Costly Grace
Sermon
Topsy-Turvy: Living In The Biblical World
Gospel Sermons For Sundays After Pentecost (Middle Third) Cycle C
The opening phrase of our Gospel is all-important: Large crowds were traveling with Jesus." Large crowds. What was it about Jesus that attracted so many people?
Was it his miracles? Jesus certainly had done plenty of them. Or was it because he was a great story-teller? Jesus had just told the story about the man who gave a banquet and invited the poor and the crippled and the blind. If you were poor or blind or crippled, wouldn't you follow that story-teller?
But did those people really know what following Jesus was all about? Did they think it was all dazzling wonders and banquet tables piled high with food?
Jesus turns to those large crowds and he says, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple."
We have heard "hard sayings" from Jesus before, haven't we? But did he really mean "hate"? Hating father, mother, wife, children, brother, sister, self -- did we leave anybody out?
Did he really mean hate? No, it's a typical Hebrew hyperbole -- an over-exaggeration for the sake of emphasis. The Gospel of Matthew passes on that same saying this way and gives it its correct meaning, I think: "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me."
In other words, it's about priorities. Jesus is confronting the individuals of this large crowd with questions about their priorities. Do they realize that following Jesus -- discipleship -- must come first in their lives? Would the crowds continue to be large if the people really knew what discipleship costs?
So Jesus tells them a couple of stories about counting the cost. Would any of you build a tower without first sitting down to see if you had enough bucks to complete it? Would any of you go to war without first calculating whether or not you had enough troops to do the job sufficiently?
Do you know what I think? I think Jesus was thinning the crowds.
You see, Jesus doesn't want to lure people into a commitment that they haven't fully thought through. Jesus is no unscrupulous salesperson who only wants your signature on the dotted line and will do anything to get it there -- "no money down, no interest, no payments until next March, and then it's easy monthly financing." No, Jesus says, discipleship costs.
Well, how much will it cost? $3,546.83? Well, let's see -- if we put off buying a new car for one more year we could swing that.
Will it cost a Sunday morning? Well, I guess I could always sleep in on Saturday instead.
Sorry, folks, but discipleship will cost you more than that. Discipleship will cost you everything you have! Here's the last line of our Gospel: "None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."
Everything!? That's the cost of discipleship? Who pays that much? Do you?
Here's a great cartoon. It's a drawing of a radio interview program, called "Meet the Missionary." It shows a radio host interviewing a missionary. And this is the question to the missionary: "But if the people over there think the Christianity presented in the Gospel is too strict, why don't you tell them about the kind we have here in America?"
Well, we've heard Jesus' comments about the cost of discipleship. It requires your all, he said, and my guess is that he did thin out the crowds with that statement. Heck, it's not even a guess; by the time Jesus got to the cross, even his disciples had fled.
So where do we go from here? Let's turn to a twentieth-century expert on the cost of discipleship. I'm referring to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who, in fact, used that phrase, The Cost of Discipleship, as the title of his book, written back in 1937. Bonhoeffer is the German Lutheran theologian who coined the term, "cheap grace." Let me share a few nuggets from his over sixty-year-old book:
Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a person must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a person his life, and it is grace because it gives a person the only true life.1
Do you want to hear the hard word that Bonhoeffer had for Lutherans -- and, remember, he was a Lutheran himself!:
We Lutherans have gathered like eagles round the carcass of cheap grace, and there we have drunk of the poison which has killed the life of following Christ.2
Whewwwww!
Now let me tell you a little about Bonhoeffer's life. Bonhoeffer was an important part of the Confessing Church in pre-war Germany. That is, he and several other pastors openly protested the direction in which Hitler was leading their country. In the late '30s, Bonhoeffer was in New York City, teaching at Union Seminary, and he could have stayed there. But he chose to go back to Germany to join the resistance. He wrote: "I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people."
So Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in June of 1939 and joined his family and others in a conspiracy against Hitler. After a failed assassination attempt, Bonhoeffer was arrested on April 5, 1943, and two years later -- in fact, just a month before his prison was liberated by the Allies -- Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis.
Well, that's Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He not only wrote the book, The Cost of Discipleship. He also lived it.
A great disciple, huh? So far removed from our puny attempts at discipleship. Well, maybe not that far removed. I want to share with you a poem he wrote in prison. It's called, "Who Am I?"
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell's confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a Squire from his country house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of
birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite
distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.
Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptibly woebegone
weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions
of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine!3
Let me close with some good, classic Christian theology. First this: all is broken. Bonhoeffer knew it, you know it, I know it. We have failed in our discipleship. Even the good that we do is tainted by sin, misplaced motives, whatever. All is broken.
Secondly, all is discipleship. That's what we heard from Jesus in our Gospel: "Whoever does not give up everything cannot be my disciple."
But if all is broken, how at the same time can all be discipleship? Only because of this third and most important proclamation: all is grace.
Not cheap grace, not grace without discipleship. But Christ's costly grace, because he raises us up when we fail.
The One who calls us from brokenness to discipleship does not leave us alone. God is with us always. "Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine!"
____________
1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan Company, 1969), p. 47. Used by permission.
2. Ibid., p. 57. Used by permission.
3. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters And Papers From Prison (New York: Macmillan Company, 1970), pp. 188-189. Used by permission.
Was it his miracles? Jesus certainly had done plenty of them. Or was it because he was a great story-teller? Jesus had just told the story about the man who gave a banquet and invited the poor and the crippled and the blind. If you were poor or blind or crippled, wouldn't you follow that story-teller?
But did those people really know what following Jesus was all about? Did they think it was all dazzling wonders and banquet tables piled high with food?
Jesus turns to those large crowds and he says, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple."
We have heard "hard sayings" from Jesus before, haven't we? But did he really mean "hate"? Hating father, mother, wife, children, brother, sister, self -- did we leave anybody out?
Did he really mean hate? No, it's a typical Hebrew hyperbole -- an over-exaggeration for the sake of emphasis. The Gospel of Matthew passes on that same saying this way and gives it its correct meaning, I think: "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me."
In other words, it's about priorities. Jesus is confronting the individuals of this large crowd with questions about their priorities. Do they realize that following Jesus -- discipleship -- must come first in their lives? Would the crowds continue to be large if the people really knew what discipleship costs?
So Jesus tells them a couple of stories about counting the cost. Would any of you build a tower without first sitting down to see if you had enough bucks to complete it? Would any of you go to war without first calculating whether or not you had enough troops to do the job sufficiently?
Do you know what I think? I think Jesus was thinning the crowds.
You see, Jesus doesn't want to lure people into a commitment that they haven't fully thought through. Jesus is no unscrupulous salesperson who only wants your signature on the dotted line and will do anything to get it there -- "no money down, no interest, no payments until next March, and then it's easy monthly financing." No, Jesus says, discipleship costs.
Well, how much will it cost? $3,546.83? Well, let's see -- if we put off buying a new car for one more year we could swing that.
Will it cost a Sunday morning? Well, I guess I could always sleep in on Saturday instead.
Sorry, folks, but discipleship will cost you more than that. Discipleship will cost you everything you have! Here's the last line of our Gospel: "None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."
Everything!? That's the cost of discipleship? Who pays that much? Do you?
Here's a great cartoon. It's a drawing of a radio interview program, called "Meet the Missionary." It shows a radio host interviewing a missionary. And this is the question to the missionary: "But if the people over there think the Christianity presented in the Gospel is too strict, why don't you tell them about the kind we have here in America?"
Well, we've heard Jesus' comments about the cost of discipleship. It requires your all, he said, and my guess is that he did thin out the crowds with that statement. Heck, it's not even a guess; by the time Jesus got to the cross, even his disciples had fled.
So where do we go from here? Let's turn to a twentieth-century expert on the cost of discipleship. I'm referring to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who, in fact, used that phrase, The Cost of Discipleship, as the title of his book, written back in 1937. Bonhoeffer is the German Lutheran theologian who coined the term, "cheap grace." Let me share a few nuggets from his over sixty-year-old book:
Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a person must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a person his life, and it is grace because it gives a person the only true life.1
Do you want to hear the hard word that Bonhoeffer had for Lutherans -- and, remember, he was a Lutheran himself!:
We Lutherans have gathered like eagles round the carcass of cheap grace, and there we have drunk of the poison which has killed the life of following Christ.2
Whewwwww!
Now let me tell you a little about Bonhoeffer's life. Bonhoeffer was an important part of the Confessing Church in pre-war Germany. That is, he and several other pastors openly protested the direction in which Hitler was leading their country. In the late '30s, Bonhoeffer was in New York City, teaching at Union Seminary, and he could have stayed there. But he chose to go back to Germany to join the resistance. He wrote: "I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people."
So Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in June of 1939 and joined his family and others in a conspiracy against Hitler. After a failed assassination attempt, Bonhoeffer was arrested on April 5, 1943, and two years later -- in fact, just a month before his prison was liberated by the Allies -- Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis.
Well, that's Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He not only wrote the book, The Cost of Discipleship. He also lived it.
A great disciple, huh? So far removed from our puny attempts at discipleship. Well, maybe not that far removed. I want to share with you a poem he wrote in prison. It's called, "Who Am I?"
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell's confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a Squire from his country house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were
compressing my throat,
yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of
birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite
distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.
Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptibly woebegone
weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions
of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine!3
Let me close with some good, classic Christian theology. First this: all is broken. Bonhoeffer knew it, you know it, I know it. We have failed in our discipleship. Even the good that we do is tainted by sin, misplaced motives, whatever. All is broken.
Secondly, all is discipleship. That's what we heard from Jesus in our Gospel: "Whoever does not give up everything cannot be my disciple."
But if all is broken, how at the same time can all be discipleship? Only because of this third and most important proclamation: all is grace.
Not cheap grace, not grace without discipleship. But Christ's costly grace, because he raises us up when we fail.
The One who calls us from brokenness to discipleship does not leave us alone. God is with us always. "Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine!"
____________
1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan Company, 1969), p. 47. Used by permission.
2. Ibid., p. 57. Used by permission.
3. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters And Papers From Prison (New York: Macmillan Company, 1970), pp. 188-189. Used by permission.
