Scripture texts: Jeremiah 20:7-13, Romans 6:1-11, Matthew 10:24-39
There’s a great irony in our religion. An amusing one to put it mildly. You see when God enters into your life in a powerful way, you come out of that profound experience transformed. You come out of that experience changed. You come out of that experience a different person than you were before. God is all about change and transformation. He seeks to change the world, to make it a better more suitable place for his beloved. He seeks to change his beloved, to give them new perspective, new ideas, new outlook, new hope, new love. Everything about God is about change.
And the one place we say you can meet this God most powerfully is within an institution that has dedicated itself over its long centuries to doing nothing but resisting change. To the point where it’s even laughable, where people crack jokes about it. How many Christians does it take to change a lightbulb? Change, we don’t do change around here!
Note which one they assign to us Lutherans.
What then are we to do with these Scriptures today? All three of which are about the change and transformation that comes upon us as disciples of Jesus Christ, as believers in a holy God. Jeremiah laments that God has overpowered him and that he can no longer help himself but proclaim God’s word to people who do not wish to hear it. Paul speaks of how we are not meant to continue in sin now that we are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection. And Jesus himself point out that these changes will alienate us from people around us, sometimes to the point of violence.
Of course, maybe those words from Jesus give us a clue about why things have played out in the Church the way they have. Man will set against father, daughters against mothers, and whoever does not take up their cross (a means of death and torture) is not worthy of me. I can very easily imagine for many people hearing those words the last thing they’ll want to do is sign on to this crusade. Most I think would run for the hills. But that’s not really what’s happened.
No, we humans are far too clever for our own good. Rather than flee from the consequences of belief, we found ways to circumvent them. We’ve built up the church with people who want all the benefits, but pay none of the costs. We make church members, not disciples of Jesus. We have our cake and eat it too. Cheap grace abounds.
That is, of course, what Paul was warning us about. It was the church he had witnessed in Corinth and Galatia (where he wrote to them with great frustration.) and now wanted to avoid in Rome. Shall we continue in sin? By no means. My Greek professor in college once pointed out that the modern Bible translates this phrase far too mildly. If you’ll forgive this digression, a more accurate translation would be something like “Shall we continue in sin? Oh, hell no.”
Jesus too highlights the dangers of this sort of wishy-washy I-want-all-the-benefits-without-the- cost-of-discipleship faith. “He who does loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me” and “those who find their life will lose it.” Jesus pulls no punches here. If you wimp out on the cost of being a disciple, you are not worthy of him.
That is probably our greatest sin as the Church. Not that we cave into our vices too often. Not that we hate more often than we love. But rather that we simply don’t take Jesus, his mission, and his goals seriously enough. We look to the cross and see a nice brass or silver decoration for our church sanctuary, not the true meaning of everything we are and everything we are to be about.
These thoughts, these ideas were central to one Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Many of you have heard of him, a Lutheran pastor and theologian living under the shadow of Nazi Germany. There, he was witness to precisely what happens when we embrace cheap grace too freely. Evil is excused and it abounds. We turn our backs on those Christ calls us to love and evil expands. We live as the world lives and evil dominates, because it knows the good are too cowardly and too weak to defy it.
Are we living in such times today? We just might, and no, I don’t mean that to point fingers at this or that politician in our government with whom I disagree. I am more concerned with the spirit of rage and hatred that seems to have infected every corner of our society, left and right, young and old, rich and poor. A spirit, that I must confess, has infected even me.
Cheap grace would say I need do nothing and let this spirit run its course within me. God will forgive me anyway. But I am a Christian. I am a disciple of Jesus and I do not wish to be a creature of hate and fury. I wish to be as my Savior was. A person of love, compassion, and mercy. A person who will make a better world by working for justice for ALL people, not merely those who are like me or who agree with my ideas. I want the path of costly grace, because that’s the path Jesus chose. That’s the path of the cross. That’s the path I am called to pursue. And what is costly grace?
Bonhoeffer put it this way...
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man 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 man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.
He who does not take up his cross is not worthy of me. Jesus says. I am not worthy of him. Not now. Not ever. Each day, I come again to him and ask him for one more chance. And in his infinite grace, he grants it. I cannot take that lightly. As it did Jeremiah, it compels me to serve, to seek that better world for all God’s beloved. It is who I am meant to be. It is who we are all meant to be. Disciples of Jesus for the sake of the world. Amen.
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