The call of Jesus to follow him is a real and tangible command.

“Come, take up your cross, and follow me.”

The call of Jesus to follow him is a real and tangible command.

It is not the beginning of a philosophical discussion or the opening of a debate about doctrine. Jesus doesn’t present a plan for positive thinking or suggest seven simple steps to becoming his disciple. It is not merely an idea meant to guide us through difficult times in life as we do our best at doing the right thing.

Confessions of faith or intellectual discussions about biblical doctrine may help us better understand our commitment to Jesus, but the call of Jesus is not to any of these things. Because the call of Jesus is real, our response must be equally real. We must take concrete steps to follow him.

The only way we can follow the Teacher is to live out of a level of intimacy that can be sustained only by acknowledging Christ’s constant presence in our lives. He bids us to walk with him and work with him — watch how he does it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. He won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on us. If we keep company with him we'll learn to live freely and lightly. I believe this is what he means when he says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:29-30).

“There is only one way of believing on Jesus Christ, and that is by leaving all and going with the incarnate Son of God,” says Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Thus, discipleship means we must give up any thought that there will be bits and pieces of our lives that can remain unaffected by our relationship with Jesus. In other words, we must be “all in.”

Here is the critical question we must ask to see if we following Jesus: How much of our service to Jesus is based upon what is convenient for us and how much of it is based upon us doing what Jesus is telling us to do? If we answer the latter, we might be in the right space.

Jesus doesn't want you to be a "good person"

Jesus doesn’t want you to be a good person.

When he calls you to follow him, he isn’t asking you to become nice and do your best at helping others. He isn’t telling us to do things so that we can feel good about the other things we may have screwed-up. Jesus’ call is a command for us to walk away from the way we “do” life so that we can follow him down a path or “way” that leads to the kingdom.

To follow Jesus, the first thing we have to let go of is the illusion that following Jesus is about becoming a good person. If that is what we think, then we will spend our lives trying to make ourselves good by following a list of rules that are, in the end, little more than self-righteous attempts to enter the kingdom on our own power. Jesus tells us clearly that this is not the way – that was why he often found problems with the Pharisees.

When we replace our relationship with Jesus with rules, the rules then take on an inordinate and unnatural heaviness. Doing so means that we are simply trying to impress Jesus, not follow in his pattern of living.  Scripture teaches us that Jesus was like in every way, except sin. No matter how hard we try, we cannot be exactly like Jesus. If we could, we wouldn’t need him. Moreover, it’s exhausting trying to be perfect – but that is often just what we try to do – and when we fail (which we ultimately will), we find ourselves farther away from God than we ever thought possible.

The sooner we stop trying to impress Jesus, the faster we can get about the business of following him – of being a true disciple. Once we realize that we cannot save ourselves and that we need Jesus, we can put down all our pretenses and allow the Spirit into our hearts – to start a process of change and transformation that is liberating, not burdensome.

Grace and Silver

If we asked most Christians about the meaning of grace, they’d probably tell us a good catechism answer: Grace is the unmerited favor of God. Not a bad answer, really, but it is one that is just abstract enough to distract us from the truly transformational nature of grace. Grace by its nature is powerful, audacious, and dangerous. I believe that if it ever got free reign in our churches, it would begin a transformation so rapid and radical that it would cause a sort of revolution.

So, what is grace, exactly?

An illustration from Les Miserables may help us better understand it. Most of us may know Les Mis as a broadway musical.  The musical is based, however, on Victor Hugo’s timeless tale about a peasant, Jean Valjean, who is sentenced to hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread. Released from prison he is offered sanctuary in the home of a priest for a short time. Even though Valjean had been treated with dignity for the first time in many years, he steals valuable silverware form the bishop’s residence. The next day, Valjean is brought back to the bishop’s home by the police, who tell the bishop that Valjean claimed that the silver was a gift. The police obviously expect the bishop to deny that he gave the silver to Valjean. Surprisingly, the bishop addresses Valjean, “Ah, there you are! I am glad to see you. But I gave you the candlesticks too, which are silver like the rest, and would bring two hundred francs. Why did you not take them along with your plates?” When he hands the candlesticks to Valjean, he privately tells him, ”Jean Valjean, you are my brother and no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you.” It’s a Christ-like moment that shows the cost of grace, both for the giver and the receiver. In turn, Valjean goes on to live a life of grace, eventually coming to support the poor and adopting a young orphan whom he must ransom out of servitude.

The grace bestowed by the bishop upon the thief transformed the thief’s heart – so much so, that rather than serving only himself, he became a generous servant to others.

God knows what we are and what we have done (individually and collectively) and yet, he loves us still. That love is showered on us even though we do not deserve it and have not earned it. Yet grace does cost something. Just as it cost the bishop his silver, it cost the Son of God everything he had to give – his very life. It differs from simple mercy in this: grace costs while mercy does not. Mercy says, “I forgive you, I won’t press charges” (and the solver is returned). Grace, on the other hand, goes the extra distance and says, “Not only won’t I press charges, I’ll pay for your rehab program.” (And the silver gives a thief a new start in life.)

That’s how grace can transform us – once we receive God's forgiveness, we allow our hearts to be changed, transformed - we repent. The only cost to us is for us to abandon our selfishness and begin to live a life patterned on the generous self-giving love of Jesus. This indicates the cost of discipleship.

Someone paid a price

In his analysis of discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer declared “cheap grace” to be the deadly enemy of the Church. We, unfortunately, have not moved beyond that reality some 70 years later. By cheap grace, Bonhoeffer meant the presumption that I can receive forgiveness for my sins without abandoning my life to Jesus and his way. I do this because I think because I have been taught that God’s grace is freely given that there is no cost associated with it. After all, if I have to pay for it, it’s really not a gift and really not free. That seems to make perfect sense to me.

Indeed, the Scriptures teach us that this gift is free. But the reality is that someone paid for it. When you get a gift from someone, they bought it and paid a price for it. It is because of their generosity that you don’t pay anything. The one who paid the price for the forgiveness we need was Jesus. In other words, although the gift is free, it doesn’t mean there was no cost associated with it. The truly hard work has already been done. But there is a catch. When offering this gift to us Jesus tells us that if we accept it, our “Thank you” need only be obedience to this request: “Go and sin no more.”

As humans, we all too easily slip into an understanding that Jesus died for sins in general: we don’t really expect it to get personal, or have any real implications for us as individuals. In this way of thinking, it is so much easier to dodge individual responsibility. When we make a generalization like “Jesus died for the sins of mankind” we can avoid the reality that “Jesus died to pay for my lie last week at work.” When it remains a mere generality, nothing in my life needs to be any different.

But Jesus offers me an individual gift of grace. When I hear those words, “Go and sin no more,” it means that I must undertake to change my habits, my thoughts, my behaviors, my attitudes, and my relationships in such a way that they align with the will of God. This is true repentance.

Once I accept Jesus’ invitation, I cannot remain the same because I am no longer the same – I have been changed. “Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ,” says Bonhoeffer. It is costly because it costs one his life, and it is grace because it gives a one the only life that really matters in the end. This kind of grace condemns sin and the evil it creates in our lives. It is grace because it changes the sinner.

To be a disciple, then, means that I can’t just see myself as part of some large abstract crowd that believes some sort of doctrinal statement. I must seek a personal relationship with the teacher. I must be able willingly to respond to the invitation to follow.

Embracing Discipleship: An invitation to a holy Lent

Most of us would like to live a life of extraordinary quality that is not only fulfilling but also carries significance beyond ourselves. More than likely that is among of the reasons we become Christians. Fortunately, it is exactly the kind of life Jesus promises if we will follow him. So, we might ask, why isn’t it happening as it was promised? Why does it seem that I am living a life of quiet desperation?

I go to church; I read from the Bible; I pray; I try to be a good person and to serve others; yet, my life with Jesus doesn’t seem to be much more than something added onto my already too complex life.  When we feel that way, many of us try harder, pray harder, study harder, and try to figure out what we’re doing wrong because that’s what we think Jesus wants us to do. What we don’t realize is that in the midst of all this, Jesus may just be asking us “Aren’t you tired of all this yet?” Maybe that’s why so many people get burned out on religion.

Instead, Jesus says, “Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll find your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me. Work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn from me. If we hear him in this way, we realize that Jesus calls us away from the hows and whys and whats into the rhythm of his life of grace.

We need first to realize that Jesus is not a problem to be solved, but a person to know. Too often, we may treat him as a “how” or “what” and inevitably end up in the cycle of trying harder to work out an equation that God never meant for us to solve. Instead of trying harder, we need to trust more. None of this is new, and the danger as you read this is that you may dismiss it as so much religious jargon. “I know it is a relationship; I know I need to trust him.” Yet, we almost always slip right back into the cycle of trying harder and the extraordinary life we want to live eludes us.

My prayer is that, during this holy season of Lent, you’ll be able to step into the rhythm of grace that Jesus provides. I pray that you won’t just stand there, but that you will actually hear the music of Jesus’ life and begin a never-ending dance with the One who is the eternal Lover of your soul. True, God’s gift of grace, Jesus—the Word made flesh, is a mystery. “No mysteries for me,” you say, “what I want is the facts.” Do you say that to your lover? Of course not, because when we fall in love, it’s all about mystery. Why should it be any different with God.

“Come,” Jesus says, “follow me.” That is the call we hope to hear all through Lent here at St. Luke’s – and we hope to explore just how we can do that. Come ... and see!

Seeing the Lamb of God

We live in a world with so much to see. There is so much that our brains actually play a large role in filtering out what we don't seem to need at the moment. Because of that, we may miss something which is very important - but that the habits of mind we have don't let us notice. In our baptismal covenant, we are charged to seek out the face of Christ in all persons. The fact remains, we see many people and they amount to little more than blank faces to us in the end. Yet, each one has the capacity to speak to us of Christ. Is this what John the Baptizer understood when he "saw Jesus walking by and said to his disciples, 'There is the Lamb of God'"???

Maybe. Maybe it's a reminder that we need to have different eyes - and to train our habits of mind to have different filters so that we can see "The Lamb of God" wherever he might appear to us - in the kind gesture given to someone else, in the destitute person we notice on the street corner, in the young girl pushing a stroller with a weeks old infant. Wherever he may be  . . .

And he became incarnate of the Virgin . . .

Saint Irenaeus spoke about the importance of the incarnation (or the enfleshment) of God in Jesus of Nazareth as an absolutely essential part of our coming to know God, to experience the love of God, and to realize the promises of God. It all makes sense when we begin from the assumption that we need to experience God in human terms -- otherwise God remains a far off reality, unrelated to our human experience. It isn't enough that Jesus of Nazareth became human, either, because that was over 2000 years ago -- how am I able to experience a God who is supposed to be present to me through a human that lived long before I was born? The proper theological answer is that I experience God I'm the Risen Lord. True enough. But then, how do I experience the Risen Lord? The answer to that is what makes this incarnation stuff important. We experience the Risen Lord in one another -- as each of us becomes likened to Christ, we can speak Christ into the world and we can experience that Christ in one another. So Christmas isn't so much about the baby in the manger - it is about my ability to know and experience God in the flesh - the flesh and blood of my neighbor in the world - in all of their imperfection. Knowing and experience God then demands that I experience more and more of the people who live in the world. With each added person, I get a better glimpse of the God who has loved us so.