The Cost(s) Of Discipleship

Recently I was watching a hearing on CNN where the interviewers were trying to “catch” the person who was testifying and were looking for any opportunity to use their words against them. It was hard to watch, and I was ever-grateful that I was not in that hot seat!

Maybe you have had an experience like this – where people were trying to catch you somehow or just seemed out to get you. It never feels good.

In the first reading from Jeremiah 18, we’re told that “the people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem said, “Come, let us contrive a plot against Jeremiah…let us destroy him by his own tongue; let us carefully note his every word.”

Just reading this gives me a sick feeling in my stomach.

Being talked about behind our back or plotted against in some way is probably one of the worst feelings – especially when it comes from people we know (or thought we knew). These forms of betrayal sting. 

And this is what Jeremiah is up against today for just trying to do God’ s work in the world. It reminds me of the famous quip attributed to St. Theresa of Avila who suffered some misfortune as part of her ministry and said, “God if this is how you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have so few of them!”

Jeremiah is just a prelude for the gospel, however. In Matthew 20 Jesus is telling his closest friends that there are plots against him and that when they go to Jerusalem, the authorities are going to come down on him and maybe even try to kill him.

One would expect that his closest disciples would offer comfort.

Instead, the mother of James and John comes up to Jesus and says, “Command that these two sons of mine sit, one at your right and the other at your left, in your kingdom.”

Jesus says that he doesn’t have the power to grant that, and instead shifts the focus back to the sacrifice that he was talking about. He says, “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?” They naively say, “Of course we can!”

This sets off a whole kerfuffle among the disciples about who is most important, and Jesus has to finally intervene and say, “You know that the rulers of the [this world] lord [power] over people, and the great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant…”

And they finally go quiet.

Imagine being Jesus and telling your close friends that people are going to come after you – even to the point of wanting to physically hurt you – and they respond by saying, “I know…but can we get the seats of honor next to you?!” He must have just shaken his head in disbelief.

As we get deeper into Lent, we start confronting the costs of discipleship a bit more head on. People might not like us for what we say. People might reject us or turn on us. People might try to harm us.

I know that I relate a lot to James and John in this story. Jesus asks them if they can “drink from the chalice” that he drinks from and they quickly say, “Of course!” But the cup that they are thinking of is the cup of popularity. The cup of celebrity. The cup of notoriety. The cup of power.

But the cup of Jesus is the one that will appear again at the Last Supper. It is the cup of service. It is the cup of sacrifice. It is the cup of vulnerability. It is the cup of pouring ourselves out for others. It is the cup of solidarity with the poor and vulnerable. It is the cup of speaking truth to power.

That may not quite be the cup we were hoping to drink from.

One of the more moving books I read years ago (that I want to go dig back out) is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor, theologian and vocal dissident against Nazism in Hitler’s Germany. While his life is not without controversy, his writings remain such a beacon for moral courage and following the gospel even when it gets hard. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and executed while in a concentration camp right before the war’s end.

In his book he says that, “If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands…[then] we have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering.” 

Bonhoeffer knew from his own life that our journey with Jesus should bring us emotional uplift and spiritual comfort. And it should also make demands that stretch us and challenge us. Demands that challenge our complicity, demands that challenge our popularity, demands that challenge our being accepted by everyone. Even demands that may challenge our safety.

And we are living during times that might be demanding more from us than had previously been asked. 

What I love about Bonhoeffer, however, is that he knew that he couldn’t tell anyone else what those demands were in their lives. He did not have any Christian purity tests that said “if you’re not doing such-and-such, then you are not really a Christian…” 

What he did encourage us to do, however, was to discern what a next step might be for ourselves – without knowing where it might take us – a step for the gospel that takes us out of our comfort zone. And he said “Perhaps you still think you ought to think out beforehand and know what you ought to do. To that there is only one answer. You can only know and think about it by actually doing it.”

Following Jesus is not a thought experiment filled with careful planning and guarantees. In fact, it might often feel like just the opposite – messy, unglamorous, difficult and tiring. We do things without always knowing what they set in motion.

And yet what we do stretches us – making more room for God in our lives and in our hearts.

Today, figures like Bonhoeffer and so many others beckon us forward – inviting us to stay the course for our commitments knowing that whatever forms of harship, sacrifice and rejection we endure are helpiing to make the gospel more real in this world.