Such involvement includes:

proclaiming the good news in word and deed,

taking part in the common life and worship of a congregation,

lifting one another up in prayer, mutual concern, and active support,

studying Scripture and the issues of Christian faith and life,

supporting the ministry of the church through the giving of money, time, and

talents,

demonstrating a new quality of life within and through the church,

responding to God’s activity in the world through service to others,

living responsibly in the personal, family, vocational, political, cultural, and social

relationships of life,

working in the world for peace, justice, freedom, and human fulfillment,

caring for God’s creation,

participating in the governing responsibilities of the church, and

reviewing and evaluating regularly the integrity of one’s membership, and considering ways in which one’s participation in the worship and service of the church may be increased and made more meaningful.

And then I looked up at them, and their faces were, like, white. And I think I asked something like, “Well, guys, which part of the ministry of membership most speaks to you?”

Nobody answered for several seconds, and then one of them timidly answered, “We’re going to have to do all of that?”

I could see the terror in their eyes, and I immediately started to reassure them that this is descriptive; it’s not a checklist. Nobody is going to grade them on this. 

But the damage was done. Half of those kids chose a few weeks later on Confirmation Sunday that they could not become active members of the church. 

As I’ve thought about those ninth graders over the past several years, I’ve wondered if their reservations about their ability to do what active church members do weren’t more faithful than my efforts to reassure them about it. 

Jesus’ words to the large crowds traveling with him in our Gospel story for today really have me wondering about that. 

See, Jesus has massive crowds traveling with him. He is on a mission to Jerusalem, the religious and political capital of the world, and excitement is building by the day about what he’s going to do when he gets there. 

But instead of signing all of these fellow travelers up for membership in his movement, recording their names and padding the membership rolls with their statistics, he turns around and tells them that they need to think real carefully about whether or not they can actually be his disciples. 

It doesn’t seem like a great church growth strategy, does it? To discourage eager followers by suggesting that they probably can’t handle being part of this, to frontload the sales pitch with cross bearing, of all things. 

Jesus is like the professor you hear about in anecdotes who distributes on the first day of the semester a class syllabus that is unreasonably rigorous, with hundreds of pages of reading assigned each week and multiple research papers — just to get students to drop the class so there will be fewer of them in the lecture hall and fewer papers to grade. 

Jesus can see the difference between spectators and disciples. 

Spectators are drawn to Jesus by spectacle, fascinated by the story he’s telling, emboldened by the way he’s challenging the religious and the political status quo. They’re moved, and they’re curious. They’re inspired, and they’re along to see what Jesus does next. 

Jesus loves spectators, but he’s calling disciples. 

Disciples leave things behind. Disciples get sent out to share in Jesus’ ministry. Disciples teach and heal and feed people. They announce the reign of God to power. Disciples try to be like Jesus, not just to watch him from a distance with interest. 

And that means they struggle and suffer like Jesus. Because disciples try to love like Jesus, they lose like Jesus. 

Jesus might attract spectators, but he calls disciples. And he wants disciples to consider what they’re signing up for. 

We might start by considering that business about hating your family. If to be Jesus’ disciple means you have to hate your family and even hate your own life, who wants to be for that?

Now before you go overreacting, let me explain about the word hate in this passage. See, I went to a seminary where I studied New Testament Greek, so I can assure you that the Greek word for hate here, “misei,” literally means “hate.” It means hate. 

But we have to guard against what one commentator called an “unimaginative literalism” here, and we have to recognize the hyperbole involved in Jesus’ use of the word hate. 

It’s not that Jesus wants us to detest our families, much less to harm them. But for a disciple, love of family is refracted through the lens of love for Jesus. 

See, in Jesus’ time, a person’s highest duty was to their family. Your faith and your family were inseparable; “honor your father and mother” is one of the Ten Commandments, after all. 

Families are complicated, I know, and some of your experiences with your families might not make the idea of hating them all that difficult. It might even make it attractive. 

Let me suggest, though, that whatever our relationship with our family is like, being Jesus’ disciple reorients our relationship to them, and all our relationships. 

Even the relationships that would seem to be the most important determinants of our identity and our purpose — even our relationship to our own plans and ambitions — get reframed by discipleship. 

So I don’t hate my parents. But I don’t live where my parents live. 

I’ve chosen not to, because, in part, trying to follow Jesus has guided where I’ve chosen to live. 

We can love Jesus and love our families at the same time.

Sometimes. 

Other times we may face a choice between our love for Jesus and our love for our family. 

Because Jesus also tells us to love our enemies, and sometimes our family might have us fight enemies. 

Jesus tells us to forgive those who sin against us, but sometimes a family might train us to nurse a generational grudge against those who have harmed and dishonored the family name. 

Jesus tells us to judge not lest we be judged, but a family might train us in all the ways our family is superior to some of those other families. 

When we follow Jesus, we may well be presented with a choice between our commitment to being his disciple and being a dutiful daughter or son, parent or spouse or sibling. 

That’s quite a lot to carry. You might wonder if you can even do it. 

To be a disciple of Jesus is to walk in the way that Jesus walks, a way of humble service to those in need and denial of one’s self as the center of one’s identity and purpose. It is, in the expression that Jesus uses more than once, to carry one’s own cross daily. 

We are all called to be disciples of Jesus. I believe that. I believe Jesus’ call to be his disciple and participate with him in inaugurating the liberating, bondage-breaking reign of God’s justice in the world is for everyone, regardless of age or ethnicity or upbringing or anything else. 

Everyone. 

But I also get the sense that being Jesus’ disciple is not for everyone. At least not all the time. 

Because Jesus says, “Follow me,” and this one says, “First let me go and bury my father.” 

Jesus says, “Follow me,” and this one says, “But let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 

Jesus says, “Follow me,” and another one says “I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it.”

Maybe we can’t be Jesus’ disciple, at least not all the time. He seems to want us to think on that before we sign up. 

I spent a couple of days with my parents last week. They go to a little Baptist church, and my dad is a Deacon (more like what we call an Elder). Sitting in the living room last Friday afternoon, my dad asks me out of nowhere, “Do you ever get, like, weird people in your church?”

I said, “You mean apart from me?”

“No,” he said. “I mean people like …” and then he tells me a story about a family who showed up as visitors at their church and got really involved right away. 

Not just Sunday worship every week but the Sunday night service and potluck, the Wednesday night Bible Study, Saturday morning men’s group — practically everything a person could possibly become involved in. And then … nothing. They stopped coming to everything. 

After a few weeks Dad calls in his capacity as a Deacon to ask where they’ve been and if everything is OK. They say, yeah, everything is fine. They’re just really busy. They never show back up again and future calls aren’t returned. 

I watch his face as he tells me this story, and it’s just full of confusion. 

Jesus refers three times in this passage to those who cannot be his disciple. It doesn’t mean they won’t be allowed to. It means they can’t. 

Because you can’t carry a cross if your arms are already full. 

“Can’t” is the native language of discipleship. Jesus is not one for the power of positive thinking; the word not appears in every single verse of this scripture, twice in some of them. Cannot, does not, not able, will not — not, not, not. 

The Gospels are the story of all the things disciples can’t do. They can’t understand his parables, can’t heal people, can’t handle Jesus’ suffering, can’t stay awake with him, can’t stay by him, can’t even tell the truth about knowing him and being one of his followers. 

Discipleship is the experience of being unable to be Jesus’ disciple and being called by Jesus anyway, again and again and again. This is what sacraments are all about. 

When we are baptized, we are baptized, to use the Apostle Paul’s phrase, “into Christ’s death, buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead ... so we also might walk in newness of life.”

And when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper — Communion — we do so to remember Jesus, who carried his cross like a common criminal all the way to Golgotha. 

The communion we experience is based not on our ability to do all the things we know we should do for God in the face of temptation and divided loyalties and the daily onslaught of the abusive hubris of the powerful deployed against the vulnerable and the marginalized. 

No, our communion is based on what we are not able to do but that God is able to do through us. So we trust that the Lord meets us at this table to feed us with what faith we lack, to strengthen our service with the bread of his weakness and the cup of his suffering, so that we might walk in newness of life. 

Today, tomorrow, and come what may.

Let us pray. 

Lord God, by the power of your Spirit, give us strength to live out the message we have heard today. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church