The Cost of Discipleship

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Kansas City

30 June 2019

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14

Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20

Galatians 5:1,13-25

Luke 9:51-62

I don’t know how it is with my esteemed colleagues who stand in this pulpit, but sermon preparation at my house goes something like this. Linda will ask me, “Is your sermon finished.” No matter how I respond, either yes or no, she will then ask, “Are you going to [blank] people off?” No matter what the topic is, I generally respond with, “Probably.” “Why,” she asks. “Because it’s my job,” I respond.

After 25 years of ordained ministry, Linda doesn’t get that part of the role of a deacon in the Church. That role is found in the bishop’s charge to the diaconal ordinand on page 543 of the prayer book. The concluding sentence of this charge is paramount, “At all times, your life and teaching are to show Christ’s people that in serving the helpless they are serving Christ himself.”[1]

There’s an old axiom that abbreviates this charge by saying the role of a deacon is “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I don’t know how well I do the former, but I seem to excel in afflicting the comfortable. But that has a cost, you’re going to [blank] people off. When he was dean of Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, Bishop Terry White would just shake his head and say, “Deacons.”

Today’s Gospel lesson consists of four pericopes, or self-contained stories, that were placed together in Luke’s gospel because they share a common theme: the cost of being a disciple of Jesus.

I love the first one.  Jesus’ disciples had entered a Samaritan town to prepare a place for him, but the townsfolk, given the hostility between Samaritans and Jews, refused to welcome them. This inhospitality was the same sin which had caused the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah[2], so it was logical for the disciples to ask Jesus, “do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But Jesus turned and rebuked the disciples, then continued on his way.

Apparently, one of the costs of being Jesus’ disciples is giving up the right to persecute others, no matter how they have offended your sensibilities.  Almost daily we see stories of fundamentalist “Christians” advocating depriving people of basic rights because of their sexuality, or native language, or religion, or country of origin, even their gender, all in the name of the Jesus who rebuked his own disciples for wanting to get even with those who violated the ancient laws of hospitality.

Doubt that? A recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that, fifty years after the Stonewall Revolt started the gay rights movement, 30 percent of Americans supported the right of business owners to refuse service to gay or lesbian people based on their religious convictions. White evangelicals supported it by 42 percent.  Lest you feel smug, white mainline protestants supported it by 37 percent.  White Christians also led the way for refusing service to transgender people, atheists, Muslims, Jews, and African Americans.[3] In 2019, 22% of white evangelicals and mainline protestants supported the right of business owners to deny service to African Americans if it violates their supposed religious beliefs. Twenty-two percent! Doesn’t it make you proud to be a Christian?

However, it’s not only what one does, it’s what one does not do. In Matthew, Jesus talks about separating the sheep from the goats on the last day. To the goats he says, “I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’[4] 

The consequences of this neglect are dire. “‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”[5]

You might ask those who support our government’s actions on our Southern border, those who defend removing children from their families and locking them up in facilities that have been described as concentration camps, where they are forced to sleep on the floors and are deprived of basic sanitary supplies, how they interpret these passages.[6]

How about us, though? You and I are not locking people up. No, but what are we doing about it? Archbishop Desmond Tutu famously said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”[7] If we remain silent about the plight of our neighbors, no matter how distant, we are complicit in their oppression.

Jesus’ next three pericopes are enigmas, and I would just as soon pass them by, but that’s against the rules.  One person approaches Jesus on the road and offers to follow him wherever he goes, and Jesus responds by apparently bemoaning the itinerancy of his ministry.  Jesus calls the final two to follow him, but they each offer an excuse to delay. “Let me go and bury my father,” and, “let me first say farewell to those at my house.”

Jesus’ responses to these last two people share a common theme, which he sums up by saying, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” As any farmer knows, when one is plowing and looks back, one’s furrows will be crooked, and everyone hates crooked furrows.  Jesus is calling his disciples to look forward, not backward.

The theme of today’s Gospel lesson is summed up in its first sentence, “When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” It was there where the climax or his ministry would occur, and with it the cost of his discipleship to the calling of God. He might not have known what that cost would finally be, but he knew it would have to be paid.

Every good thing has a cost. “But wait,” you say, “The best things in life are free!” No, they may not have a monetary price, but there is a cost. The best thing in my life is my thirty-three marriage to Linda, but as any of my Facebook friends can attest, the cost I pay is having to watch the stuff she picks from Netflix. I assure you; the cost Linda pays is much greater.

One of our rector’s favorite theologians is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who in 1937 wrote the book, The Cost of Discipleship. In it, Bonhoeffer makes the distinction between "cheap" and "costly" grace. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, grace without cost.[8]

Cheap grace is coming to the communion rail on Sundays and then living the rest of the week as if nothing had happened, as if you aren’t a portion of the body of Christ in the world.

There is a cost to living the Gospel in that broken world, beyond [blanking] people off.

There are some people who are accepting that cost.  Our rector has spent his life working for economic justice in our society, even going to jail to stand up for the Gospel, and probably costing him support in his own parish. This last week, employees of Wayfair, an online retailer, found out their firm was selling furniture to a government contractor setting up camps for asylum seekers in the southwest and risked losing their jobs by staging a walkout in protest. Mother Megan Castellan tweeted, “we should help them, yes? Yes.” People are facing imprisonment for leaving food and water near our southern border for migrants seeking a better life.  People in San Diego and Tampa have been arrested and fined for feeding the homeless without a permit. A ship’s captain was arrested in Italy for rescuing migrants on the Mediterranean. The list goes on. Regardless of their religious affiliations, all these are serving “the least of these as if they were Christ himself.”

We can take steps to make our world a better place. We can make the lives of our elected officials miserable by calling and writing them continually. We can give monetary support to organizations aiding immigrants, whether documented or not. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg tweeted, “Pay their bail.” I have an article on my Facebook page that lists organizations that do just that. Finally, we can take to the streets and make our voices heard. I know where the local ICE offices are.

At the end of each service, the deacon calls the people of God to “go in peace to love and serve the Lord,” not to live their everyday lives as if nothing has happened and come back next Sunday, but to love and serve. At St. Paul’s, the children of the parish are requested to join me in calling the congregation to go forth. I love that Heidi refers to them as “prophets,” those speaking the word of God to God’s people. Join us in proclaiming the love of God to a suffering world, in the name of he who was once a refugee in Egypt, with Joseph and Mary.

Amen.

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[1] Op. cit.

[2] Compare Abraham’s treatment of the three visitors in Genesis 18 with that of the people of Sodom in Genesis 19. (NSRV)

[3] Robert P. Jones, Natalie Jackson, Maxine Najle, Oyindamola Bola, and Daniel Greenberg. “Increasing Support for Religiously Based Service Refusals.” PRRI (June 10, 2019). https://www.prri.org/research/increasing-support-for-religiously-based-service-refusals/.

[4] Matthew 25:42. (NSRV)

[5] Matthew 25:45-46. (NSRV)

[6] “Trump Administration Argues Migrant Children Don’t Need Soap” https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/safe-sanitary-no-soap-beds-court-migrants-trump-850744/

[7] https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/desmond_tutu_106145

[8] Op.cit.