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Mark 8:34-38

The Costs of Discipleship

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Mark 8:34-38

The Costs of Discipleship

Dr. Philip W. McLarty

In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes it clear: While God’s grace is always bestowed freely, it is never bestowed cheaply. Bonhoeffer says specifically,

“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church …Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian ‘conception’ of God … Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner … 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.” (Pp. 45-47)

Bonhoeffer would have us know, grace is free, but it’s anything but cheap. It comes at the price of God’s only begotten son, and it leads us to surrender our lives to God in gratitude and faithful obedience. Bonhoeffer calls this, “costly grace.” He says,

“Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field, for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price for which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.” (P. 47)

God’s grace is a free gift, but there’s a price to pay. Nowhere is this stated more clearly than in the gospel lesson for today where Jesus said, “Whoever wants to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” (Mark 8:34)

In the sermon this morning, I’d like to explore some of the costs of discipleship, and, to\ be honest, at first they may sound radical and far-fetched. I think that’s because, unconsciously, we’ve adapted to the ways of the world to such an extent that we’ve watered down and diluted the biblical teaching on discipleship so as not to offend anyone. We’ve so bought into the marketplace mentality of the world in which we live that we’ve come to think of Christian discipleship and church membership as one and the same thing – that all you have to do to be a disciple of Jesus Christ is join the church, come to worship every once in a while and, perhaps, make an offering. Deep down inside, I think we all know there’s more to it than that. And so, my hope is that by being more specific and laying out some of the costs of discipleship, we’ll take some corrective action, toward the end that we take our calling as disciples of Jesus Christ more seriously, commit ourselves to Christ more fully, and so, feel a greater share in Christ’s kingdom on earth.

So, what are some of the costs of discipleship? One is the loss of our old identity.

Question: What was Pope John Paul II’s name before he was elected Pope of the Roman Catholic Church? I’ll give you a hint: He’s Polish. Give up? Before he was elected Pope in 1978, John Paul’s name was Karol Wojtyla. He was born in Wadowice, Poland in 1920. When he was elected Pope, he took the name, John Paul II, and it’s by that name that he’ll be remembered throughout history.

It used to be said that each of us has two names, a surname and a Christian name. Your surname is your last name. It signifies the family to which you belong. Your Christian name is the name given to you as a child at your baptism. It signifies your belonging to Jesus Christ.

I’m not sure we even think this way any more, but it might help if we did, because, as far as the world is concerned, a name is just a name, and the prettier, the better. But, in the Christian faith, our first names are meant to identify us as disciples of Jesus Christ. The emphasis is not upon us, but Christ; what’s important is not who we are, but the One to whom we belong. Well, I doubt that any of us, like the Pope, would be inclined to rush out and change our names, but how would it be if you were to think of your name as synonymous with your new identity in Christ?

Paul told the Corinthians,

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old things have passed away.
Behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

And, as Paul said of himself,

“I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live,
but Christ living in me.
That life which I now live in the flesh,
I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me, and gave himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

And, of course, you’ll remember that, before he met the risen Christ, the Apostle Paul’s name was Saul. One of the costs of discipleship is the loss of our old identity. Another is the sacrifice of personal freedom. As Presbyterians, we’re quick to jump on the bandwagon of free will. God claims us as his own, we say, but gives us the freedom to say no; God shows us the way we should live, but gives us the freedom to rebel and make our own mistakes. One of the favorite scriptures of Reformed Christians like us is Paul’s classic statement to the Galatians,

“Stand firm therefore
in the liberty by which Christ has made us free,
and don’t be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.” (Galatians 5:1)

What we need to remember is that freedom in Christ is not freedom to do your own thing, but freedom to choose Christ over the ways of the world. In the epistle lesson this morning, Paul makes it clear that to accept Christ is to exchange our slavery to sin and death for obedience to Jesus Christ. He says,

“Don’t you know that…you are whom you obey;
whether of sin to death,
or of obedience to righteousness?
But thanks be to God, that, whereas you were bondservants of sin…
made free from sin,
you became bondservants of righteousness” (Romans 6:16-18)

In his covenant prayer, which he offered every year at midnight on New Year’s Eve, John Wesley prayed,

“I am no longer my own but Thine, put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt, put me to doing, put me to suffering, let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee; let me be full, let me be empty; let me have all things, let me have nothing; I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.”

As disciples of Jesus Christ, we’d do well to pray with Wesley and be reminded that we’re not free to follow the dictates of our own sinful nature; we’re free to surrender our wills to the will of God and to submit ourselves to the authority of Jesus Christ.

Ironically, in today’s world, it’s our youth and young people who are often leading the way. Did you see in the news this week where a group of college students from Missouri spent their spring break here in Bryan/College Station helping build a Habitat house? A reporter on the evening news asked one of the girls why they’d want to spend a week in Bryan working on a house instead of going to the mountains or to the beach, and she said, “Well, we’re Christians and part of what it means for us to follow Jesus Christ is to serve others in his name.”

And college students are not the only ones, high school students are taking their faith seriously as well. I don’t have the latest statistics, but I think you’ll find that more and more of our youth are responding to peer pressure by turning to Jesus Christ. They’re saying no to drugs and alcohol and premarital sex and choosing abstinence instead, claiming their bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit, to be kept pure and undefiled.

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Paul was right – “Stand firm therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free.” Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we’re no longer slaves to sin and death, we’re free to be obedient to God and seek God’s will for our lives. One of the costs of discipleship is the sacrifice of personal freedom. And another is giving up of old prejudices.

It’s no secret, prejudice is passed on from one generation to the next. When I was growing up in the South in the late 40s and 50s, black people were thought to be inferior to white people. There were separate restrooms, dining rooms and schools to keep us segregated from each other. In addition, we were prejudiced against Jews and Hispanics and, as Protestants, we were prejudiced against Catholics. What are some of the prejudices you learned as a child?

How long did it take for you to let go of them? What prejudices are you still holding on to today?

In the Christian faith, prejudice must give way to allegiance to Jesus Christ, for in Christ, we meet on the common plane of God’s forgiveness and his love. In his Letter to the Galatians, Paul says,

“…you are all children of God, through faith in Christ Jesus.
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ
have put on Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither slave nor free man,
there is neither male nor female;
for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:26-28)

Human nature can be characterized, in part, by the old adage, “Birds of a feather flock together.” But, as Christians, there can be no picking and choosing, one over the other. All who pray to God as Father and claim Jesus Christ as brother are sisters and brothers to each other.

Some like to say, “You can choose your friends, but your family is a given.” As disciples of Jesus Christ, we’re called to lay aside our prejudices and relate to each other as one family of faith.

I’ll be the first to say, this is a lot easier said than done. My hunch is, the longer you live in one place, the harder it is to do. As many of you know, I’ve moved around a lot. And, in some ways, that’s an advantage – the more you know the long-term history of a community or a congregation or an individual, the more you tend to be influenced by the past. You remember the way people were “back when,” things they did or said, mistakes they made that you couldn’t forget if you tried. But, for people like me, who move into a community for the first time, there’s a certain sense of naiveté, which, in many ways, is a blessing – you don’t know where the bones are buried – you have the freedom to meet people where they are at this point in time and accept them for who they want to be, rather than who they’ve been in the past.

Having said that, I wonder: Are there individuals in the community today – or in this congregation – you have a hard time accepting because of things they said or did years ago? Are there individuals you have a hard time embracing as your brother or sister in Christ? I don’t mean to step on your toes, but I’m here to tell you, if there are, you need to get over it. Jesus calls us to forgive and, if not forget, at least not harbor old grievances from the past. It’s one of the costs of discipleship, the giving up of old prejudices.

There are other costs of discipleship I only have time to mention in passing. One is the letting go of personal wealth. The truth is, as Christians, we have no assets of our own. All that we have belongs to God. Our job is to be good stewards, not owners, of the possessions with which God has entrusted us.

Another cost is the giving up of ultimate allegiance to family and friends and country. Jesus said,

“He who loves father or mother… son or daughter more than me
isn’t worthy of me.”
(Matthew 10:37)

And, of course, the greatest cost of discipleship is the losing of our lives in devotion to Jesus Christ and his kingdom on earth. There are no two ways about it. Jesus said,

“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it;
and whoever will lose his life for my sake and the sake of the Good News
will save it.”
(Mark 8:35)

A clergy friend of mine tells the story of meeting a couple at a party who’d just moved to his community and were looking for a church home. “Tell us about your church,” they said, “we might be interested.” Of course, what they meant by that was, tell us about your programs, your activities, your facilities – what do you have to offer us, in other words? How does your church compare with the others we’ve visited? My friend smiled and said, “Oh, you’ll love our church. If you come to our church, we’ll kill you.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly what the couple was expecting to hear. At first, they were stunned and speechless. Finally, the woman chuckled politely and said, “I assume you’re kidding.” My friend said, “Not at all.” Then he went on to explain that to follow Jesus Christ is not to add another bullet to your résumé, but to give up self-interest in pursuit of Christ’s kingdom on earth, that the church is not a shopping mall where you pick up the things you need, but a mission outpost from which you go out in service to Christ and his kingdom. He never said if the couple joined his church or not.

In order to live, first you have to die. That’s the ultimate cost of discipleship. It’s also the spirit in which we prepare to celebrate Christ’s resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday. Jesus told his disciples,

“Most certainly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,
it remains by itself alone.
But if it dies,
it bears much fruit.”
(John 12:24)

And this is the Good News: When we’re willing to pay the costs of discipleship – when we’re willing to give up our identity, to sacrifice our personal freedom, to let go of our prejudices, our hold on material wealth, our allegiance to others – when we’re willing to die to self, in other words – then we shall experience new life in Christ and share in the promise of his resurrection from the dead. Charles Everest understood this perfectly when he penned the words to our closing hymn,

“‘Take up thy cross,’ the Savior said,
‘if thou wouldst my disciple be;
deny thyself, the world forsake,
and humbly follow after me.’
Take up thy cross and follow Christ;
nor think til death to lay it down;
for only he who bears the cross
may hope to wear the glorious crown.” (Presbyterian Hymnal, p. 393)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Copyright 2003, Philip W. McLarty.  Used by permission.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB), a public domain (no copyright) modern English translation of the Holy Bible.