Proper 18c 2025; Sept 7
Luke 14:25-33; Jack Hardaway
ROCKET SHIP
It broke my heart. It happened so quickly.
It was years ago, when my children were very young, my son Ben decided to build a rocket ship.
We had a pile of boards, plywood, debris and really cool junk piled up in the back yard.
He must have been about five or six years old. “Hey Dad, can I build a rocket ship?” “Sure.”
I watched in fascination as he moved things around with excitement. Eventually he slowed down, sat down and scratched his head and said, “Dad, I don’t think this is going to work. I don’t see how this is going to get up in the air.”
And my heart suddenly broke. It really surprised me.
To see a dream come to end.
I think I was half expecting it to work out of his sheer joy and determination.
Our dreams die.
Our hearts break.
Discipleship.
I’ve heard the word used a lot over the years.
Frequently it has seemed that discipleship means simply saying the word “discipleship” over and over, with a look of determination. Something that is ultimately so serious that all joy dies, replaced by a heavy self-seriousness. Do more. Try harder.
Discipleship comes at a cost.
That is the Gospel lesson.
Following Jesus means letting go of everything else and following Jesus.
I think we frequently get it wrong, we think it is about gravity, when it is about levity.
I think more specifically it means being set free from the idols that own us and control us. It costs us by breaking the many slaveries that we cling to. It costs us by having to take the risk of love that we have forsaken.
I think ultimately discipleship requires us to dare and to risk dreaming again.
The cost of discipleship is that we have to risk dreaming again.
We have to let go of all that claims to own us.
Only God can own us, and what God owns is set us free to love, the biggest dream there is.
At Baptism after the water is poured over our heads we are anointed with Chrism oil.
Chrism is a word that means Christ-ing, we are Christ-ed, and we are marked and sealed as Christ’s own forever. It is a branding and an owning.
The Apostle Paul writes of being God’s slave.
An ownership that breaks the chains, that sets us free, and we are only free when we choose love.
God is daring to dream again, that is the Gospel.
Jesus is God’s dream entering the world.
God is risking everything for this dream, dreaming of humanity, of you, of me, set free.
The resurrection of Jesus wakes us from the sleep of death, raising us into the dream of God, the dream of freedom that is love.
Healing our broken hearts.
Waking us to dream again.
Discipleship, follow the dream.
Risk love.
Fly like a rocket ship.