I once tried to build a chicken coop.
I studied up on it, drew up some plans and made a list of building supplies.
Finally I started building. I never did figure out what went wrong.
Ultimately I think I just really had no idea what I was doing, and I didn’t even know enough to know I didn’t know.
It leaned and sagged and eventually just puttered out with me scratching my head with lots of band aids on my fingers.
It sat there for a long time like a dead pile of bones, a monument of my folly, until I finally admitted defeat, took it apart and gave what was left away.
Discipleship.
Will we be able to follow through, or will it be a bone pile of futility?
Today we hear Jesus giving some very hard and challenging teachings about discipleship, about following Jesus. It almost sounds like he is trying to talk people out of being his followers, because it is too hard and too costly.
He isn’t some slick salesman trying to make it look easy and rewarding.
Following Jesus will challenge and change all our loyalties and relationships, our priorities will change, including the priorities of family and self preservation.
Are we willing to go all the way until it is finished?
Are we willing to count and pay the cost?
Are we starting something we can’t finish?
Jesus tells these little stories that make us ask hard questions.
Will we carry the cross and sacrifice all our loyalties and priorities?
Is God’s grace something that is cheap and easy or is it costly?
God’s grace will set us free but it means that we have to live with that freedom, not with all the big and little slaveries that try to own and define us. And that is why God’s grace is costly.
I used to make lists of priorities, of virtues to cultivate, of things to accomplish and I’d try to figure where God should fit on that list.
It didn’t work. Eventually I realized God couldn’t fit on any list, not even as the top priorities. God was rather the paper that all the priorities and aspirations were written on, God changed and held all my loyalties.
The costly demands of discipleship: insisting on everything. How does this reveal God? How is God experienced? As arrogant and demanding perhaps? But looking at the scripture again, we see a God who is so alluring that people drop everything just to follow and be near.
Jesus Christ is the alluring presence of God, we are drawn like a moth to a flame until we are consumed, set alight.
The warnings regarding discipleship are just that, warnings. Do we really want to draw near to the God who allures and calls us to a freedom that changes everything? Do we really want to know what it means to be free? Jesus is the flame inviting us to find out.
Today is Rally Day, we have fun, we celebrate, we organize, but let’s remember that what we are rallying around is this alluring God who makes us drop everything to walk the way of discipleship.
That is something worthy of celebrating; it is the thing worthy of celebration really, worthy of getting organized.
Grace Church is changing and growing. We just finished a significant restoration and building project. Now it is time to look at how we build and grow community.
Let’s build a Church of disciples.