Sermon on The Parable of the Cost of Building a Tower – Luke 14:25-35
The Parable of the Cost of Building a Tower – Luke 14:25-35
St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, Laramie, WY 82070
28 October A+D 2021 Pr. Mark Preus
And many crowds followed Jesus, and He turned and said to them, “If anyone follows me, and does not hate his father, and his mother, and his wife, and his children, and his brothers, and his sisters, yes, even his own soul, he is not able to be My disciple. And whoever does not carry his cross and come after me, is not able to be My disciple.
This is what Jesus says to you who would follow Him. What do you want from Jesus? He wants you to be His disciple. A disciple is a student. He wants you to learn from Him. If you want to learn from Jesus, He says that you have to hate the ones you love the most and even your own soul. If you don’t, then you’re not able to learn anything from Him.
You can’t learn from Jesus if you don’t measure the cost of following Him. It is not a small cost to learn anything from Jesus. It involves losing everything that your understanding says you should value more than anything. But Jesus is saying that you can’t learn from Him if you don’t hate these people.
Isn’t this a contradiction? Jesus tells us to love everyone, even our enemies. Why does He now say that I have to hate the ones I love the most and even my own soul if I want to learn from Him?
But it is no contradiction. You can’t love your father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and you certainly don’t know the value of your own soul if you don’t hate them in comparison to wanting to learn from Jesus.
It is hyperbole, it seems. Exaggeration. We could moderate what Jesus says in Luke with what He says in Matthew, which sounds more reasonable,
He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it. Matthew 10:37-39
But why does Jesus use this severe exaggeration? Why didn’t He just repeat what He said in Matthew instead of saying that we need to hate people God tells us to love in order to learn from Him?
He who has ears to hear, let him hear! He wants these words to sink into the core of our heart and soul. He doesn’t want us to compartmentalize our need for His words. He wants us to know that our need to learn from Him is not a box or room in our lives that we can enter when we want to, but that there is nothing more important than to learn from Him, and in fact, if you don’t learn from Him, your family and your own soul have been lost. All of your work and love and care and concern about these important people and about yourself are all in vain if you don’t learn from Jesus, if you aren’t His disciple.
And He tells two parables to illustrate this. If you want to build a tower, you should sit down first and see whether you can build it. Otherwise, if you lay the foundation and can’t finish it, then everyone who sees it will mock you, saying this man began something he couldn’t finish.
To build a tower means to build your life. Just because you think you are able to lay a foundation doesn’t mean that you are able to finish it. Do you have enough? Spiritually speaking, do you have enough to build a tower to heaven? Do you have enough to build your life into something that finally matters? Jesus is saying that no one, not your father or mother, your wife and children, your brothers and sisters, and especially not you, is enough for you to build the tower, to build your life, to save your life. You need to learn this. You need to carry the cross.
The cross tells you that you yourself need to be sacrificed. The cross says that everything you are is to be sacrificed to learn from Jesus. If you don’t, then you can’t learn from Him. You can’t be His disciple.
It’s the same thing with a king who is going to meet another king in battle. He needs to see if he can beat a king who has twice as many troops as he has. He needs to send a delegation while his enemy is still a long way off and ask for the things that bring peace.
In both of these parables, the builder and the warrior have to give up. They have to recognize that they don’t have enough to succeed. Jesus is saying that if you want to be a Christian, you don’t have enough by yourself to succeed, to build, to fight and win. Nothing you have is enough, as Jesus says, “So therefore every one of you who does not say good-bye to all of his possessions cannot be My disciple.”
This flies in the face of reason and all righteousness that you see on earth. How many churches spend entire sermon series, and how many pastors and self-help gurus write books on how to maintain what you have, your family, your relationships, and control of your own soul? But Jesus says to give up all these things. Everything. He says you need to hate it, because it does not help you build the tower or win the war. Nothing you have by yourself, from the flesh, can teach you what Jesus alone can teach you.
This is offensive to the world. It is that sharp and shocking rebuke to the man who says to Jesus, “I will follow you; only let me first go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”
What is this cruelty? Jesus doesn’t offer condolences. He doesn’t seem at all to care about something that we should all care about. What about the ones we love? Don’t they make life worth living? What about our efforts to do good? Doesn’t that matter? Wouldn’t the world be a horrible place if everyone hated his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters? Didn’t St. John say, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer?”
Yes, and that is true. But you can’t love your brother unless Jesus teaches you. You cannot love your father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters unless you learn from Jesus.
And that is the offense. Only Jesus can teach you the love that your family and you need. And this love does not come from your own love. You can only know how to love when you have lost hope in building the tower, in winning the war. You need someone else to lay the foundation. You need someone else to win the war.
And you will learn this whenever you repent. That is what it means to bear the cross. It means dying to yourself. It means recognizing that even if you have loved your family, your natural love isn’t enough to win a single war against sin; it isn’t enough to finish anything in this life.
But if you repent and follow Jesus, that is, if you repent and believe in Him and watch where He goes, then you will find the love that you are lacking, yes, and also the savor of the salt that is needed for every sacrifice in the Old Testament.
Jesus tells His disciples to carry their cross before He bears it. But He is going to do it. And so we also, who know that Jesus was crucified, cannot know the value of His cross until we bear our own cross, until we feel the pain of losing everything, that is, when we know what sin has done to us. It has taken everything.
Jesus knows. He lost everything. He bore our sin, and He knew the cost. It cost Him His life. It cost Him all His innocence to bear the guilt of the world. But His innocence won. And His innocence is what you find when you follow Him bearing your cross.
You feel the loss of all things. You see your lack of love for those you should love. You see your inability to figure out how to finish your life’s accomplishments; you see your lack in fighting the battle against sin, and Jesus wants you to see this so that you look nowhere else but to Him, not to father or mother or wife or children or brothers or sisters – only to Him.
Because there is no foundation that anyone can lay except that which is already laid, Christ Jesus your Savior. He is the stone the builders rejected, but has become the chief cornerstone, the foundation. Those who think they love enough do not need this foundation of love laid on the cross. Those who think they are strong do not come to terms quickly with their accuser while they are on the way. But those who have failed to love God and to live life the way God wants them to, they have no other choice but to hate everything and anyone, that is, to disregard it, to ignore it, to say good-bye to it, only to learn from Jesus, the foundation, the Savior, the mighty King of Kings, who is good and upright and therefore teaches sinners in the way.
And He teaches you along the way, as you follow Him. He teaches you that there is nothing to gain on earth if it is not lost for the sake of Christ and His righteousness. This is the one for whom Paul suffered the loss of all that he had to boast in before the world, so that he might be found in Christ, not having his own righteousness from the Law, but the righteousness that is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that is the patient obedience of the spotless Lamb of God, sacrificed with salt on the cross.
He seems to require so much, but He requires nothing. He doesn’t require your parents or spouse or children or your own life. He requires you to see that you don’t have these if you don’t have Him. You have nothing without Him. Your flesh denies this, and so it must be crucified. You soul needs to learn this, so you must follow Him.
Follow Him. See where He goes. He goes for your father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters and everyone you love and everyone you have hated. He goes where the punishment that you and all they deserve is laid on Him to give you peace, to lay a foundation of rock that you can stand on and not sink into despair; He goes to fight the war you don’t have enough strength to win, but He does. In His weakness of the flesh He wears is all the power of God, because He is the only God, He is the only teacher, and He teaches you what you need to learn.
He is your righteousness. You have enough in Him. If you lose everything, you still have everything because you have Him. Follow Him, and see where He goes. He visits the haunts of sadness and sin to destroy sin and bring in a joy that overcomes all sorrow. He knows the pain of your repentance, and He gives the joy of your faith. It is believing and knowing that Jesus is teaching you, a sinner, the way that leads to everlasting life.
There is nothing too great to lose for Christ, because everything is lost without Him, and everything is found in Him. Whoever loses his life for Christ’s sake finds his life. And so you find this life every day. Your baptism signifies that the Old Adam in you, who can’t build the tower or win the war, who loves what dies more than God who is living, this Old Adam is drowned and dies in repentance with all of his evil desires and sins. And you find life not in your building the tower or winning the war or having the greatest family that people admire. No, you find life in Him who became your brother and showed your true Father in heaven, who raises you up from doubt and sin and regret and guilt and washes you clean in the blood He shed on His cross, and makes you born again from your Mother the Church. You find life when Jesus teaches you about His death and resurrection. When you bear your cross and follow Jesus, you always learn that life is in the forgiveness of your sins, and that love is born from the faith that clings to Him who is the resurrection and the life. Then you see that your brothers and sisters are those who do the will of your Father in heaven, and that will is to learn from Jesus that He is your only Savior.
Build your life on Him alone, and you will finish the tower. Fight only with Him, and you will win the war. When you lie on your death bed and all that you have is slipping out of your hands and away from the sight off your eyes, then faith’s strong hand will still be holding onto that Rock, the foundation that cannot sink, the righteousness which covers all sin, the life that destroys all fear. You will have Jesus, you will have His love, and you will lose nothing. Amen.