WHAT DOES IT COST TO BE A CHRISTIAN?

Seplember 24,1989

8:30 and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
John M. Buchanan

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Luke 14:25~-33

“For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and
count the cost..." ~Luke 14:28 (RSV)

There is something almost offensive about the question. There is
something offensive about the very insinuation that there is a price to
pay. We have ample experience with religion's venerable tradition of
turning God's grace into a tidy profit, from the well organized sale of
indulgences in the Middle Ages, to prayer hankies and vials of water from
the River Jordan. In our time we have witnessed the harnessing of the
enormous power of television and telemarketing to the old penchant with the
resuit that Jesus Christ is packaged and marketed, someone quipped, like so
much soap powder.

What dees it cost to be a Christian? There is something offensive
about the question! And yet, even as we are reacting negatively to it,
defensively, maybe even squirming a bit, I think we know that it is also an
important question because we know that the cost of being a Christian for
some people has been very, very steep indeed.

Tt came up, in fact, one time in the middle of Jesus! ministry. It
was probably the high point in terms of numbers. My mental picture of a
day in the life of Jesus and his disciples is of a small group of people,
walking from village to village, dealing with small gatherings wherever
they went: teaching, healing, discussing. But, in the middle of the story
he was attracting a lot of attention apparently. “Great multitudes
accompanied him,” Luke tells us. They were there when he taught. They
straggled behind as he traveled. They were there at meal time and night
time. They were following because of the freshness and winsomeness of his
teaching, and perhaps because they found hope in his description of God's
coming Kingdom and perhaps they followed because they were poor and had
nothing better to do, and perhaps — at least one New Testament scholar
proposes —- they followed because they sensed a disaster about to happen and
they didn't want to miss the excitement. They knew there was a deepening
conflict between Jesus and their religious leaders and that it was only a
matter of time until the Roman authorities got involved. And that was
always dramatic, and interesting.

And so there they were, for whalever reason, following him around,
hundreds of them, maybe even several thousand. And one time he turned
around and said to them wilh no Warning, "(Cf anyone comes to me and dees
not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and
sislers, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple... whoever
of you dees not renounce all that he has cannot’ be my disciple.”

And then he told two smal] parables about a builder who had ual
accurately calculated the cost of the building and was nol able to colnplete
it. And a king who underestimates his opponent and has to settle for peace
on his enemy's terms.

Luke's presentation of the story of Jesus is the gentlest, the most
human. These are unusually harsh stories and the teaching about hating
one's family and renouncing everything seem impossibly difficult. Do you
suppose he meant it, that following him means denying what we generally
regard as one of our better characteristics - love for family? Did he
really expect them - us — to hate our parents, spouses, children, in order
to be a Chrislian? Is that the cost?

We know intuitively that it could not be that. We have experience
with cult-type religion that undercuts and destroys basic human
relationships and we have ample evidence that when religion does that it
becomes demonic.

The simple fact is that he didn't hate his parents. He apparently
worked in his father's shop, supported his mother and brothers and sisters.
His mother continued to be a part of the story, accompanying him to
weddings, following him all the way to Jerusalem. She is still there when
he is arrested and as he dies on the cross, she is still there; and one of
the last things he is able to say has to do with her care. So of course
this one who taught the redemptive power of love — love of brother and
sister, love for the poor, love for the enemy - did not mean that his
followers must hate parents, children and spouses.

Then, why did he put it that way? The linguistic scholars who know
about these things help us to understand that the Aramaic language Jesus
spoke was extraordinarily vivid, and that it is common in Semitic language
to make a strong point by dramatic contrast or hyperbole. So, of course he
did not mean that you have to hate your parents. But he did mean that
following him was demanding and costly; that it can mean serious self-
sacrifice and it does mean a serious reordering of priorities. What he
meant to tell them, and us, was that there is a lot at stake here: the
meaning and significance of our lives; that the nature of this enterprise
is salvation, wholeness, self-realization, and not just a very peripheral
pursuit of peace of mind, or, in their terms, a pleasant two week sojourn
in the countryside waiting for the disaster to happen. He used the
strongest language possible because the issue is human life.

There is important truth here. There is truth here about the limits
of human love. The psychologists knaw that if the total meaning and
significance of your life is tied up in your children, for instance, or
your spouse, or lover or parents ~ if you have no identity apart from them,
if you live through them - you are in trouble. Anne Wilson Schaeff calls

9/24/89

{hal co-dependeney aud addictive behavior. Parental love Uhal knows no
limits becomes smulhering, oppressive and deadly. Parents whe live through
their children - whose emotional rewards are experienced Lhrouwgh the
achievements of their children - are, sadly, nol wholly alive themselves
and are certainly uot Fovine these children in a way that works for the
Child's welfare and health. Part of Toving as an adult is to know the
Jimits of love. And there is truth here about life. Life begins, the
currently popular adage proposes “when the last child goes off toa college,
Lhe mortgage is paid and the dog dies.” Life begins. the slick magazines
promise, when you can afford Gucei, BMW, to ski St. Moritz and drink
Dewars. Bult what Jesus said is that life begins when you find sometiniug ta
Jive for other than yourself: that full human life is given when a great
cause calls out of you total loyalty, faithfulness and commitment. It is
the singular Christian proposal that in giving life to Jesus Christ, true
life is discovered. It is there throughout the stery... It is the
Christian counter proposal to the absolute commitment to consumerism which
is characteristic of our time. True life is a vift you are given when you
discover something important enough to give your life to it. That is to
say the answer to the question, “What does it cost to be a Christian?" is
really simply everything.

In the meantime the church continues to wring its hands over the fact
that numbers are down: that we aren't mainstream or mainline anymore: that
we are not keeping pace with competing groups or with the secularism of
our culture. When the Bears kick-off at noon, our attendance is down.

Martin Marty, in a whimsical editorial about church growth statisties
nates that the Mormons, who are growing, are willing to make 1,500 house
calls to produce one “friendly opening" and that the Episcopalians who are
declining, haven't made 1,500 house calls since the death of Thomas Cranmer
in the 16th century.

And so our inclination is to keep away from these "hard sayings" of
Jesus', this unusual harshness: to talk about the benefits of religion,
not the costs.

The Wall Street Journal published a delightful article by a Kansas
City advertising executive who, with tongue in cheek, has come up with a
“marketing plan for revitalizing America's major religious faiths."

"My strategy is to consolidate the various name brands, even the
strong flagship brands like Southern Baptist into one identifiable, Exxon-
like entity. The target audience here is Mom, Dad, Butch and Sis - solid
suburban Americans who want a little Ged in their life and somewhere to £0
before brunch. After test-marketing various possibilities, I have decided
upon the name Middle American Christian Church, or MacChurch, for ad
purposes. TI will not be sure of MacChurch's theology until focus eroups
are run, but I plan on following the promotional path blazed so
successfully by Holiday Inn. In other words, this will be your ‘no
surprises’ church. When Dad brings the family here, he can be sure that
they will not be asked to speak in tongues, handle snakes, or give money to
the Sandanistas."

Among the ad man's proposals are a new brand of Judaism for baby
boowers and a “market segmentation" approach for Roman Catholicism. "RC
Lighl for post-Vatican II liberals, RC Classic for traditionalists and RC
Free for Lhose more interested in liberation theojogy than Papal Bulls."

“Protestantism,” he says, "presents marketers with special problems:
the jidividual churches will have to understand thal there is just so much
theological shelf space, Chat product differentiation is net viable for gra--
as-you-please Protestantism. Thus, the Middle American Christian Church or
MacChurch.” [see American Mainline Religion, Roof and McKinney, p. 2294

Now, no one is quite that bold about it, but there is among us the
sense Chal if we were a little more market conscious, if we stopped asking
people to give and started piving them what they want, we might be more
successful. And there are plenty of success models to emulate.

Deeper still there is a century's old ambivalence within
Presbyterianism about anything resembling a hard-sell
approach to faith. Our commitments have been to a theology of grace,
networks. ;

The early Calvinists believed that God had already decided who to
save and so all the church had to do was be ready to welcome the redeemed.
John Caivin, himself, someone said, “probably believed that most of those
who would be converted had been by his time. So he designated ‘evanpelist'
as a temporary office." ;

The settling of the new world brought the issue to the surface. The
Calvinist Puritans confronted a whole new continent and indigenous people
who had never heard about Christianity and began to think about their
responsibility to share the good news of Jesus Christ with them. But
Presbyterians have always maintained a degree of discomfort with the hard-
sell school of evangelism. In fact, sitting in the chancel last week when
Dr. Boyle announced that next Sunday was “Evangelism Sunday," I thought I
detected a corporate shudder and I imagined you asking, “I wonder
what they will do." I grew up in a Presbyterian Sunday School and never
once saw a new face. The Baptist Vacation Bible School, on the other hand,
was flat-out recruitmental with plenty of rewards and incentives for the
sales force, my chums, and for potential customers, me.

Our rich history has always kept in tension ardor and order: heart
and mind: evangelism and education. We are who we are as Presbyterians
precisely because our relationship with non-believers begins with respect
for their integrity, not pity at the inadequacy of their religion. And
there is an aesthetic aversion as well. "This business of a 'decision for
Christ' is for people who like their religion hot and heavy, chiefly those
who get overly excited about it all," wrote Robert Raines, “but not for me.
IT like my religion quiet and always in good taste.” [New Life in the
Church, p. 40]

But how sad, if for intellectual and aesthetic reasons we miss the
real issue.

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Because at the heart of Lhe matter is the issue of our lives: Will
we Live them fully? Will we experience them as completely as we can? At
the lieart of the matter is paradox that in giving our Jives away we receive
them; that in picking up a cross and following we are alive as we never
were before.

Our wholeuess as persons — our self-realigalion if you prefer the
language of psychology -— or our salvation, depends on our finding something
that claims our passion, devotion and commitment: something hig and royal
enough to demand everything we have and are.

Sometimes history and circumstance draw the issue very clearly for
us. When we visiled Dachau last summer, the point was made for all of us
eloquently. One of the remaining barracks is the "Priesterbunker," the
barracks for ministers and priests who saw in Nazism an absolute conflict
with devotion to Jesus Christ, who acted on that perception and who ended
up in a concentration camp. And there is not a clergyperson - or a
Jayperson for that matter, who does not look at that barracks and wonder,
could I have done that? Would I have done that? There are times and
circumstances when the issue is clearly drawn. That was one of them. and
so Dietrich Bonhoeffer, knowing what was ahead, could write about cheap
grace and costly grace and familiar and stirring but also distressing
lines:

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."

Clearly Alan Boesak and Bishop Tutu and those around them, biack and
white, believe that time and circumstance are drawing the issue sharply in
South Africa; and that their loyaity to Jesus Christ is forcing them to say
no to their government. I was reading some of Boesak's sermons recently toa
try to learn a little bit about his thinking because I do believe he is on
the edge of the basic theological issue, as Bonhoeffer was fifty years ago,
And I was interested to discover that his introduction to a collection of
highly political sermons contains a warning about a too eager martyrdom
or Christian masochism, “that dark longing within the hearts of so many
Christians to be flogged into the arms of Jesus — or into the fires of
hell." [The Finger of God, p. 8] That is, we are not all called to be a
Bonhoeffer or a Roesak, nor does the issue come at all of us with equal]
clarity. History and circumstance differ and require different
responses.

William Willimon once wrote to the point:

“To be martyred is one way to pay for the faith, but I submit it's
tough to pay, day by day, in a lonely, dull, ignored-by~pagans wilting that
cones fron waiting."

The cost is not always dramatic, he says.

“The woman who devoted her life to raising children in need of a
home, the man whose faithful devetion to a mentally ill wife is quiet and
Steady, the youth whose civil disobedience for conscience's sake leads to
prison or exile, these are among the countless thousands, who through the

bs

mins tana

centuries and in many contexts, have interpreted the text with their
lives." fInterpretation, Mark, p. 156-7]

One who paid with everything she lad was Eva Jane Price,
Congregational missionary wife, in China in the 1890s. Her long
correspondence with ber parents in Des Mojues bag been published recently
under the tille China Journaj). It is a fascinating, informative and moving
story. She was 33, her husband 41, when they decided to go to Oberlin
College with their two children to prepare for Missionary work. She was
very huwau and winsome: wife, mother of three - twu of whom died in
childhood. She loved God, but she also loved her own life, children and
her mother, and the farm in Iowa. It took three months to travel to China
so a letter to her mother took six months to be answered. The letters are
full of the stuff of our own humanity - the daily details of life in an
ulterly alien culture ~ which she did not understand and which called her
“foreign demi.” And, of course, the relation which caused one of her
friends to go mad and another to decide to commit suicide. In an early
jetter she writes, "Mother, what do you think I wanted the other day?
Well, I'll tell you if you'll promise never, never to tell - one of your
big aprons so I could put my head in it and cry and imagine it was in your
lap." [p. 29]

In 1900, eleven years after they left Towa and Oberlin College, the
Prices and their remaining daughter were murdered in the Boxer Rebellion.
In her last letter, as the rebellion closes in on the small missionary
compound she wrote... "Our lives are worth nothing unless the Lord keeps
them. We are all expecting to die and God is giving us grace, and we pray
that you at home may be abundantly blessed by him. We would not choose to
die now and in any horrible way, but pray without ceasing that God will
choose for us and make us glad to go the way he says." [p. 236]

Time and circumstance do not draw the issue as sharply for everyone.
Pray God that we do not have to face the issue as dramatically as Eva Price
did, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer did, as Alan Boesak is.

But pray God that our good fortune does not protect us also from the
opportunity to decide to live. Pray God that we are not so anesthetized by
comfort and security and the orderliness of our lives thal we never pet
around to living them by giving them away.

“What does it cost te be a Christian?” Everything, It means
deciding to be his man/his woman with everything you are and everything you
have. It means living for him. It means deciding to be his wan/his woman
every day. It means deciding to be alive.

I invite you to it.

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