UNEDITED
In the Name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I’d like to suggest to you that some lessons and appointed Gospels in the Lectionary, if taken only at face value, are more pleasing to the ear than others. I’m thinking now about all of our perennial favourites: David and Goliath; Jonah and the Whale; Daniel in the Lion’s Den; the Annunciation to Blessed Virgin Mary; the Nativity of Christ, the Good Samaritan; the Wedding at Cana; the empty tomb; and many more. Just insert your favorite, heart-warming story and you’ll know what I’m suggesting.
I’m talking about the stories that fill us with warm and fuzzy thoughts and feelings. And when we hear them, we’re tempted to sort of lean back into them and rest awhile, trusting, in the words of that great theologian, Bob Marley, that indeed “everything’s gonna be alright.” And we leave mass comforted, relaxed and even a bit euphoric. Or so we think.
And, often times, when this happens, what has actually happened is that we’ve experienced something called cheap grace. And we are all guilty of it from time to time. I’m channeling my inner Bonhoeffer now. Cheap grace, he said, is:
The grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
So, then, on the other side of the same coin, we get appointed passages like what we’ve just heard from the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke, which remind us of costly grace and the true price of discipleship.
After quite the spill, Jesus sums it up for those would-be disciples, who’ve gathered around Him, by saying, “Whoever does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”
A better translation of the Greek word rendered “renounce” (which, to me, sounds all rather dignified, even sort of liturgical) would be, “to say farewell to.” So it becomes: “None of you can be my disciple if you do not say farewell to all your possessions.” Now that’s costly discipleship indeed!
And to a world fixed – truly obsessed with – accumulating possessions, this passage is not exactly what I would initially, on the surface, call comforting and pleasing to the ear.
In fact, I don’t know if you noticed it, but even our customary responses after the Gospel (“Glory to you Lord Christ”/”Praise be to Thee O Lord) were a little flat just now. And that’s because Jesus has gone from preaching to meddling, as they say.
But we shouldn’t be surprised, for we know, from the writer to the Hebrews, that, “The word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow.” Thus we must conclude that, like a skilled surgeon, the Gospel often cuts us before it heals us.
Finley Peter Dunne, the great early twentieth century humorist who is best remembered for his “Mr. Dooley” sketches, once said that the job of journalists is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted.” The same might be said of the Gospels – and today we, the comforted, are feeling a bit of affliction as our Saviour speaks.
But before you go sell your possessions, which I’m sure neither you nor I are going to do any time soon, it is worth the preacher being very clear. Jesus is not saying that everyone in all places in all times should abandon their possessions.
What He is saying is that anything that possesses us – any and all things that get in the way of receiving His love and light – are misplaced and must be jettisoned, if we are to be His followers, his disciples.
So, He’s come to us today, in a sense, dressed as that most feared of all men: the dreaded “repo man.” Yes, Jesus the “Repo Man.” Hey, don’t knock it. One time many years ago, when I was first in college, my family cut off the money, citing some supposed maturity issues (the nerve!), and I could no longer afford to make payments on the Chevrolet Tahoe that I simply had to have. So, I was indeed glad to see him arrive and take away that which I could not afford.
So, yes, Jesus the “Repo Man” greets us today as the agent of God the Father, who’s come to take back something our souls really can’t afford anyway – namely, the idolatry of material treasure – so that we might see the real treasure offered to us by being His disciples – His agents filled with His mercy, grace and love.
And that turns this passage into something beautiful! Look how far He goes to draw us back! Thanks be to God that we have a Saviour who tells it like it is!
Have you ever had a best friend that tells it like it is? I’m talking about that person you can go to and say something – anything at all – and he or she won’t respond with what you want to hear, but, rather, what you need to hear? “Does this herringbone double-breasted sports coat look nice on me,” I once asked Malacy at Neiman Marcus, and she said, “I don’t think you need to buy anything that accentuates your waist like that.” It’s just that sort of best friend honesty – saving honesty, if you will – that I’m talking about. What a friend indeed we have in Jesus!
In Pope Francis’s latest book, The Joy of Discipleship, he explains discipleship like this:
Despite our resolve to follow the Lord Jesus, we experience every day the selfishness and hardness of our heart. When, however, we recognize ourselves as sinners, God fills us with his mercy and with his love. And he forgives us, he always forgives us. It is precisely this that makes us grow as God’s people, as the Church: not our cleverness, not our merits, but the daily experience of how much the Lord wishes us well and takes care of us. It is this that makes us feel that we are truly his, in his hands, and makes us grow in communion with him and with one another. To be Church is to feel oneself in the hands of God, who is father and loves us, caresses us, waits for us, and makes us feel his tenderness.
It is my prayer that each one of us might feel anew that tenderness today, so that we might indeed be repossessed by His love, and then remembering the costliness of that love – hanging on the Cross for you and for me – we might be compelled to share a little bit more of it in our sinful and broken world as disciples of our Risen Lord – in name and deed!
So now, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it, “May the Lord who has given us the will to do these things give us the grace and power to perform them.”
Sermon preached by the Rev. Charleston D. Wilson
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota, Florida
16th Sunday after Pentecost
4 September 2016