What Is the Cost?

Luke 14:25-33

September 7, 2025

 

            Several years ago a commercial aired that became extremely controversial. It infuriated some people, while other folks applauded and defended it. There was backlash against the makers of the product. People on the other side of the controversy made sure that they voiced their support of the brand. Nasty things on both sides of the divide were stated on social media. The firestorm over this commercial revealed, once again, some of the great divisions in our society. What was the product that caused such a hullabaloo, that provoked such outrage? Cheerios. Yes, you heard me correctly. Cheerios. Cheerios the cereal. Cheerios the cereal with the name that sounds like a happy British farewell, as in Cheery-O! Cheerios, my kids’ first finger foods. Cheerios.

            Several years ago now, Cheerios ran an ad that featured a little girl, box of Cheerios in hand, coming to her mom with a question. Is Cheerios good for your heart?  Her mom looked at the box and told her that some of the ingredients were helpful in lowering cholesterol which is heart healthy. The little girl thanks her mom, takes the box, and runs off. The next scene is the father waking up from a nap on the couch, and as he sits up, a whole bunch of Cheerios positioned over his heart, falls off his shirt. The commercial ends with him calling his wife’s name, obviously wondering what the heck was going on.

            So what’s the controversy? The commercial featured an interracial couple. The wife/mother was white. The husband/father was black, and the little girl was biracial. That representation made some people really, really angry, while others thought it was great. But on both sides of the debate the words “family values” were used. What constitutes family values? What weakens family values? What are family values? Was this commercial a building up of family values or a breaking down of them?

            However we may define family values, I would hazard a guess that all of us agree that they are important. Valuing families, caring for them, supporting them is the lynchpin of our society and probably most societies. While family values may be a buzzword from the last century and in our present one, the ideas behind family values are not new. Families, however they may look, whatever the makeup, are essential now and they have been essential. Families were just as essential, maybe even more so, in Jesus’ context as they are now.

            In the culture in which Jesus lived, families were more than just what we define as a nuclear family – mother, father, children. Families included the extended family of grandparents. cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. Family meant protection. Family meant security. To be alone, to be without family, was to be vulnerable. Scripture, in both testaments, repeatedly speaks to the need to care for widows and orphans. Why? Because they were often without family, which meant they were some of the most vulnerable in that society. They had no family. The book of Ruth tells the story of two widows, who lose family and rely on each other for protection and go to seek extended family who will help them.

            Yet in the opening verses of our passage from Luke’s gospel, Jesus says something that seems to violate everything that his culture and ours would consider family values.

            “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.”

            I read a commentator this week who wrote about one of his pastors. Whenever this pastor would preach on a particularly difficult text of scripture, he would say something like, “I know I can’t get an amen, but can I get an ouch?”

            Can I get an ouch?

            We must hate our families to follow Jesus?! We must hate mother and father and brother and sister to be his disciple?! Isn’t Jesus the one who spoke about loving God and neighbor and ourselves? Isn’t Jesus the one who welcomed little children when everyone else wanted to shoo them away? Isn’t Jesus the one who hung out with the marginalized and forgotten and overlooked and judged? Isn’t this the Jesus who in the passage just before this preached about the openness and wideness of God’s table in the kingdom? But in seemingly the same breath, he then says that we must hate those closest to us in order to follow him. We must hate the ones who gave us life if we want to be his disciple? We must hate our families. Can I get an ouch?

            This seems contrary to everything Jesus has said before, but is it? Is it really? Jesus often used hyperbolic speech to make an impact and an emphatic point, and this certainly could be a technique that he was employing in this moment. It’s also possible that he wasn’t calling those who would follow to hate their families as in have hostility or show aggression toward them, but that no matter how much wannabe followers may love their families, they must love God and their call to follow more. They must prioritize their lives so that what is most important is discipleship. You may love your family, but you must be willing to let them go if you really want to follow me.

            But in saying this, I don’t want to soften or dilute Jesus’ words. They are hard and they are shocking. They would have shocked his original listeners just as they shock us today. If Jesus was trying to evangelize or grow the numbers following him even more, this was not the way to do it. Clearly, Jesus was not using a Dale Carnegie technique in how to win friends and influence people. Luke tells us that Jesus was being followed by crowds of people. Why would he deliberately try to thin those crowds out?

            Yet, here’s the thing, Jesus was not just randomly walking around the countryside. He was on his way to Jerusalem. He’s been on his way to Jerusalem for a while now, and that means that he is making his way to the cross. His cross. His death. And he doesn’t have time to waste, and he is not pulling any punches. If you want to follow me, then you are going to have be willing to walk away from the people you love the most, to separate from them. If you want to follow me, then you must carry your own cross. You must be willing to lose everything, including your life. This is not a volunteer position that you can do when you feel like it, and when your schedule allows. This is a commitment that could cost you everything, so you better count the cost before you make it. What is the cost you are willing to pay? What are you willing to sacrifice? What are you willing to give or give up? If you can’t leave behind family and friends and possessions, then you shouldn’t follow me, because my way is a narrow way and following in my footsteps will never be easy. Have you counted the cost?

            Can I get an ouch?

            What is the cost we are willing to pay? I dread these words of Jesus because I know how torn I am between the people I love and the possessions I own and discipleship. I know how much courage I lack, how much struggle I wish to avoid, how much sacrifice I am afraid to make. Jesus’ words cut me to the quick, because I know that I do not follow him as I should. I want to but I am afraid of the cost. Can I get an ouch?

            Yet I also know that I have had to hate and let go and walk away from a lot just to stand in this pulpit. I didn’t hate my grandfather, but I had to hate his conviction that women should not be ordained. I didn’t hate my grandmother, but I had to hate what she implied when she called my early sermons “my little talks” rather than the sermons they were. To make it to this pulpit required me to let go of and walk away from a lot of people that claimed and claim I have no business being here.

            What have you had to hate? What have you had to let go of? What have you been forced to walk away from to be here, to follow Jesus? Maybe it doesn’t feel like much or maybe it feels like everything. Maybe you carry a heavier cross than any of us can imagine, and maybe your heaviest cross is still to come. Carrying our crosses was never meant to be easy, but we were also never meant to carry them alone.

            There is no clean or comfortable wrap up to Jesus’ words today. They should make us say, “Ouch.” They should convict us and make us struggle and wrestle and wonder. But just because they carry a sting does not mean that they are not good news. We know that even those closest to Jesus messed up. They couldn’t carry their own crosses, at least not at first. They ran away in fear. They didn’t know how to let go of what they possessed and what possessed them. But still there was grace and still there was mercy and still there was forgiveness. That grace, mercy, and forgiveness are ours as well. We are called to carry our crosses and follow, but we are not called to follow alone. We are not alone. Even when we stumble and think we can’t go on, we are not alone. We are not alone. Thanks be to God.

            Can I get an ouch? Can I get an alleluia?

            Amen.