I can't say I wasn’t warned.

It’s not like no one told me how hard it would be.

Aside from all the horror stories about what it would do to my body, my career, my bank account, my freedom to do as I please, people also warned me about just how vulnerable it would make me…"like having your heart walk around outside your body,” said one.

People told me there was no one right way to do it, but there were millions of wrong ways and that no matter how hard I tried I’d invariably get it wrong at some point.

They said cryptic things like: if you knew how hard it would be you’d never do it, but having done it, you’d never go back.

So of course, I did it anyway.

I had kids.

And they were right. It’s been hard. Good, but hard.

Not only that, the warnings just kept coming. Well meaning older women would come up to me in the midst of endlessly long days when my kids were small and sticky and screamy and it was all I could do not to scream back and tell me to enjoy every minute because they grow up so fast.

Bless their hearts, if they weren’t right.

But the biggest and most cryptic warning of all was that even if I did everything right the best I could hope for is that they’d one day grow up and leave me, and damn if that isn’t true too.

Which is to say that I knew there would be a cost to having children and the cost would be high. But let me tell you, nothing can really prepare you for the moment your kid hugs you one last time and then walks off into the big, wide world without you. Nothing at all.

I thought I’d counted the cost. Some where along the line I must have agreed to pay; checked some box without reading the fine print. But the great well of loss that opened up inside me the moment my George waved goodbye and walked past the security checkpoint line at Logan makes me wonder if we ever really count the cost at all; at least of things we think are a good idea at the time.

Friendships, college, marriage, homeownership, even our pets: all of these are good things. But just because they’re good doesn’t mean they aren’t also hard. Anyone who has ever struggled to repay a student loan, gone to marriage counseling, called a plumber in the middle of the night, or said goodbye to a loved one - furry or otherwise, can tell you that every good thing will cost you something in the end…and sometime that cost is more than you can bear.

Honestly, maybe it’s better that we don’t know. I fear if we ever really counted the cost we’d never do anything good at all. And Jesus must know this about us, which is why his brutal honesty and transparency is so striking in this passage. You’d think he’d want as many disciples as possible. But if that’s the case he’s got to be the worst recruiter of all time.

Case in point: who here would have been comfortable identifying as a disciple of Jesus before hearing his words this morning? I would have. Who here is feeling up to it now?

I admit that even I am a little less sure.

And I’m a pastor! I’d like to think that I’m all in.

But if this is in fact the cost, I’m gonna need an out. Because let’s be honest: I love my family. I like my stuff. I don’t want to suffer, and I’m not ready to die.

Who’s with me? Awesome. I appreciate the solidarity.

But where does that leave us in relation to Jesus?

I mean here he is telling the crowd straight up, don’t go building towers you know you don’t have the means to finish.

Don’t go rushing off into battles you know you can’t win.

Don’t go chasing waterfalls - oh wait, no that was TLC back in the 90’s, but it was the same message.

Don’t think you can follow me if you’re not willing to risk it all. Don’t think you can be my disciple if you’re not willing to give up your family, your possessions, indeed your very life, because that is what I have already done and, indeed, that is exactly what I plan to do.

Jesus is warning us.

He is telling us just how hard it will be.

He’s laying out the cost, up front and in full, and speaking for myself, I know it is more than I can bear…

it just is…

but gosh darn it if I don’t want to go anyway.

Maybe not all the way. But at least a little bit more.

This may explain why I also have friends, a college education, a marriage, a house, a cat, and 2 children. You can warn me away all you want, but the fact that every good thing comes at a cost isn’t enough to deter me because I want good things and I truly believe that Jesus, well, Jesus is the best thing of all.

That being said, I don’t know if I have what it takes to be a disciple.

Actually, scratch that. I know that I don’t. I’m kind of a wuss.

But there is something I read this week that gave me hope even in my weakness, and I want to share it with you.  Riffing off a sermon by my favorite preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor, the good people at SALTPROJECT - which is an on-line commentary I love - posed a radical question:

What if discipleship isn’t really for everyone - even those of us who call ourselves Christians (https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2019/9/3/giving-up-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-thirteenth-week-after-pentecost) ?

Sounds banana pants, I know. This idea really through me for a loop, and I know it doesn’t square neatly with other passages like the great commission where Jesus sends us out to make disciples of all nations.

But, I still think there is something here worth considering. They point out that Jesus only really called 12 disciples, plus friends, patrons, all those women, and occasional bands of recruits like the 70 he sent out to heal and proclaim that “the kingdom of heaven had drawn near.”

Wherever Jesus went he preached, fed, and “sozo”ed people (pronounced “sowd-zo”) a greek word that means both to heal and to save. Jesus preached to the multitudes, fed them, healed and saved them.

And then, more often then not, he sent them right back to their families, back to their homes and their hometowns, back to their lives and their livelihoods, to proclaim what God had done for them.

Only rarely did Jesus say, “come, and follow me.” Indeed, whenever the crowd following him would get too big, he’d usually turn around and say something really hard like he says today in what appears to be an effort to turn them back.

Which raises the question: is it possible that Jesus’ healing and saving grace is for all, but discipleship is only for a few?

Again, this idea is still one I am processing, but I must admit that history bears this out as well. For all the millions and millions of people who have called themselves Christians, I can only think of a relative few in every generation who have given up everything to follow Jesus. So few that we still know many of their names.

I’m thinking of people like St. Francis and St. Claire, St. Teresa and Brother Lawrence, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Corrie ten Boom, Sojourner Truth and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. There are many names we don’t know, of course, but on balance, the bulk of those who have called themselves Christian throughout the ages have not lived up to the standards of discipleship Jesus lays out here in Luke.

This is not to criticize or judge anyone, but simply to point out that if we are honest, most of us have more in common with the multitudes then the 12, more in common with the ones who were healed and fed and then sent home to proclaim what God has done for them, then with the ones who gave it all up to follow Jesus as his disciple.

It would therefore be more accurate to say that we are, in the words of Barbara Brown Taylor, more like “friends of the disciples.”

Friends.

A step down, I grant you, but to be a friend is no small thing. As their friends, says Taylor, we can remember and lift up the stories of the disciples who have gone before us. We can support the disciples who are at work amongst us. We can raise up disciples who will serve after us. And, as often as we can, do our best to emulate the disciples whose stories inspire us.   

True, hard-core, un-compromised discipleship, or at least the level of discipleship Jesus is outlining here, is simply not for everyone. It’s just not.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not for anyone.

We might not all be capable of living our whole lives in total and complete obedience to the way of Jesus, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t serve Jesus where we are and gradually give over more and more of our lives as we go along and, I don’t know…maybe see what happens.

I mean, that’s how I’ve approached all the other good things in my life, so why stop now? I guess, in spite of all the warnings, I’m still willing to risk something big for something good and maybe some of you are too.

To that end, in spite of everything I’ve just said, I want to do a thing with you all this year. I want to gather a small group of you together this Fall to work through a book with me called “Practicing the Way” by John Mark Comer.

And yes, it’s a book about discipleship. But I think the key word here is “practice.” It’s a book about grounding ourselves the spiritual practices that Jesus found life giving, the practices that kept him on the way, even knowing where that way would lead him.

If, like me, you’ve heard Jesus’ warnings this morning, you are painfully aware of your limitations, and you still want to go deeper, we need to talk.

Seriously, if you don’t know if you have what it takes to follow Jesus all the way to the cross but you’re not yet ready to pack it in and just go home, I’d love to talk to you about joining me for a small group study this fall.

And then I am hoping that the ones who join me this fall will lead the rest of you in small groups this winter, so we can all experience this book together.

I don’t know exactly where this will take us or how far we’ll be willing to go. I would imagine that when all is said and done, most of us will turn out to be more like friends of the disciples then full on Saints with a capital “S.”

But then again, who knows? Maybe Rebecca is the next St. Teresa of Avila or Streeter is the next St. Ignatius of Loyola.

Maybe we’ll raise up a true disciple amongst us before all is said and done.

In which case, I pray God’s mercy upon you.

I mean you can’t say you weren’t warned.

It’s not like no one told you how hard it would be.

But at least you’ll be among friends.

Friends who,

just maybe,

can help cover the cost.  Amen