Luke 9:57-62--The Cost of Following Jesus

Luke 9:57-62
English Standard Version
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The Cost of Following Jesus
57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59 To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 60 And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61 Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62 Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

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Sorry this is getting published a day late, but I lost my session login in the middle of writing this article on the 28th, and and didn't get around to coming back and writing it again yesterday.  I do find this topic of conversation an important one though and one that we often don't have with people when we are sharing the gospel with them.  Jesus is short on time here and He doesn't have time for people that simply want to follow after Him but not be fully committed to Him.  He's already dealt with that issue a few times during His ministry, but most notably after The Feeding of the 5,000 (if you read the account in John's gospel).  He now has many people wanting to follow after Him as He is on His way to Jerusalem with His eyes set on the cross.  He's in so much of a hurry to get there that He wouldn't take the "normal" route that the other Jewish people would take to bypass Samaria, but instead went right through it, preaching the gospel to the Samaritan towns and villages (even those which He knew would reject Him) on His way so that everyone that He came to share the gospel with had heard the message before His limited in-person, face-to-face ministry here on Earth was over.

Jesus' words in this passage may seem harsh, but they are truly loving when you consider that He knows that the chief priests and the teachers of the law and the Sanhedrin are not only coming after Him but everyone who has associated themselves with Him and His gospel.  This is not a movement where Jesus is going to be accepted as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and HIs followers were simply going to ride His coat tails into His kingdom and have a never-ending gravy train of peace and prosperity to enjoy just because they named themselves as being a follower of the person who was going to win the battle.  The battle is going to come to the followers as we'll see in the book of Acts and beyond.

The people must have sensed that things were coming to a climax with the determination of Jesus to go to Jerusalem and the way in which Jesus was now being a little more open about His identity, and the obvious hostility that was there between those in authority (both the Roman authorities and the Jewish authorities) and Jesus.  Now was the time to let Jesus know they were on His side (or so they thought), but these people had divided hearts and interests that kept them from being fully committed to what Jesus was doing in the here and now.

The first person seemed to be one of those that wanted to ride the gravy train like I was talking about before.  Jesus sees right through the man's statement of allegiance and knows that the man is only interested in what he can get out of following Jesus (there are many today that believe in this kind of prosperity gospel that you should say you believe in Jesus because that will make God have to bless you and give you good things--good health, lots of money, etc.  You won't have to look hard to see this message in all kind of "inspirational" books, sermons that make it onto TV and radio, and in the hearts of the world as their imagination as why would follow after Jesus.  Certainly it must be for selfish reasons, for why would we follow after a God who didn't serve us and give us something for the trouble of serving Him?).  Jesus tells this man that He's got it all wrong and that He lives in poverty, is homeless, and has no material possessions or comforts of this world to offer this man.

The second person is called by Jesus (that's different than the first person who came up to Jesus on his own), but the response to the call was that this man was committed to his family and needed to wait for his father to die before following Jesus.  While this sounds honorable, Jesus has taught that we must be willing to leave everyone and everything behind to cling to Him, much like how a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two will become one flesh.  (Genesis 2:24).  We are told that our relationship with Jesus will be like a marriage, but notice in that marriage that Jesus is the groom who left HIs Father's house (heaven) to make a way for us to to be united with Him.  Reading between the lines a bit, this man's father probably would not approve of his son being a follower of Jesus and so the man wanted to wait until after his father was dead so that he would not have that conflict or embarrassment.  But if this man truly believed in Jesus, why didn't he also want his father to come to believe in Jesus before he died (and who knows how long before that happened)?  Under the Law (see Numbers 30) this man was free to make his own vow or oath and his father could do nothing about it--only for an unmarried woman did the father have discretion to nullify the vow or oath as long as his daughter lived in his house and was under his authority.  So then, this man is simply making an excuse to not follow Jesus and while he wants to make it sound like he's doing it for religious reasons to honor his parents, he's not.  If he truly loved and honored his parents, he would bring them to Jesus too.  Jesus says some words here that are hard for us to believe came out of His mouth, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."

We've probably seen this at play in Jesus' own life as I mentioned before.  It's pretty apparent that Joseph dies at some point during Jesus' ministry because there were some responses early on along the lines of "We know who your father is," and "Is not this the carpenter's son?" (Implying that Jesus was born out of wedlock between Mary and Joseph and that they had come up with the story of immaculate conception as a cover for their fornication).  Later we see that Joseph is not mentioned....only Jesus' mother and siblings, and Jesus would give Mary into the custody and care of John from the cross implying that Mary was a widow and Jesus as the first-born son has been responsible for her, but now He was passing that responsibility along to John who closer to Jesus than His actual brothers.  We don't see Jesus leaving HIs ministry to bury Joseph and put the family's affairs in order.  While we don't have every moment of Jesus' life recorded for us in the gospels, I presume the exclusion of this particular part of the story means that Jesus isn't calling this man to do something that He didn't already do Himself--to let His brothers and sisters (who at the time were not following Him and were spiritually dead) take care of burying Joseph as He continued to declare the kingdom of God in the limited time that He had.  Not even the love of family should be distraction from the call that we are given.

Now a third man came up to Jesus to voluntarily follow after Jesus, but says that he first wants to say goodbye to those at home (probably referring to his wife and children).  This answer is probably one of the hardest things that Jesus said.  Jesus says that you can't go into ministry for Him always looking behind you to make sure that your family is going to be safe--that's like a farmer trying to plow a furrow and looking behind him.  The furrow won't be straight and he won't be able to see things in front of him that he needs to see (rocks, when to make the team of horses or oxen turn, or any course corrections he needs to make to keep the furrow straight).  Such a farmer does a lot of work that looks bad and is worthless in quality.  Those are some pretty strong words, but Jesus knows that many are going to be called to choose between their families and their faith in the near future.  It's not an easy choice, but we are called to love Jesus supremely so that it seems like we hate all others in relationship to our love for Him.  (See Luke 14:26 where Jesus specifically addresses this issue as being part of the cost of discipleship).

This conversation about the cost of discipleship is going to keep coming back.  Jesus wants the people that are happy being followers to make a real commitment are they in or are they out?  Now is the time to decide.  We should be real with those we are witnessing to that there are real costs associated with following Jesus and they can't leave one foot in the world and one foot in the kingdom of God.  There is no line that we are judge by where if you are on one side of the line you belong to Jesus, but if you are on the other side of the line, you don't.  You are either one with Jesus and willing to go through anything He goes through, or you don't belong to Jesus at all.  There are no marriages for the sake of convenience or for political alliances like Solomon's marriages, or simply for being a gold-digger and wanting to marry a rich sugar-daddy and get all the benefits that come with being married to someone with the resources of the Creator of all things, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.  We're not simply in this for ourselves.  There are fringe benefits that come our way for sure, but that it not the reason that we become united with Christ.  We do so "to the praise of His glory."  So, I encourage you to check your motives for following Jesus today and ask yourself if you are are in it for selfish reasons, if you are embarrassed to say you follow Him when He calls you to a relationship that may divide you from your family (maybe imagining the decision to be easier once that member of the family were dead) or are you so attached to the living members or your family or maybe your friends that are like family to you, that you wouldn't go and do what Jesus calls you to do because you wouldn't want to put them at risk or don't want to risk those relationships.  Just who is the Jesus you are trying to follow after?  Is He the one that told you that everyone hated Him and will hate you too and that in this world you will have trouble, or are you believing in a fictitious Jesus that is your sugar daddy and doesn't even really care about your relationship with him and He just writes you checks and buys you things to make you and keep you happy?  Who Jesus is and what kind of gospel we believe seems vitally important because Jesus seems to be telling us here and in other places that there are some people who think they belong to Him and they don't.