“The Cost of Discipleship”

Michael D. Powell January 25, 2009 Mark 1:16-20 3^rd Sunday after Epiphany

Ed and Joanne are a couple who were both raised in the church but now have nothing to do with institutional religion. They've boiled their religious belief down to one essential: "Not to get clobbered by life." Years of religious education never taught either of them how to really cope with life.

They said it only made them more neurotic. "There isn't a church in all of America I want to go to," said Joanne. So over the last 10 years they have begun to build their own religious philosophy, salvaging bits of the Christian tradition they liked and chucking the rest. The first to go were an angry, vengeful God and Hell. "That's just something they say to scare you," Ed said. They kept Jesus, "because Jesus is big on love." From the local bookstore, in a bulging section called "Private Spirituality," they found wisdom in places they had never before searched, or even heard of: In Zen masters, in "The Course in Miracles," and in Ashland's Neil Donald Walsh, whose book, "Conversations With God," is a runaway bestseller. Worship, for Ed and Joanne, now consists of listening to tapes of Walsh having his conversation with God, who is played by Ed Asner. (1)

Ed and Joanne are your neighbors. They are your sons and daughters. This movement toward an eclectic, private spirituality is transforming religious faith and practice all over the world, and it's neither all good, nor all bad. It just happens to be the way it is these days, and I think we all know it. The reason I bring it up this morning is that our Gospel lesson is about the call to discipleship, which I believe has profound social, even political implications. If discipleship implies community and responsibility, which I believe it does, and if so many have obviously felt called to follow a more private, non-institutional brand of spirituality, then I'm interested in counting the cost.

Traditionalists worried that the sixties might kill off God. It hasn't happened. In 1966 Time Magazine's cover asked the question: "Is God Dead?" More than 40 years later, 95% of Americans say they believe in God, more than any other Western country. About half of all Americans think the nation is in the midst of a religious revival. But, even as that revival spreads, many have stopped believing in church. Seven in ten Americans say they can be religious without going to church. Spirituality and religious faith are viewed by many as individual and private matters with few ties to a congregation or community.

Publishers call this phenomenon "private spirituality." "This should be called the ME-lennium," quipped one critic. "People are not building community; they're building individual comfort zones." "We've trivialized God," says one Christian psychologist. "Most popular books on spirituality assume God is the butler who serves you for one reason - to give you a happy life. We've turned God into divine Prozac."

Contrast this with the ministry of Methodism's founding father, John Wesley, whose "social Gospel" set the stage for a religious revival of individual and corporate responsibility. Contrast it with the message of Martin Luther King, Jr. who believed strongly in the power of love to transform both individual lives and human society. Finally, contrast the message of divine Prozac with the message of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. While teaching in an underground seminary during Hitler's bloody reign of terror he wrote a famous book entitled The Cost of Discipleship. In it he made a distinction between "cheap grace" and "costly grace."

Bonhoeffer believed that there was a subtle danger in the Christian faith. The good news is that we are loved unconditionally. It's a rich and wonderful gift, able to transform and heal the wounded soul. We are acceptable to God just as we are. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ is also about redeeming love, which refuses to leave us just as we are! The unconditional love of God is an empowering love that challenges us to change and to grow, to become someone new and better than we were before we were called to follow. This is nothing less than a call to responsibility, a call to commitment and to community. Cheap grace, Bonhoeffer said, is attending church simply to claim that warm and fuzzy unconditional love that demands nothing in return. Costly grace is opening ourselves to the redeeming, transforming love of Christ that calls us to a discipleship of individual responsibility and social commitment.

I am not ready to give up on the church as an agent of personal and social transformation. As United Methodists in this community we have a niche, a natural constituency. There are people in Salem who need what Morningside has to offer, which is the love of Christ with a social conscience and a sense of personal and political responsibility. There are also people in this community who have gifts that we can put to good use, people who are looking for a way that they can make a difference. We can be that way! We can help point people in the direction of a purpose that is bigger than themselves, a reason for being that challenges them to be more than they are. The cross and flame of United Methodism stands for more than a warm heart, it stands for the fire of commitment and a belief that Christian discipleship implies both personal and corporate responsibility.

I believe that the message of this morning's Gospel lesson is that we, as individuals and as a church, are being called to discipleship. We have a ministry in this church and in this community, a ministry that can offer hope and change lives. It's a high calling, and it comes at the cost of personal commitment. I'll close with this. Ask yourself

Do you have a job in this church and this community . . . or do you have a ministry? There is a difference!

+ If you are doing it because no one else will, it's a job. If you're doing it to serve God, it's a ministry.

+ If you're doing it just well enough to get by, it's a job. If you're doing it to the best of your ability, it's a ministry.

+ If you'll do it only so long as it doesn't interfere with other activities, it's a job. If you're committed to staying with it even when it means letting go of other things, it's a ministry.

+ If you quit because no one praised you or thanked you, it was a job. If you stay with it even though no one seems to notice, it's a ministry.

+ If you do it because someone else said that it needs to be done, it's a job. If you are doing it because you are convinced it needs to be done, it's a ministry.

+ It's hard to get excited about a job. It's almost impossible not to get excited about a ministry.

+ If your concern is success, it's a job. If your concern is faithfulness, it's a ministry.

+ People may say "well done" when you do your job. The Lord will say "well done" when you complete your ministry.

+ An average church is filled with people doing jobs. A great church is filled with people involved in ministry!

+ If God calls you to a ministry, for heaven's sake don't treat it like a job. If you have a job in the church, give it up and find a ministry! God doesn't want us feeling stuck in a job, but excited, fulfilled, and faithful in a specific ministry.

May God bless and empower us as disciples of Jesus Christ, called to be in the ministry of this church and community. Amen.

(1) "Beyond 2000: “Many Shape Unique Religions At Home," Washington Post