The Table is a cross

 

Luke 14: 25-33
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
September 7, 2025

Photo of a cardboard protest sign that reads "What lessens one of us, lessens all of us."

Sometimes, with certain scriptures, it’s tempting to call him “Difficult Jesus” but seriously, when is he not being difficult? Well, difficult for people who look like me. When I was younger and feeling like an outcast, I fell in love with the guy. This Jesus who forgives and claims us as we are. This Jesus who blesses the poor in spirit and those who mourn. This Jesus who lifts up those who are oppressed and denounces the proud and self-sufficient. This Jesus who breaks the rules and preaches against the establishment. I never thought I’d be part of the establishment, but here I am.



So when Jesus says that whoever comes to them to be a disciple and does not hate their family, their kindred, their friends, even their life, rather than prescribing what we have to do to qualify, he is describing what was happening, what could happen if people choose to join him in his ministry and do what he does. The Greek word used here for “hate” is miséō and would be better translated as “love less than”. Whoever follows Jesus and does the Jesus things, like eating with outcasts, feeding the hungry, criticizing those with wealth, calling for the release of prisoners and the end of empire and suffering, will end up loving their family, their friends, and even their life less than they used to. There will be a cost to this discipleship.



What Jesus wants to know is, when push comes to shove, are we going to comply with and preserve the status quo or are we resistors for the kin-dom of God, the wholeness and justice for the vulnerable?



What I find truly alarming is, for the most part, how much of our lives is business as usual in the face of the daily insanity of the current administration. We are the proverbial frog in the slowly incremental boiling water. Just in the last week: Destroying a boat and its passengers for alleged drug activity without due process, otherwise known as an extrajudicial killing. Renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War without an act of Congress. Threatening to send the National Guard to the city of Chicago. Condemning decades of science behind vaccines and climate research. Immigrants still being arrested at their immigration hearings and places of work. Using all of this as a deflection against the truthtelling voices of sexual assault survivors and some infamous incriminating files. And yet life goes on, one, because it must but also because that is how deeply invested, even addicted we have become to the way things are, which is one reason why we feel so powerless to do anything.



In the words of Anglican priest and theologian John Stott, “The Christian message has a moral challenge. If the message is true, the moral challenge has to be accepted. So, God is not a fit object for [our] detached scrutiny. You cannot fix God at the end of a telescope or a microscope and say, “How interesting!” God is not interesting. God is deeply upsetting. The same is true of Jesus Christ … We know that to find God and to accept Jesus Christ would be a very inconvenient experience. It would involve the rethinking of our whole outlook on life and the readjustment of our whole manner of life. And it is a combination of intellectual and moral cowardice which makes us hesitate. We do not find because we do not seek. We do not seek because we do not want to find, and we know that the way to be certain of not finding is not to seek … Christ’s promise is plain: "Seek and you will find.”



If we seek after Christ, inevitably we will find the cross, which is no easy thing. The Church is called to be a community of the cross and this Table brings us face to face with it. For the most part, being a Christian, being an authentic whole person hasn’t really cost me anything. Like I said, I’m part of the establishment. I haven’t lost family or friends or social position because I’m a Christian or because of my sexuality or my gender or gender identity. But I do know people who have lost family and friends and more because of doing the Jesus things, who have had to find a chosen family because they want to live as an authentic whole person.



Both the Table and the cross call us to disrupt our lives for others, to not comply with the ways of empire but to conspire for the kin-dom of God. We can’t really change even our small corner of the world if we are not willing to change ourselves, to allow ourselves to be transformed by doing the Jesus things.



The flipside of noncompliance with empire is who and what are we protecting? A community of the cross is a community of solidarity that protects the vulnerable. This Table teaches us that liberation is both a part of our past and it is our future. Fascism is already here, draped in the flag and carrying the cross. These are scary times, but what is even scarier is sacrificing our humanity on the altar of the way things are. Sacrificing the humanity of others on the altar of the way we think things should be. Every time we come to this Table we are welcomed with open arms even though we will betray and desert Jesus and be faithful and do the Jesus things. The invitation is to keep coming back to this Table and try again. That’s what grace is for. The Table is a cross.

Benediction

Jesus said, “You ought always to pray and not to faint.”
Do not pray for easy lives;
Pray to be stronger people.
Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers,
But for power equal to your tasks.
Then, the doing of your work will be no miracle—
you will be the miracle.
Every day you will wonder at yourself and the richness of life
Which has come to you by the grace of God.