Who's disciple are you?
Sermon for Pentecost XIII, 2025, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Luke 14:25-33 In my first semester in college, a couple of my dormmates were recruited by the Maranatha Campus Ministries , a new religious movement that was just shy of a cult. One guy, Brad, came to school with the impression that being on his own was about partying all night and sleeping in, which meant he was on his way to failing out a couple of months into the semester. Around the beginning of October, he started hanging out with the Maranathas, and soon after that he was preaching fire-and-brimstone street-corner diatribes at their meetings. He was spending more and more time with them, and his grades didn’t improve. His parents found out what was going on and came in mid November to pack him up and bring him home. Again in this morning’s gospel reading, we hear strong words from Jesus, first saying that to be his disciple we have to hate our family, and then that we have to take...