College football kicked off this weekend, pro football happens on Thursday, and I’m football-ed in the brain. This one reflects that. Catch more after the break…
Luke 14:25-33; Philemon 1-21; Psalm 1; Deuteronomy 30:15-20
As I’m sure everyone here is painfully aware, I kind of like football. Ok, I’m rather obsessed with football. It’s a great game – there’s strategy, athleticism, raw power, you name it football’s got it. One of the amazing things about the game is that if the people on each team aren’t working together, the whole thing falls apart really quickly. Football is one of those games where one person can only take the team so far. It’s not like basketball, where one person can singlehandedly make a team a contender for the championship. If the offensive line doesn’t work together, even the most amazing quarterback won’t be able to make plays. Without a good quarterback, even the best running back will get shut down every time.
Of course, having that level of teamwork takes a lot of planning. And I’m not just talking about training camps and practices during the season. Most of the time, pro football players have been playing the game their whole lives. They’ve been immersed in the game, from when they were children, in high school, through college, and finally into the NFL. Their position is second nature to them.
But the excellence they’d achieved on the field didn’t just happen. They were committed to being the best they could be. Sure, a handful of players are a little too convinced of their own greatness, but the vast majority work hard every day and try to get better. There are playbooks to memorize and game scripts to remember. And even when they’ve made it to the NFL, the competition to keep your spot on the roster only gets stronger, as every year there could be a rookie coming along to take your place. You have to put everything that you are into it, or there won’t be anything there.
And so there’s sacrifices to make. Sometimes the family loses out, sometimes it’s friends. But there’s always a sacrifice. In order to keep doing what they love, they attend practices, watch film, study the game, work out, and the like. And most amazingly, they all know that every time they step on the field it could be the last time they play, and could even cost them their lives.
It really is kind of incredibly how similar being a football player is to being a Christian. From talking to you, I think most of the people here were raised Christian. We grew up in the church, went to confirmation in Jr. High, and just kind of always went to church, so much so that on Sunday morning going to church is second nature.
That’s the kind of people Jesus was talking to in the Gospel. They were mostly Jews for whom being Jewish was everything that they knew. On the Sabbath, they went to synagogue. They obeyed all the laws. They were good at being Jews, but they were still trying to figure out what it was to follow Jesus. So, being a good teacher, Jesus starts to talk to the crowd:
“If anyone wants to follow me, and thinks their father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, or even themselves are more important than me, don’t bother. And anyone who wouldn’t be willing to die for me, can’t be my disciple either. If you’re going to build something, you always make sure you have the money first. Otherwise you’ll stop halfway through and be humiliated. Or if a king is going off to war, he first makes sure he can win, and if not he’ll send a delegation to make peace. In the same way, make sure you know what it takes to follow me before you do.”
This is one of those passages that’s often called a “hard saying of Jesus”. But really it does make sense. Think back to the football player. They know full well what they have to go through to play football, but they do anyways. Jesus is just making the people who want to follow him aware of what it will take. Remember a few weeks ago, when Jesus was talking about families betraying one another on account of him? This passage is continuing on the same lines.
Like I said earlier, most of us here have been Christians our whole lives. It’s second nature to us. But I’m going to contend that being good Christian (in the sense of the religion) doesn’t always mean one is a good follower of Christ. Here’s an example, there’s a few football players I can think of who, caught up in their own sense of amazingness, don’t practice as hard as they should or don’t pay enough attention to the game and by the time their careers are wrapping up, they don’t have all that much to show for it. Now think of a Christian like that – we may think we’re doing well, but sometimes we miss practice. Or sometimes we forgot to watch film. Or sometimes we even don’t show up for team meetings.
Now to drop the sports metaphors, we might identify ourselves as Christians, but never read the Bible. We don’t spend time with what Luther calls the crèche that holds the Word of God, which is Jesus. Sometimes we might not pray – not just telling God everything that we want or need, but actually listening for what God might be telling us as well. We could be calling ourselves Christians, but not actually be following Christ.
Floating around in various Christian circles you hear that following Jesus makes life perfect, and everything works the way it should. I don’t think that’s at all what Jesus is saying here. The Christian life, a life following Jesus, is definitely not always easy. I’m sure we all can think of times when having faith made things harder, not easier. But even though sometimes it’ll be hard, the biggest bonus of following Christ is that He is always there with us to be our support, our guide, our friend, and our savior.