Luke 14:25-33; Jeremiah 18:1-11

I wonder what is your thought or feeling when you heard or read today’s Gospel text.  We must hate our family first and, only then, can we follow Jesus?  Wow!  Our Lord did not stop there.  He continued, “You must take up your cross and follow me.”  As you know the cross in Jesus’ time was a tool of execution.  Why was he so harsh?

Personally, I believe that the Christian messages and practices are getting more and more privatized.  Christian faith has become a “private affair.”  As a result, we lost the social and/or the prophetic dimension of the Gospel.  As a church, we should be culturally and socially relevant (while remaining biblically sound, of course).  I know some of you want to listen to more prophetic messages from this pulpit.  It is also true that many expect to listen to “up-lifting” sermons when they come every Sunday.  When I read the Gospel text last Monday, I sighed: “Oh, my…, it’s going to be a very difficult sermon.  Do I have to preach based on this text?”   It is not even easy to just read and understand the text, is it?

After days of prayer, I finally decided to briefly mention about this text and move on to Jeremiah as quickly as possible.  Technically speaking, we can skip the Gospel lesson, but God nudges me to address this text.  So, friends, please bear with me, because this text is too important not to be mentioned.  After all, we are here because we all want to and try to be true disciples of Jesus Christ.  Right?

To be the disciples of Jesus, the first rule is you must hate your father and mother, your wife and children, your brothers and sisters – yes, even your own life.  Then you must be prepared to die for the cause.  As Jesus has said, anyone who is not prepared to give up EVERYTHING cannot be my disciple.  Wow!  Not exactly a “church growth” text, is it?  Is that the kind of message that would appeal to you?  A few, perhaps.  But most would be drawn to Mega-churches where you can hear the so-called “Prosperity Gospel.”  

Rev. Young-Ki Cho who is now the retired pastor of the largest church in the world in Seoul, Korea where more than a half million people gather to worship every Sunday still preaches that if you receive the Holy Spirit and dedicate your life to the Lord, God will bless 1) your soul, 2) your health, and 3) your business (or what you do for a living).  Yes, his main message is that God promised not only spiritual blessing but also physical and material blessings as well.  Joel Osteen, the pastor of the largest congregation in America preaches basically the same message.  One of his sermon titles is “God wants you to be rich!”   I know a pastor whose last name is Dollar.  Wow!  Guess what kind of message he preaches?  The same message, of course.

Is this message valid?  Among 12 disciples, most of them were crucified, some of them were stoned or beaten to death, but none of them had become rich and had lived happily ever after.  That’s why I believe these messages are not valid.  It is a typical message of shamanism; absolutely not a Christian message.

We hear Jesus: unless we hate our families, carry our crosses, and give up all our possessions, we cannot be his disciples.  What are we dealing with here?  How are we to understand?  As I said earlier, I am trying to be very brief with this text.  Let’s think about just one thing that really bothers us before we move on to our Old Testament lesson.  What is all this about hating our parents, our children, even our very lives?   The best way to understand it is to realize that Jesus was using a figure of speech we do not use anymore.  In Aramaic, the word we translate “hate” has nothing to do with an emotion.  It was a way of expressing priorities – so if I say, “I love Yale and hate Harvard,” for example, it would not mean I feel hostile toward Harvard, but simply that Yale was my first choice.  In Jesus’ day, the way you stated a preference was by pairing two things and saying you loved one and hated the other.  Again, it had nothing to do with feelings.  The issue here was priorities.

Jesus says “Get your priorities straight,” because discipleship can cost all that we have, all that we love, all that we are.  Discipleship might mean leaving home for service somewhere on the other side of the globe.  It could mean a ministry in a dangerous neighborhood of an inner city.  It could mean participating in a mission trip in Kenya to build a house for some unfortunate orphans.  It could mean getting up early on a Sunday morning to come to worship or helping out on every first Monday morning at the FCA gathering in our Faith Hall. 

Discipleship means put our lives – put our everything – in God’s hands.  In the Old Testament lesson this morning, Jeremiah tells us that God’s creative process is an ongoing event.  Our lives are like clay on a potter’s wheel being molded and shaped by the potter’s hand.  And we are challenged and called to become Potter’s Clay and put our lives in God’s hands.

Have you ever watched a potter at work?  There was a potter in my former parish in Woodstock, NY.  Liz Lawrence is an artist and she gives pottery lessons.  One Sunday, I invited her and asked her to make a pottery during the service while the Praise Band was singing the song, “Change My Heart, O God.”  I had watched it in the movie, Ghost, (remember that movie?) but I had never watched it live, in front of my own eyes.   Liz took some clay, put it on a slab, then spin it around, constantly using her hands to shape it.  At one point the object may look like a bowl, then before my eyes it turned into a vase.  She lovingly molded the clay until it had a right shape.  And I am sure that she would continue until every imperfection would be gone.  Then, she would add beautiful designs to add a finishing touch.  Each object she creates is a work in process, evolving from a mound of clay into a beautiful work of art.

Do you know that, according to the Scripture, you are a beautiful art work of God?  Each one of us is a labor of love in the hands of the Master Potter of life.  Isaiah 64:8 says, “We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.”  They say “We are all made of common clay and that is why we all have the same kinds of problems.”  Well, we may only be made of clay, but remember that we were each, individually molded, and still being crafted by God’s own hand.  In short, we are God’s handiwork in process, which is my first point (with this text) I want to share this morning.

Now… the song we will sing in a moment, “Change my heart O God,” is actually a prayer: “You are the potter I am the clay; mold me and make me, this is what I pray.”  A good prayer! Even though we pray this way, we human-beings have a tendency to believe that we are masters of our own fate, don’t we?  We would rather be in control of our lives instead of yielding to the creative hands of God.  And we end up doing or being what we want rather than what God wants. 

That’s why I said earlier that discipleship means putting our lives in God’s hands.  I know it is not easy to be “clay” in the potter’s hands because change makes us fearful and we can’t always see ourselves revolving into something new or different.  But, let us listen to Jeremiah once again who spoke to God’s people: “Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand.”  What a comforting word!  We are all in God’s hands.  God’s hands are always upon us, leading us, guiding us.  Many times when our lives turn out differently than we hope and expect, it is we who let go of God not God who releases us.

God wants us to be like clay, pliable, flexible, in a constant process of being shaped, molded and reworked when necessary to adapt to the changes that occur around us.

All of us are clay, clay with imperfections, lumps, impurities, problems and issues (you name it).  It is the Master Potter, however who can ultimately determine the final product.  Our role is to let God shape our lives, perhaps reshaping them as we proceed through the stages of life.  It is our willingness to let God do God’s handiwork that will enable us to live our lives to their fullest potential. 

My brothers and sisters in Christ, remember this: our God is a God of miracles.  God can take a lump of clay and fashion into a living human being.  God can take your life and make it a useful tool for God’s Kingdom.  You may not think you have anything to give or that God doesn’t think you’re worth the effort but you’re wrong.  You are a handiwork of God.  God simply wants to be the Potter in your life, shaping who you are through the presence of God in your life.  Let God be God, and enjoy being in God’s hands.

Amen.

I want to close with Wesley’s Covenant Prayer and I want you to join me.  You can find it on page 607 of your Hymnal.

Photo by SwapnIl Dwivedi on Unsplash