Luke 14:25-33
25Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26"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. 27And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
28"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? 29For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, 30saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'
31"Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.
Introduction
Many years ago I led a family to Christ in a mission campaign.
This poor family had few children attending school far away from their village.
Every morning the local authority will send a school bus to pick them and other children to school for free.
When the authority found that this family embraced Christian faith, they began to change their own rules by charging them bus fares.
Eventually the family was threatened to pay bus fares or to give up Christianity!
When I heard that the parents decided to hold on to the Christian faith and gave up education because they have no money to pay bus fares, I just could not control my tears.
In the same village, many Christians faced similar situations.
They were bullied and persecuted in one way or another.
However those hardships did not stop them from coming to the Lord.
Neither those difficulties stop us preaching the gospel to them.
In order to help these new Christians, we bought a van and sent a Church worker to bring them to school and even gave them free tuitions.
Further on we built a wooden church for them.
The story did not stop there.
Months later, the wooden church was being torn down by anti-Christian mobs.
These mobs came from other villages belong to the faith of the majority.
After much prayer, we decided to bring this issue to the higher authority through Christian organisations.
Thank God after some months, a local court summoned these mobs to recompense the church double the building cost.
Eventually we rebuilt the church with bricks instead of a wooden one like the former.
These things happened in the villages of the native people, the aborigines in Malaysian Peninsular.
I can tell you stories after stories about how much cost some people had to pay in order to follow Christ.
1. Message Today
In today’s gospel reading, we see the challenges ahead of those who wish to follow Christ.
These challenges given by Christ were not exclusively few but much to do with the principles lie behind.
a. Firstly, Jesus said you must leave your family in order to follow him.
During the time of Jesus’ ministry, the disciples did not feel the tension or smell anything about persecution.
But Jesus forewarned them the time would come where there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three.
They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. (Luke 12:52-53).
The leaving from families became not a voluntary action but many a times were helpless decisions to be made.
I knew of a Chinese brother who was imprisoned for at least 3 times because of his faith in Christ.
During one of his imprisonments, the police broke his knees.
The church members took him home and prayed for him.
He was miraculously healed 3 months later.
When I met him in a trip in China, he told me that he had been away from home for years only to escape more persecution from the police.
He had to run from one place to another and did not see his family for years.
Many such stories are taking place in the remote areas of China and other countries where Christianity is seem to be a threat to the authorities or people of other faiths.
b. Secondly, Jesus said that you must love him more than anyone or anything else.
We should not misunderstand that Jesus wants us to be hateful to our dear ones.
Here is a way of expressing the contrast of different standard of love.
The love we love Christ should supersede everything and comparatively so much so that your love towards others including your dear ones is much out bitten.
Loving Christ does not mean the abandonment of affection with people.
Instead, it is a paradox while a person embraces the love of Christ while abandoning the love of all others, he or she would embrace much more love than before.
Here is the example of the Apostle Paul.
He loved Christ so much and considered all things as rubbish. (Phil 3:8)
At the end, Paul gained more friendship than ever.
Look at the friendship between Paul and Philemon and Onesimus.
Onesimus was once useless to both Philemon and Paul.
But then he became useful. (Philemon 11).
It is believed that Onesimus was a ran away slave to Philemon.
He transgressed against Philemon and fled to the site of Paul’s imprisonment to escape punishment for a theft he had committed.
He then heard the Gospel from Paul and converted to Christ.
Paul urged Philemon to reconcile with Onesimus.
That showed the strong bond of love within the Christian faith.
The Chinese brother I met more about 15 years ago has been faithful preaching the gospel to hundreds of people.
Together with other faithful workers of the Lord, they formed another huge family of Christ in gospel action.
This is the paradox: you gave up and therefore you embraced.
c. Thirdly, carry your cross and follow Christ.
Two issues were emphasised here.
One is to carry a cross.
That denotes a cost to be counted.
Secondly is to carry your own cross.
No one should let down his own cross nor should anyone carry someone else crosses.
Each person has his own cross to carry.
A story was told about a man who complained about his cross and wanted to have a change.
With permission he chose a lighter and shorter cross for himself.
In his heavenward route there comes a gap where he needs to use his cross as a bridge to cross over.
The real test comes by as he realised that cross he chose was too short and could not reach the other end of the gap.
In his furious, there comes the angel bringing the right cross for him.
This original cross finally enabled him to cross over.
This is an analogy about carrying our own cross, not others’.
2. What are the lessons?
How can we Australian Christians to be disciples of Christ?
What does it mean to us to hate our family in order to follow Christ?
We are not in the first century of Christendom where believers were persecuted by the Jews and Romans.
Neither are we like the Christian brothers and sisters in many third world countries facing different degrees and levels of persecutions.
Somehow the message is clear.
Whether we like it or not, we are in an era where the Christian faith is fading away due to secularism.
Sometimes we loved our cultures so much and we dare not to “hate” them.
Sometimes we are so protective to our social and political behaviours and we wish not to stand up and make our voices heard.
Bills against Christian ethics and biblical teachings have been passing by the authorities, one by one and bit by bit.
The rising of humanism overshadowed the authority of God’s word.
As Paul described, “…the secret power of lawlessness is already at work…” (2 Thess 2:7).
People are getting use to all these lawlessness and don’t feel the urgency.
That is to say we are comfortably enjoy our lives and wish not to be disturbed and so therefore would not disturb others.
The end result of such attitudes is only one - dropped dead.
Let us count the cost and follow Christ.
Do not think that you are able to continue to survive in your comfort zones.
If you do not shake the world, the world is going to shake you.
Christchurch NZ had severe earthquake early morning yesterday.
Thank God there was no serious casualty.
But let us think in terms of the spiritual earthquake in our minds, our families, our societies and the nations.
To stop spiritual earthquake taking place, we need to practice spiritual paradox: shake before you are shaken.
Shake the people around you before you are shaken by them.
Many years ago, when I challenge the church leaders to consider reaching out to some native people groups, the answer from one of the leaders was, “Don’t disturb them!”
He was trying to say, “let them continue to be in their spiritual poverty as well as physical poverty!”
Of course I did not stop there.
Eventually we managed to bring hundreds of people to Christ through our mission campaign.
Conclusion
Cane toads are not welcome in Australia.
I heard documentary of how people kill them by wrapping them in plastic bags and put them into a freezer.
These toads in freezer will not feel pain but lose conscious and died eventually.
Similarly if we put a frog in a pot of water and start boiling it, the frog will not struggle as the water becoming warmer eventually boiled.
Satan has been doing the same tricks to humankinds.
The more we submerge into our so called comfort zones, guess what?
We would be cook unconsciously.
As today is my first Sunday as a rector of St Marks, I would like to challenge you to forget what you are comfortable with and walk with me and straining toward what is ahead, and press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus.
These are familiar words of Paul from Phil 3:13-14.
After much prayer, I intend to reach out to the Chinese working class immigrants in the near future.
This will involve a lot of human and financial resources.
Therefore I covet your prayers and supports in one way or another.
I know you have your own cross to carry.
But if you think you want to walk the way of the cross together with me, you are welcome.
May God grant you strength and courage for his glory and honour.
Amen.
