The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

I sometimes wonder whether the frenetic pace of Jesus’ three year ministry ever got him down? The reference to “the crowd”, in our reading this evening, may perhaps explain the seemingly monstrous remarks he makes about discipleship entailing hating your family; could they come from sheer exasperation with the crowd of followers hoping for another miracle? To be sure, of all the “hard sayings” of Jesus, these and those following, must qualify as among the most difficult.
Those difficulties are various; sometimes they are simply obscure, like camels passing through needles’ eyes, but there is no obscurity here. What Jesus says is hard because it is inconsistent, with other sayings and, worse, contrary to accepted morality of then and now.
The stories of the builder and the king are neither obscure nor, it seems based in some other moral system; they make logical sense in themselves, but what is really strange about them is the way in which they are so much at odds with the experience of conversion, the acceptance of discipleship, or the acceptance of grace and salvation as recounted in the New Testament. The stories seem to be advising us how to think about these momentous experiences, and warning us not to take them on too lightly.
But that isn’t how it happens in the Gospels. We do not see Peter and Andrew sitting down to count the cost of accepting Jesus call; the implication is that they simply dropped the nets followed Jesus. St Paul tells us that he spent a few years in Arabia contemplating the nature of his call and, it would seem, working out his theology, but the conversion itself on the road to Damascus, was instantaneous. The shepherds outside Bethlehem discuss what they have been told, but don’t seem to be in any doubt as to whether they should go; and they don’t seem to have arranged locum cover before abandoning their flocks. Mary did not ask for a little time to reflect on Gabriel’s proposition- indeed it wasn’t a proposal; it was, as perhaps grace always is, a simple fact- of enormous consequence, of course- but still simple, not needing  to be thought about, but just accepted.
There is recklessness in the typical conversion story, as sort of disorder, an upsetting of social norms; think of the centurion who is surprised, but accepts Jesus’ orders or Matthew, an official of the Roman government, called away from his tax office by a mendicant preacher. Jesus seems to have courted censure by consorting with the collaborators and those beyond the edge of decent society. This is far from calculation based on society’s normal expectations; reputation was blown away by a gust of a grace.
In our stories, the reason the tower builder and the belligerent (or is he on the defensive?) king take time to calculate the cost of the project and go through their risk assessments is because they fear for their reputations; the builder fears ridicule if he is left with a half built house and the king fears an ignominious defeat. Ignominy and ridicule are however, just what Jesus himself and his followers are led to expect. This is of course shame and disgrace in worldly terms; St Paul recounts his sufferings with pride and reverses the value judgements of his persecutors; St John can see a shocking and disgraceful execution as the glorification of Jesus.  As I have said, in his life Jesus invites criticism and disdain by mixing with “publicans and sinners”, but clearly sees in them the potential for conversion to true belief, and ultimately more satisfying values.
So what can Jesus mean by apparently urging his disciples to think carefully before they follow him? He points out the disruption it will bring to their family lives; the will have to hate those whom they love, and who love them. They will have to hate their very selves, their “own souls”; and they will have to take up their cross-that is walk to their execution. How could anyone calculate whether it was worth doing any of that? Clearly, there is a double standard at work. The appalling price of discipleship in terms of physical and emotional well being must somehow be worth paying for a reward that is judged by an unworldly standard.  
The rabbinic tradition tended towards extreme contrasts and we often hear this in Jesus’ teaching where starkly opposite propositions are juxtaposed; you cannot love God and money; come to the feast now or be excluded for good. Choose between your family and me. I want to say, but isn’t there a grey area? Surely it’s unreasonable to see the world and our choices and destiny in such starkly opposed terms? We would prefer something more gradual and accommodating.
In part, this black and white mind set is only a way of presenting choices and it certainly achieves emphasis, but possibly more in our ears than originally intended. There is a choice, but it is more a choice between different worlds, and different sets of values; that of the spiritual and eternal life and mortal existence in the physical world. Accepting true discipleship will give us access to a world in which we can see our true nature and our worth in terms that are not tied to our physical existence.  Our spiritual nature and our physical nature are to some extent opposites, and following a spiritual path may lead to a great deal of friction.
So we should perhaps see the stories of the tower builder and the king as showing us how not to behave? The point is not that they were right to be so careful and calculate their actions by the norms of human society; but instead that as disciples, they should have thrown caution to the wind and attempted to build a tower which they knew might not be completed but which might have been a statement of idealistic optimism- ridiculous in worldly terms but admirable according to another, and ultimately more satisfying code. Should the king have ignored the Just War theory and resisted invasion, even when he knew it was hopeless? We remember the bravery and glory of Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae although their stand was futile; only Tolstoy, writing much later, has respect for Kutuzov and his delay and caution which ultimately saved Russia from Napoleon.  We need not see our lives in such black and white terms. And we should not forget that as we try to imitate Jesus, he was both human and divine, and both our natures matter but to achieve the latter we may sometimes need to abandon the values of the former.
We have to recognise that sometimes following a spiritual path or a path of idealism may be pretty sticky in worldly terms; it may well make us unpopular and justifiably unpopular with family, friends and colleagues. But sometimes discipleship will make such demands; it may require us to leave aside conventional moral calculation, and concern about ridicule or reputation. Let us pray that we have the strength of character to make those choices, if and when they are asked of us. Amen.