& to the church of the unchurched[2]

Introduction

Discipleship

We are now in a 24 week period called Ordinary Time. It stretches through the summer months into late fall, when we enter again into the Extraordinary Time of Advent in preparation for Christmas. In Ordinary Time the readings at Mass are about the call to discipleship--the following of Jesus. In this year’s liturgical Cycle C the evangelist Luke is our mentor in discipleship.

Costly discipleship

The gospel for this thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time reads, “As the time drew near for his return to heaven, Jesus moved steadily onward with an iron will towards Jerusalem [where he will meet his death]. One day he sent messengers ahead to reserve rooms for them in a Samaritan village. But he and his disciples were turned away! The people of the village refused to have anything to do with them because they were headed for Jerusalem” (Lk 9:51-52). (Samaritans showed their hatred towards Jews, particularly towards those who were going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.) Discipleship--following Jesus especially through hostile territory--is no fun.

As they were journeying on to another village, someone came up to Jesus and avowed, “Teacher, I will follow you everywhere you go.” The man was clueless about the cost of discipleship. Jesus put him straight as he spoke about his own extreme poverty. “Oh, so you will follow me wherever I will go, will you? I tell you, friend, the foxes have dens to take shelter in, and birds have their nests but I, the Son of Man, have no place of my own where I can lay my head” (Lk 9:58).

As they continue on their way, Jesus invites a man to come and follow him, and he tells him that discipleship possesses such an immediacy that he may not put it off until his parents die and he can bury them; he must “let the dead bury the dead.” He tells another that discipleship is so urgent that he may not delay it by taking time off to go home and say goodbye to his family (Lk 9:59-62). Jesus doesn’t intend his extreme words to be taken literally, but he does intend to provoke thought.

On one occasion a young man came up to Jesus and asked, “Master what must I do to gain eternal life?” Jesus replied, “You know the commandments: `Do not commit adultery; do not commit murder; do not steal; do not accuse anyone falsely; respect your father and mother.’” “I have observed all these commandments from my youth,” the man replied. “Then there’s one more thing left for you to do,” Jesus responded. “Go sell all you have, give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven. Then come back and follow me.” Luke adds, “At that the young man’s face fell because he had many possessions” (Lk 18:18-23). My mystic friend writes, “His face fell because he understood the cost of discipleship. What do you expect him to do: jump up and down for joy?”

It is natural for our face to fall at the cost of discipleship, just as it is natural for it to fall at the cost of gas at the pumps these days. It’s natural, too, to dismiss discipleship spelled out in costly terms as unrealistic or to greatly water it down and continue on one’s merry way with cheap discipleship—the following of Jesus which doesn’t cost one red cent.

Farming out costly discipleship

Dietrich von Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a German Lutheran minister and theologian who was put to death by Hitler in 1945. In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, he claimed that the Roman Church, feeling uneasy about dismissing discipleship as unrealistic or watering it down, found a more creative solution to its quandary: it farmed out discipleship to a few chosen specialists in the church called monks and nuns! To them the Roman Church could point and say, “Look at these people of mine! They have dropped everything to follow Jesus. They haven’t taken precious time off to bury their dead or to return home to say goodbye to their families. Look at these people of mine! In them I have been faithful to the Lord’s command to, “Go and sell all that you have, give the money to the poor and then come back and follow me.”

But that, Bonhoefer contented, created a double standard in the church: a maximum standard for a few chosen monks and nuns and a minimum one for the rest of God’s people. “The following of Jesus,” he maintained, “is not the achievement or merit of a chosen few but is a divine command to all Christians without distinction.” In 1964 (twenty-one years after his execution) Vatican II caught up to Bonhoefer’s contention that discipleship is a divine command to all Christians. In its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium (that revolutionary gem of Vatican II) the council went out of its way to carve out a special chapter entitled The Call of the Whole Church to Holiness[3] and placed it before a chapter entitled Religious (i.e., a chapter on monks and nuns).[4] ”The Lord Jesus, the divine Teacher and Model of all perfection, preached holiness of life to each and every one of His disciples, regardless of their situation” (No. 40 Lumen Gentium). That put an end, at least on paper, at the church’s farming out discipleship to a chosen few.

Cheap discipleship

Bonhoeffer was writing out of the context of the Evangelical Church of Germany in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. In its midst, the inconceivable horrors of Nazism managed to take root, thrive and go unchallenged. No wonder the very first line of his book The Cost of Discipleship reads, “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.”

By cheap grace he meant the sacraments, the forgiveness of sin and the consolations of religion thrown away at cut prices. By cheap grace he meant the conferral of absolution without requiring costly repentance; the conferral of baptism without requiring costly commitment; the conferral of Communion without requiring costly bread-breaking. By cheap grace he meant the Christian church demanding nothing costly either from herself or from her followers. By cheap grace he meant the following of Jesus which doesn’t cost the church or Christians one red cent.

E.g., cheap discipleship in the church

In a letter dated Oct. 23, 2006, Bishop William S. Skylstad, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, asked his fellow bishops to inform all pastors that the extraordinary ministers of holy Communion (i.e. non-ordained minister) will no longer be permitted to assist in the purification of the sacred vessels after Mass! That permission was granted back in 2002, and Rome recently refused to renew it.

Such busyness is not the following of Christ! Such busyness is cheap; it doesn’t cost the church one red cent. Such busyness might cost the poor celebrant a smidge who has to do the dishes alone after Mass, but it doesn’t cost the church one red cent. Discipleship which doesn’t cost the church anything is not discipleship at all!

E. g. again

Sometime ago a compassionate and innovative pastor took it upon himself to substitute rice for wheat in the Communion wafer to accommodate a little girl making her first Holy Communion. She was afflicted with celiac, a disease which can’t tolerate wheat and other grains. The pastor’s boss, the bishop, declared the Communion to be invalid (!) because, he said, “We must follow Christ—we must do what he did. At the Last Supper he did not consecrate rice wafers but bread!”

Such busyness is not the following of Christ! Such busyness is cheap; it doesn’t cost the church one red cent but it did cost the little girl dearly. Discipleship which doesn’t cost the church anything but which causes others everything is not discipleship at all!

E. g.,costly discipleship in the church.

It is obvious that the shortage of priests becomes more critical every year. A whole system of pastoral care built up over the centuries, which managed to provide single pastors for single parishes, is collapsing before our eyes. Cluster parishes now pop up all over. One poor pastor is put in charge of three and even four parishes. It’s also obvious to many that the shortage crisis is really man-made (like our gas shortage at the pumps). Many feel there is really a rich reservoir of candidates out there (married or unmarried, male or even female) who would like to be tapped for priestly ministry. It’s also obvious to a good number of theologians that there is no plausible, honest theological argument that stands in the way of this. It’s obvious, too, that it is a great waste not to tap that rich supply.

I make bold to say that simply to pray for more vocations, or to import priests who don’t speak English fluently, or to cluster parishes, or to blame the times for not being able anymore to generate generous young people for a life of service and dedication—that I make bold to say are cheap ways to solve (or ignore) the crisis before the church. They don’t cost the church one red cent.

There’s another way for the church to solve her crisis, and that is to reinstate priests who wish to return to ministry or to ordain married men and even women to the priesthood. That, indeed, would be costly for the church! Tectonic plates would shift beneath her male-orientated and celibate feet! But discipleship is supposed to be costly even (and especially) for the church. It would also be very costly for the church to take on all the other issues that wrangle the church, like birth control, divorce and remarriage and sexual orientation, etc. But discipleship is supposed to be costly even (and especially) for the church. When the church has first demanded costly discipleship of herself, then she can powerfully demand it from the rest of us.

E. g., cheap discipleship in the Christian

Discipleship is supposed to be costly not only for the church herself but also for the individual Christian. One day a lady from out of state dropped in at Old St. Mary’s for a 10 AM Sunday liturgy. In the very first sentence of an angry letter which she later sent, she came quickly to her bottom line:

My son, as well as the entire community of Old Saint Mary’s, has a right to have Mass celebrated in obedience to liturgical rules and regulations. How come you failed to give the prescribed absolution at the penitential rite? How come you failed to recite or sing the Gloria prescribed for Sunday Mass? How come you did not read the gospel in its entirety? You shortened the reading of the Gospel proclaiming only verses 27-39 from the tenth chapter of Matthew. In the reading the Gospel how come you failed to use the masculine words prescribed by the Church, but instead you went ahead and changed them to gender-neutral words. How come you failed to take Communion at the prescribed time; instead you took Communion after everybody else had communicated, etc?

Such busyness is not the following of Christ! Such busyness does not cost the visiting lady one red cent, but it surely was meant to cost me.

E. g., costly discipleship in the Good Samaritan

Once upon a time a man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho and was waylaid by robbers who left him half-dead. Along came a Jewish priest hurrying to Jericho where he was to deliver the homily for the dedication of a new synagogue there. He saw the poor man and passed him by. Along came a Levite (a priest’s helper) who was off to Jericho with a long list of errands to check off. He, too, saw the poor man and passed him by. Then along came a Samaritan (an infidel and half breed in Jewish eyes). Though he was rushing to Jericho for a very important business meeting, he slammed on the brakes of his busyness and stopped to pour the oil of compassion into the poor man’s wounds. Then he hoisted the man’s dead weight unto his beast of burden and hurried him off to the nearest inn. There he drew from his pockets the cost to pay for the man’s care and cure. He continued on to Jericho where yet another cost met him: he had arrived late for his meeting, and consequently his business deal fell through! Now who of the three was a true disciple of Yahweh who commanded Jews to love their neighbor as they love themselves (Lev 19:18)? Answer: not the Jewish priest nor the Levite but the Good Samaritan because he paid the cost of discipleship of Yahweh.

E. g.,costly discipleship in Jerry Quinn

Jerry Quinn, owns a bar and restaurant in Boston. In the morning newspaper one day he read about the plight of Franklin Piedra, an Ecuadorian, 33 years old, suffering from chronic kidney failure. His mother wanted to give him one of her kidneys. The transplant would cost at least 100,000 dollars, and she has no health insurance. The Ecuadorian Consulate suggested that he go home and die. Jerry Quinn had a better idea. “I’m not a very wealthy guy,” he said. “I’m comfortably off, but I got this thing in my life—you can use only one car, you can use only one kitchen, you can use only one bathroom, you can only eat so much. That’s my theory of life. So what more do I need?”

Quinn was saving his money for a major down-payment on a two-bedroom apartment in a suburban part of Boston with a river view and all. But another thought kept popping up, and he couldn’t get rid of it. He called the reporter at the New York Post who wrote the story. He said he wanted to help. She asked, “How much do you want to donate—a hundred bucks? A thousand bucks?” He replied, “I’d like to do the whole thing! The whole $100,000!” Piedra and Quinn finally met. Quinn said, “He hugged me and kissed me and told me I was an angel. As I thanked him I could feel the shivers going up and down my back.” The article doesn’t say a word about Quinn being a good Catholic, as many Irishmen are known to be. He might be even a “roaming Catholic” as many Catholics are these days. He might even be some kind of a rounder. I don’t know. But he is, indeed, a disciple of Jesus, for he paid the cost of that discipleship to the tune $100,000.

One bottom line

Just recently a friend said to me (with my worn out stories about the Good Samaritan and Jerry Quinn), “You say the same thing over and over again.” At the end of the day those who have found a bottom line in their life have little more to say than their one bottom line. They keep saying it over and over again. Though they use many different ways to say it, it’s still nothing more than their one bottom line going on and on like a record. Elie Weisel, the Holocaust’s most prominent survivor and author, has one bottom line and he keeps repeating it. Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights’ advocate, had one bottom line and he kept repeating it. Sr. Joan Chittister, nemesis of a male driven church, has one bottom line, and she keeps repeating it. Bonhoefer, one of Hitler’s six million victims, had one bottom line, and he kept repeating it: Discipleship of Jesus is costly. They all keep repeating their one bottom line, but they say it in many different eloquent ways.

Conclusion

Worth every red cent

Well, the sun finally set that day when earlier everyone was rushing to Jericho each on his own very important business. Though the Jewish priest did a great job at the homily for the dedication service (he received a great applause), and though the Levite got all the errands on his list checked off that day in Jericho, a kind of blah and uneasy feeling came over them as they arrived back home in Jerusalem that night. It was the feeling of one who hasn’t stopped to make a difference on the highway of life. It was the feeling of one who doesn’t follow anyone greater than one’s self. It was the feeling of one whose discipleship of Yahweh hadn’t cost him one red cent. When, however, the Good Samaritan arrived back home late that night, though he was exhausted by his sudden encounter with the man waylaid by robbers and by his disastrous business meeting, there was a song singing in his heart. It was the song that sings in the hearts of all those who make a difference on the highway of life. It was the song that sings in the hearts of all those who pay the cost of discipleship and experience that it’s worth every red cent.

[1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. It’s now come to mean the migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland or parish!

[2] By “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!