The Cost of Discipleship
John Wilkinson Third
Presbyterian Church
May 20, 2007
Acts 16:16-34, John 17:20-26
Following the congregational meeting and postlude, and prior
to your attending the pastoral care luncheon, you are invited
to coffee hour at which you might enjoy a piece of cake to celebrate
the 55th anniversary of the ordination to the Presbyterian ministry
of the Reverend William W. Young. As you all know, William Young’s
ministry at Third Church was one of faithfulness and distinction,
and Anne and he continue to offer themselves as models of faithfulness
and commitment. I am personally grateful for their friendship,
support and insight on so many things, and since a 55th anniversary
happens only every 55 years, we thought cake would be in order.
William, congratulations, with gratitude for all that you do.
***
On Easter morning, we remembered the witness of William Wilberforce,
the English politician who paved the way for the end of the
English slave trade. The movie “Amazing Grace” tells
the story. At the movie’s conclusion, a pipe and drum
band plays the great hymn after which the moved is named, and
moves across a clearly religious space, which turns out to be
London’s Westminster Abbey, where Wilberforce is buried.
As the camera pans across the great plaza, one notes ten small
sculptures at the west front door.
When one tours Westminster Abbey, much of the attention is
placed on the interior, and rightly so, the famous people buried
there and the British history captured within those walls. But
one is equally blessed, if not more so, to discover these ten
small figures, which are, in fact, ten twentieth-century martyrs,
those wholost their lioves fro their Christian faith. They are
from the global church – east and west and north and south.
There are several names that you might recognize: Oscar Romero,
archbishop from El Salvador, who was murdered while celebrating
mass. Romero said that: "I must tell you, as a Christian,
I do not believe in death without resurrection. If I am killed,
I shall arise in the Salvadoran people." The quotation
associated with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s sculpture declares
that “If physical death is the price I must pay to free
my brothers and sisters from the permanent death of the spirit,
then nothing could be more redemptive.”
There are others – less familiar names to us in the
Western church. You may recognize the name Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 in Breslau, Germany. A
twin, he grew up in a comfortable professional home. His father
was an eminent psychiatrist and neurologist. He lived in a nominally
Lutheran, though not a profoundly religious, household, and
so the young Bonhoeffer caused something of a stir when he announced,
at thirteen, that he would pursue the ministry. After studying
at the University of Berlin, he studied in Rome and later in
New York City at Union Theological Seminary.
As Hitler rose to power, Bonhoeffer, along with other church
leaders, viewed the Nazi movement as something like the formation
of an alternative religion and a danger to Christianity. Bonhoeffer
became an active participant in the dispute which broke out
in the Protestant churches between those who sympathized with
Nazism and those who sensed that the new politics threatened
the integrity of the church.
In this context rose a movement called the “Confessing
Church,” organized to protest the rise of Nazism and Hitler’s
appropriation of religious meaning for his political efforts.
Bonhoeffer ran an illegal seminary for the Confessing Church
that was shut down by the state security police in October 1937.
In 1939 he returned to the United States, but war was imminent
and he chose to return to his own country.
He became increasingly implicated in the work of groups committed
to the overthrow of the government. In March 1943 he was arrested
and incarcerated. In July of 1944, a final attempt was made
by German citizens to destroy the Nazi regime by taking Hitler’s
life. It failed, and hundreds of political prisoners were executed
afterwards. Bonhoeffer himself survived as a prisoner until
April 9, 1945, when he was executed, only a few days before
the end of the war. He was 39. (Biographical highlights include
references from the Westminster Abbey website, Wikipedia.com
and personal memory)
In his brief life, Bonhoeffer wrote several works of poetry,
and several volumes of letters and papers from prison were published.
Perhaps his most well-known work was published in English several
years after his death, known as The Cost of Discipleship. Bonhoeffer's
most widely read book begins, "Cheap grace is the mortal
enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace."
Bonhoeffer wrote, and lived, to give witness to how the life
of discipleship matters to the post- resurrection church living
in the post-Easter world.
Bonhoeffer was not the first to suffer, even suffer death,
for the sake of the gospel, nor would he be the last. You may
remember last Sunday’s account – Paul and Timothy
and their conversation with Lydia. The story continues this
morning, as you have heard.
A woman possessed by a spirit is healed by Paul. The problem
is that she was a slave, and the spirit that possessed her enabled
work – fortune-telling – that made money for her
owner. One does not typically equate Paul and matters of social
justice, but here he is, liberating a slave, and a girl, no
less, and challenging the economic conventions of the Roman
Empire in the process.
But not without consequence. Lack of spirit-possession equals
lack of profit-margin, and so the slave-owner brings charges
against Paul and Silas for disturbing the peace. The charges
stick, and before being imprisoned, the crowd joins in in a
severe flogging of the two.
For our purposes this morning, that is where the episode can
end, though pay attention to the rest of it sometime, including
the unexpected conversion of the jailer.
The question in these weeks following Easter is how does it
all matter? How does the good news we celebrated then continue
to find traction in our own lives and in the life of the world
now? How does the glorious nature of a rolled-away stone and
mysterious angels resonate with the world in which we find ourselves
living – a world filled with hunger, warfare, oppression,
human suffering, the kinds of realities that led to Martin Luther
King’s assassination, Bonheoffer’s execution, Paul’s
imprisonment, and the suffering of countless others –
then and now, named and unnamed.
And more so, for you and me, how do we discern the spirit
of resurrection, the grammar of resurrection, operating in our
lives? God has different designs for us, each of us. For some
it may be imprisonment or even the ultimate sacrifice. But for
many, or most, it is not. And yet we believe with Bonhoeffer
that we are not called to rely on a cheap grace, but rather
a costly one that challenges us, stretches us past the point
of comfort, calls us to forms of discipleship that may be unexpected
for us, and perhaps even unwelcome.
Bonhoeffer’s life, and the lives of others who have
witnessed to us, raise a set of important questions hinted at
by the arrest of Paul and Silas. Where does this Jesus story
take us? What happens when our values seem at odds with the
broader culture? What is the nature of the church that calls
us in and sends us out? These are not easy questions, nor are
they to be taken casually.
As we have said, the Bonhoeffer experience is unique. But
we don’t have to look far to find suffering, and we do
not need to ponder too deeply to determine how we may make a
difference. This is not suffering for suffering sake, no theological
hazing. This is, rather, following the gospel on its natural
trajectory, to where people are hurting, to where reconciliation
needs to happen, to places where justice and hope are in short
supply. We may not be called to martyrdom, but we are called
to discern the signs of the times and to respond in faith, in
the places where God has called us, in our own lives, our communities,
perhaps the life of the church.
The Reformation in whose heritage we dwell taught us that
religion is no private matter, that God is the god of all the
world and not just the part that gathers for worship one hour
a week. It would have been easier for Bonhoeffer to remain in
his pastoral study, writing theological volumes and a poem here
and there. It would have been tempting, and indeed it was, for
him to remain in the U.S. and study and teach, watching Hitler’s
atrocities from afar. We could say the same thing for King,
or Dorothy Day, or any of the martyrs whose likenesses adorn
Westminster Abbey, or any of the countless faithful who have
changed the world, or any of the countless faithful who have
made a difference in our own lives.
I think of one of my own “personal” Bonhoeffers.
We would call her a “stay at home mom” these days.
Her witness – for public education, for medical care for
young mothers, for hunger, for a church that took its world
seriously – resides with me still, some decades later.
She did not seek the spotlight and demurred from all attention.
These are the saints we all know, whose lives have been claimed
by the promise and power of resurrection, and whose faithful
discipleship changed the world, truly changed the world. We
look to her, and them, not to be immobilized by what they did
or shamed by what we are not doing, but to be inspired by what
we may do.
And it may be costly. Let’s not say that easily, but
let’s not ignore it either. It may be costly. Grace is.
From prison, Bonhoeffer wrote this poem:
All go to God in their distress,/Seek help and pray for bread
and happiness,/Deliverance from pain, guilt and death./All do,
Christians and others./
All go to God in HIS distress,/Find him poor, reviled without
shelter or bread,/Watch him tormented by sin, weakness, and
death./Christians stand by God in His agony./
God goes to all in their distress,/Satisfies body and soul
with His bread,/Dies, crucified for all, Christians and others/And
both alike forgiving./
As Christ stands with us, may we stand with Christ, and by
so satisfying the needs of the world, be ourselves satisfied
in our very souls. Amen.