The Risk is Real - The Rev Dr Kelly Sprinkle - 9-7-2025

Reading Luke 14:25-33 read by Jane Pierce

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Second reading is from Luke, chapter fourteen, verses twenty five

(00:04):
through thirty three. Large crowds followed Jesus. He turned to
them and said, if any of you come to me
without hating your mother and your father, your loved ones,
your sisters and brothers, indeed your very self, you can't
be my follower. Anyone who doesn't take up the cross
and follow me cannot be my disciple. If one of

(00:28):
you were going to build a tower, wouldn't you first
sit down and calculate the outlay to see if you
have enough money to complete the project. You do that
for fear of laying the foundation and not be able
to complete the work, because anyone who saw it would
jeer at you and say you started a building and
couldn't finish it. Or if the leaders of one of

(00:50):
the countries were going to declare war on another country,
wouldn't they first sit down and consider whether an army
of ten thousand they could win against an enemy coming
against them with twenty thousand. If they couldn't, they'd send
a delegation while the enemy is still at a distance,

(01:11):
asking for terms of peace, so count the cost. You
can't be my disciple if you don't say goodbye to
all your possessions.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
I attended a church related university. I was, in my words,
at least one of the loved sons of the institution.
While I was there a couple of years out from graduation,
it appeared, at least from all I could tell in others,

(01:54):
that a faculty member had been summarily dismissed from her
role because she attended a church that had decided in
the early nineteen nineties to bless the union of two men.
I wrote a letter to the president expressing my dismay

(02:18):
in this. I put it in the mailbox, and within
a few days I received a reply, and it went
something like this. It was about loving your alma mater,
whether it's right or wrong, but your loyalty shall be strong.

(02:47):
I can't remember the quote exactly, but it also went
on to say to trust those that God has put
into leadership. A few weeks later, I was at my
alma mater for the class agents of every class would
meet once a year, and we were to be the

(03:09):
ones eventually, you know, to help encourage others to give
a little of their own earnings to support your own
alma mater. The president clearly ignored me, sat opposite of
where I might be, and after this meeting of the
class agents, I was never invited back as a class agent.

(03:35):
Somehow I believe my name had gotten lost, or it
was intentionally lost. You know. It's sort of still when
I think about as much as I love my Alma Mater,
it hurts a little, but it makes me think of
what we've just heard today in Scripture, that sometimes it

(03:58):
appears that our love for justice makes us appear as enemies,
or a scripture might have said it to the world,
it may look like that I hate my Alma Mater.
My intent was to lift it up, to push it

(04:23):
to think on a different level. Today's text from the
Gospel is not one that we would hear by literalists
or those who are reading scripture as a prescription, because
I clearly don't think Jesus would have said the way

(04:44):
to the Realm of God is by hating your mother,
hating your father, your loved ones, your spouse, your children.
But it is, if we think about it, perhaps how
the world sometimes views our actions. We live in a

(05:09):
time where our love, our decisions, our stands for justice
sometimes are proclaimed that these fotes hate our nation because
we dare stand up against injustice, that we dare to

(05:29):
stand up with our different opinion. Part of it is,
my friends, that we have been called to choose life
over and over again, to stand up for those who
have been dismissed, to stand up for those have been discouraged.

(05:52):
As Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us in her writings, is
that during the time of when this reading was written,
perhaps two generations out from the time of Jesus, or
maybe even three, that it was in the time of
that era that in the family and in the reco

(06:16):
Roman world, that to choose to be a follower was
always a part of the family decision, the male family
member's decision, that is, and that if you went against
your family, it meant that you had turned your back

(06:38):
on them. But we know that Jesus had a way
of teaching often of making things either either or my friends,
and being a people of the way, a people of
following Jesus. The choice that is before us is not

(07:04):
to hate our families and not to hate the world,
but to engage in practices sometimes that the world may
think that you stand all against what it believes that
you stand against perhaps nationalism, that you stand against xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia.

(07:28):
Even when the world sometimes appears that it's turning on
your back, turning is back on the way of justice,
we are still called to make the choice. Now. It
says that we are to calculate the cost in our
decision making. I think the calculating the cost is not

(07:51):
deciding well, if I do all this, this is what
it's going to cost me in the end, and I
choose not to do it. Part of it is to
realize that the cost sometimes may push us to new grounds,
to push us into new areas, to stand up for
what is right, my friends. To choose love is to

(08:33):
make a difference in the world. To choose love is
to stand up and say that in my name, just
cannot happen. To choose love is to welcome the immigrant.
To choose love is to welcome humanity and to welcome

(08:55):
them all to the table. To choose love overhete is
to change not only our hearts but others. But we
know that changing someone's perspective is sometimes hard work. Sometimes

(09:19):
it takes standing up for who you are and who
God has created you to be, and to proclaim with
all your dignity and all your worth, that this is
who I am, and this is where I will enter
into the world. For in Christianity, taking up the cross

(09:48):
is hard. Now we often have made it sort of
this statement of, well, this is my cross to bear,
that I might be allergic to chocolate. This is not
what it means to carry the cross. And it's not
that Jesus is asking us to pick up his cross

(10:09):
and go to our deaths. It is to pick up
the cross is to lift up the crosses that are
killing people today. To pick up the cross and show
the world where injustice is, to shed light on those

(10:30):
places where death is conquering life. To lift up the
cross as if it is a beam of love and
show that those practices must come to an end. Picking

(10:52):
up your cross, being the black sheep of your family
or Alma mater, maybe that's the very thing this world needs,
for those who take the risk to pick up the
lens the light and show it upon the world, so

(11:12):
that the shattered places may be seen as to be
about making a difference. Even if others may say that
you hate your nation, you hate your ownA mater, that
you hate our way of life. For you see, love

(11:36):
will win out, but it will not win out without
us that we must be willing for it to appear
that we hate what we love. We ultimately we must

(11:59):
remember that Jesus are beloved. Probably never quite said hate
your mother or father, for Jesus was one of the
commandments of loving father and mother, loving your God, loving
your neighbors as yourself. But doing so may ruffle feathers,

(12:23):
may upset the most vocal. But my friends, you can
do it. Choose life over death. Amen.