The Gift is Free, But Not Cheap
Mark 8:27-38[1]
I think we all come to
faith with assumptions about what it means to be a Christian. We may think it
relates primarily to how we participate in church or our hope for eternal life.
In my case, phrases like “abundant life” and “new life in Christ” appealed to
my dreams for a happy home for my children. But our faith challenges us to
think more deeply than our dreams about “the good life.” To put it bluntly, our
faith means we have chosen to follow a man who was executed as a criminal,
accused of insurrection. More than that, our faith challenges us to think about
what it means to even call ourselves “Christian.” What should we expect of our
lives if we dare to call ourselves by the name of a Christ who died a shameful
death on the cross?[2] If we let that sink in, I think we have to admit that while the gift of new
life in Christ is free, it’s not cheap!
We believe that God
gives us the gift of his love freely, unconditionally, and irrevocably. It’s
easy to take that gift for granted, thinking since God will love me no matter
what, it doesn’t matter what I do. But the truth is that the gift of love did
not come “cheaply” for God, it was quite costly. And that means that we cannot
take it for granted. We have to consider what God’s costly gift in Jesus Christ
means for us if we call ourselves “Christian.” If we say we’re going to follow
a Christ who died on the cross, we have recognize that decision will be costly
to us as well. And the cost is that we cannot simply live our lives however we please.
As we have seen
before, that is the point of our Gospel lesson for today. Peter confessed that
Jesus is the “Messiah,” but when Jesus began to teach them that meant he would have
to die, it became obvious that Peter didn’t understand at all. Jesus knew that
his path of obedience to God would lead him to die on a cross. In fact, he says
that he “must” face rejection, great suffering, and ultimately death in order
to carry out his role as the “Messiah.” The necessity behind this was that it
was the only way for him to carry out God’s plan to offer unfailing love to all
of us as a free gift. But that gift comes to us at great cost to God: it comes
at the cost of Jesus’ life!
If that weren’t
shocking enough, Jesus proceeded to teach his disciples that their obedience to
God would lead them on the same path! He told them point blank: “those who want
to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and
for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mk 8:35). We know from history that
some of the early Christians literally faced death for the sake of their faith
in Jesus. While we don’t face death for our faith, we still have to figure out what
it means for us to “lose” our lives for Jesus’ sake.
One who actually
followed Jesus to the point of death was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was teaching
theology at the University of Berlin when the Nazis took control of Germany in
1933. At great personal risk, he led a movement of Christians who resisted the
idolatry of the Nazi movement. That movement produced the “Barmen Declaration”
that is in our book of Confessions today, and reminds us that Jesus represents
“God’s mighty claim upon our whole life” and our “joyful deliverance from the
godless fetters of this world.[3] When war was imminent, Bonhoeffer initially fled to the safety of New York, but
he almost immediately returned to Germany to continue leading the underground
church and resisting the Nazis. He was imprisoned in Berlin in 1943 and
executed along with other resistance leaders on April 9, 1945.
In the early years of
the Nazi era when he was leading the underground church, Bonhoeffer wrote a
book simply entitled “Discipleship.” There, he reflected on the tension between
the fact that God’s gracious gift comes to us freely, but it is nevertheless
costly. Bonhoeffer challenged what he called “cheap grace,” which for him meant
grace as forgiveness that doesn’t change the way we live.[4] Bonhoeffer contrasted that with what he called “costly grace”: “it is costly,
because it calls us to discipleship; it is grace, because it calls us to follow
Jesus Christ. It is costly, because
it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live.”[5]
If we choose to accept
God’s incredibly generous gift and follow Jesus as his disciples, we cannot
simply pursue our own quest for “the good life.” The gift of God’s love demands
the very best we have to give, throughout our lives. Jesus not only taught us,
he showed us that the way to truly live is to give yourself away for the sake
of others. If we refuse that choice because the price of surrendering our hopes
and dreams is too high, the consequence is that we will lose the very heart and
soul of what it means to really live. But if we have the courage to follow Jesus,
we will find that the path of self-giving is the way to the life that God offers
each and every one of us. That’s the wonderful gift God offers: it’s free, but
it’s not cheap!
[1] ©
2021 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 9/12/2021 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Cf.
Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 36-38: “Christians who do not have
the feeling that they must flee the crucified Christ have probably not yet
understood him in a sufficiently radical way.”
[3] “The Theological Declaration of Barmen,” The Book of Confessions (2016),
8.14 (p. 283).
[4] Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 4), 43-44: “Cheap
grace means grace as … cut-rate forgiveness; … grace without a price, without
costs. … Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross.”
[5] Bonhoeffer, 45.
No comments:
Post a Comment