The Cost of Discipleship: A Sermon for Proper 18
Our lessons today are about the cost of discipleship, which includes making sacrificial choices about establishing priorities in our lives. In our first lesson, Moses is addressing the Israelites as they are preparing to enter the long-awaited Promised Land after the forty-year journey in the wilderness. Moses urges his disciples to “choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him.” Moses reminds us that following God involves our own choice. And our faithful response will almost always require a sacrifice.
Our Psalm poetically presents the choices that God’s people have to make – the choice between a life of righteousness and wickedness. In the first Psalm of the psalter, right out of the gate, the message for God’s people is about the choices we will be presented with in our lives. The cost of discipleship involves making the right choice, even when it is difficult.
But it is our two lessons from the New Testament that give us an idea of what these difficult choices might actually look like in our day-to-day lives. Jesus doesn’t mince his words when he says, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” And what might carrying the cross look like for Jesus’ followers? In one of his least beloved statements in all of the Gospels, Jesus 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.” Back then, and still today in some parts of the world, choosing Jesus had profound financial, familial, and social implications.
But I think that it is Paul’s letter to Philemon that might best demonstrate what sort of difficult choices we are faced with as followers of Jesus. Writing from prison, Paul is sending Philemon’s escaped slave, Onesimus, back to him. But Paul is urging Philemon to take Onesimus back as a free person of equal status. The grounds upon which Paul is making this request aren’t social or political; they are theological. Paul refers to Onesimus as “a beloved brother-- especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.” As Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians, in Christ “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” In other words, in Christ, all of the world’s labels and distinctions take a back seat to one’s baptismal identity.
This letter tells us that Paul has some sort of authority over Philemon, but Paul says that he wants to place the decision of how to treat Onesimus in Philemon’s hands. Paul doesn’t want Philemon to feel forced into freeing Onesimus. Paul wants Philemon to choose based on his own conscious, informed by his own faith in Jesus Christ. But while Paul isn’t directly forcing Philemon to free Onesimus, he is certainly making a strong case when he says, “So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it. I say nothing about your owing me even your own self.”
If Philemon is astute in his faith, he should notice the rhetoric Paul is using. In other words, what Paul is saying to Philemon is what Jesus says on behalf of us to his Father in heaven– “If your people have wronged you in any way (and we have), or owe you anything (we do), charge it to my account. I will repay it.” And that is exactly what Jesus did for us on the cross. He took our debt and made it good...not because of who we are but because of who he is. So Paul is appealing to Philemon on these grounds. And now, Philemon has a tough choice to make. Paul has laid it out for him, and has appealed to their personal relationship which is grounded in their faith in Jesus Christ. If Christ was willing to take humanity’s sin upon him, and if Paul was willing to make good on Philemon’s debt to him, can Philemon do the same for Onesimus?
But Philemon’s story is our story as well. As followers of Jesus, we have difficult choices to make. Of course, when we hear Philemon’s story with our modern ears, there is no question in our minds as to what the right thing to do is in terms of slavery vs. freedom. I don’t think anybody here would find the choice difficult in terms of is it right or wrong to own another human being. But, the question becomes more difficult when we frame it in terms of finances. In the United States, during the era of chattel slavery, many slave owners came to believe that slavery was indeed an immoral institution. But they couldn’t bring themselves to act on it, and free their slaves, because it would result in financial ruin for them. The way the agricultural economy worked in the South, nobody would be able to compete and make a living if they all of the sudden had to pay their labor. The only way out would be to sell the family farm and start a new career and way of life.
Today, the choices we are faced with might be more subtle, but we still have choices to make. And these choices can affect our lives, finances, and relationships in such a way that they indeed become our cross to bear.
From the beginning of time – as early as the Garden of Eden - God’s people have had choices to make. That is our God-given free will. And oftentimes, the righteous choice will involve sacrifice. Jesus himself had such a choice to make, and he chose to suffer and die on the cross so that we might have life. As followers of Christ, the legacy that we leave will be based on the choices we make. As Moses said to the Israelites in the wilderness, let us choose life so that we and our descendants may live.