Year C

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Gift of Grace

Imagine for a moment, if you will, one of our local politicians here in Vidalia is addressing a group in front of the courthouse. He begins by saying: ‘If you are going to vote for me, your voting to loose your homes and families; your asking for higher taxes and lower wages; your voting in favor of loosing all you love best.’ So come on….vote for me! The group listening probably wouldn’t even bother to throw rotten tomatoes. I’m sure they would be puzzled and amazed at why anyone would try to advertise themselves in that way. But isn’t this exactly what Jesus is doing in the gospel today? So you want to be my disciple, do you? Well, in that case you will have to learn to hate your family, give up your possessions, and get ready to take up a cross. Hardly the way to win friends and influence people.

But wait a minute. Suppose, instead of a politician, the leader of a great expedition is speaking to the group about forging a way through a high and dangerous mountain pass to bring urgent medical aid to villagers cut off from the rest of the world. The leader says to the group, ‘if you want to follow me, you’ll have to leave your packs behind because from here on, the path is too steep to carry all that stuff. This will be a very dangerous undertaking, and it’s very likely several of us won’t make it back. Are you all in? Difficult decision, but we probably could understand this, and even though we may at first say oh no not me, we can see why it would make sense, and we might change our mind. This analogy can help us see that Jesus is really more like the second person than the first and it can help us understand that faithful discipleship is definitely not for the faint of heart.

If you want to be my disciple, take up your cross and follow. Jesus uses strong language to spell out the high cost of discipleship. To be my disciple you must accept all the consequences of following me. You will be forging your way through a high and dangerous mountain pass and you will have to decide. Three times in this passage, Jesus says that without a definite decision, we cannot be his disciple, and there is also a cost; you could lose your life. Jesus accepted the full cost of discipleship for us and he is quite clear that being one of his disciples requires a measure of sacrifice, effort and resources. It demands a commitment of us, but it is also a process. The discipleship Jesus is talking about doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and involves some false starts and modest successes, as we grow in our faith journeys.

I have attended church all my life and heard the scriptures read every Sunday but it wasn’t until after I attended a Cursillo Weekend in my mid-thirties that I opened the bible for the first time to read and study the word of God. I knew that God was in my life and a part of it but I began to realize that I hadn’t made a definite decision to follow and when I did, that decision set my journey on a new direction. A journey that has required a lot of trusting God on my part and it hasn’t always been successful; I have known failure in my life. Like we all have, but what I have learned from my decision is that to bear my cross means, I will, to the best of my ability, obey and love God in times of joy and in times of pain always seeking to place my trust and my life in God. As committed disciples, we learn as we follow how to face life’s challenges and joy’s with a spirit of love, hope, faith and peace that leads us to a deeper spirituality; a spirituality that grows and deepens on our journey.

The call we have is to journey with God. It is the call to seek God constantly allowing ourselves to become dependent and vulnerable on our journey with God so we can experience God in our life. The journey is the road where we are formed, tested, transformed and profoundly known by God. Our faith journey depends upon roads that transform us because at the heart of discipleship is transformation and we come to know the transforming power of this road for ourselves, as we seek a just and loving environment for others. We come to know the heart of God when we reach out to the poor, the prisoner, the sick and all those who are banished to the outer limits of care. Our faith journey transforms, challenges, and encourages us to do more work in God’s name and to become more of who God desires us to be. God desires a world the prophet Amos tells us about, where justice rolls down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. This task Jesus tells us will be difficult and we may not see it completed in our lifetime, but we are to begin a transforming route for that future. For all will benefit from the road we start and most of all, we come to know the joy of being on the transforming road to which God has called us.

For, the joy of the road is worth the cost of commitment, and Luke is reminding us today that we cannot be shallow or uncommitted believers. The cost is about changing our behavior; it is about a profoundly radical shift with every fiber of our being toward the ethics and teachings of Jesus, living our lives in complete devotion to God. All our relationships, whether with people or possessions, all our plans, causes, and interests are to be yielded to God’s plan to transform us, and our world. If we are to follow, we are to make that definite decision and accept the cost of the journey as Jesus did, and sometimes the cost will seem too much. We will not always live up to Jesus’ ways but God is faithful and if we choose to make this journey and allow God to shape our lives, God will shape us into the image of the risen Christ and use us to bring God’s love to world. Then, we will experience life abundant and find the joy of being on this journey with Christ.

Yes, the message from Jesus seems harsh today but the benefits of discipleship, the benefits of making that decision to take up our cross and follow is to know the joy of transformation and the gift of God’s love. God’s love is a precious gift. It is the gift of grace. It is a “costly grace.” As Dietrich Bonhoefer wrote “It is costly, because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live.” His costly grace gives us life. “Are you all in?” If your answer is yes, then take up the cross, and follow Jesus.