Sermons from St Faith's
The Cost of Discipleship
Rev Sue Lucas, Sunday,
September 13th, 2015
There are times, no doubt, when our faith is a
comfort to us; but today’s readings, and
particularly our Gospel, is a reminder that our
faith is challenging and uncomforting. The
cost of discipleship is set out in stark terms:
‘if any want to become my followers, let them deny
themselves, take up their cross and follow me.
For those who want to save their life will
lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake
and for the sake of the Gospel will save it.’
These stark words are, in fact, our baptismal
promise – for we are baptised into the death of the
Lord in order that we might share in his
resurrection.
We perhaps don’t want to see it – and we’re not
alone, of course, because, in the first part of the
Gospel, Peter doesn’t either – seeing Jesus’s
Messiah-ship in triumphalist terms – hence Jesus
tells him to shut up. Peter doesn’t get it for
now – nor at any point really until after the Easter
events when we see a very changed figure in the Book
of Acts – and in the tradition, after becoming the
first Bishop of Rome, Peter eventually shared Jesus’
fate.
Most of us, God willing, won’t come to share in the
death of our Lord in quite such literal ways –
though it is sobering to remember that there are
still Christians in the world who do.
But we do need to learn to die. That is what
our baptism means. That is what it means to be
the church.
What are we called to die to? Well, perhaps we
are called to die to the fantasy of our own
righteousness and rightness; and it is a fantasy –
for all of us; for we live in a fallen world, and
none of us is perfect, not one; and however well
intentioned our actions may be, as our Epistle says,
we all too easily bless the Lord and Father, and
curse those who are made in the image of God.
Even those we perceive to have wronged us are made
in the image of God. And we can too easily
assume that the situation is clear; we can too
easily assume what others think without taking the
time to hear them – and it can be hard to hear,
against the white heat of anger and the white noise
of a cynical media.
And if we are called to take up our Cross, we are
called to be Christ like – not a triumphalist
Messiah, but a suffering servant, who from his Cross
prayed for his persecutors. The Cross we are
called to bear is, perhaps, the most agonising form
of cognitive dissonance – to recognise that those
who profoundly disagree with us are not necessarily
wicked or stupid, and cannot be dismissed or
ignored. Not that we necessarily end up
agreeing – perhaps agreement is overrated – but it
is very easy to disagree badly. Much harder to die
to our own righteousness and to disagree well.
Can we do it? Dare we do it? It is a
huge challenge; but it is also our calling; and we
have the pattern of Christ and the gift of the Holy
Spirit – which in the end, transformed even someone
as committed to having the last word as Peter.
What profit us if we gain the world, but lose our
lives? What profit us to hold onto our most
treasured fantasies of ourselves, whilst being blind
to the need to reimagine things?
Yet, if we can set our mind on divine things, not on
human things – the Cross becomes the place of hope
and life.
Tomorrow, appropriately, is Holy Cross Day –
sometimes called the Triumph of the Cross; the
challenge of our faith is the cost of the cross; but
the Gospel of Resurrection is the triumph of the
Cross; for, in being willing to let go of our
dearest fantasies, new, unlooked for possibilities
emerge; God comes to meet us in the mess and
difficulty of our own lives, and makes of that
unpromising material the joy and hope of the
resurrection. Amen.
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