It will cost us to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. So, we might want to take a step back to reconsider because self-mortification is not pretty.
Where do we think we are following Jesus? Calvary is no yellow brick road leading us to the God-Wiz who simply grants our wishes. I don’t care what deal those capitalist prosperity gospel peddlers are offering.
Like the crowds that followed millennia before us, we come for the message and the miracles but leave before our martyrdom. And for all his beckoning, we are no closer to Jesus. We will not even give him an inch for the sake of self-preservation.
But this Lenten season is not merely a forty-day challenge. It is the choice to abandon our willful desires as proof of our commitment to discipleship and it should cost us something.
“How much does it cost?” The question is used to infer value and determine if we are willing and able to pay the price.
It is captured in idioms like “This cost me a pretty penny,” “It costs to be the boss,” or “I’ll do whatever it takes at any cost.”
In our materialistic society, many Americans make choices for the sake of appearance to secure an image of elitism, wealth and social status. This is attached to our luxury labels, white picket fences and private schools.
The cost matters as it determines the nature of the investment, its importance and the goal for the individual, community, corporation or government. But what about the cost of being a follower of Jesus? What does that look like exactly?
“When Christ calls a man (sic), he bids him come and die,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in The Cost of Discipleship. This remains a hard saying.
“Come to church but stay for a funeral” is a hard sell. It also likely wouldn’t go over well on a church sign—even if you offer a fellowship meal afterward.
While we have seemingly endless soul-numbing circumstances and anesthetizing preaching that has attempted to take the sting out of Christ’s death, it is still no less difficult to accept. Perhaps it’s why we keep our distance, why there is so much space between us and Christ.
There is more than wiggle room and walking distance between Jesus and us when the conversation shifts to self-discipline, simplicity and solitude.
We shift our feet at the mention of our cross (Matthew 15:24-26). Still, Bonhoeffer said, “The faith community of the blessed is the community of the Crucified.”
Maybe we are no different than the twelve disciples, unable or unwilling to come to grips with his death, because it would certainly mean our own.
But if all hands are in, ours must be pierced, too. Or is that too high a cost?
If so, we add our names to the list of fair-weathered disciples. Christ’s invitation to eulogize the old self and its nature is trampled underfoot by the crowd and stuck under the disciples’ door, left unanswered or outright declined.
My elders warned me, “No cross, no crown.” What they meant was there is no shortcut to the resurrection. To be seen with Christ is to suffer with him.
Jesus was clear when he told the disciples, “If any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who will lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life” (Matthew 16:24-26)?
To be sure, this is not a fan club. Following Jesus does not come with a t-shirt, a travel mug or VIP seats to his next miraculous feeding. There is no frequent follower reward program.
But if anyone had a reason to be full of himself, it was Jesus. If anyone could point to connections, brag about who he is, boast about what he’s done and what he knows, it is Jesus.
Still, he chose not to. God’s equal or servant, Jesus chose the latter. Because even the appearance of the Divine matters.
Surely, this is not the God we imagined. However, William Sloane Coffin reminds us, “There is no smaller package than a man all wrapped up in himself.” The only Bigger Person, Jesus, is so much bigger than that.
Besides, there is more to this walk and in the end, he will not be celebrated. Persons will look at Jesus on the cross and size him up. They will look at him, consider his worth and walk off thinking his ministry doesn’t look like much.
They will question Jesus’ investment of time and shake their heads at the supposed loss of talent. I can hear them sigh and say, “He could have been so much more.”
And yet he was. Because “the cost of discipleship” is not keeping up appearances.
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Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
