“Lions may be kings of the jungle, but for nearly two hours, two kittens ruled the concrete jungle as officials halted New York subway service Thursday.” That was the first line in a true story I saw on the CNN website around this time of year in 2013. It goes on to say, “The fearless felines risked all nine lives meandering the subway Thursday, causing part of it to be shut down for 90 minutes as personnel cut the power to begin their search. New Yorkers are accustomed to seeing critters, but it’s usually rats and mice scampering around the underground tunnels, leaving the alley cats above ground.”
“Even though the search was for a couple of friendly felines, some riders were not happy with the inconvenient suspension. ‘It’s a waste of money. They could have been doing something else. It’s a waste of money. But that’s the MTA for you,’ one subway rider and former MTA employee Wilson Burton told a CNN affiliate.” The trains were backed up and people were late as crews tried to corral the kittens. Finally, the kittens were captured and the trains ran again. The last line of the article says, “It was a close call – but, luckily, curiosity didn’t kill these cats.”
I don’t envy the person who had to make the decision to save the kittens. Can you imagine the official in charge having to decide, weigh the cost of the angry commuters and the economic impact of the stopping of the trains, against the lives of a couple of kittens? As a cat lover, I think the right choice was made. But I’m sure other people might have estimated the cost in a different way. Every year, people spend $350 million on Halloween costumes… for their pets. I saw that PetSmart just released a special line of costumes just for guinea pigs. I mean, that’s a lot of money for something I don’t really understand. But that’s ok. Many folks think that is a wise investment. People plan their budget and their budget includes money for a pumpkin suit for their dog. They are counting the costs.
Today, in the text, Jesus was a little more serious than Halloween costumes for pets, and wanted the listeners to count the cost, to ponder what it would take to be a follower and a disciple. And just like in the 1st century, the stories and actions of Jesus ask us, today, to count the costs. But we don’t know the cost unless we budget, unless we prepare, unless we know what we are doing and where we are going. And just like the GPS on your phone, you can’t map out where you’re going unless you know where you are right now. You know that first field in the Google Maps app on your phone? It wants your current location. We can’t possible budget our time, our resources, and our talents for the furthering of God’s work in the world when we don’t know where we are right now and where we want to go. In order to follow Jesus in love and devotion we must budget ourselves, our lives. Because we don’t just budget our money. We budget our time, we budget our relationships, we budget all of who we are. That’s why we pledge to the church. Pledging to give a certain amount in tithes and offerings to the church helps us to count the cost, to know what we, as families, are able to give to Royal Lane next year and what Royal Lane can do in the community. Pledging is crucially important to help us create the budget of the church. It is important for us to know what resources we have based on how much of your time, talent, and treasures you pledge to give.
For those of you who know me well, it wouldn’t surprise you that I am super meticulous about my family’s budget and our spending. I track our retirement portfolios, our savings account, our credit card, and our checking account every single day. I want to know exactly how much we have (where we are now) and how much we need to save in order to accomplish as a family the things we want to do (where we are going). Although I doubt Jesus used spreadsheets or Wells Fargo apps or budget management tools, we do see that Jesus seemed to have in mind budgeting in his teachings, especially in this gospel lesson for this week. He asked, “For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether there is enough to complete it? 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?”
Jesus seemed to be telling us that we need to prepare, to budget our resources for what is to come. We need to count the costs. The trouble is, Jesus just got finished telling us what the costs actually were. The costs include our closest connections and dearest relationships, that of our family and friends. The costs amount to all our possessions. The cost for following Jesus into this messed up world is that we must daily pick up our crosses and carry the burden of budgeting all of who we are and what we will do to live out our lives of love.
But to tell you the truth, if I were to sit down with the spreadsheet of sacrifice and the tally the costs, as Jesus has asked us to do, my choice might be not to follow Jesus. The cost feels too great and I’m not sure I have the will or the wealth to make any real difference in this world. But that is where the budgeting spreadsheet falls short. Yes, carrying the cross of Christ means sacrifice and loss. But ultimately, Jesus promised that when follow we will also experience lives of abundance.
The Rev. Dr. Amy Lindemen Allen agrees that “Jesus’ is a logic of abundance, not of scarcity. He demands that his disciples leave behind their families and their possessions, not as an exchange for something better, but as a prelude to something bigger – to the Kingdom to which Jesus promises those very same families are invited to be a part. Discipleship isn’t about giving everything and everyone up to never see them again, any more than warfare is about sacrificing all 10,000 soldiers to win a war. Yes, of course, there will be losses along the way – losses that must be thoughtfully and carefully mourned. Counting the costs ahead of time, being aware of these risks, is part of any good budget or strategy plan. But the plan isn’t about the loss – the plan is about the end goal [of abundance].”
So, for Dr. Allen and for Jesus, the end goal of budgeting our lives, to give more of who we are to discipleship and growth and love and passion, “is God’s Kingdom – a kingdom into which mother and father, sister and brother, spouse and child, friend and stranger, are all invited together to live into what it means to be a people, a family of God.” But families, ourselves, our neighbors, and our community are costly expenses. To love God, to love ourselves, to love each other requires support and compassion, and sometimes infrastructure and investment. Are we willing to shoulder the cost? Are we willing to invest in the work of this church and in the reign of God’s Kin-dom? These are the questions Jesus invites us to carry, to weigh, to ponder as we give all of who we are at the altar of worship, as we give all of who we are in the car on the way to school, as we give all of who we are in East and West and South and North Dallas, as we give of who we are to the costly work of God. Discipleship is costly, and love is budgeting.
But we get anxious and fearful when we lose stuff, right? When we lose our place in our families, when we lose our power in an organization or profession, when we lose our possessions. It is scary. But what I feel Jesus is telling us is that we are held in abundance, not scarcity. We are held in abundant love, abundant grace, abundant mercy, abundant acceptance. Following Jesus is about abundance. Although Jesus demanded that his followers leave behind their families, their possessions, and their lives, it wasn’t to destroy them, it was to strip them down to a point where they could see the abundance God had for them. Letting everything go is to get us to something bigger, to the world and realm of God that Jesus invites all of us to join.
Jesus’s words ask us to budget, to plan, to figure out all of those things in our lives we need to let go so we can fully receive what God has prepared for us and to what God is preparing us for. We cannot be people who grow, when the weight of the world is upon us. We cannot be a church that changes this city, when the weight of selfishness is upon us. We cannot be Christians who bring the love of God to this world, when we haven’t let go of everything that is in our hands so we can actually invest in the lives of others. For when we are truly empty, when our fingers are no longer white-knuckling power, prestige, money, and relationships, we are finally, FINALLY, free to pick up the cross. I think God wants us to have empty hands so that we can pick up the cross of Christ and in turn, have full hearts and full lives.
And I know carrying the cross means different things to different people. Dr. Karoline Lewis says, “For Luke, what does it mean to carry your cross? It could mean to carry the burdens of those from whom Jesus releases burdens. It could mean to carry the ministry of Jesus forward by seeing those whom the world overlooks. It could mean favoring and regarding the marginalized, even when that action might lead to your own oppression. If the cross is only a means for your salvation, then you’ve missed Jesus’ point, especially because in Luke 14 the cross hasn’t happened yet. Carrying the cross at this juncture has to be in the context of what has come before, not cast in the hindsight of our theology, confessions, and traditions. Carrying your cross cannot only be located in suffering and sacrifice when the biblical witness suggests otherwise.” The cross is also life.
But I’m like you, when I think about the cross and that something “costs” something, I feel I have to give up money, or time, or energy to make it happen. Is that discipleship, to give up more when we are already stretched so thin? Maybe it is for you. Maybe you have collected resources over the years and need a way to use those resources for the betterment of Dallas. And we feel that we are moving into the way of Jesus when we focus on his death on the cross. Because that’s the cross, right? The cross was where Jesus died. The cross was where those who were sentenced to crucifixion lingered in pain and agony. So yes, the cost of discipleship is, in fact, costly, as we weigh the cost and count the cost. But the cross also represents life because, as Dr. Lewis says, “To carry your cross is to carry the choices and burdens and realities of a life that has made a certain commitment – a commitment to a way of life that is committed to bringing about the Kingdom of God here and now. That’s certainly what it meant for Jesus.”
In 2018, Americans gave $410 billion to charitable causes. $410 Billion! And of that $410 billion, only 32% of that went to religious institutions. In fact, people are generally giving less to churches, even as charitable giving is on the rise. There are so many good causes out there and I know many, if not all of you, are stretched thin financially because of all the good you are doing. I know the financial struggle might be suffocating and even feel like you are perishing. But I want to encourage us all to focus on life, rather than death. What if we focused on a different way of being, a way of being where the cross means life instead of death, where sacrifice means hope instead of despair? Because ultimately we should listen to this lesson in Luke and realize that when Jesus died on the cross it meant life for us, life for others. Dr. Lewis continues by saying, “How is the cross, especially for Luke, flying in the face of empire? A promise that God’s seeing us does not end in our death and burial? A certainty that release of the captives is a past, present, and future reality, but that that future depends on our choice to carry the cross of Jesus? So, carrying your cross is a choice and ironically, it is a choice for life and not death.”
Church, we need to be freed to dream, to create, to set free, to love, to live out our love, to bring life to this city. And the way that we do that is we count the cost. We pledge to the church’s vision and mission. We pledge the church’s budget with our time, talents, and resources in order to give money to help abused women find shelter. We pledge the church’s budget so that we can go to Pride and let a community of people know they are created by God and loved by Royal Lane. We pledge our church’s budget so we can get peanut butter and diapers and clothes to North Dallas Shared Ministries. We pledge our church’s budget so music groups and support groups and non-profit groups can meet in a heated and cooled space as they plan how to build up the community. We pledge our church’s budget so we can pay our ministers to help grow and instruct our children, create passionate music and worship, provide comfort and care in the hospital, and build multi-faith and multi-racial connections in the city so that the love of God, the kingdom of God, comes to earth right here and right now. We pledge our church’s budget so we can count the cost and what it means for us to live our love in the world. Love is budgeting. So, take a pledge card from the pew rack this morning, fill it out, put it in the offering plate, and let us live out our love together.
Amen.