4th Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 7A – Mark S. Winward
Jesus said, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” – Matthew 10:39
The Cost of Discipleship
In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Wow, tough Gospel reading this morning—perhaps the hardest of Jesus’ teachings. But seriously, when there is a selection in the cycle of readings that is difficult to understand, hard to swallow, or seemingly harsh, that is probably the exact place a preacher should focus. So, I feel responsible to explore this very hard set of sayings of Jesus in today’s Gospel. Why was Jesus so harsh?
For one thing, he knew the sacrifices his followers would make to spread the Good News of his kingdom – and it was indeed costly. The great second-century Church father, Tertullian, famously wrote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Especially in the first three centuries of the Church, Christians would be beaten, tortured, and killed in ways limited only by the imagination of their persecutors. And it was their refusal to deny Jesus as Lord that inspired millions to embrace a faith ironically represented by a Roman symbol of execution: the cross. Martin Luther famously wrote, “A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing.” Jesus knew his disciples, like him, would be called upon to suffer for his Good News of hope, salvation, and reconciliation.
Perhaps the most convincing evidence of Jesus’ resurrection is the fate of those twelve: Andrew died on a cross; Simon was crucified; Bartholomew was flayed alive; James (son of Zebedee) was beheaded; the other James (son of Alphaeus) was beaten to death; Thomas was run through with a lance; Matthias was stoned and then beheaded; Matthew was slain by the sword; Peter was crucified upside down; Thaddeus was shot to death with arrows; and Philip was hanged. Only John made it through alive, but he was exiled to a small island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.
Radical Discipleship Versus Tame Faith
The demands that Jesus makes upon those who would follow him are pretty extreme. I have to admit, I am completely perplexed by how many preachers take away the sharp edge from lectionary readings like this one. If we practice our faith the way Jesus exhorts us to, Christianity can’t just be a tame Sunday School faith, confined once a week to the four walls of a church. The faith to which Jesus called his disciples is nothing less than hungering after God to the point of laying down our lives for his sake. Such radical discipleship shakes our foundations, topples our priorities, and at times pits us against friend and family, making us strangers in this world.
Perhaps the most demanding of Jesus’ teachings is found in today’s Gospel reading in Matthew. Matthew, by the way, records Jesus as specifically addressing his disciples, while Luke records the same words as part of his teaching to the crowds. In either case, the impact is equally challenging: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.“
That must have gotten their attention—and it was designed to. Now, people followed Jesus for a number of different reasons. Some followed him because they saw Jesus feed a multitude of people and were waiting to be fed again. Some followed him because they heard of Jesus’ ability to heal and were waiting for an opportunity to approach him and be healed. Still others followed him simply for the excitement. But it is safe to say that only a few were truly committed to this traveling preacher’s teaching.
Understanding Jesus’ Shocking Language
If we think about it, Jesus no more taught hating our family in the Gospels than he taught us to hate life. Indeed, four chapters later, Jesus preached to the teachers of the law, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus knew exactly how to draw a crowd in—he used shocking language to shake them out of their complacency. But once these Jewish crowds got over the initial shock, they might have realized Jesus wasn’t telling them anything at all new. They might have remembered that this principle was graphically acted out in Genesis 22. That story recounts God commanding Abraham to take his son, Isaac, to Mt. Moriah to be sacrificed. Intent on obeying God, at the last moment, an angel of the Lord prevents Abraham from carrying out this horrific act.
Now, this is not a story about child abuse; rather, it is a story about faithfulness. Here, a simple nomad demonstrates he is willing to perform a sacrifice which was common to the primitive religions. But God no more meant Abraham to sacrifice Isaac than Jesus is suggesting for us to hate our family. Rather, God meant to test Abraham’s priorities. And because of Abraham’s faithfulness, God issues one of the most famous promises in the Bible: “Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.” This story was near and dear to Jesus’ Jewish audience, and if they thought about it, they would have realized Jesus was sharing with them exactly the same principle: namely, God demands nothing less than to be the central priority in our lives.
The Radical Reorientation of Faith
This demand for total priority is exactly what Paul is describing in today’s reading from Romans. Paul describes the radical reordering of one’s life represented in baptism. Here, the old life for Self is set aside, and a new life oriented for, in, and around Christ is embraced. Such a life embraces the author of life and, in doing so, seeks God’s purposes. The point is that a life given over to God—dead to self—naturally seeks God’s will. That is why baptism and repentance are so closely tied. Repentance literally means “turning around 180 degrees.” Such a 180 degree reorientation represents a turning away from our own wills and towards God.
Most people will tell you that what it takes to get to heaven is just to be a good person. In other words, we get God to accept us by being good—a kind of quid pro quo. You’re good, so God does what you want. The Gospel turns this thinking on its ear. When a radical spiritual reorientation occurs, we naturally point towards God’s will rather than our own.
The Weight of Objective Truth
That is a pretty costly proposition if our faith isn’t, in some fundamental way, true. It’s popular to believe now a days that it really doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere. Of course, it is quite possible to be very sincere and have all the best intentions, and to be sincerely wrong. If faith is anything more than a way to help us feel good about ourselves, it must either be objectively true or objectively false. Woven throughout Scripture is the simple proposition that God revealed Himself miraculously to the people of Israel, and then directly in Jesus Christ. At the end of the day, if our faith has any substance, that proposition is either objectively true or false. We are either sincerely wrong, or it is the most important Truth one can possibly know in the world. And if Christ—as he claims to be—is the very definition of Truth, that revelation demands we build our lives around it and follow in His footsteps. But count the cost. Jesus tells us, “Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
Heroic Faith
Such sacrifice is nothing less than heroic. We see it in inner city ministry, in world missions, and in organizations like Doctors Without Borders. Heroic faith is the difference between a contribution and a sacrifice. Following Jesus Christ can never be only a polite Sunday morning faith. It demands walking in the footsteps of Christ along the way of the cross. It demands being prepared to face ridicule and rejection for our faith. And it demands laying everything we possess and all that we are at the foot of the cross. It demands we yield before Jesus Christ as the Lord of our lives—with Him as our central priority and focus.
The irony of the cross, though, is that it hardly represents just sorrow and sacrifice. Rather, just as it did when Christ first walked the Via De La Rosa, the way of the cross leads to resurrection. And rather than throwing our lives into chaos, putting all we have and are under God’s control—under the Lordship of Jesus Christ—begins to put things in order. And finally, we know Peace. In losing our lives, we gain them. Surely, then, we will discover for ourselves the converse of Martin Luther’s words that I began with: a faith that gives everything, costs everything, and suffers everything is most certainly worth everything.