06.25.2023 | The Cost of Discipleship
“The Cost of Discipleship”
Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, California
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday, June 25, 2023
Today’s gospel reading is a reminder that Jesus and his most faithful disciples were not in the marketing business. If they had ever taken a marketing class, they would have flunked it. Amen?
No one with ambition sets out to launch a marketing campaign for their new product or service with publicity like the messaging Jesus shares in Matthew chapter 10.
Given pronouncements like this, I’ve always found it amazing that Christianity survived beyond the first century AD.
My former colleague, Jim Crawford, at the Old South Church in Boston, used to scoff at UCC evangelism campaigns that borrowed heavily from Madison Avenue. “The Gospel was never intended to be popular,” Jim would say, when he would see a flier promoting the latest so-called evangelism campaigns, which he saw as being designed more for the purpose of putting butts in pews than follow the example and teachings of Christ.
Taking up crosses, following Jesus, walking the talk of love and just--these ideas were hard. Fair-weather friends would flame out in a heartbeat. And they did.
Take note, it’s not just 21st century Christians who mistake the church for a country club, or some sort of member-benefits program. Jesus' first followers were slow to realize that true faithfulness was more about taking up crosses than collecting door prizes for showing up on Sundays.
II
To be clear, Jesus was very transparent about discipleship. He always held the magnifying glass to the fine print. It was the disciples who stuck their fingers in their ears and tried to drown out the truth.
They weren’t interested in what Jesus had to say about the cost of discipleship. They wanted the a la carte menu, not the whole buffet that he was offering. They wanted the joys without the costs, the gain without the pain, and the empty tomb without the gloom. And the truth is, so do we.
You have to be careful about hanging out with Jesus, because he tells it like it is. None of his followers is exempt from the challenges that he faced. If the authorities thought he was the devil incarnate, they would surely think the same of his associates.
10-hut, Soldiers of the Cross! Suck it up! Dig deep. Be brave. Act boldly! When your last day comes upon the earth, be prepared to give account of the hope that lies within you, and the ways you expressed your faith in words and deeds.
Do not be afraid of those who can harm your body. Be afraid, Jesus cautioned—be very afraid—of selling your soul for worldly rewards and a ticket down the path of least resistance!
Discipleship is not a panacea. Following Jesus will not make your life easier. The Christian life is a journey without a map, not a gift certificate to a wine country spa. If you want to be part of this circle, you will have to stop inquiring about what’s in it for you, and start accepting responsibility for operationalizing the mission of God.
You will need to shed whatever self-serving agenda you have been pursuing, and shoulder up your own cross. You will have to lose yourself if you ever hope to find yourself. And, oh yah, don’t be surprised if everyone around you flips out, in the process. That’s what Jesus was saying. That’s the 21st century version plain spoken, gospel truth that Jesus was messaging in Matthew 10.
III
The circumstances that Matthew described weren’t some distant prophecy. He was describing events unfolding in his first-century faith community. Religion in First Century Palestine was defined by the head of household. Palestinian societies held strong values about family loyalty. So Jesus’ call to love him more than family was a call to a loyalty over the strongest, not the weakest, claim on one’s life. (1) Jesus was challenging his followers to make the ultimate commitment.
This commitment didn’t simply affect the people who signed on with him; it affected everyone in a person’s household. Any family member’s change in religious practice caused a disruption in their household, and disruptions like these were compounded, in Jewish families, because one member's commitment to Jesus negatively affected their relatives standing in the synagogue, too. (2) So signing on as a disciple of Christ was more than a decision that one made for oneself, it affected the whole family, and as a result conflict was inevitable.
If the family conflict that discipleship engenders seems like ancient history, think for a moment about the challenges that families in our own time face, when someone marries outside their home culture--particularly their religious culture, be that Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, or some other religion--or no religion at all.
IV
Looking back over my lifetime, I can’t miss the tremendous changes in attitudes and outlooks about marriage outside of traditional circles. Those who are my age and older likely remember the famous Supreme Court ruling that took place 56 years ago this month (June 12, 1967) on the landmark case Loving v. Virginia. That judgment invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.
The case was brought by Mildred Loving, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, who had been sentenced to a year in prison in the Commonwealth of Virginia for marrying each other.
According to the prosecution, Mildred and Richard Loving’s marriage violated the state's anti-miscegenation statute, which was known as “the Racial Integrity Act of 1924,” which prohibited marriage between people classified as "white" and people classified as "colored."
The Supreme Court's unanimous decision (in 1967) held that this prohibition was unconstitutional, overturning Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
Beginning in 2013, Loving v. Virginia was cited as precedent in U.S. federal court decisions holding restrictions on same-sex marriage in the United States unconstitutional. (3)
V
I’ve been fascinated by the evolution of marriage equality for same-sex couples in the 21st Century. The progress toward marriage equality hasn’t followed a linear path. It’s been more like a dance. (For an intelligible and comprehensive summary of the evolution of marriage equality in the US you can see the “Freedom to Marry” website. (4)
These changes in attitudes and laws have occurred in both civil and religious contexts.(5) This parallel process, and the advances that have occurred, are no accident. They are not a result of pure providence; these changes resulted from a combination of spiritual inspiration and a concerted effort among people of faith to challenge their own family members to engage in difficult conversations, and share their deeply held faith values, such as affirming that “love is love” and that marriage equality is a human right, regardless of marriage partners’ demographic groups.
The skills needed to hold these conversations aren’t proprietary, or based on rocket science. They are based on Aristotelian argumentation and personal testimony. They can be learned and polished. Ask me how I know. I studied rhetoric. I learned by example. I tried my wings. I floundered more than once. Eventually, over time, I learned and improved and got stronger and more capable of holding these conversations without throwing up or running away.
What I/we have learned through our work on marriage equality or from other civil rights movements needs to be carried into our advocacy work for meaningful change around public policy and practices related to gun control, a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions, federal immigration reform, and more.
VI
Knowing all this background on Matthew’s early Christian community, and reflecting on our own baggage about conflict, it’s no wonder we get nervous about speaking up.
These conversations are about our deeply held faith values, and attitudes that are embedded in our culture. The stakes are high, because they affect our loved ones, and they can be controversial and surface conflict in our families and among those in our friendship circles. To be sure, the risks are sometimes great, but the rewards are even greater.
As a child, growing up in a small farming community in Iowa, I never imagined what my family of origin would look like now. In the last 50 years, several of my Lutheran cousins have branched out and married Catholics, and no one has died as a result of those marriages!
My Swedish-American cousin, Craig, married a Latina whose name is Rosalinda, who grew up in a family who has lived on the (now US-side of the) Rio Grande for 7 generations. Rosalinda’s family never crossed the border. The border crossed them.
More recently, my cousin, Michelle, and her husband, Chad, adopted a daughter from Korea, who was welcomed into the family by four brothers who were all born in Iowa.
And, then there’s my Mormon cousin, Kevin, and his spouse, Kim, who adopted a son who was born in Missouri and appears to be Euro-American. Their twin daughters, who are also adopted, were born in China. The first time I met Kevin and Kim’s children I was more than a little surprised to receive their congratulations on my marriage to Stephanie Spencer, and their regrets that they had not been able to attend our “California” wedding here at Eden Church.
Kevin and Kim were very gracious about the whole thing; but the truth is, they didn’t attend our wedding because we didn’t invite them. We had let fear, rather than faith, guide our judgment. We erroneously assumed that they wouldn’t want to attend our wedding, so we never sent them an invitation.
As it turned out, we also misjudged many of the relatives on my dad’s side of the family, too. Most of my card-carrying Lutheran relatives have been far more hospitable to Stephanie than I had ever thought possible.
What Stephanie and I learned from these experiences was that we not only underestimated the capacity of our loved ones to do their own homophobia work and evolve, we underestimated the power of God’s grace to transcend ignorance and hate. Now we know better. Hopefully we won’t make those mistakes again.
VII
Think about your life for a moment. What conflicts have you been trying to avoid in order to maintain some false sense of peace? How might God be calling you to start a challenging, but necessary, heart-to-heart conversation with a loved one that may rock the boat, but could ultimately lead to a healthier outcome?
The decision to proceed with any and all of these proposals involves a certain amount of risk, the potential for conflict, and the possibility that others will write you off. But, then, Jesus never said discipleship would be easy. He just said that he’d be with us as we strove to fulfill God’s mission. And that, friends, is the best news of all. Amen.
1 Fred B. Craddock, John H. Hayes, Carl R. Holladay, and Gene M. Tucker, Preaching the Common Lectionary: Year A (Trinity Press: Philadelphia) p. 338.
2 Eugene Eung-Chun Park, Exegetical Perspective, Mt. 10:24-39, in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary. Year A, Vol. 3, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox) p. 165.
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia
4 http://www.freedomtomarry.org/pages/history-and-timeline-of-marriage
5 http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/18/where-christian-churches-stand-on-gay-marriage/