The
Cost of Discipleship
Introduction
His face fell
A rich young man asks Jesus what he must do to gain
eternal life. Jesus answers, “Keep the commandments.” “I have done that,” he replies.
Then Jesus says, “There’s one thing left for you to do: go, sell all your
possessions, give the money to the poor, and then come back and follow me” (Mk
I have often shared with
you letters which a mystic friend of mine has written me over the years. In a
letter dated October 14th (today is the 15th) 1979, 27
years ago, probably around this very Twenty-eight Sunday of Ordinary Time, she
writes, “The young man’s face fell because he understood the cost of discipleship.
He understood the cost of following Jesus: you’re asked to get rid of all your
possessions. So what do you expect him
to do? Jump up and down for joy? -- P.S
I’m still getting rid of all my possessions, and I still have to go back and
follow him.”
Sweeping invitations
The gospels are dotted
with sweeping invitations to discipleship. Jesus says to the crowds, “Whoever
does not `hate’ his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and
sisters, and himself as well cannot be my disciples. Whoever does not carry his
cross and come after me cannot be my disciples…. Whoever does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my
disciple” (Lk
A paradox
Here my mystic friend
writes, “How strange that Jesus should want the poor man to get the riches of
the rich man who has a harder time
getting into heaven than a camel has passing though the eye of a needle. Isn’t
the poor man already ahead, and wouldn’t receiving the riches of the rich man
simply set him back? And so it seems,”
she writes, “we are in a paradoxical situation. And a paradox holds its truth
quite gently and elusively, and we must approach it with care.”
Jesus’ call to sell our
possessions and give the money to the poor is a paradox. Its truth is gentle
and elusive. It has to be approached
with care. Maybe many of us approach it as quite unrealistic and even undesirable
and dismiss it out of hand. We don’t take the call seriously, and so our faces
don’t fall.
It’s obviously unrealistic to think we can get along without
possessions in our society. Furthermore, very few of us are ready to give up
those wonderful possessions which are the fruit of human technology, and which
make our lives human, enriched and pleasant.
I love my car, a Rav. It takes Simeon and me to the lake at early dawn and
to Old St. Mary’s for morning Mass and to the grocery store for our daily bread.
I also love my TV. When the Packers have
a fighting chance of going to the Superbowl, it provides me with a welcome escape
from the real world. But my TV also keeps me in touch with the real world of
24/7 terrorism and school massacres and helps me to say something meaningful at
Sunday
Or farming it out
The Protestant Reformation claimed that our church,
feeling uncomfortable with dismissing Jesus’ call as not really serious, farmed
it out to a restricted group of
specialists in the church, namely monks in monasteries and nuns in nunneries.
Their task was to take care of Jesus’ call for the rest of us. That, the
Reformation said, created a double standard in the church: a maximum standard of
Christian perfection for the few who are really serious about following Christ,
and a minimum standard for the rest of us who aren’t. In his book The Cost
of Discipleship Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran minister martyred by
Hitler, wrote “God showed Luther though the Scriptures that the following of
Christ is not the achievement or merit of a chosen few. It's a divine command to all Christians
without distinction.”
We can dismiss Jesus’ call outright as not really serious, or, if we’re too pious for that, we can at least farm it out to others. In either case our faces don’t fall, and we simply get on with possession-ridden lives. Or we can take Jesus’ call seriously by trying to make some sense out of it. Let’s try that.
Ideological
possessions
The materialistic mindset in us sees possessions only as things in our hands, but there are possessions also in our heads and hearts.
There are ideological possessions, like the
kind in Nazi heads and hearts which proclaimed that only the master
race--the tall, blue eyed and blond--had a right to live. That possession was
lethal. It ignited the ovens of the
Holocaust and turned six million innocent human beings into a burnt
offering. Some of our worst possessions
are in our heads and hearts. Of them especially Jesus says, “Unless you
renounce your possessions you cannot be my disciple.”
Now there rages another ideological possession. It’s in extreme Islamists’ heads and hearts proclaiming
there is only one way and only one civilization—the Islamic way and
civilization. That possession is lethal. It brought down two towers and three
thousand innocent human beings, and it now sets two civilizations--Christian
West and Islam—on a collision course of confrontation. In a lecture delivered last month entitled, The Cross and the Crescent, George L.
Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, characterized that confrontation as
“the most dangerous, most important and potentially cataclysmic issue of our
day.” Some of our worst possessions are in our heads and
hearts. Of them especially Jesus says, “Unless you renounce your possessions
you cannot be my disciple.”
There
are theological possessions. These are the dogmatic
possessions in the heads and hearts of some church people who proclaim
that anything there is to be said has already been said about issues like human
sexuality, artificial birth control, homosexuality, divorce, celibacy,
ordination of women, open communion, etc. Yes, even to the church, and
especially to the church, which should mirror the poor Christ who “emptied himself” (Phil 2:5-7), Jesus says you cannot be my disciple unless you renounce your
possessions. You cannot be my disciple unless you’re ready to let go of your
last word unquestionable word. The Holy Spirit of God is breathing in the signs
of the times and the people of God, who are asking you to let go.
We must eventually get to ourselves. Until then,
all we’ve been doing is pointing fingers at Nazis, Islamists and church people.
There are emotional
possessions in the heads and hearts of all of us. You can ask almost anything of us human
beings, but by gum, don’t ask us to give up our personal prized possession of anger
which has us talking angrily to ourselves through months and even years of our
lives. That possession is lethal; it kills our spirit. Or, by gum, don’t ask us
to give up our personal prized possession of self-pity which has us constantly
licking our wounds so that they never heal, and which so immobilizes us that we
never get up and get on with life. That,
too, is lethal; it kills the spirit. Some of our worst
possessions are in our heads and hearts. Of them especially Jesus says, “Unless
you renounce your possessions you cannot be my disciple.”
A conviction
of fifty years
Some time ago I received a letter from a woman who accidentally stumbled into Old St. Mary’s 10 AM Mass and later wrote back, berating me for not giving the prescribed absolution at the penitential rite, and for not reciting the Gloria prescribed for Sunday Mass, and for not reading the gospel in its entirety, and for not using the masculine nouns prescribed by the church but instead changing them to gender-neutral words, and for not taking Communion at the time prescribed for the priest, i.e., before the faithful, and for not reading the concluding prayer and for not giving the dismissal as prescribed by the Church (this is a shortened version of her letter). What a long list of possessions I thought to myself!
Last
week I received another such letter. It,
too, was written by someone who accidentally stumbled into Old St. Mary’s
After contending with that stuff for fifty-five years, I have accumulated in me the most personal and powerful persuasion that some of our worst possessions are in our heads and hearts and not in our hands, and that they demand Christian renunciation far more urgently than does my Rav or my TV or my computer or any other material possession of mine. The thought that I can keep them all and use them and enjoy them lifts my spirit, but the thought that I have to give up some of the stuff that’s in my head and heart makes my face fall.