Breaking Ground

First Presbyterian Church of Metuchen 

September 4, 2022 

Written and delivered by: Rev. Ashley Bair 

Title: Breaking Ground 

Scripture: Luke 14: 25-33 

Prayer - God, be with us. Lead us by the hand, bring us with you. Wherever you take us. May the words I speak be those you want spoken. And the words we hear be those you want heard. Amen.  

In 2005 a hurricane swept through southern Louisiana and wreaked havoc and destruction like the state had never seen before. It became such a national media sensation that if you were around at that time, you likely have an immediate memory of watching the images on TV when people were living in the Superdome or being rescued from their rooftops by helicopter.  

When I moved there six years later to work with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, there was still such immense damage being sifted through and repaired. I could walk down a street in New Orleans and see every house labeled with a spray paint four square grid that looked like an X, one number on the top and one on the bottom. The top number was the date FEMA inspected the house and the bottom number was how many people they found inside, listed with an A for how many were alive and a D for how many were found dead. 

Families were torn apart; people were shoved onto planes with no idea where they would end up. They were given food and some money and were forced to make their way in a state not their own for years before gaining clearance to return to their home in Louisiana.  

I got to know one couple well: Dirk and Prudence. Dirk wasn’t home when a wall of water came rushing toward their house. A friend ran in and told Prudence to head to the back of the house, and there they prayed. The 35-foot wall of water engulfed their house, pulling them in as they held onto piping at the back of the house. They thought this was it - the moment they die. Eventually the water subsided and there was a calm, the eye of the storm was passing over them and they stepped out of the house into the peaceful silence.  

Everything around them was gone. The front of the house was torn off, there was complete destruction around them. As they watched debris float down their road, they realized that the two pine trees near the back of their yard had stopped a wall of rubble and cars that the wave had carried from coming towards the back end of their house. They were rescued by a man with a boat who rowed them downtown to shelter. They spent two years living in Alabama before their property was cleared for construction. After waiting years for clearance and insurance to help them afford the move back to their own home, their neighborhood and friends and family, they started the process of rebuilding. They hired a contractor from word of mouth who offered to help hurricane survivors at a discounted rate to speed up the bureaucratic process and get families home.  

After submitting the insurance money with some grant money, they accepted, they waited to hear from the contractor about when the building would start. Months later they received a letter in the mail telling them that their contractor had disappeared with their check along with the down payments of several other homeowners looking to rebuild, fraudulently settling himself with over a half a million dollars. They didn’t get the money back.  

Here they were almost 3 years later, still waiting to go home. Now with all their money taken. They had lost everything, all their things, their home, friends, family members, the life they knew was changed forever. And still, they were so committed to getting home.  

When I met them six years post Katrina their house was nearly finished. As they told me the story of Prudence holding on to those pipes in the back room, they talked about how lucky and blessed they felt that the pine trees had kept her alive. That there was a reason for them to be alive and so they needed to fight in any way they could to get back to their place. They took out loans, they sold the rest of their stuff, and they started to rebuild. On the day they broke ground on the rebuild of their home, they had forsaken so much to be there again. Once the shovel hit the dirt, there was no turning back.  

So many Katrina stories seem unreal, it's unbelievable what some people on this earth have had to live through and suffer for and forsake. Dirk and Prudence’s story and the sacrifices of all those in that tragedy moved me immensely. When I looked at them entering their new house for the first time I was humbled to tears. I remember thinking: what would this feel like? To feel so called that you would do whatever it takes?  

I thought of Dirk and Prudence immediately when I read the Scripture passage today. Because they never would have put themselves in that position, and yet they continue to choose to go home; their circumstances were endured and chosen. And I think the kind of sacrificial life Jesus invites his disciples to, demands the same call. When I first look at this scripture I think: There’s no way. How unreal, what do people have to live through and sacrifice and forsake to become disciples of Jesus? What is it that Jesus would have us forsake to commit to him? Family? All possessions? Life itself? 

When the crowds gathering around Jesus got large, he said, Okay, keep following me, but to do it: Hate your family. Love your enemies. Sell all that you own. Give it to the poor. Embrace destruction, pick up your own cross and carry it - anyone who doesn’t cannot be my disciple… What if we put that call out in the front? Can you imagine? “Come on in, and if you want to be a disciple, here’s what you gotta do…..” 

As Barbara Brown Taylor wrote, “Mercy! If that is not a message designed to disperse large crowds, then I don’t know what is. Unlike many of his boosters, Jesus did not put a lot of energy into drumming up enthusiasm for his message. If anything, he worked pretty hard to tamp it down.” I read this and imagine people in the crowd around him saying, “I didn’t know following this guy was going to be so expensive! I came here for comfort, not conflict. Or - doesn’t scripture say to obey your parents? It’s a commandment! Who is this guy? Why would he say something like this?  

Well, the first years of the Common Era, when Jesus was alive, was a time when the governors were crucifying people in Galilee. When Pilate was carrying images of Caesar into Jerusalem and helping himself to the treasury to pay for whatever he wanted and beating anyone who protested him to death. When King Herod had all the baby boys in Bethlehem killed after the wise men from the east went looking for a newborn. 

It was not a good time to be someone doing unusual things or drawing unusual crowds. Jesus was not only doing both of those, but on top of the unusual he was criticizing what was going on in the Temple and with the Roman government. When the crowds were gathering around him, intrigued - maybe they were interested because it matched their feelings, maybe they gathered like we do around an accident, more curious about the destruction than interested in getting involved - either way they gathered.  

So, Jesus took the opportunity to do two things: Jesus reminds those around him that following him is not for the faint of heart, it means we will have to give up things, even the most precious things we hold dear.  And Jesus reminds those around him that some of them have already done this; endured it and chosen it.  

I think because of sermons I’ve heard in the past, or texts I’ve read on this passage, I used to read this and think, “this is so much more than sacrificing our conveniences, this is absolute sacrifice, which means being a disciple is an attainable goal we will be working on for the rest of our lives. We can’t do it - hate our families, take our selves to death? I guess I’m out.”   

Today, I don’t believe that. I don’t think that’s a fair representation of Jesus’ ask. I don’t think that’s fair to you. Because there are people who have done this. We’re not in the first years of the Common Era, but do I think Dirk and Prudence, when they did everything they could to return home to their people, that that wasn’t sacrificing themselves to return to their community? That that isn’t a call of Christ?  

How many LGBTQ siblings of ours have been kicked out of the church. Out of their families and had to deal with resentment toward their parents, just to claim the place in God’s kingdom that was always theirs? 

How many beloveds have been jailed? Imprisoned wrongfully? Or taken a hit for somebody else and died because of it?  

I think, today, that you have been through something that has nearly cost you everything. And I want us to think about that - and not distance ourselves anymore from Jesus. Whatever it is, he sees you and he knows it. We haven’t all lived through a hurricane or endured a circumstance near to death, but we do understand the reality of sacrifice. I think we do.  

For one, you come here every week and listen to us talk about Jesus’ messages about greed, power, corruption, selfishness, desire and justice, love, and compassion. And it’s not about us and it's not about this place. It’s about Jesus convicting and challenging us to do very hard things and I know you take it to heart somehow. That it shakes you, somehow. And you come back. Here you are again. In the crowd. Following Jesus.  

Jesus did not want his followers to think that discipleship was easy, it isn’t. He wanted his disciples to know what they were in for - a life of sacrifice and commitment. The disciples whom Luke wrote about, in the time of Herod and Pilate, already knew what they had to lose: their families, their homes, their possessions, and their lives.  

Taylor writes, “To follow Jesus meant to hit the road to Jerusalem with him, leaving every other source of security behind. They had everything to lose. Jesus did not want anyone lining up behind him without counting the cost. He loved them too much for that, and besides, it was not as if their salvation depended on it. He saved all kinds of people without recruiting them to follow him: bleeding women, beggars, men possessed by demons, notorious sinners.” 

They followed him in their trust that enduring and choosing Jesus would be worth it. They had seen enough of the goodness, the unrelenting love, the healing presence, to not live in their fears and trust his path to freedom. Of those who heard this, some still followed him. It doesn’t mean they always understood the cost, or journeyed without doubts, or knew what was going to happen. We read that they didn’t. But they remained committed.  

That’s what Jesus was after - that our commitment to him is as steadfast as it can be. That through what we endure, and we choose, we follow Jesus. That if it all gets taken away, we know that can be the cost of discipleship, and even then, we go back to build it up again. To feel so called that we would do whatever it takes. 

What is at stake when your shovel hits the dirt, and you start breaking ground? Once the shovel hits the dirt, there’s no turning back. Amen.  
 

WORKS CITED: 

“Friends of the Disciples.” by Barbara Brown Taylor in Preaching in the New Millennium: Celebrating the Tercentennial of Yale University, edited by Frederick J. Streets, Yale University Press, 2005.