Mtr Mary Trainor
Dear friend,
Many of us are well aware that there supposedly is a cost to our discipleship, a cost to following Jesus. It’s our cross, we are told. When we think of cost, we think of the martyrs, both ancient and modern, those whose following of Jesus cost them their very lives.
Most of us will never face that test. In part because we live in a time and a place where sacrificing our lives to follow Jesus isn’t necessary. Yes, people in the world still are slaughtered for their faith. But not us and not here.
The shield of safety afforded us makes it possible to pursue our daily lives, and to pursue our faith, almost as though one is disconnected from the other. I wonder if I am the only one who wonders about that.
I went to church with a man who was a faithful attender. It took years for us to learn why. It was for the Confession.
One of his children later revealed that he drank too much and, for years, physically and psychologically tormented his wife and their children. When one of them was brave enough to point out the hypocrisy between his churchgoing and his conduct, he smugly replied: “I say the Confession every Sunday and I am good to go for another week, just the way I am.”
Apparently he had not been inspired to amend his life. No call to repentance. Say the Confession and be the same violent and mean person he was the week before.
In our Office Gospel today (Matthew 8:18-27), Jesus talks about cost. To the scribe who gushes that he will follow him anywhere, Jesus says, Don’t be so quick. I don’t even have a place to sleep at night. To others who want to bury their father before trekking off with Jesus, he says, No. Someone else can do that. You, follow me.
He seems almost cranky. Granted, he’s exhausted from marathon healing. Maybe that’s why he isn’t sugar-coating his message. But in ways little and big his point is: Following me comes with a cost, comes with change, comes now.
I wonder if Christian churches these days water down that message to make it more palatable, to attract those who might not come if they heard there was a cost. Granted, Jesus’ message is supposed to sound like Good News, but does that require denying his basic teachings about loving one another, loving our enemies, forgiving endlessly, being servants?
In Teaching a Stone to Talk, writer Annie Dillard offers some challenging words about watering down the message:
“It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats … to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”
Mtr. Mary