Nestled within the hymnal in front of you is a well-known hymn. Perhaps you know it. “Stand up, stand up, for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross.”[1] Despite its rather militant language, the tune and commanding summons to stand up for Christ make it hard to remain seated. It’s one of those hymns that gets the adrenaline flowing and the emotions stirred up. It might enhance our excitement on this first Sunday of the program year. Stand up for Jesus! Lift high his royal banner, it must not suffer loss! Stand up and follow him! So, why are you still sitting down?
But not so fast, Jesus might very well say to us. Maybe we should sit down first. Although we spend a great deal of our time sitting down in a technological age, we are still the inhabitants of a stand-up culture, which is often impetuous and rash. Good intentions prompt us to stand up too quickly and to answer the call of discipleship too hastily. Even while sitting down at our computers or before our smartphones, our stand-up culture exhorts us to get up quickly and do something. Easy commitments follow, promises that are never kept ensue, meaningless platitudes proliferate on social media, and online signups count for nothing. We are citizens of a stand-up culture.
I once worked at a place that had stand-up meetings. The idea was that meetings would be more efficient if everyone were standing. Anyone tired of standing on their feet would, theoretically, be less prone to pull the meeting into frivolous side conversations or endless banter. Stand up for the brief meeting and then move on with the day.
Stand-up culture is nothing new, though. Fallible humans have always been willing to stand up for something and then abandon the project. It’s just a bit easier to stand up these days when a tech device separates us and our interlocutor. Easy promises are offered by text message or email and then never honored. Ghosting is an insidious phenomenon aided and abetted by technology. If the courage is lacking to say no or explain why a commitment is impossible, radio silence is chosen instead. So, it’s not that our stand-up culture is something new. It’s just much harder to refuse an engagement or to back out of an agreement when you’re face to face with someone.
As proof that stand-up culture has always existed, we could take a snapshot of those large crowds following Jesus towards Jerusalem in today’s Gospel and compare it with a snapshot of those left standing at the foot of the cross on Good Friday. Scripture doesn’t give us an accurate picture, but I suspect that the crowd was a good deal smaller at the cross. And I also have a sneaking suspicion that the faces of those at the cross were overwhelmingly different from those who started out on the road with Jesus many miles from Jerusalem.
And this is why Jesus might very well tell us to sit down before standing up. Hold your horses, he might say. Ponder the cost of what you’re about to do. Examine yourself and see if you have what it takes to follow me. After all, someone planning to build a tower wouldn’t undertake the project without first sitting down to estimate whether the project could be brought to completion. Nor would a king wage battle against another king without first sitting down to assess whether he could be victorious. Why then, would someone follow Jesus if the journey couldn’t be completed? Such a response would only be chosen by one who considers discipleship to be yet another meaningless option among many.
And the cost is steep, so steep that we might pretend as if Jesus didn’t really mean what he said, because we are prone to make Jesus conform to our world rather than allow God’s kingdom to transform us. To sit down before following Christ is to search the depths of our hearts and decide whether Jesus is really at the center above all else. If love for your biological family isn’t rooted in a stronger love for Jesus, you should sit down before going on the journey. We can fill in the blanks with other loves that we are wont to put before love of our Lord. Whoever doesn’t love Jesus more than financial security, should sit down before going on the journey. Whoever doesn’t love Jesus more than success or popularity, should sit down before going on the journey. Whoever doesn’t love Jesus more than ideology or academic prowess or personal security, should sit down before going on the journey. It's not that we shouldn’t love our biological family. It’s not even that we can’t have a right relationship with the many things that vie for our attention and affection. It’s simply that if those other lesser loves are not prioritized around Jesus, our ultimate love, then we should probably sit down before standing up.
Sitting down to count the cost is nothing less than contemplating the “risk of love.”[2] It’s the risk of being in relationship with someone who might break your heart or betray you. It’s the risk of giving birth to a child, caring for her, and then setting her free into a treacherous world. It’s the risk of being baptized, of dying with Christ and rising to a new life. It’s the risk of giving all you have and are to the living Lord, whom you cannot see but who you trust is eternally in love with you.
The risk of love assumes that, in following Christ, we will sit down to weigh the cost, mean what we say, and avoid false promises that will never bear fruit. To accept the risk of love means that we accept the limits of our finite humanity as God’s gift to us, while always striving to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.
Jesus’s words to those who would stand up quickly to follow him are more convicting than they at first appear. He uses earthly examples to speak of heavenly things, and his questions have an assumed, obvious answer. What person would try to build a tower without assessing whether the project could be completed? Not a wise builder! That’s the answer. And what king would go into battle before determining whether a victory would be likely? Not a wise king! The question is clear and cuts to the heart. Why are spiritual matters less important than worldly matters, not just for the imaginary figures in Jesus’s examples but for us, modern Christians? Why would we not sit down and invest more of ourselves in discipleship than in any other human endeavor?
We could very well pose the same question to our situation. Why would we claim to be Christian without letting our actions reflect what our words purportedly say? Why would we profess to follow Christ without letting him be the center, without letting his precious day of the week shape our entire week, without letting his kingdom be the focus of our time and money, without letting God be the fulcrum around which our life revolves rather than an afterthought?
If we refuse to engage in stand-up Christianity, we will first sit down and consider the risk of love. And if we contemplate the risk of love, we will discover something of almighty God. And the good news is that in Christ, we see most visibly a God who did not and does not shy away from the risk of love. We find a God who created everything not out of duty but out of love, who is committed to a completely free creation that will inevitably turn away from God and wound God’s heart.[3] But that is the risk of love, and it is worth taking.
In sitting down before standing up, the entire Christian journey becomes a journey of self-giving love. We can’t stand up once and be a real Christian. We must sit down and stand up, again and again. Our whole life is a process of becoming more and more like God in whose image we were made. And by growing more maturely into God’s likeness, we accept more fully the risk of love by bidding farewell to all that pushes God away from the center of our lives. We do it with God’s unending grace and through self-discipline, spiritual practices, and the perseverance of faithful discipleship.
So, sit down, sit down, for Jesus, you lovers of the cross. Lift high your eyes to the cross, where true love is most perfectly realized. Choose life, not death, again and again, for the remainder of your earthly days. Give up all that would draw you from the love of God. And then, stand up, stand up, for Jesus, and follow him all the way to heaven.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 7, 2025
[1] Words by George Duffield, Jr. (1818-1888), The Hymnal 1982, no. 561
[2] See chapter two in Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007).
[3] See again, chapter, in Tokens of Trust.