Title: Salty!

People were following the Lord, in great numbers. They were impressed. They liked how He fed them on fish and bread, when they were in the wilderness and there were no stores nearby. They were intrigued by the authoritative way in which He spoke. They loved how He healed their children and brothers and mothers.

Well, now He was really talking. "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."

If I only had a pizza for every time someone told me that it’s a sin to hate, yet, here is Jesus telling us that it’s a sin not to hate. What gives? What gives is a proper understanding of hate.

When we think of love and hate, we think in terms of emotions. Love is when we are in love, and we find ourselves trying to mow the lawn with the rototiller. And, hate is when we are so angry with someone that we wish bad things upon him.

This is the furthest thing from Jesus’ mind. He is using hate to refer to our attitudes and our actions. In Matthew’s Gospel, instead of hate, the phrase more than is used, that we are not to love our family members more than we love God. Jesus is talking about attitude and action. He’s talking First Commandment stuff.

No one, but God, gets the first position of love. If you love your family, or your own life, more than you love God, you sin. If you put your family or yourself before God, you sin. If you do not repent—if you do not admit and hate this—you lose your life for eternity.

I recently connected with a childhood friend, on Facebook, with whom I hadn’t spoken in thirty years. She told me about her brother, and how her brother still persists in a sinful thing, after all these years. To this, she said, "I can’t judge him, since he’s my brother."

What would the Lord say to that? He would say that she can’t be His disciple if she will love her brother, without his coming to repentance. By allowing for his sin, she is as much as saying it is not a sin, and, thus, she is calling God a liar. She is loving her brother more than she loves God. In fact, Jesus would say that she is hating God. She needs to reverse it.

This is tough business, this being a Christian. So tough is it that the Lord continues, "Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." The cross was used for capital punishment. The cross, in particular, was used to kill the worst of criminals so that they would suffer, terribly. And, Jesus tells you to bear your own cross.

We are coming up on the ninth anniversary of 9/11. So often, people tell me that many must have turned to God, in the face of this suffering. My response is always the same, that just as many turned away from God, finding it un-God-like for Him to allow such suffering.

But, here’s the importance of suffering, for when you suffer—whether it is for Jesus’ name, as in spiritual harassment, or when you suffer a disease or a job loss, or when you suffer any of life’s infinite hardships—you are giving opportunity to display something about yourself. You show your family and friends, and yourself, what you’re made of.

God uses all of life’s suffering to teach you that you are not in control of your life. God uses all of life’s suffering to teach you that this life is corrupted by sin and the work of the devil. God uses all of life’s suffering to teach you that you are going to die, and you need to be prepared. So, He says, count the cost. "For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?"

Do you ever sit down and count the cost of being a disciple of Jesus Christ? Do you have enough in the spiritual bank of your faith to make your way through this life? When a cross pops up in your life, can you cash the check, or does it bankrupt your faith?

Don’t go getting cocky, just because you call yourself a Christian. The majority of the so-called Christians of this congregation can’t even get themselves into church on any given Sunday. Whose life are they loving—the Lord Jesus’, or their own? And, the vast majority of the so-called Christians of this congregation can’t even get their kids to Sunday School or themselves to Bible class. Whose life are they loving—the Lord Jesus’, or their own?

How can Christians be salty, if they don’t get seasoned by Jesus Christ? How will you suffer any of life’s hardships if you won’t even dedicate yourselves to the easy things of being a Christian? I guarantee you, coming to church and Bible class is easy on your faith. Losing a job, being betrayed by a spouse, dying of cancer—these are hard on your faith.

The Lord Jesus says, "Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?" He goes on to say that, when the salt goes flat, it gets tossed—that it’s not even good for the manure pile. He finally says, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

Are you a salty Christian? How do you get salty? Ask yourself: How do I season myself, so that I succeed at my job, so that I’m a good hunter or cook or athlete, so that I achieve my goals in whatever pursuit I undertake?

Do you not count the cost? If it is your job, what is the cost? It’s the education that it takes to know the job, and the experience that it takes to know the ins and outs of the job. If it is your hobby—be it fishing, or knitting, or whatever—it’s the same thing. And, as you undertake a job or hobby, you count the cost: Am I up to getting this education? Am I interested in putting in the time, the effort, the money, and getting the experience, so that I can be successful?

Dear children of God, you who consider yourselves disciples of the Lord Jesus, how much more important to count the cost of being God’s child and Jesus’ disciple?

Are you a salty Christian? How do you get salty?

It’s not so much that you get salty, but that the Lord seasons you. But, just as a person needs to be with his teacher to get an education, you need to be with the Lord to get His seasoning. His seasoning comes through His Means of Grace: the proclamation of the Gospel of the forgiveness of your sins, the Baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection where He clothed you with His perfect holy nature, and the Communion of His crucified and living body and blood which He uses to sustain the spoken forgiveness and the washed righteousness.

Being a Christian comes down to how you view God and how you see your life. If you think that God is only there to make life good—I call this the Cookie Jar God—then you will not put Him before a beloved friend or member of the family; then you will find Him to be a meany when the struggles of life come upon you, or you will simply feel like He has fled from you—and who needs a God who is not faithful? You will count the cost of Christianity to be too high, and you will bail out.

As I began the sermon, two weeks ago, God will never ask you to die for your sins. But, He does call you to suffer with Him. It is in suffering that you learn that this life is not the life, but that it will always be filled with suffering. When you suffer without Christ, life’s hardships are like salt poured into the wound. When you suffer with Christ, life’s hardships are salt to season you into tasty Christians who, first, can carry your crosses and, second, are wonderful witnesses to family and friends what it means to love the Lord, hate this life, bear the cross, and have plenty in the bank of faith to be children of God and disciples of Christ.

This is why Jesus took up His cross, to suffer what you cannot—the penalty for your sins—so that, taking up your cross, your following Him results in your eternal life in Paradise. Amen.