Plant it this Morning:
A sermon on Luke 14: 25-33 (Year C, Proper 18)
The Rev. Thea Keith-Lucas
September 9, 2007

The great French general, Filed Marshal Lyautey, was walking in his garden. He looked at a spot that was too bright with sun and turned to his gardener, saying, “We must plant a tree there today.”

“But General,” the gardener objected, “the tree won’t provide shade for a hundred years!”

“In that case,” said Lyautey, “plant it this morning.”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus asks his disciples to plan carefully for God’s future. We can imagine that this was an exhilarating time for Jesus’ followers. The disciples, many of them young men and women, boldly left their families and their work, all their chance of an ordinary life. They left their homes and families behind to follow a great and holy man. They sit for hours at his feet hearing a new message of freedom and love that changes their hearts forever. They are swept along by the journey from town to town, by the great crowds who come to be healed and to be fed. They are thrilled as Jesus challenges the authorities of the day.

And Jesus says, “Stop. Wait. I want you to know what you are getting into. Just like a builder laying a foundation or a general drawing up a battle plan, you must know the cost of your actions before you begin the work. The time is not long now before all of this excitement will end. Before long I will ask you to risk arrest and death as we take our message to the seats of power in Jerusalem. Before long, I will ask you to watch me suffer and die.”

In our Gospel today, Jesus presents us with the bill, the full total of the costs of discipleship. This is it, the full contract, with all the fine print. No hidden clauses, no surprises. What I ask of you, Jesus says, is everything. All of your possessions. All of your time. All of your energy. All of your life. Everything.

So now we know. And we must ask ourselves, “Is it worth it?”

On the one hand, we have our selves. Sometimes they don’t seem like they are worth that much. There is a beautiful line in our wedding vows: “With all that I am and all that I have, I honor you.” As my husband Jake and I prepared for our marriage, we joked that that line should come with footnotes: With all that I am (forgetful and stubborn) and I all that have (ugly sculptures and a mountain of school debt) I honor you.” We know too well our weaknesses and our failures. Nevertheless, our selves, our lives are all we have, our one precious gift from the Lord. Are we ready to give them up?

On the other hand, we have God’s promises. Jesus calls us to give our short life for the endless life of God, our small heart in exchange for the boundless love of the Lord.

Many of Jesus’ disciples gladly offered him their lives to spread the Gospel and give birth to the Church. But they believed that the kingdom of God, the new day of God that Jesus had promised, was coming any day now, maybe next year, and surely before their generation had passed from the earth. We stand here with the grim knowledge that two thousand years have passed and the world is still full of suffering and sin. We know that God’s great hope for this world is still far off, that people will still be struggling to find healing and freedom and love for centuries after we die.

Everything we have – in exchange for a far-off promise, a promise whose beauty we can only begin to taste in this life. We ask ourselves: Is it worth it?

And by the grace of God, we say yes. Through our baptism in Jesus Christ, God has planted a mighty hope deep in our hearts, where nothing in this world can uproot it. We look at ourselves and say, I don’t know how to change or how long it will take for me to be the person you have created me to be, but yes Lord, I will be faithful and brave today. We look at the broken relationships in our lives and say, it may take years to really forgive and to trust, but yes Lord, I will try to love in a new way today. We look at this world and see problems with no end – poverty, racism, war, disease, rampant greed, a complacent and empty culture of consumption, the destruction of our planet – and we say, I do not know when and how your peace and your abundant life will ever come to this world, but yes Lord, I will get to work today.


This is our first time sharing the gospel and breaking bread together at this altar. This is just the first day of our work together, and it will take time for us to learn each others’ ways. We know it can take several years to forge a good partnership between a parish and a priest, the relationship of deep trust that makes a community thrive and grow and bring forth courageous new ministries. We don’t know where this journey will take us, but we can start it today, greeting each other with open hearts and great hope for our future together.

Jesus tells us the kingdom of God is like a little seed. It may take years and years to grow, but when it reaches its height, its great branches spread wide across the sky. In that case, we will plant it this morning.