“We have to come up with a detailed cost analysis!” Who hasn’t heard such advice at one point or another – whether it concerned the costs of renovating a church, the price tag for fixing a leaking roof or a moldy basement, or calculating the full extent of college tuition for your children? We always want to know what we’re in for, if we’re smart. Thankfully, we have some people in our congregation who are very good with spreadsheets, numbers and analysis. Today, Jesus gives thumbs up to all the spreadsheet people, the folks who are sometimes accused of being insufficiently spiritual because they have this annoying habit of telling us the truth. “Yes, this roof, if you want to do it right, will cost you forty Grand!” Ouch! “Yes, your fire suppression system hasn’t worked in at least ten years and installing a new one won’t be cheap!” In the gospel lesson for today, which begins with such unimaginably coarse words, Jesus comes around to talk about something a bit more relatable: a cost analysis… of discipleship. Jesus encourages all those who follow him to decide whether they are willing to do what it takes; to consider the sacrifices that will be required to follow Christ all the way.
Estimating the costs, I can relate to that, especially as a parent with a college student now. So much thought and analysis has gone into this whole process of college selection. Before our daughter selected her college, she visited lots of different places and compared a whole range of things, not always costs, mind you: she compared curricula and courses, musical and artistic opportunities, food menus (how good is their cafeteria? Is there an Indian restaurant nearby?), college rankings, and, just for fun, famous alumni.
Her parents meanwhile, mostly her mother to be fair, did some of that too, but more importantly, they compared price tags, scholarship offers, the boring, staggering numbers of the college landscape. You have to calculate the costs. While I had some awareness of college tuition before, let’s just say, it’s a bit more real now, as in “checkbook real”! And since we have a number of parents here with children who still have a number of school years in them, we can say, “Start saving now, kindergarten parents! It’s never too early!”
How did we get to college tuition? Well, let’s face it, the gospel passage offered to us this morning is about as popular as college tuition. It ranks right up there with taxes, reducing carbon emissions and the story of Sodom and Gomorra. People just love to hear Jesus talk about the steep cost of discipleship – and he wasn’t even referring to monster tuitions. He was using a different currency altogether: dedication, devotion, commitment – your soul, YOU in other words. And how do we begin to measure our dedication and commitment to Christ? Jesus simply says: “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” So, it must have something to do with carrying the cross and how we deal with the shadow sides of life, the losses, the defeats, the tough stuff that is thrown at us, the cross. And I know some of you will want to get up right now and say that you’ve had your share of shadows, thank you very much! And some of you may wonder secretly: why are the shadow sides of life distributed so unfairly? Some people seem to get an awful lot of it, while others have it easy, or so it seems. Unfair! Some pay more for the discipleship tuition than others! Sound familiar?
This text, I believe, offers an important detail that can help us cope with the unfairness of life, because, let’s face it, life is always unfair, right? Jesus does not ask us, at least in this version of the gospel, to carry his cross and he also doesn’t ask us to carry your cross. He asks us to carry the cross. What we are asked to carry may not have anything to do with you directly. It could be the cross given to our neighbor or a family member or the person sitting next to you. It could be the cross given to your church. Yes, I believe what Jesus is saying here is this: if you are so blessed that no cross is in sight for you, help someone else out. As a Christian you are called to help carry the cross in this world. That’s the cost of discipleship.
I recently read an article about a former top manager of one of the biggest publishing companies in the world, the German giant Bertelsmann. The manager was Thomas Middelhoff and he was once at the very top of the industry, winning one of the Manager of the Year awards, before he fell onto disgrace after misusing corporate funds in another company. In rapid succession, he wound up in prison for three years; he developed a life-threatening disease; he got divorced; he went into bankruptcy. You could say he fell all the way to the bottom. Last year, a few months after being released from prison he was interviewed by a reporter from the Financial Times. The article begins with this sentence, “For a man who literally lost everything — his health, his wealth, his reputation and, for the better part of the past three years, his personal freedom — Thomas Middelhoff appears remarkably at ease with himself.” The interview reveals someone who was apparently able to find himself by encountering the dark side of life, who reconnected with the Catholic faith of his upbringing during the most trying period of his life. Reflecting on the past he said at one point in the interview, “I had turned into a guy that wasn’t me anymore.” Rather than just carrying his own cross, enduring the dark days in prison while losing his former identity and image, pitying himself, he got involved in a charity and he says it brought awards never given in the world he came from, such as a hug or the autistic person who barely ever said a word but then muttered, “Thomas, good man,” touching his heart.
Maybe that sounds cheesy and borders on cliché, the man who found Jesus in prison… But what touched me about this man’s experience is that the paradoxes that Jesus teaches are so often confirmed by people who had no missionary intent of confirming them. Jesus says things like, “If you lose your life you will find it.” And here you have a man wo experienced just that, against his own will. Jesus comes across as the worst salesman, saying, “If you want to follow me, you have to weigh the costs and pick up the cross. It won’t be easy.” We immediately start thinking this Christian life is one dark cloud filled with sacrifices and hardships. But then, when people actually engage in service, sacrifice and helping others, and also learn more about themselves in the process, it becomes enormously rewarding and, yes, liberating. It’s the deep paradox of the cross. It’s the deep paradox of discipleship. You follow Christ and you become more than a follower. You encounter the shadows of death and suddenly light shines forth in you. Those paradoxes are often beyond our understanding but something we can only grasp through experience, in other words, by following Christ. The Thomas Middelhoff’s of this world who were thrown off their high horses, beg us to trust that the cross is a worthy place, a place of personal transformation, maybe the best thing that can happen to you. It will cost you, but it will offer rewards many people have no idea exist. The cross is a higher education. It’s an education of the soul. It’s the best education there is! Take that, Harvard! Take that, Yale! Amen. (The FT article was published May 11, 2018)