Luke 14:25-33
Now large crowds were traveling with [Jesus;] and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”
—-
Earlier this summer, Sam and I were visiting my mom in Chicago, and she enlisted our help in cleaning out and reorganizing her bedroom.
Sorting through old papers in a bin next to the desk was quick and mostly uneventful, but every now and then, we would stumble upon an old picture, or a legal pad where my dad had sketched out a few scenes for a short stories he’d been working on.
Of much more interest was pulling out all the drawers in the giant mirrored dresser that has existed for as long as I’ve been alive, a beast of a piece of furniture taking up most of the wall.
In this dresser, we discovered artifacts of my parents’ lives for the last forty-plus years.
Lots of old jewelry, much of it of little value. But also, a pocket watch belonging to my great-grandmother, and some old and beautiful rings (a couple of those came home with me); a grandmother’s set of pearls, in need of repair; my mom’s high school class ring, and her old charm bracelet that I had been infatuated with as a child.
In the dresser, we found a birth announcement from when my dad was born. We found a whole stack of insignia patches for my dad’s police uniforms, and uniform pins as well. We found letters of commission and congratulations from the village for each of my dad’s promotions through the police force.
We found old pens and more old pictures. We found some old books, and were faced with the moral dilemma of whether to keep an very old and perhaps valuable illustrated copy of Little Black Sambo, or whether the deeply and offensively racist illustrations in the book meant that it was destined only for the trash bag.
To be honest, every item we evaluated came with its own dilemma: is this item worth keeping, or bequeathing, or donating, or tossing in the trash? And does every item of value need to be kept?
There’s a tension between keeping and letting go; a fundamental conflict between the desire to cling to stuff and wealth and the desire to rid ourselves of it. It is a conflict that plays out in our American middle-class society in the simultaneous rise in both climate-controlled storage facilities (for all our extra stuff) and the tiny house trend (a radical embrace of minimalist living).
There’s a reason that Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, has flown off shelves, sparked a Netflix series, and has turned the name Kondo into a verb. According to Kondo, a superabundance of possessions stand in the way of us living our best life; the best way to manage our belongings it to evaluate them in terms of whether or not they spark joy in our lives. She encourages us to give thanks to the belongings that have served us well, as a way of releasing them and letting them go.
Or if the Kondo-method doesn’t quite do it for you, then you can take a slightly more morbid turn, and embrace Margareta Magnussen’s take on a Swedish practice called döstädning, which literally translates as death-cleaning. In her book, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, Magnussen helps us reframe our decluttering in terms of being good to those who come after us. The admonishment is to take responsibility for our stuff, and don’t leave it as a burden for family and friends. Keep things that have meaning, keep things that will be important to those who come after you, get rid of the rest.
I don’t know whether Jesus would consider himself a pioneer in the world of decluttering trends, but perhaps he knows what Kondo and Magnusson and others do: that a clutter of possessions gets in the way of joy and of relationships; that keeping a clenched fist around our belongings and our wealth cuts off circulation and separates us from God, neighbor, and creation.
This is, of course, not a new idea in Luke’s gospel. We are fourteen chapters in, and already we can make an impressive list of all the times we’ve heard the warning that love of possessions and wealth are incompatible with the call to discipleship and to Christ’s kingdom.
While Jesus is still in the womb, Mary sings about how the hungry will be filled with good things and the rich will be sent away empty. John the Baptist tells a nervous crowd that the way they prepare for Jesus’s ministry is to share their extra stuff with people who need their extra stuff. Jesus states, in no uncertain terms, that his mission is to bring good news to the poor. In Luke, Jesus’s beatitudes are not spiritualized as they are in Matthew’s gospel (“blessed are the poor in spirit”); they are concrete. “Blessed are the poor (full stop!)”…and “woe to those who are rich (full stop!).” Jesus sends the disciples out with nothing - no food, no money, no staff, no bag, no bread, to teach them about the sufficiency of his kingdom. He chastises those who want to follow him, but only after managing their affairs back at home first. He tells the parable of the rich fool who values his stuff more than his life. He tells disciples to sell their possessions and give alms, to seek the unfailing treasure in heaven, and he tells us that where our treasure is, there our heart will be also.
Jesus, in Luke’s gospel, has been clear. The pursuit of wealth and possessions is at odds with pursuit of the kingdom of God. Relentless pursuit of wealth and possessions damages our relationships. It cuts us off from each other. It destroys the earth. It drains our joy. It creates burdens.
Jesus instead calls disciples to pursue God’s kingdom, and he warns them that this will come at a steep cost: it will require you to leave everything behind. The burden and release of the kingdom is that it frees you from the weight of all other things of this world.
And so there’s a question, lurking behind our gospel reading today:
What is it about Jesus and the kingdom of God that make it worth it to give up wealth, family, home, and life itself?
That’s a question that Jesus doesn’t answer for us in our gospel reading today. He tells us to count the cost, to prepare ourselves for the demand of discipleship, he shows us the stick but not the carrot.
We need to back up a few verses in Luke’s gospel for that. Jesus tells a parable right before today’s reading, a parable of a great banquet. A host prepares an extravagant meal - a meal of provision and joy, abundance and love, a meal freely given, freely offered, an invitation generously extended.
This meal is a picture of what God offers us in Christ and what the kingdom of God looks like: a kingdom of provision and of joy, abundance, love, grace and rest, celebration and generosity; a place where the meal is offered freely, whose host is Jesus; a space where there are no greater and lower seats, but all places at the table are places of honor; a place where health and life and hope are offered for all whose bodies and souls are hungry.
But in the parable, when the first rounds of invites go out, they are met with resistance. “I have just bought a piece of land and need to tend it.” “I have just purchased some new livestock and want to try them out.” “I have recently been married.”
Jesus has invited you to the banquet, my friends. He has laid before you a table overflowing with bread and wine, an abundance of grace and life. This is the carrot: a banquet in the kingdom of God where you and all are fed, where there is peace, where there is joy, where there is no more oppression, or pain, or division, or death.
Jesus has done the calculations. This banquet is worth your life. It’s a banquet for which he is about to give his life. And he invites us to do the same.
And so that’s the question for us in today’s gospel - what is it that keeps us from joining the banquet?
Where do we put our trust? Where do we put our sense of faithfulness? In God? Or in ourselves and our belongings? What are we hoarding and consuming and possessing? What is consuming and possessing us?
Jesus doesn’t give us a strategy for cleaning out the clutter. He doesn’t give us a method for discerning what is “enough” and what is “too much.”
He simply tells us to let go, for the kingdom he offers is more than enough. He gives us permission to detach from our things, because he has the one treasure worth possessing. He tells us to clear away everything that gets in the way of saying “yes” to the dinner invitation, because we are worthy of the invite, just the way we are.
Holy decluttering can take many forms.
For some of the church fathers, this meant living a truly ascetic life - moving to the desert, living in caves, denouncing all worldly possession. For other faithful people, past and present, this has meant entering into monastic orders, and taking vows of simplicity. For some, this has meant coming together into intentional Christian communities defined by shared wealth and shared possessions.
For you, this might mean a thorough house-cleaning and many trips to the Depot. Or maybe a bigger decision, like moving into a smaller home. It might mean that you think differently about how you approach birthday and Christmas gift-giving. It might mean finding ways to borrow and share more, rather than purchasing. Or committing to reusing items and using sustainable items instead of their disposable counterparts.
This is for you to discern; how God is calling you to the work of holy decluttering. This, my friends, you, counting the cost of the kingdom, in prayer and in faith, discerning how to use what you have in service of God and in love toward neighbor and in care for creation.
Jesus tells us that where our treasure is, there our heart will follow.
God’s kingdom, the great banquet set before us, is the true pearl of great price, the treasure that we carry in clay jars, the one coin worth casting aside all our furniture to find.
Jesus says, “I freely offer you the riches of the kingdom, the life that is everlasting. Come to the banquet, for the invitation is wide open.”
This is the treasure.
Is your heart ready to follow?