Jesus Wants Everything

9-8-19

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Risen Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen. 

The signs are everywhere – kids going back to school, fall programming kicking off, pumpkin spice everything appearing… and Jesus talking about the Cost of Discipleship. Yup, must be fall!

If Jesus had been a student in the 21^st century, he might have added to the crowd following him to Jerusalem that day, “For which of you, about to start your first week of school, do not fill your brand new backpack” – which will be blessed right here next week – “with pens, fresh pencils, blank notebook, sharp crayons and colored pencils, binders, protractors, calculators, and erasers?”

It reminds me of one of my favorite Netflix shows, the Great British Baking Show. In nearly every episode, SOMEONE has a great catastrophe – whether from too much of on ingredient or not enough of another, a silly mistake, or simply doing too much in too short of time. Then they face a choice: how do the spend the rest of their few remaining minutes – start over? Or make a new plan?

Just because you make in on the Great British Baking show doesn’t mean that great baking catastrophes won’t ever happen. And in our lives of faith following Jesus, we are never promised an easy or happy life. but Jesus DID promise to be with us and in us. The God we worship created us GOOD.  The God I worship IS about the business of death and resurrection, helping me to daily die to my old self and rise up into new life, over and over again, as many times as it takes until I die by giving up my last breath. I have not "arrived;" no one has. This Christian life that we're called to is not a passive pumpkin surgery, but instead it is a journey of discipleship.

As German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote: “When Christ calls [a person], he bids [them] come and die.” He wrote this in a book called “The Cost of Discipleship,” just a few short years before he made a gamble, to risk his own life in an attempt to bring World War II to an earlier end. Pastor Bonhoeffer and his friends failed, and suffered the consequences – imprisonment and a death sentence at the hand of the Nazis. Bonhoeffer counted the cost of his discipleship and risked his freedom – and life - to try to save others from suffering further… and paid the price for it.

When the Apostle Paul wrote his letter to Philemon, he too was in prison for spreading the freedom through his gospel work. While he was in prison, Paul encountered a slave named Onesimus, who became a great help to him. But at some point, Paul realized a problem. Onesimus had run away from his master and was technically breaking the law. To complicate matters, Onesimus’s master was Philemon, who himself had sponsored a thriving church community out of his own home.

Paul was faced with a dilemma – Should he submit to a law that keeps one person unfairly imprisoned in order to keep the peace? Or should he defy a harmful institution but anger a fellow Christian?

If we read between the lines, Paul forges a third way… a way that both seeks the freedom of an enslaved human being and the opportunity of Philemon to make things right…. Paul basically butters Philemon up first, but he gives Philemon the choice, while making it clear that his “good deed might be voluntary….” To treat Onesimus as he ought to be treated, as “a beloved” brother, and fellow child of God, not as property.  Paul used his privilege as a free, Roman citizen (though in prison) to help a slave received justice.

One of the resources that the ELCA has recently published – and gave all the delegates to the Chuchwide assembly in Milwaukee last month – is a prayer prison prayer book called, HereMy Voice. One prayer states,  “….some of [Jesus’] own disciples, like Peter and John and Paul and many other followers since then” -  here we could easily insert Dietrich Bonhoeffer – “and even [Jesus], have been held in prison and not known what was happening outside, how long the doors would be locked, or if they would ever be opened. But even trapped in prison, theses who trusted [Jesus] found a way to live with hope and freedom.” (106)

We don’t know what choice Philemon ultimately made, but I hope it was the right one the one that Paul hoped for – to trust his faith in Jesus and allow Onesimus the freedom that Paul himself could not enjoy. Whatever the case, one thing is clear from Paul’s letter – that the way of discipleship is not “business as usual,” and involves a real cost. Freeing Onesimus would have cost something to Philemon – socially and economically. But NOT freeing Onesimus would have cost him something even more. The choice was his. Death, or life?

It’s obvious which one God would have us choose – life, of course. As Moses exhorted the people in Deuteronomy – a book that is one big speech that Moses give to the people as they are poised to enter the Promised land after 40 long years in the wilderness – choose life, not death. Remembering the very real deliverance from Egypt, the people would not choose to go back there, back to comfortable idolatry and captivity. The trick is, what look like life to most of us, actually brings us death. And what looks like death – say, a cross – is actually the means by which we are given life.

Human beings are hard-wired for self-preservation. If anything, we are really, really good at avoiding death at all costs. Death, even if it is not a physical death, is frightening, disrupting, and upsetting. It causes fear and pain. And that is exactly where Jesus is headed, on the road to Jerusalem, on the road to the cross, and to death. And that is exactly where Jesus calls us to follow him.

And Jesus gets that is a hard thing to ask when he calls us to follow him. He knows that it is a hard thing to follow him every single day of our lives, not just for one hour on Sunday mornings. He knows that it is a hard thing to give up the stuff we cling to, though we know they will just get in the way. He knows that it is a hard thing for us to follow Jesus on HIS terms, not our own.

When we follow Jesus’ call, our selfishness and greed are put to death. Our brokenness and separations are put to death. Our fear of the unknown is put to death. The darkness in our hearts is put to death. Even our death is put to death when Jesus calls us sinners to follow him.

As my former seminary professor writes, ‘Christian discipleship is not something that can be done … after all the other commitments have been met. Jesus isn’t asking for our leftovers. Jesus wants us—our love, our time, our resources, our work, our commitment—in order to live out what we pray: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.’ Remember that bit in the Lord’s Prayer, which we say every week?

Take a look around you – see your mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters in this community of faith. These are your companions in Christ, here to persevere by your side, shoulder your burdens with you, and to do the impossible when we all respond to God’s call, no matter what the cost. Because, together, we got this. Thanks be to God. Amen.