Rev. Tessie Mandeville
September 09, 2007
Christ Covenant MCC
Decatur, GA 30030

Every day we make hundreds of decisions about our lives, sometimes without even really thinking. We decide what time to get up. What to eat. What to wear. We decide what route to take to work. What time to eat lunch. What to talk about with our co-workers. Everyday, we make hundreds of decisions from the mundane to the deeply personal such as who we will date, who we will form an intimate relationship with, where we will allow our careers to take us.

I served as a chaplain in an Intensive Care Unit in California. That was a place where split-second life and death decisions were made on a routine basis. Our hospital specialized in heart surgery, and in particular, operating on high risk heart patients that other doctors and hospitals would not work with. I was privileged to work with some of the best doctors and nurses in the county; people who knew what it was like to make sacrifices for the greater good. People who had given up many nights of sleep and time with friends and family so that they could attend medical school. These people had studied endlessly and they were highly trained professionals, ready to do their jobs. And they had to be ready because at any time, an emergency could happen; a code blue could be called. A person could stop breathing; their heart could stop pumping, and they had to respond quickly and make life and death decisions. There was no time in that moment to ponder or question; they had to be ready to act.

Decisions, decisions. Some seem so small and mundane; some will lead to life or death. The decisions we make matter. Life is full of choices and many paths. We can walk down paths that lead to life or we can walk down paths that to lead to death. God endowed us with free will and as always, the decision is ours.

Talking about free will, whether or not it exists and whether or not we truly have it, is the topic of many theological conversations and symposiums. In the act of creation, God decided to have companions along the journey; those companions are us. As companions of God, we are invited to co-create with God. I know that many Christians talk about giving our will over to God and totally relying on God’s power to see us through. But that sounds to me like a total abdication of our will, a total giving up of our responsibility for our lives. I don’t believe that God calls us to completely abdicate our will. God gave it to us; why would She ask for it back?! I am hard pressed to believe in a God that creates us with free will and then expects us to give it up in a moment’s notice. So I invite us today to enlarge our understanding of the call of God so that it includes our moral agency. God doesn’t force us to follow Him. We are invited to be in partnership with God. To willingly make covenant with and be loyal to God. To have an embodied, integrated spirituality of thought and action which understands that in the created order, humans have responsibility. We are invited to be God’s companion. Ultimately, in our relationship with God, we get to decide just how far we’re willing to go.

No one can illustrate this point better than Jesus and we have to hand it him—he really has a knack for telling people what they don’t want to hear! Our gospel story today picks up right where Jane left off last week, with Jesus at a huge banquet where everyone is included. The scriptures aren’t clear if Jesus is still at the banquet when he makes his next announcement or if he’s moved on but I like to imagine him at the banquet. The hall is decorated; there’s a live band in the background; people are dressed in black and white; there’s lot of food on the tables and the people are happy to be there. And can you just see Jesus? He gets up, holds his glass up and uses his utensil against it to get their attention and then says, “While I have you all here, there are a few things I’d like to talk about.” And their mouths are full, they are happy, they like Jesus; he’s been healing people, casting out demons, and bringing the dead back to life. What’s not to like? People were so amazed with him that he had huge crowds following after him.

But then Jesus addresses the crowd and says, “I know I just told you that everyone is included in the realm of God. Now I’d like to say that for everyone who would like to be there, here are the requirements: hate your mother and father, wife, children, even your own life, carry your cross and while you’re at it, give up all your possessions.” I wasn’t there when Jesus said that but I’m pretty sure it was a downer for the people and probably ruined some of their appetites! In fact, it might have been down right scandalous for Jesus to say what he did. But here’s the thing: Jesus said this to the people on his way to the cross and there wasn’t time for hesitation and delay. Jesus was making life and death decisions and he was requiring the people who followed him to do the same.

In our journeys with Jesus, in our relationship with the Divine, we have decisions to make about how far we’re willing to go. The call of discipleship comes with a cost. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who tried to lead his church in resistance to the Nazis. He was killed in 1945 for his part in a conspiracy to murder Adolf Hitler. He wrote one of the most famous books about the meaning of discipleship and before he was hanged he wrote:

“Where will the call to discipleship lead those who follow it? What decisions and painful separations will it entail? We must take this question to him who alone knows the answer. Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow him, knows where the path will lead. But we know that it will be a path full of mercy beyond measure. Discipleship is joy.”

It is a joy to be in relationship with God. It is a joy to make covenant with God. And it is a joy to follow Jesus Christ but following Jesus comes at a cost. Following Jesus is not about cheap grace, as Bonhoeffer says, because cheap grace says that, “my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are forgiven.” Our task is to not accept cheap grace. “We must attempt to recover a true understanding of the mutual relation between grace and discipleship.” Bonhoeffer says, “Happy are they who know that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace, and that grace simply means discipleship.”

It is a joy to follow Jesus Christ but following Jesus comes at a cost. Everything important comes at a cost. Nothing that is worth having or doing comes easily and it certainly isn’t cheap. Whatever is important to you will demand something of you. It is the same with Christian discipleship; we cannot water it down and make it easy. Our own lives surely are not watered down and easy and neither was Jesus’ life. Jesus’ life included a cross and so does ours.

Rev. Sarah Dylan Breuer says it this way: “In 21st-century America, we see what we think of as a cross mostly as pieces of jewelry, and then as decorations for churches, and then maybe as part of the logo of an organization. It's become in many ways a symbol of respectability and privilege, held up by political candidates to rally the base. But that's not what the cross represented in the first-century Roman Empire. There, the cross was a work of perverse genius -- a cheap and non-labor-intensive way to inflict indescribable pain and shame, while providing a gory public reminder of just what happened to those who undermined the good order of the Empire. It was a reminder of what happened to Christians who encouraged women and men to decide for themselves whom they would call "lord," and then to follow no one else.”

Jesus said, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” We don’t have to go looking for crosses to carry. All we have to do is make decisions to show love, to tell the truth and to do justice and the crosses will come. At MCC San Francisco, they felt a call to do justice by starting a food program. The program was called “Simply Supper.” Every Wednesday and Friday, volunteers from around the church and local community came and cooked a delicious, healthy meal for homeless and hungry people. The neighbors loved the idea of feeding people until the homeless people came into the neighborhood itself. They didn’t like the idea after that and they didn’t like MCC San Francisco. They fought this program; they called in politicians and held town hall meetings—all because the people of MCC San Francisco practiced justice and compassion.

It is a joy to follow Jesus Christ but following Jesus comes at a cost. Everything important comes at a cost. Nothing that is worth having or doing comes easily and it certainly isn’t cheap. Whatever is important to you will demand something of you. But it’s also true that when we want something badly enough, we’ll pay whatever is required. And I believe what Jesus is saying to us is that in the moment of decision, God expects us to be ready to act. Be ready to do justice in the midst of opposition; be ready to work for peace in the midst of war. Be ready to go against the status quo. Be ready to follow wherever we are led even if no one else comes along, including your family. Be ready to give up not only what you possess but what possesses you.

Being in relationship with God requires our whole hearts, minds, bodies and souls. As companions of God, we are invited to co-create with God. Ultimately, in our relationship with God, we get to decide just how far we’re willing to go.

Decisions, decisions. Some seem so small and mundane; some will lead to life or death. The decisions we make matter. Life is full of choices and many paths. We can walk down paths that lead to life or we can walk down paths that to lead to death. God endowed us with free will and as always, the decision is ours. My prayer is that we will choose life. Let it be so and amen.

Ann Boyd, a paper entitled Incarnational Theology

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, Simon & Schuster, 1937, p. 38

Ibid., p. 51

Ibid., p. 55.

Ibid., p. 56.

Rev. Sarah Dylan Breuer, www.saralaughed.net/lectionary

Copyright © 2007 by Rev. Tessie Mandeville. Permission granted for non- profit circulation with attribution of author and venue. Other rights reserved.