5^th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 8)

“What Discipleship Is Not”

1 July 2007

This very difficult gospel lesson this morning teaches us something of what it means to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus Christ. We see three different men, confronted with the challenge of discipleship, and each of them fails that challenge. Luke tells us their stories, it seems, as if to say, “Discipleship is not like this…” But these negative examples are important, for they show us very starkly what it means to follow Jesus. Let’s look at these three would-be disciples one at a time.

“As they were going along the road, someone said to Jesus, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’” Perhaps the first thing to notice here is that this would-be disciple approaches Jesus with an offer. He’s willing to follow. This is one of only two times in the gospels where somebody comes up to Jesus on their own initiative and offers to follow him; most of the time, Jesus makes the first move. “Follow me,” he says to Simon and Andrew by the Sea of Galilee. Now if Jesus were like us, he’d probably have the disciple membership application right there, ready to have this prospect sign on the dotted line! But what does he do instead? He talks about how difficult it is to be a disciple!

I suspect that Jesus is telling us here that Christian discipleship isn’t something that we decide to do, but something to which we are called. It happens at the initiative of Jesus Christ, not ourselves. Remember the catechism? “I believe that I cannot by own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel.”

Now this is important. If I come to Christ at my own initiative, making my own offer to follow, then I’m the one in control. If I decide later that this discipleship stuff is too difficult for me, or not fulfilling, then I am reserving the option to back out, to stop following Christ. But if Christ is the initiator, then he is the one in control! If I understand up front that I have been called to follow, then when the following gets difficult and the road weary I cannot be so quick to turn back. I understand that discipleship means not just that I am committed to Christ, but that Christ is committed to me.

And so this man who offers voluntarily to follow Jesus gets a harsh reply. In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s words, Jesus tells him “he doesn’t know what he’s doing.” Following Christ is not something that we decide would be a nice addition to our life, rather like joining a health club or a taking a course in Chinese cooking. We don’t just march in and sign up! Rather we are called by the one who has nowhere to lay his head, called to follow him to Jerusalem, where a cross is waiting.

There is a second man in the story. This one is called by Jesus. “Follow me,” Jesus said. “But he said, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ This man hears the call to discipleship, but he feels the tug of other obligations. We can understand those as the obligation of family, or the obligation of fulfilling the law; but the point here is that when you follow Christ, that supersedes all other obligations or responsibilities. Our commitment to Christ isn’t one of a number of other commitments in life; no, it is the commitment in life. Nothing is more important. Nothing. Christ demands all.

Clarence Jordan was the founder of the Koinonia Farm near Americus, Georgia. Way back in the 1950’s, when the South was still legally segregated, Koinonia Farm was set up by Jordan, who was white, to be an interracial community. By its very nature it was controversial, and from time to time it got into trouble with the law. Clarence Jordan approached his brother Robert, who was a successful lawyer, and asked him to defend Koinonia Farm. “Clarence,” he replied, “I can’t do that. You know my political position. Why, if I represented you, I might lose my job, my house, everything I’ve got.” “We might lose everything, too, Bob,” Clarence replied. “Well, it’s different for you.” “Why is it different? I remember, it seems to me, that you and I joined the church the same Sunday, as boys. I expect when we came forward the preacher asked me about the same question he did you. He asked me, ‘Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ What did you say?” “I follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point.” “Could that point by any chance be—the cross?” “That’s right. I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross. I’m not getting myself crucified.” “Then I don’t believe you’re a disciple. You’re an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his. I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them you’re an admirer, not a disciple.” “Well now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn’t have a church, would we?” “The question,” Clarence said, “is, Do you have a church?”

Do we have a church? Are we disciples, or are we admirers? Are we committed to following Christ, or are we only willing to do so when it is convenient, when other things don’t get in the way?

There is a third man who comes to Jesus in this story. “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” In his reflection on this man, Bonhoeffer focuses on three words that the man says: “Let me first . . .” He is ready to follow, ready to be a disciple, but something comes first—and for this man, as for most of us, I’m afraid, what comes first is me. Me. He has his own priorities, his own desires and wants, and they come first. And the trouble with that is that when that me comes first, usually that’s about as far as we get. Because there’s always me! If that me comes first today, it will come first tomorrow and the next day and the next.

To follow Jesus Christ is to place that me under his control and direction. It is to put aside my own wants and desires, and to follow him on the road to Jerusalem, the road to the cross.

There is a wonderful prayer written by John Wesley which expresses this better than most anything I know. It goes like this: “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 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. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine.”

“To yield all things to his pleasure.” You know, the tendency that we have when we read a passage like this is to soft pedal it somehow, to say that Jesus doesn’t really mean it, to convince ourselves that he is saying these outrageous things in order to get our attention. Maybe he is. But I suspect that unless this passage leaves us feeling like there is some substantial growth still needed in our discipleship, then we haven’t taken it seriously enough.

Still he calls us, gently and insistently. He spreads a table before us, and invites us to follow. He bids us to leave that me with him. It’s too heavy for this journey, he says. But come along, he says, come eat and drink and be refreshed, and then follow thou me.