Luke 14:25 & 33

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said… [If] any of you does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (1874-1922) was an intrepid explorer of the early 20th century. He made multiple trips to the South Pole and fired the imagination of the world with tales of harrowing expeditions, shipwreck and dramatic rescues in Antarctica.

A 2002 documentary entitled Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance Expedition tells the story of how Shackleton and 27 men set out in the ship Endurance with the harebrained idea of crossing Antarctica on foot. Their boat was subsequently crushed by ice, sunk and the men were stranded on drifting ice floes for many months. Eventually after surviving sub-zero weather in cloth tents and eating seals and penguin meat, the ice broke up and they traveled in an open air row boat through 60 foot swells on the fridged arctic sea towards civilization. After shipwrecking on an uninhabited island and then traveling 800 additional miles in a lifeboat the men were heroically rescued two years after they began their ordeal.

In preparation for the trip, Shackleton allegedly printed this ad in a London newspaper:

MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES,

BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS,

CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOR ANDRECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS.

Five thousand men volunteered for the expedition.

Now the point of this devotional is NOT to say that the Christian life is similar to a doomed polar expedition or winter camping on a polar ice pack. But we are not honest with ourselves or others if we paint a picture that the ‘way of Jesus’ is easy. Often in our desire to “sell” the gospel we rightly observe that following Jesus brings peace, purpose in life, forgiveness of sin, power for living, and hope for the future. All true. But when we commodify the gospel in this way, it becomes yet another personal consumer choice and following Jesus becomes all about me- my needs are met, my life is better, my problems are solved; following Jesus is just another strategy towards self-fulfillment and the American dream. This is why over the past 60 years we’ve had so many “conversions” and so few disciples. We want Jesus as our savior but we don’t want him as our Lord. We want to receive but we don’t truly want to follow.

And that is a very small gospel.

What if, instead, following Jesus meant risking it all, entering the battle, committing to a life-long journey, sacrificing for a cause, fully embracing a community, dying to self, and partnering with God’s mission in redeeming the world? What if your destiny is something much bigger than you are currently living?

Shackleton’s ad had a way of cutting it straight and yet it attracted enormous attention. People desperately want to be part of something bigger than themselves, to find true community and make a difference and that is what it is like to truly be part of God’s kingdom.

~

Perhaps your faith isn’t radical enough.