The Cost and Joy of Discipleship
(Rutgers, November 22, 1998; Reign of Christ Sunday, Year C.,
Pledge Sunday )
Colossians 1:11-20 (NT, p. 213); Luke 23:33-43 (NT, p. 91)
Today is Reign of Christ Sunday,
the day on which this particular liturgical year comes to an end,
a year in which our worship has, for the most part, focused
on the testimony to Jesus borne by the Gospel of Luke.
Next Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent,
the Sunday on which we begin a new liturgical year,
a year in which our worship will, for the most part, focus
on the testimony to Jesus borne by the Gospel of Matthew.
Now, the meaning of Advent we know about-
it's the season in which we are to prepare penitently
to receive and celebrate again the joyous news of Christ's birth.
But what is Reign of Christ Sunday all about? What is it that God
asks of us on this particular day of the liturgical calendar?
Well, to put it simply, Reign of Christ Sunday is our time each year
to reaffirm the pledge we made when we joined the church-
the pledge to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior,
the pledge to put Christ first + foremost in our hearts + lives.
Reign of Christ Sunday is a time for us each year to recommit
ourselves to giving Christ first place in our lives,
to letting Christ set the agenda for our lives.
To launch today's consideration
of Christ's rule in our lives
let me quote two radically different historical figures.
One was a tyrant, and the other was a victim of a tyrant;
one was the early 19th-century emperor Napoleon Bonaparte,
and the other was the mid-20th century theologian
Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Napoleon once observed, with both considerable ego and great insight:
II Alexander , Caesar, Charlemagne and I have founded great empires.
But on what did we rest the creations of our genius?
Upon force.
Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love;
and at this hour millions of men would die for him."
Some 130 years after Napoleon offered this observation of his,
one of those who did die witnessing to Christ's rule of love-
in strong opposition to another tyrant, Adolf Hitler-
one of those who did die witnessing to Christ's rule of love
was the theological activist Dietrich Bonhoeffer ,
who had written a book The Cost of Discipleship..
In it, Bonhoeffer wrote as follows:
“... the kingly rule of Christ .. . is the call of Jesus Christ
at which the disciple leaves his nets [i.e., her previous way of life]
and follows [Jesus] ."
"And if we answer the call to discipleship,
where will it lead us?
What decisions and partings will it demand?
. .. only Jesus Christ knows the answer.
Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow him,
knows the journey's end."
"When we are called to follow Christ, we are summoned
to an exclusive attachment to his person....
It is a gracious call, a gracious commandment....
Christ calls,
the disciple follows;
that is grace and commandment in one....”
And it is a costly grace.
The call to discipleship is a costly grace
because its invariable corollary is an obligation to serve Christ,
an obligation to adhere to Christ as the Sovereign of our lives.
It is a costly grace because it compels us
“to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him"
even if the journey's end is a cross-
as it was for Jesus himself, and, I may add, for Bonhoeffer too.
To put Christ first and foremost in our hearts is
to surrender ourselves to the loving purposes of God
revealed not only in the life of Christ
but also in his death, an excruciating death,
in the face of which he was nonetheless able to pray,
"Father, forgive them."
As Bonhoeffer understood it,
Christianity is not religion in the abstract;
it is following Jesus in the concrete.
Following Jesus is discipleship;
and Christianity without discipleship
is as hollow as Christianity without Christ.
And, Bonhoeffer assured us, both in the pages of his book
and by the way he faced his own execution,
that the path of discipleship to Christ is, in spite of suffering,
a road of blindless mercy and deepest joy.
The cost of discipleship and its joy-both these concepts were brought
home to me every day during my recent visit to North India,
where but 1% of the population are Christian.
You see, in India,
when your family and friends are Hindu, or Muslim, or Sikh,
to convert to Christianity, to declare yourself a Christian,
to proclaim Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord of your heart
entails the cost of being cut off from family and friends,
the cost of having to form and shape a totally new identity,
a totally new set of social affiliations.
y et the first-generation Christians I talked with
dwelled not on the cost of their discipleship,
which is very real,
but on the depth of their newfound joy.
And for second and third generation Christians in India
there is also an inevitable cost to discipleship that is very real,
for to continue to follow Christ
and to proclaim him as Savior and Lord of your heart
entails continued identification with a tiny, powerless,
stigmatized minority group who have no hope
of attaining or exercising political power and authority.
Indeed, to continue to follow Christ
and to proclaim him as Savior and Lord of your heart
entails opening yourself to the persistent reality
of discrimination, and even persecution.
yet millions in India testify that the joy of the sense of
self-worth and dignity born of their experience in Christ
far outweighs the cost of their discipleship.
My experience in India has forced me to recognize
that in contrast to Indian Christians,
who really do understand what Bonhoeffer was talking about,
the cost of discipleship,
we American Christians, by and large,
don't understand what Bonhoeffer meant.
I believe we think of Christ's call to discipleship as inexpensive
rather than costly.
We tend to think of Christ's call to be a disciple
as a call to be comfortably mainstream-
as a call that has, we think, few troublesome
implications for the daily life of average Americans.
So I was startled by a conversation our group had in Delhi
with the Reverend Dr. James Massey,
who represents India's 25 million Christians
on his nations National Commission for Minorities,
a government commission charged with seeking to protect
the religious rights of all of India's minority groups.
Dr. Massey commented to us that the work he is doing is vital
but that he nonetheless needs to pass the assignment along
to someone else when his first term expires.
"Why?" we asked.
"Because," he answered, "in my governmental role
I receive a fair number of perks,
and I'm finding that the comparative luxury of my new life
is slowly but surely numbing me
to my call to carry the cross of Christ."
Dr. Massey feels that returning to a simplicity of lifestyle is essential
if he is to maintain his integrity as a disciple of Christ.
We six American Christians looked at each other guiltily.
If numbness to Christ's call to carry the cross is overtaking
Dr. Massey after but 3 years of a life of comparative luxury,
what measure of numbness to the call to carry Christ's cross
must afflict us American Christians
after a lifetime of comparative luxury.
Might it not be the case that we, too, like Dr. Massey, need,
for the well-being of our souls,
to restore a material simplicity to our lives
if we are to perceive and truly respond to
the needs Christ has called us to meet?
Is it possible that we American Christians are like a flock of God's
sheep who have gotten lost from the trail of discipleship
because our comfort has led us to lose sight of our Shepherd?
George Buttrick, a former pastor of Laura Jervis's girlhood church
the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church,
loved to recount the story of coming one day upon a
farmer who had just rescued a lost sheep.
Buttrick asked him how sheep get lost,
and the farmer replied,
"They just nibble themselves lost."
They just go, he explained,
from one comforting tuft of grass to another,
never looking up, until at last they've lost their way.
It occurs to me that that may be exactly what's happening
to many of us American Christians.
On the trail of discipleship, we just nibble ourselves lost,
moving from one tasty tuft of material advantage to another ,
never looking up, until we've lost our way and have no idea
exactly when or where we lost sight of our shepherd, Christ.
On Reign of Christ Sunday God calls us to look up from our tasty tufts
and to once again look to our Shepherd,
to once again let Christ, rather than comfort,
set the course of our lives,
so that we may experience the deep joy that comes
only from experiencing the perpetual presence of God.
This is Pledge Sunday, a time w hen we are asked
to make a commitment of time, talent, and money
to the work of God through the life of this church.
The pledge I am inviting us to make today is
about much more than money alone.
The pledge I am inviting us to make today is
the pledge to accept Jesus Christ as our Shepherd and Savior ,
the pledge to keep focused on our Shepherd,
the pledge to put Christ first and foremost in our hearts and lives,
the pledge to serve the One who founded his reign upon love,
the pledge to return to a life of material simplicity
so that we may recover our calling as disciples,
the pledge to accept the obligations of discipleship whatever the cost,
the pledge to follow the trail of discipleship to even a cross.
I ask us to spend the next several minutes in silence.
I ask us to spend this time reflecting again on
putting Christ first and foremost in our hearts and lives.
I ask us to spend this time considering again
the pledge we made upon joining the church,
the pledge to respond to God's love through discipleship,
through costly discipleship.
I ask each of us to spend this time considering how we can bring
the service of Christ into our homes and places of work.
And I ask each of us to renew and expand our pledges of support
to the work of God through the Rutgers Presbyterian Church.
After our minutes of silent reflection
on the cost and joy of discipleship,
I will close our period of pledging with prayer.
Then, during the offertory anthem,
please come forward to the table
to place both your morning offerings and your pledges for 1999
in the plates that are there.
Let us now observe our period of silence and prayer for pledging.
Let us pray.
O God, we pledge our lives anew to the discipleship of Christ.
W e accept the costs and anticipate the joy. Amen.
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