Sermon for Ordinary 23, 7th Sept 2025

Welcome sisters and brothers and peace be with you. May the words on my lips and the meditations in our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. <Amen>

As some of you know, Kim and I were traveling in South America and Spain not too long ago and one of the most useful phrases is, “Cuanto cuesta?” “How much does it cost?” We have to know how much things are going to cost. It’s an integral part of daily life.

In today’s gospel, Jesus explains the cost of true discipleship to His followers.

Jesus is on the move again, he has left the hospitality of Simon the Pharisee’s table, and is headed towards Jerusalem. Large crowds are following Him; and He turns and says to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” <PAUSE>

Wow! It almost sounds as if Jesus is trying to get people to STOP following him! Have you ever heard Jesus be so negative? Ten times in these few verses, he uses the word “not” – three of those are in the phrase “cannot be my disciple.” <PAUSE>

Jesus has seen the crowds growing behind him, and He knows that some of these followers are only “tagging along” and he is saying to them, “Unless you’re SERIOUS about following me, you might as well go home!” <PAUSE>

Jesus is not trying to get rid of followers. Jesus just wants them – and us – to know what is involved in being a true disciple. We need to know what we’re getting into when we say we want to follow Jesus. We need to ask “Cuanto cuesta” … we NEED to know the price because … the cost is high.

Specifically, Jesus says we must “hate” our families if we want to follow him. This was amazingly strong stuff in a culture where family was everything, and loyalty to one’s family was the highest loyalty expected … and, I suspect, these words are equally difficult and challenging for us to hear today. <PAUSE>

Does Jesus actually want us to “hate” our families? Of course not, and their are plenty of scriptural examples that show this. So let’s take a look at that word, “hate,” to see what Jesus means.

Keep in mind that the idiomatic Greek vocabulary Luke used had relatively few words in it. So, the Greek word ‘misew’ can be translated as “hate” but it also means ‘disregard’, ‘be indifferent to’, or ‘to love one thing less than something else’.

In this particular instance, Jesus is offering a comparison between the devotion one would normally only reserve for family members and the devotion required to become one of His disciples. Jesus is saying, “Love me more than you would even love your family, as important as that is to you. Love me more than whatever holds first place in your life, whatever matters most to you.”

Not only must we be willing to put Jesus ahead of all other priorities, he raises the price of discipleship even higher. “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple,” Jesus says.Jesus’ own cross wasn’t even on the horizon at this time. To His listeners, taking up one’s cross was a general expression of accepting the burden of great suffering. If following Jesus meant taking up a cross, it meant staying loyal to Him, even in the face of great suffering.

So, Jesus gives parables to help us understand. You want to build a house? You start by sitting down to figure out if you can afford it? You ask yourself “Cuanto cuesta”? Obvious!

But there are two really important things about today’s short parables that we may miss if we read them too quickly:

1. Jesus tells us that “counting the cost” requires thoughtful pondering. We can’t follow Jesus any old way it suits us. We have to carefully consider the commitment we are making.

2. Jesus focuses on outcomes. “Counting the cost” indicates that there is some end in mind, some goal to be reached. Don’t start building unless you plan to finish!

To be a disciple of Jesus you must know that the cost will be of putting Jesus first, and everything else afterwards. <PAUSE>

There is no plan for being a Christian. You don’t retire from following Jesus, to live off the investment of your past discipleship. Every day starts anew. Every moment requires your full commitment.

All the lessons Jesus teaches us – they all boil down to this: go all in, or go home. We can’t hold anything back, if we want to be disciples of Jesus Christ. <PAUSE>

As I said, the cost is high, but the rewards are massive. God’s grace gives us:

abiding peace,

a life penetrated throughout by love,

a faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good,

the hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances,

the power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil.


In short, the abundance of life Jesus brings. <PAUSE>


So now comes the final balancing of the budget … YOU have to ask yourself … Is being a disciple of Christ worth it?

The price of following Jesus is way, WAY beyond what we can afford BUT when we give our all to Christ, we receive so much more! Therefore …

as you come to Christ, come to offer yourself, body, mind and soul, to the One who died to save you, who rose again to redeem you, and who will come again to claim you as His own.

I runga e te Ingoa o te Atua, te Matua, te Tama me te Wairua Tapu. <AMINE>