The Cost of Discipleship
A homily for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C
“The Cost of Discipleship” is a sobering book dealing with the role of Christianity in an increasingly secular world. It was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor in 1937. At that time of publishing, the Nazi party was firmly in control of Germany and World War II was on the horizon. Bonhoeffer was staunchly resistant to the Nazi regime. That opposition would cost him his life. In 1943 he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. In 1945, he was accused of being involved in a plot against Hitler and then sent to the gallows to be hanged.
He was a man who lived what he preached in his book. I think that “The Cost of Discipleship” should be required reading for anyone who seriously wants to follow Christ. It is not an easy read in the sense of it be very convicting especially, I think, for Christians in the western world today. Because when Jesus says in our Gospel reading today, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple,” he really means it.
We are very far removed from crucifixion being a part of life as it was in the Roman Empire. We wear beautiful crosses around our necks as jewelry. We hang crucifixes in our homes, our classrooms at our Catholic schools, we have a big crucifix above the altar, we hang rosaries with a crucifix from the rearview mirrors of our vehicles. Such reminders are good if we remember what they mean. The cross was a cruel form of capital punishment that evoked horror and shame. Those to be crucified carried their crossbeam through the streets surrounded by the crowds mocking them along the way. The cross means death. When it comes to discipleship it means a dying to yourself. When we respond to Jesus’ call to carry our cross and follow him. We are to die to ourselves and to sin, and then rise again with Christ to newness of life. That makes real demands on how we are to live.
Bonhoeffer makes the distinction between what he calls “cheap grace” and “costly grace.” Regarding cheap grace, he says this: “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without profession of faith… cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.” Perhaps we can think of cheap grace like spiritual cotton candy. Cotton candy is sweet, attractive, tastes good… but it is empty. Cotton candy is empty calories, devoid of nutrition, full of dyes that are probably toxic, and it is mostly air. If you try to live off it, then you will become sick. The sickness would get worse the longer you tried to live off cotton candy. You wouldn’t have energy. Life would be drained out of you. Cheap grace Christianity is sweet, not offensive to anyone, makes no demands, and at best is a decoration on our lives to be brought out on occasion. It tends to think that sin and hell aren’t real, that the moral demands of the Gospel can be discarded or changed at will. It turns Jesus into a guru whose only rule is “just be nice.” Cheap grace is attractive and easy, but it is also lifeless. If Bonhoeffer or any of the martyrs or saints held to cheap grace, then they would not have been martyrs or saints. They would not have stood for Christ or anything. Moreover, as today’s reading makes clear, cheap grace is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
What about “costly grace?” Bonhoeffer says this: “Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus; it comes as a word of forgiveness to a broken spirit and the contrite heart. Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: ‘My yoke is easy and my burden is light.’”
Authentic discipleship will cost us. It must cost us; it must make demands on us. Otherwise, it means nothing and does nothing. Being a follower of Christ must cost us because love makes demands upon us. Truth makes demands upon us. When you love someone, when truth is revealed to you (that amazing eureka moment when the light bulb comes on in your head), that love and truth change how you live. They change your whole approach to life: how you spend your time, your money, the priorities and goals you set, the company you keep. Jesus Christ proclaims the truth of who God is and who we are meant to become as beloved sons and daughters of the Father. He reveals the love of the Father for His children and shows the depths that love by dying upon the Cross for our sake. Love and truth in Christ must have a real, deep impact on how we live. His love and truth must change us. Following Christ means a total reorientation of our life towards him. This isn’t spiritual cotton candy. This is real food. It is substantial. It is good. Following Christ means a real movement from the darkness of sin to newness of life.
Our second reading from Saint Paul’s letter to Philemon is an excellent example of a life changed by embracing the cross and reorienting our lives towards Christ. Saint Paul writes to this man Philemon on behalf of a young man Onesimus. Onesimus was Philemon’s slave. It seems that perhaps Onesimus stole something from Philemon and ran away (Paul speaks of some injustice in the letter). Whatever the case, Paul means to send Onesimus back, but with a change. Paul says that Philemon is to receive Onesimus “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a brother…” Slavery was a common and widespread practice in the ancient world. To receive a slave as a brother, to break down that social barrier so firmly entrenched in the society of the time, that was revolutionary. This new relationship comes about because of Christ. As Christians, Philemon and Onesimus cannot remain the same as before. The grace of Christ is at work in them. And no doubt it was costly to them both. For a master and slave to break down that barrier and live as brothers in a world that didn’t accept that, that would cost them. We don’t know for sure what that was. Perhaps they suffered misunderstandings or ridicule. But suffer they must for the sake of Christ. Through the Cross of Christ, a new life for them was born. Through the Cross they learned to live as sons of the Father.
We all have to contend with a broken world, the brokenness and sin of our own lives and those around us – cheap grace will fix none of it. Costly grace is our salvation because costly grace is real. Jesus calls us to follow him by taking up our cross, by dying to self and to sin, and allowing him to work in us to bring us to new life. That means our lives must change. Because of Christ we must live differently.
Image Credits
German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv), Bild 146-1987-074-16 Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 (Germany)
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Confessing-Church#/media/1/73037/213661
