When Your Salt Isn’t Salty

Text: Luke 14:25-35

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

          When you picture Jesus, you probably think of the Sunday School pictures of Jesus with the smiling face, the warm demeanor, welcoming children onto his lap and holding lambs over his shoulders. He’s the kind of person that you’d immediately like when you meet him. Not one to get easily agitated. And this is an accurate portrayal of who Jesus is. But it’s not only who he is. That’s not the Jesus who appears in Luke 14. This Jesus is the one who we heard last week say that “Anyone who exalts himself will be humbled.” And who today we hear saying, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” That’s the kind of message that’s going to get your attention. Because that’s what it’s meant to do. Get your attention. Jesus needs your full attention because the message that He has to proclaim is one that you cannot ignore.

There is no other way. You can’t split your attention and give half of it to the world and half of it to Jesus. It just won’t work. You can’t tell him that you’re busy right now, but you’ll have more time to follow Him later. That’s not how it works. Jesus call to discipleship here in our lesson may seem radical, even fanatical, but it’s what He demands of His followers. And He gives you the tools of faith, courage, and stamina to accomplish that calling. And there are those times where you feel fully faithful, totally courageous, and full of stamina to follow Him in just the way He’s asking you to. And then there are those times where the faith is waning, the courage is lacking, and the stamina has faded. This is what Jesus is talking about when He says, “Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?”

Great question, right? The temptation would be to say, “well, you can’t really put the saltiness back into the salt once it’s gone, so I guess the answer is that it can’t be done.” This isn’t a rhetorical question. And it’s not a brain teaser either. Jesus wants you to be salty – filled with faith in Him, courageous to stand up to the ways of the world, and full of stamina to make it to the end of the race. But He also knows that there are times when that saltiness is just not going to seem to be there. The weight of the world is dragging you down. Questions and doubts hang heavy over you. The courage to follow Jesus in the way He wants isn’t always going to come easy. But the answer isn’t to give up and think that it’s an impossible task. The answer is to find the only way that your saltiness can be restored. In all the difficulties that Jesus describes, the way to restore the saltiness Jesus demands is to

LIVE IN CHRIST’S CALL TO DISCIPLESHIP

BY GIVING EVERYTHING UP TO HIM.

          To see what Jesus is calling us to do, we need to look at the specific challenges that He highlights. First, our saltiness is lost, Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes even his own life.” If a person does this, “he cannot be my disciple.” It would be easy to just explain this away by saying that if your family is getting in the way of following Jesus that you need to keep your distance from them. But Jesus isn’t willing to sugar coat this. He uses the word hate, quite the opposite of his earlier command to “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,” because He wants His disciples to realize that nothing dare come before Him in the life of a disciple. But this is also not a blanket command to hate our families. Most times our parents, spouses, brothers and sisters, and children are going to be on our side. But if ever they get between you and Jesus, there is only one choice that’s acceptable to make. We cannot allow anything, including family, to be of greater importance in our lives than our relationship with the Lord.

Secondly, the saltiness is lost for “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me.” Jesus says that this person “cannot be my disciple.” Bearing the cross certainly doesn’t meant that we are all to die a death like Jesus did. Our crosses are different than His was. But we still have crosses to bear. And as I’ve been saying, following Jesus – being His disciple – takes faith, courage, and stamina. Things that we might not always have in abundance. And we need them, because bearing one’s cross doesn’t refer to the afflictions and troubles that commonly come in life to Christians and non-Christians alike. Rather, a believer taking up the cross means to accept whatever suffering might result from a sincere commitment to Christ and His kingdom.

For many of the disciples, their confession of Christ would mean death. Now, it’s not likely that your confession of Christ is going to result in death, but Jesus’ demand is that you be willing to endure anything for the sake of your faith. And He’s not the only leader who ever understood the sacrifice that was necessary to obtain a desired goal. The Italian freedom fighter Garibaldi offered his men only hunger and death in their pursuit to free Italy. Winston Churchill told the English people that he had nothing to offer them but “blood, sweat, toil, and tears” in their fight against the enemies of England. Of course, gaining freedom for Italy, or overcoming the enemies of England are just temporal goals. The goals we seek to achieve are eternal. They carry so much more consequence than anything that we might face here on earth. Which is why Jesus is so adamant about the commitment we need to make to forsake everything else to follow Him. And you’ve already made the commitment. In your confirmation or at your profession of faith you committed to “continue steadfast in this confession and Church and to suffer all, even death, rather than fall away from it.” And what we know for certain is that the rewards of this faithfulness are eternal.

Thirdly, your saltiness is lost when you don’t “first sit down and count the cost.” Jesus tells two stories about looking ahead to ensure that you have what you need to accomplish the goal – to finish the race. In the first, He tells of building a tower and counting the cost of completing it before laying down the foundation and then being unable to finish it, lest “all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘this man began to build and was not able to finish.’” In the second, Jesus tells of the wise king who will count his troops and determine how many of the enemy’s troops he’s up against before going out into battle. The conclusion of this section is a wonderful reminder to us of both the cost of discipleship, and also the relationship that Jesus desires to have with each of His children. He says of the king who realizes that He’s going to lose the war to a superior army, “while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation to ask for terms of peace.”

That’s a great military tactic, but it’s also the only plan that we have and can hold to in our lives. We’re outmatched. Our sinful nature constantly falls prey to the lies, deception, and unwavering attacks of the devil. When we don’t renounce everything in this life and hold solely to the promises of God, we’re like the king who would foolishly go to battle with 10,000 troops against the enemy’s 20,000. But by the grace of God, even though we might seem to be outmatched by all the things that would lead us away from God, with Christ on our side, there is no power – no force – that can overcome us. And really, it’s no power that can overcome Him.

And so, instead of trying to fight that stronger opponent on our own, we send out our “delegation and ask for terms of peace.” Peace which God has already won for us, through Christ’s righteous work on the cross. Peace that He freely gives to us when we ask Him for it. Peace that’s ours when we turn from the ways of this world and anything that would distract us from Him. Peace that He freely gives in the forgiveness of sins that He is ready to distribute every time we approach Him in humble confession.

Being a disciple isn’t easy. It does mean that living in Christ’s call to discipleship requires giving up everything to Him. But when we do that, the rewards are great. And even when the call may seem radical, or even fanatical, it just means a closer relationship with the One who has done everything for us so that we might live forever with Him. And everything means even doing what to us would be impossible. Gifting faith that stands up to the pressures of life. Granting courage to face even the harshest critics. Bestowing stamina that will allow us to finish the race. And even putting the saltiness back when the salt has lost its taste.

This message of Jesus might not at first seem to come off like the picture of our Savior that we know and love. But when you understand how greatly He desires that every one of His children would be with Him for eternity, if He didn’t tell us exactly what that took to happen, it would be truly unloving. Thanks be to God that He has told us what it takes to be His disciples. And thanks be to God that He has done the work of salvation for us already. May he give you each the faith, courage, and stamina to follow Him to the very end, where the greatest treasure awaits you. Amen.

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.