Loretta Lynn sang long ago, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” People like the promises of the good life, but if there is pain or other difficult challenges involved, they quickly lose enthusiasm and slip right back into the life with which they are comfortable even when they know that the long-term consequences are bleak.
This is happening all of this country in the form of new year resolutions to lose weight and exercise. People start like a ball of fire … until they get hungry, have to make time to exercise, and experience the pain of exercise. Those who say, “In order to reach your goals, you will have to cut back on the calories and do X amount of exercise a day” are considered dream-killers, wet blankets, the cold-water bucket brigade. Reality is a difficult thing to face, but like gravity, even though you may not like it, it is there. Jump off a roof and reality will hit you hard.
Those who would follow Jesus must understand reality. There is a future of glory, but the path to that glory is fraught with dangers, temptations, trials, self-denial, and, yes, death. If you follow Jesus, you must walk the way he walked. The path he took to glory was through the cross.
Jesus lays this out for would-be disciples as he himself sets his face to journey to Jerusalem in Luke 9.51. The Samaritans reject him out-of-hand. But then Jesus meets three hot prospects whom he appears to dissuade by laying out the cost of discipleship.
The first one is willing to follow Jesus anywhere he goes. Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of Man who is destined to inherit an everlasting kingdom. (cf. Dan 7) He wants to be a part of that. But Jesus tells him that as an Ezekiel like figure, the Son of Man, he will be a priest-king in exile with no place to lay his head. Even though he is king, he will not have a palace to which he will arise to his rest like the present rulers of the earth. Those who follow him must be willing to go outside the gates and suffer with him. (Heb 13.13)
Jesus commands the second man to follow him, but the man wants to go home and bury his father. Maybe his father is ill and about to die. Maybe he wants to wait until his father dies. The call of Jesus is urgent, and this man must “let the dead bury their own dead.” His father isn’t following Jesus and is spiritually dead. There will be many more like him who can take care of the funerals of their ilk. This man must be willing to forsake his father to follow Jesus, preaching the kingdom.
The third man simply wants to go home and bid his household farewell. This seems reasonable. When Elijah called Elisha, Elisha was allowed to do this (1Kg 19). But Elisha also killed the oxen with which he was plowing and cooked them with the yokes that had been on their necks. He left his old life completely. This man must not look back once he has taken his hand to the kingdom plow. If he does, he isn’t fit for the kingdom.
What’s curious about all three is that Luke doesn’t record what they did. That’s purposeful, I believe. He is putting everyone who hears Jesus’ words in the positions of these three. How will you respond to the demands of discipleship?
Rejection of Jesus doesn’t only take the form of the Samaritans. Rejection of Jesus takes the form of interest without commitment, of delayed good intentions without follow-through, and of attraction to Christ Jesus without allegiance to his kingship. There are people like this all over who flirt with the church but are unwilling to give up their lives of immorality, who are slothful, refusing to take on the challenges of responsibility, who are cowardly, afraid of the cost of commitment, and who simply love this present world more than they love Christ. They are no better off than the Samaritans Jesus confronted with his claims. This is all rejection of Christ.
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. But if you are going to gain future glory with Christ, you must take up your cross and follow Jesus. That’s reality.
