Luke 14:25-33
Membership Class
James Sledge September
8, 2013
Next
Sunday we begin a new worship schedule and Christian Education activities
resume. The beginning of a new program year means the start of a new Confirmation
Class, and we’ll have a New Member Class later in the fall as well.
Classes
for confirmation or new members have some similarities. In a way, both are
about what it means to be an active, participant in the Jesus movement as that
is lived out at Falls Church Presbyterian. At their conclusion, many in both
classes will decide whether or not to “join,” to make a profession of faith,
perhaps be baptized, and promise to be a faithful disciple here.
Given
this, now would seem a perfect time to share with potential confirmands and
members some of Jesus’ thoughts on joining him. In our gospel reading, a crowd is
following along with Jesus. They are clearly intrigued. They’ve signed the
“Friendship Pad” and checked that they are interested in membership. Jesus says
to them, “If you don’t hate your mother and father, your siblings, your spouse
and children, and even your own life, you can’t come with me. If you don’t
carry your own cross and go wherever I go, you can’t come with me. If you don’t
give up all your possessions, you can’t come
with me.”
Come to think of it, maybe we don’t want
to use this with a new member or confirmation class. I’m all for full
disclosure, but come on, Jesus. One of my favorite preachers, Barbara Brown
Taylor, in a sermon on today’s gospel said, “After careful consideration of
Jesus’ harder sayings, I have to conclude that he would not have made a good
parish minister.”[1]
If
you’ve spent much time in Presbyterian congregations, or just about any other
Mainline group such as the Methodist, Lutherans, UCC, or Episcopalians, then
you are likely familiar with our focus on membership. We urge people to “join,”
and so we have lots more members than people here on the typical Sunday. For us
a bit over half of our approximately 500 members attend on a given Sunday, a
larger percentage that many Presbyterian churches.
But
when you move out of Mainline denominations, you find different patterns. I had
a couple of seminary classmates from Assemblies of God congregations, and I was
surprised to learn that their Sunday worship attendance far exceeded their
membership. One of the congregations had around 800 people in worship, but they
only 250 or so members.
In
these congregations, you didn’t join in order to affiliate in some way. If you
just wanted to come on Sunday, attend worship, give a little money, and perhaps
go to a class, you weren’t expected to join. Joining was a step beyond that, a
more serious commitment. In some ways this fits with the distinction Jesus
makes between crowds that are interested and want to hear what he says and
those who are actually ready to go with him.
One
of the unfortunate pieces of our Presbyterian heritage is an understanding of
membership acquired in the era of cultural Christianity. In the day when church
affiliation was an expected element of citizenship, Presbyterian and other
Mainline congregations were the churches of choice, and we were happy to have
you affiliate with us. Expectations were minimal. An oft quoted one is “Attend
at least once a year, or give money. And unless you specifically requested it,
it was hard to get taken off our membership rolls, never mind what Jesus or our
own denominational rules said.
Jesus,
by the way, never talked about membership, though he did talk a lot about
discipleship, about following him. He says that all are welcome, and nothing can
disqualify you from becoming a part of God’s new realm. He says that God is
never happier than when a sinner comes into the fold. But if no one is turned
away, and the worst sort of folks are welcomed with open arms, there is still
no question but that following Jesus means a total reevaluation of priorities
and loyalties.
The
bit about hating your family and your own life is a colorful, Semitic way of
saying that loving Jesus and the new family formed by those who follow him must
take precedence over all other relationships. But the part about crosses and
possessions is more straight forward. To follow Jesus is to encounter
difficulty and even suffering that could be avoided by not following him. And
our things, our stuff, personal comforts, and the careers, ambitions, and
lifestyles that accompany them, are all huge obstacles to following Jesus.
We
live in a consumer culture, and we’ve been thoroughly schooled in its ways. The
way life gets better is to add things to it: cars, homes, and possessions. Events,
activities, and experiences are consumer items as well, added to make our lives
fuller and more meaningful. Religion and spirituality are on this list, experiences
we add to uplift or enhance our lives.
But
then Jesus comes along and says we’ve got it all wrong. Following him requires
some subtraction, some hard calculations to figure out whether or not we’re
actually able to be his disciples. Jesus is not being hard on us. He just wants
us to know what we’re signing up for.
Jesus
wants to disabuse us of the idea that he came to give us another consumer item
or to create a new list of members, of religious insiders. He came to change
the world, to get it ready for God’s new day, and to make us a part of that.
But changing the world is dangerous and difficult work. Just ask Martin Luther
King, Jr, Nelson Mandela, Bishop Oscar Romera, Aung San Suu Kyi, Benazir
Bhutto, or Mahatma Gandhi. And of course Jesus. He’s well aware that such work
will get him killed.
A
lot of us aren’t ready to sign up for such work, and Jesus is kind enough to
warn us in advance. We in the institutional church have tried to turn
Christianity into something you can simply join or affiliate with, but Jesus
just won’t go along. He keeps calling us to something more, something bigger
and greater and more meaningful, but also more difficult, which is why Jesus probably
would have made a terrible church pastor. Speaking of which, I think the ending
of that sermon by Barbara Brown gets it just right.
He may not have
made a good parish minister, but he made a very good savior, and I do not think
he is through saving us yet. His best tool has always been the very thing that
killed him—that cross he ended up on—the one he was carrying long before he got
to Golgotha. He is always offering to share it with us, to let us get
underneath it with him. Not, I think, because he wants us to suffer but because
he wants us to know how alive you can feel even underneath something that heavy
and how it can take your breath away to get hold of your one true necessity.
Even suffering itself pales next to what God is doing through it, through you,
because you are willing to put yourself in the way.
It is not for
everyone. That is clearly what he is telling us. There are not a lot of people
who have what it takes to shoulder the cross, but I do not think that means the
rest of us are lost. It is for the rest of us—the weak ones—that he took its
weight upon himself. If we cannot help him carry it, he will carry us too. I
think he just wants us not to take it for granted. I think he just wants us to
know what it costs.[2]
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