THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP
20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Jer. 38:4-6, 8-10; Heb. 12:1-4;
Lk 12: 49-53.
AIM: To challenge the hearers to a
fresh decision of Jesus Christ.
Is it easy to follow Jesus Christ –
or difficult? Sometimes Jesus makes discipleship sound easy. Here is a well-known
example: “Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest … For my yoke is easy, and my burden light” (Mt. 11:28, 30).
In other passages, however, Jesus
makes discipleship sound very difficult. Today’s gospel reading is a case in
point. Jesus says there that he came “to light a fire on earth” – not for peace
but for division. Jesus spoke those words out of his own lived experience: “I
have a baptism to receive. What anguish I feel till it is over!”
Those words refer not to Jesus’
baptism in water in the Jordan River, but to his coming baptism in blood on Calvary. That was what caused Jesus “anguish.” Those
words from today’s gospel give us a rare and precious glimpse into Jesus’ inner
life.
From his birth at Bethlehem
to his death on Calvary, Jesus was the
faithful disciple of his heavenly Father. He summons us to be his
faithful disciples. But he also warns us that obeying his summons will mean
“division” from some of those nearest and dearest to us. Such divisions are
unavoidable, because Jesus demands a decision: for him, or against him. Where
decisions are demanded, people will decide differently. The resulting divisions
can be painful – and costly.
Our first reading told about the cost
of discipleship for the prophet Jeremiah. God commanded Jeremiah to warn his
people of disaster if they did not repent and place their national life on the
firm foundation of obedience to God’s law. The people responded not with
repentance but by frantically shoring up their military defenses against
foreign enemies. Jeremiah warned that a purely military response to danger was
futile.
That message was, understandably,
unwelcome to the military and political leaders of the nation. Lacking the
courage to kill Jeremiah, they tried to silence him by putting him into one of
the underground cisterns used in Jerusalem
to store rainwater. This incident is a good example of the divisions Jesus
speaks about in the gospel between those who, like Jeremiah, are willing to
follow God’s call regardless of the cost, and those who reject God’s call
because the cost seems too high.
Is the cost of discipleship today too high?
For many it is. In today’s dangerous world there are many voices warning us
Americans of the need for a strong military defense. We hear less about the
need to repair our moral defenses. In
a world filled with terrorism, military defenses are as important for a nation
as an efficient police force is for a city. All the military might in the world
will not save our country, however, or any country, if the moral fabric of our
national life is rotten. We do not need to look far for signs of this moral
decay. Here are just a few examples:
● Schools
that are awash in a sea of drugs, physical and general lawlessness; where
parents who want the best for their children are willing to have them driven
many miles to attend better schools; and where many who would like to be
teachers instead of wardens are quitting in disgust.
● Lying,
cheating, and taking unfair advantage of others at every level: in business,
government, in labor unions, and in the so-called learned professions. A
retired lawyer said to me recently: “When I was admitted to the bar, you could
take another lawyer’s word for it. Now you had better get it in writing.”
● The
indiscriminate and legal killing of unborn children in our country, because
their birth might be an inconvenience. There are now over a million abortions a year in our country. That is one
tiny human life snuffed out every twenty seconds of every hour, day and night,
day in and day out. Some pro-life activists are upset that Pope Francis seldom
speaks about abortion. Here is what Cardinal Sean O’Malley, one of eight
cardinals from all over the world chosen by Pope Francis to be his advisers,
recently said about this: “I think he speaks of love and mercy to give people
the context for the Church’s teaching on abortion. We oppose abortion, not
because we are mean or old fashioned, but because we love people. And that is
what we must show the world.”
Those
examples are just the tip of the iceberg – only a small part of the evidence of
moral sickness in our society. There are, thank God, also many beautiful signs
of moral health, especially in the idealism and willingness to sacrifice of
many of our young people. I’ll give you some examples in a minute. But all this
good evidence cannot cancel out the bad. A moment’s reflection discloses part,
at least of the reason for this moral sickness: placing private gain ahead of
public good; seeking happiness through getting rather than through giving.
Calling
attention to such things is as unpopular today as it was in Jeremiah’s time.
Critics today are called unpatriotic, or silenced with the simplistic slogan: “America – love
it or leave it.” Anyone who has experienced that kind of hostility knows what
Jesus means when he says in today’s gospel: “Do you think I have come to
establish peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. The price of
following Jesus Christ is high. How
could it be otherwise, when the One we follow found that the price of his
discipleship was death?
Perhaps
there is someone here who thinks that the price is too high; that Jesus Christ
makes unreasonable demands; that is better to compromise, to bend with the winds
of public opinion, and not to try to swim against the stream. Such thoughts are
understandable. But they are wrong.
Though
the price of following Jesus Christ is high, it is price which an uncounted
multitude of God’s faithful daughters and sons have already paid, and which
many more are paying right now. They did not find the price too high. On the
contrary they were happy to pay it.
A few years ago, I received into the
Catholic Church a 29-year-old graduate of Yale and former Lutheran seminarian
who made his decision for the fullness of Catholic faith despite the embittered
opposition of his family. And in that same week two young men whose religious
vocations I have been nourishing gave their lives to Jesus Christ; one through
ordination as a transitional deacon, the other through taking life vows as a
Jesuit. And at the same time a young woman from Ohio, who spent nine months
working in an inner-city school as a Vincentian volunteer, was clothed as a
novice with the Franciscan Sisters of the Martyr St. George. She is now fully
professed and serving in Cuba.
In
making their decisions for Jesus Christ those four young people, all under 30
when they made their decisions, joined the “cloud of witnesses” we heard about
in our second reading. They are portrayed there as spectators in a stadium
cheering on us who are now running the same race which they ran in their day.
Unanimously they proclaim that the race is worth
running, and price of discipleship is worth paying.
Listen
again to those words, in a modern translation. They thrilled me with I first
discovered them at age 13 or 14. They thrill me still. “Therefore, since we are
surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every
weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the
race that is set before us; looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,
who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame,
and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” [Heb. 12:1f]
