In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Large crowds were travelling with Jesus, and turning to them he said…”

What does it take to attract people to church these days? How about $10.5  million. At least that is what the United Church of Canada is currently spending on a nationwide advertising campaign to attract new members.

The program is called “Emerging Spirit” and one of the ads for the campaign features a bobblehead Jesus perched on a car dashboard along with two boxes. One box says “funny” and the other says “ticket to hell”. I guess you are to take your little computer mouse and click on one of the boxes.

Now  I don’t know if the campaign has increased membership in the United Church but it has increased sales for the bobblehead Jesus doll that was featured on the campaign website. But, wow, $10.5 million dollars spent in order to attract people to church. For us Presbyterians that would buy a lot of ham and scalloped potatoes. And certainly within the United Church the campaign is not without it critics especially over the bobblehead Jesus thing. But the Jesus doll is assumed by many people to be the symbol for the campaign.

And perhaps there is a reason for that. Looking at our reading from the gospel of Luke, what sort of television ad would you devise to capture today’s encounter with Jesus? Certainly he has the crowds with them after a somewhat shaky start in his hometown of Nazareth where the good citizens tried to throw him off a cliff.
He has the crowds, polls are surging off the charts, popularity numbers are high and then he turns to them and says, “Are you looking for a deeper meaning in life? Does your marriage need a boost? Is work getting you down? Well, not exactly. This is Jesus. What he says is, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple.”

I bet the crowds got pretty quiet at this point. And if Andrew Coyne (National Post), Chantal Hebert (Toronto Star) and Alan Gregg (Strategic Council) had been there they would have all agreed that Jesus really blew it with that speech. But then Jesus goes on, “And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. And finally to top it all off, “In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.”
I bet the crowds got a great deal smaller after that sermon. So what sort of ad would we develop to capture that sermon?

I heard or read somewhere that there are churches who have removed the cross from there sanctuary because they feel that it was an obstacle in their attempts to reach people with the gospel. New people found it offensive so they replaced it with a symbol of a dove. Now if this story is true it is an example of our reckless willingness to reach the world at any cost –even at the cost of the gospel itself.

And yet this version of Christianity is very popular today. It confirms all our prejudices and excuses all our weakness. Sort of like having surgery without any pain or like losing weight without the discipline exercise and eating right.  As I have said before there are those preachers that tell there listeners that Jesus wants them to be healthy, wealthy and wise – the gospel of prosperity.

But in our reading from Luke Jesus clearly is not interested in meeting our needs. Rather he turns the whole subject of needs upside down by targeting some of our most cherished values – family, parenthood and self fulfillment.

 Each of them are put in their place in relation to Christian discipleship, and rather succinctly I might add. The greater value is to be free of these relationships, to be empty in order to share with Christ the burden of carrying the human family if not creation itself.

And this is not an isolated passage. When you take the stories of Jesus found in the four gospels, all of his sermons, parables etc. it’s no wonder Jesus has trouble holding a crowd. Because all of these stories, sermons, parables, this way of life of which Jesus speaks leads to only one place – and that is the cross.
Is it any wonder that people are not to keen on following the path that Jesus walks. In fact I am surprised any of you are here at all. Good grief who would actually choose to try and live there life this way.

Unless what Jesus says, does and lives is true, that Jesus truly is the way, the truth and the life. But it is a way of life that is decidedly against the crowd. I have to admit that it is passages like this that keep me hanging in, even with all of my failures, my falling down and getting up, my falling down and getting up.

The way that Jesus offers is hard but it is that difficulty and the grace of God that continues to push me on because in this way of discipleship marked by humility, peace, love and compassion I find a truth that speaks to the core of my being.

And maybe it is the same for you as well. We are here because in some surprising way Christ has sought each one of us and called us to be disciples and walk and way of life that is not of our own choosing or devising. And despite the cacophony of voices all around us telling us how to live our lives, to be “healthy, wealthy and wise” we believe that the narrow way that Christ offers is the truth.

And so we gather, Sunday after Sunday, to be immersed in a story that clashes with the values of the world that surround us. A story where the cross of Christ has center place, a story that offers a different account of where we have come from, of where we are going and what we are called to be. And when this story told in scripture becomes our story above all the other stories that the world tries to impose on us – we are then on the narrow way of discipleship, the way that challenges us to count the cost, the way of the cross.