The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Emmanuel Episcopal Church
September 2, 2022
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Philemon 1-21
Luke 14:25-33
Ok, Maybe I’ll Hire An Electrician This Time
Some of y’all know I write songs, and several years ago, thinking of how my kids would sometimes be rather challenging, I wrote a song called “Don’t Breed,” as in don’t have kids. It’s tongue in cheek, though considering Jesus’ teaching today on hate your family if you want to be my disciple, maybe I secretly wrote “Don’t Breed” to please Jesus.
“None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions,” after having decided to hate your whole family, Jesus taught. So, we’re supposed to give up everything we own, live with nothing on the street, having first told our entire families that we hate them and want nothing to do with them. Not exactly the feel-good film of the fall. What if we doctor this up a bit with, maybe you don’t have to give up everything, because after all, your stuff shows how blessed you are by God, but make sure you hate…well maybe not your family, but all the right people whom you’re supposed to hate. If you’re not sure who those are, your pastor will tell you whom to hate.
That doesn’t seem quite right either, does it? In order to be Jesus’ disciples, we’re supposed to bring hurt and discord into the world, dishonoring our families, hating others, and then possibly leaving ourselves with nothing and no one? That’s obviously not what Jesus meant.
We are to give up anything that binds us and weighs us down, preventing us from following in the ways of Jesus, ways which, by the way, were given for our benefit. That’s what Jesus meant.
Jesus talked about the cost of being his disciple, like the cost of building a building. Make sure you have enough to finish, Jesus said. You decide to build a building, and you start running short of cash, so even though you don’t know a whole lot about electricity, you decide to wire the building yourself. Hey, it may work out, but being that you don’t know what you’re doing, you might just set the building on fire.
Ignoring Jesus’ ways, holding on to the things which bind us and weigh us down, is like choosing to wire that building yourself. You might just want to pay the electrician instead. There’s a cost to it, but the benefit is a building that has lights and air conditioning and doesn’t have electrical fires and burn down. 
That’s very similar to when “Moses said to all Israel the words which the Lord commanded him, ‘See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.’” Moses went on to tell Israel that if they obeyed God and walked in God’s ways, they would be blessed and have life, but if they turned away from God’s ways, they would perish. See, when God set before the people “life and death, blessings and curses,” God was not promising to reward or punish the people of Israel based on their obedience. God was telling the people of Israel truths of creation. Heaven and earth, God said, were witnesses against Israel. The blessings and curses God announced were simply the ways of Heaven and earth, the ways of creation. The blessings and curses are simply the way things are.
That’s very similar to when “Moses said to all Israel the words which the Lord commanded him, ‘See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.’” Moses went on to tell Israel that if they obeyed God and walked in God’s ways, they would be blessed and have life, but if they turned away from God’s ways, they would perish. See, when God set before the people “life and death, blessings and curses,” God was not promising to reward or punish the people of Israel based on their obedience. God was telling the people of Israel truths of creation. Heaven and earth, God said, were witnesses against Israel. The blessings and curses God announced were simply the ways of Heaven and earth, the ways of creation. The blessings and curses are simply the way things are.
If you wire your building incorrectly, you might just set the building on fire. Life and death, blessings and curses, not because you disobeyed and got punished, but because that’s simply the way electricity works. God wasn’t threatening the people, “be good or else.” God was saying, “for your sake and benefit, I hope you wire your houses correctly.”
I think of our economy where we want, and in this country get, a lot of inexpensive things. Companies here get to hire cheap labor over there, and we get a lot of inexpensive stuff. We also get a world where which used to have subsistence living and farming now have extreme poverty for most as farming gave way to factories and those at the top have plenty while those at the bottom no longer have enough. That causes a whole new level of suffering in the world, of poverty, strife, and discord. These curses of poverty, strife, and discord are not punishments meted out by God. They are simply the natural way the world works.
Desire for more and more inexpensive stuff is faulty wiring. Give up your possessions, Jesus said, and let me rewire your building.
Jesus knows that all of our lives have some faulty wiring, and Jesus knows that sometimes the wiring is so bad, some folks just need a new home. “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.”
Imagine a family who treats certain other people terribly: maybe it’s because of racism, maybe it’s classism, maybe it’s just general irritated misanthropic grumpism. Whatever the issue, imagine a younger member of the family doesn’t feel the way his family does and wants not to treat others terribly, but he feels trapped. What if his family turns on him for choosing to treat these people well? “You’ve gotta choose, us or them. You fall in with them, you choose to associate with them, then you’re no longer one of us.” The young man chooses not to treat the others like dirt, and his family rejects him for it. That’s the cost of discipleship. He wasn’t hating his parents, but he was choosing to let them hate him if that’s what it cost to do the right thing. He was choosing to unbind and unburden himself. He didn’t give up his family. He gave up acquiescing to their hatred and terrible behavior.
That can be the cost of discipleship, but what do you get for that cost? You get a building that’s wired so that it doesn’t burn down. Rather than a life of hatred and anger, raging against all that you find objectionable in the world, you get to stop drinking the poison of your own anger, thinking that it’s going to hurt someone else.
See, God’s ways, the ways of blessing and life, are given for our benefit, and by extension for the benefit of all around us. It can be hard to pay the cost of God’s ways. We tend to stay in our ruts where it feels safe. We’re afraid of letting go, afraid of offending, of being without, of not being enough. Can I really trust God to rewire my building. I’ve done it myself already, and sure there are electrical fires, but that’s really other people’s fault. I’m set in my ways, and I’ve got a lot of stuff which provides me with a sense of security. My wiring is doing just fine, thank you very much. Maybe I’ll take a suggestion of Jesus here or there, but I’m certainly not going to let him rewire the whole building.
Trusting in Jesus is hard. When we feel the pull or the nudge of Jesus to change our ways, to give up some way that isn’t bringing life, it’s hard to trust that we’ll be ok. When we feel the pull or nudge of Jesus to let go of some of our stuff, believing that we really are being held down by it, it’s hard to trust that we’ll be ok. When we feel the pull or nudge of Jesus to stop going along with ways which bring hurt and discord into the world, even if that risks our loved ones rejecting us or risks us having inexpensive stuff, it’s hard to trust that we’ll be ok.
When we do trust Jesus, however, we find that we have fewer electrical fires in our buildings. We find greater freedom and happiness, having been unbound from things which have weighed us down. We find peace and an honest desire to be of benefit to others. We find ourselves freed from the morass of fear and self-pity. Trusting in Jesus’ ways, we find that the blessings and curses which God promised Israel really aren’t supernatural reward or punishment, but are the natural way the world works.
Trusting in the ways of Jesus, we find ourselves walking in the flow of God’s blessings, of creation’s blessings. Like a building properly wired, there’s a cost, but there’s also a benefit: life, love, peace. Amidst a world that still doesn’t always go as we wish, Jesus calls us to let go of whatever is keeping us from following in his ways, and we let go and turn things over to Jesus over and over. Bit by bit, trusting Jesus with the wiring more and more, and finding ever more blessing as we do.
