The Costly Process

We heard last week from mission co-workers John and Gwen Haspels, about the costly process to work among the Suri people in Ethiopia. John and Gwen give of their lives, witnessing to the active, living God at work in a people half a world away.  We have talked recently about our faithful life here at First Presbyterian regarding stewardship, and our commitment as followers of Christ. We come back to the cost of discipleship as the Gospel text leads us, in order realize God’s mission for us as the Body of Christ in Wooster, Ohio and in the world.  I’ve spent a lot of time wondering if a church like ours can be relevant for Youth and Young Adults when there are so many competing forces for their time and energy.   In today’s culture, the cost of discipleship is great and the process of discipleship is not easy.  Faithful discipleship is definitely not for the faint of heart.  This passage causes us to evaluate living a life as a follower of Jesus Christ.
Our passage lies within the travel narrative in the Gospel of Luke. By this time the crowds following Jesus have grown exponentially. As Chapter 14 continues the stakes get higher for how one is to follow Jesus.  You can imagine the crowds gathered around him, pushing to see him, jostling for position close to the teacher, and the man, who is worth following. When turns around and says, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself cannot be my disciple.” You can picture the enthusiastic hoard of followers stopped in their tracks a gas with what Jesus has just said.  “You want us to do what?”
If these words of Luke are too harsh for you this morning, think about the spirit of these words here in Matthew, “whoever loves father or mother more than me…and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10: 37), or from  Eugene Peterson’s, The Message, "Anyone who comes to me but refuses to let go of father, mother, spouse, children, brothers, sisters—yes, even one's own self!—can't be my disciple.” Of course, Matthew and the Message’s paraphrase offer a softer challenge, but not our text in Luke-it cuts right to the chase. Stop! Wait! IF you are going to follow me, it is going to take some sacrifice!!
Jesus is not telling the crowds to hate their parents and abandon their children.  This word has a different connotation in ancient times. Jesus is sharply confronting them with the priority of their commitments and implicitly pointing them to rearrange what they currently know in order to embrace the new surrogate family they join as they become disciples.  Jesus strongly urges the crowd to think how their allegiance to Him might take precedent over family.  When loyalties compete, they need to be sorted out according to some priority. 
What emerges in this text for the followers is also the cross.  In the first century, they didn’t know where their followership would lead them. Did they  know as Jesus did, that discipleship would lead them to Jerusalem, to the day where he would be betrayed and would carry the cross through the streets. The second is estimate of cost, the only place in the New Testament where the word for “cost” is mentioned.  It takes something, a costly measure to follow and Jesus wants to make sure everyone knows what that is.   So it is with the builder or the king, it is important to know the cost!  This passage requires that we both count the cost of discipleship (to ensure that they can “afford” to follow Jesus) and remember that the cost could include everything, your allegiance to family and possessions.”
Because we belong to God individually and corporately, it calls us as disciples to think about the way we belong to others.  The passage in Luke confronts us with hard choices and jars any notion that being a Christian leads to social advancement or personal gain (it often doesn’t). One author says, DISCIPLESHIP moves us beyond comfortable kinship ties to forge new relationships among those commonly committed to Christ, who become to us a new family.  As we consider which options we might choose when given competing interests, will it be Sunday School or Sunday Soccer? Bible study or baseball?  Uncomfortable choices for those of us who are comfortable in our faith.
Discipleship stands at the center of the Christian life. Luke places discipleship at the heart of the church’s life together.  Discipleship is more than believer-ship.  More than studying about Jesus, the marks of discipleship are for the teachable, for the followers (maybe better said as “Students”) who would continue to learn and serve in the Kingdom of God, with Jesus is the teacher. More than getting our beliefs right or correct, we are invited to be active in our growing up in Christ.
    Part of what intrigues me about youth and young adults is that we all have our differing viewpoints about what discipleship looks like (Is it just coming to church on Sundays? Is that enough? How open we are to talking about our faith journeys?  How resistant we are to spreading the good news?)   How does God form us as disciples in the community of faith as church? 
I found something interesting that might shed some light on our discussion of discipleship for a community of faith.  Since 2002, the National Study of Youth and Religion, has been conducting ongoing research (a massive study through interview and phone calls with nearly 3,300 (thirty-three hundred) teens across all faith perspectives), and they have reported that an “alternative faith” is emerging among American teens.  Investigators (Smith and Denton) are calling this faith, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, MTD for short that does not stand alone so it affiliates with the unsuspecting religions of today.
    Here is why this claim of MTD is important àinvestigators indicate that Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is actively displacing historic faith traditions throughout the United States.  If teens were to write out a creed for this religious outlook it would follow these five points (notice where Jesus is in this):

*a god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.
*God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and most world religions.
*The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself.
*God is not involved in my life except when I need God to solve a problem.
*Good people go to heaven when they die.

This MTD creed is converting people to this alternative religious vision. MTD is all about divinely underwritten personal happiness and interpersonal niceness. This is a comment, NOT about American Teens, as much as it is about American Congregations. This MTC religious vision is about a cross-free, Jesus-free faith.  This stands in sharp contrast to the faith that Jesus presented his followers in our passage, where “whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Lk. 14: 27).

In a recent edition of The Christian Century, Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean, professor from Princeton Theological Seminary writes an article about “Faith, Nice and Easy: The Almost Christian Formation of Teens.” The cover page says, “Our God is too nice!” Kenda Dean says that American teens have learned a “bland, boring version of Christianity in their churches. Those of us who are adults in the church have not invested in our children’s spiritual accounts; we teach children baseball but we expose them to faith. She writes:
We provide coaching and opportunities for youth to develop and improve their pitches and their SAT scores but we blithely assume that religious identity will happen by osmosis and will emerge “when youth are ready” (a confidence we generally lack when it comes to say, algebra.)

Here’s the result?  Dr. Dean sees teens who lack ‘soul strength’ because the adults around them lack it too! OUCH! That might make us stop in our tracks too.  Harsh words, not unlike the ones from our text today? The answer that Jesus offers for a life of discipleship is not an easy one, not a cheap one, but a substantial one.
The question is not “what do we do about the youth and young adults today?”  But is there is something that will combat this gradual, creeping watered down, no risk, no stress Moralistic Therapeutic Deism?
What is it? It is in a more faithful church!  Kenda Creasy Dean goes on to write that the Exemplary Youth Ministry Study, a Lilly foundation study indicates:

*Do we know ourselves as a church where we live as if it matters that we “belong to the One who made us, the One who loves us too much to lose us.”? (Dean, p23.)
*Does the church portray God as living and present and active?
*Does the church emphasizes spiritual growth, discipleship and vocation while also promoting outreach and mission?
*Does the church view its young disciples not as moralistic do-gooders but as Christ’s representatives in the world?
*pastors and families and adult leaders model “the transforming presence of God in life and ministry.”
   
Dr. Dean calls traditional Christianity a consequential faith. Consequential faith knows that spiritual formation is not an accident. Consequential faith has risks. The love of Christ is love that is worth living for and yes, even dying for. Consequential faith calls people of all ages to become Christ’s disciples, carrying their cross and following him.  Historic Christian faith keeps Jesus and his vision of the kingdom of God at it center.
Eugene Peterson writes in his latest book Practice Resurrection that:

‘the most significant growing up that any person does is to grow as a Christian. Biological and social, mental and emotional growing is all ultimately absorbed into growing up in Christ. The human task is to become mature, not only in our bodies and emotions and minds within ourselves, but also in our relationship with God and other persons.

Growing up as followers of Christ in a culture that is significantly more secular is not easy.  When we commit to follow Jesus, our worldview changes. When we commit to follow Jesus it is like we put on a new pair of glasses. We start to see others and the world in a new way. When we follow Jesus, it won’t be easy or neat. It will be costly and challenging. We will not get it right the first time, and we will need to explore and encounter Jesus to try out this discipleship. 
In the end, as we grow up and as we deepen our understanding of discipleship, we see the Gospel paradox, “those who lose their lives for the gospel have those lives returned to them in abundance, so also those who “hate” their families in order to love Jesus end up loving their families in a deeper, more sacrificial sense. The path to that deeper love leads through a cross. That path follows one through a Christian community where God is living, present and active in people’s lives.  Where we come alongside our youth and young adults and develop a positive and hopeful spirit to engage the life of Christ in all of our hearts. Maybe that will be in “a church where caring comes first.”               
Thanks be to God.