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Reading from Right to Left                          Luke 14: 25-33                       Sept. 9, 2007

When I was young, growing up in my parents’ home, we rarely, if ever, went out to dinner. 

In fact, when I search my mind for memories from my childhood, none of them involve eating together at a restaurant.  The only exception I can think of, actually, is a very vivid memory I have of sitting with my mother at a lunch counter at a Five and Dime in downtown Patterson, New Jersey, eating a tuna fish sandwich.

Now, from the look on some faces, my guess is that some of you have no idea what I just described, but trust me on this:  fifty years ago you most likely would have found a Five and Ten-cent Store in just about every town, including here in Riverside, and at many of those stores you could sit at a counter and have lunch – and possibly even top it off with an ice-cream soda.

But as much as I enjoy reminiscing about the way things used to be, that is not my point.  My point is this:  Growing up, I learned, from my parents that money was scarce and that you should spend it wisely and carefully.   Eating out was a special occasion, and even a tuna sandwich prepared by someone else and served to you at a restaurant was a memorable treat.

My parents, you see, remembered the Great Depression.  They remembered what it was like to have nothing – indeed, when nobody had very much of anything – and they learned, from that experience, how to measure the cost of everything they did.  Figuratively speaking, they learned – and taught me as well – to read menus from right to left.

So it should come as no surprise, then, when I tell you that this practice of reading menus from right to left is simply a part of who I am.  It doesn’t matter if it is a fancy French restaurant with a wine list the size of a telephone directory or a Taco Bell, I always start with the price. 

I may not make the decision based on the price, mind you, but I always try to stay away from situations where the cost is not disclosed up front.

Twenty-five years in the financial services business simply reinforced this concept, by the way.  I always told my clients:  if the cost of a product or a fund or a 401(k) option or a deal of some kind is not clearly disclosed so there is no doubt about it, stay away. 

And, now that I’m no longer advising people about the choices they make for their pension or endowment funds, but, rather, find myself in the humbling, downright scary position of advising people about the choices they make in their spiritual lives, guess what?  My advice is the same.  Read the menu from right to left.  Make sure you measure the cost.

Fortunately, Jesus agrees with me (actually, it’s the other way around, but it does feel good to say it the way I just did).  The Gospel lesson for this morning that we just heard is a record of Jesus telling his followers about the cost of living a Christian life – about the cost of being His disciple. 

It is one of the hardest sayings in the Gospels.

“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,” Jesus says. “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

Just before Jesus said these things, Luke tells us, a large crowd was following him.  He was becoming very popular and successful, as people responded to his teaching, healing, and power.

But instead of watering down his message to appeal to the masses around him – which is precisely what today’s popular TV preachers do, by the way – Jesus, instead, raises the bar.  “I have no interest in part-time disciples,” he tells his listeners, “if you want to follow me, it will cost you.”

As those of you who have seen our recent newsletter know, I have been reading the Harry Potter series this summer.

Well, I just finished the last volume – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – and while I don’t want to give away any plot or ending secrets, for those of you who haven’t had the chance to read it, I would like to share some observations: 

When you think about it, talking about Harry Potter is a particularly good thing to do on this first Sunday of the new School year.  You see, Harry and his friends at the fictional Hogwarts School experience the same trials and tribulations that every real school-age young person faces: making friends and being hassled by non-friends, trying to figure out your relationships to the many adults in your life; and as you get older, trying to get a handle on your developing sexuality, all while trying to figure out who you might become as you mature from child to young adult.

But more importantly, the characters in the Harry Potter books learn some significant lessons.  Lessons that are relevant to our reflection, this morning, on the meaning of the Gospel:

First, they learn that love is the strongest force in the Universe; and that the gift of love is the greatest quality that a person can possess. Evil, on the other hand, is also a very real and powerful force.  And evil grows out of fear and the quest for power.

The eleven year-old kids in Book One of the series face this struggle between good and evil, between love and hate; and the seventeen year-old young adults in the final episode face it as well. The struggle becomes more and more complex as the characters mature, but the overall message is the same.  In the end, there is nothing more powerful than love. 

Second, the characters in the novels learn that death is inevitable and is something to be respected, not feared.  They learn that even though death cannot be avoided, it is possible to be the master of death – not by running away from it or being afraid of it, but by understanding that there are far worse things than dying.  “Do not pity the dead, “ says Professor Dumbledore, Harry’s teacher and mentor, “pity the living … who live without love.”

It is on this subject of death that Rowling’s bestsellers cross over the line, in my view, between children’s books and adult reading.  Again and again, in the later volumes, the reader is forced to come to grips with the fact that death is a part of what it means to be alive.  When Harry loses someone he loves very much – several someones by the end of the story – he has to deal with his loss, his anger and his guilt.  These are very real emotions, indeed.

And most of all, Harry and his friends learn in no uncertain terms that following the way of love – doing what is right – is hard, and requires incredible commitment.  They also learn that sometimes the most unlikely people rise to the occasion – and that sometimes it is someone who society regards as “odd” who will do something out of the ordinary and reveal the power of love. 

Keeping the faith and fighting the good fight, for Harry Potter and his friends, is sometimes unbelievably hard.  Excruciating choices must sometimes be made.  Life and death choices, in fact.

As you can see, these life lessons are quite consistent with the message of the Gospel.  And they are particularly in sync with the message Jesus conveys in our text for today.

Harry and his friends are willing to do what’s right even though they know that they do so at great cost.  They are willing to be part of Dumbledore’s Army even when it means risking everything.

Now, I’m not suggesting, necessarily, that Harry Potter is a Christ figure.  There is currently a very lively debate going on among scholars on this point.  But as one of those scholars suggests, “Harry is a figure with both extraordinary and ordinary credentials who becomes the focus of the conflict. Is he spiritual? Not in any self-conscious way. But does his existence have spiritual consequences? Of course it does. Vast spiritual consequences. He is the very embodiment of spiritual meaning as we know it.”

Setting all of that aside, however, whether Harry Potter is a Christ figure in a morality play or just a character in a really good fantasy read, a reader cannot help but conclude, after being immersed in these books, that the central character is a boy who matures into a man and that man makes clear choices – the right choices, it turns out – with an even clearer understanding of their cost.

Which is precisely what Jesus told his Disciples then, and expects his modern-day disciples (you and me) to do.

In the last volume of the Harry Potter series, Harry walks away from all of his friends and the support of his teachers, removes his invisibility cloak (for those of you who haven’t read any of these novels, Harry has such a cloak, which comes in very handy at different points in the story) and faces Voldemort, the personification of evil, alone.  He knows precisely that it could cost him his life, yet he does it because he knows it is the right thing to do.

Jesus tells us that we need to love him with that same dedication.  He tells us that he expects us to put our faith first – ahead of our families, our friends and our possessions. 

The point, my friends, is this: Jesus warns that we will come to a decision point at some time or another in our relationship with him. We will have to choose what comes first. When that conflict arises; when there is a disconnect between our allegiance to Christ and our allegiance to something else, the one who wants to be a follower of Christ will choose Christ over and above that something else.

To put it in the simplest terms, to be a Christian means that somewhere, sometime, someplace we must come to the decision that Jesus Christ absolutely comes first in our life.

The truth is that many people, these days, want Church without the commitment.  They want to be part of the church crowd, they want to be close to the places, people, actions, and communities where the gospel is being proclaimed. But when the hard word of Jesus is spoken, the crowds trickle away again, and only a few remain.

“Are you interested,” Jesus asks? “Count the cost. Are you excited? Count the cost. Do you think you are ready to follow me? Count the cost.”

Read the menu from right to left. This is the clear message of our text. "Don't be like those who start a building, lay a foundation, but never finish it because they never measured the cost,” Jesus says, “people will mock you and your faith.”

I mentioned earlier that I spent much of my time, during my years in the investment world, helping my clients discover and measure the cost of the investments they were considering.  During that time, I had a favorite saying.  It was simple, really:  Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  We must be careful, as Christians, to avoid thinking that our faith is a too-good-to-be-true proposition.

So, let me invite you to be one of those people who always reads menus from right to left.  To be one who always asks “How much does it cost?” 

For you see, when it comes to our faith, the answer is clear:  It costs everything.  But it is clearly worth it.

                                                                                AMEN