The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

+ In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

First, to those who are fathers, or who have acted as fatherly figures to people in their lives, a very happy Father’s day to you.

Life changes quickly when you become a father, a mother, a parent. With a child, the whole scope, the entire focus, of existence is shifted. 

For me, one shockingly mundane and life-changing experience happened in 2017 while in grad school. I had returned to the faith after some years away, and was searching for a church home. 

I was a poor grad student waiting for a haircut at a Great Clips. A much older couple entered after me, but I let them get their hair cut first because I wasn’t in a rush. Me and the wife ended up chatting for a while, about faith, and life, one of those randomly deep and profound conversations with a complete stranger. She suggested I check out Calvary Episcopal Church. In that moment, the trajectory of my life would be changed.

In our Gospel from last week, Christ finished calling the 12 Apostles. Christ called. They responded. And everything changed for them - and for the world.

Today’s Gospel continues shortly after this moment, when Jesus is explaining to them what it will mean to be one of his disciples. 

Today we are asked to consider the demand of discipleship - how it changes us, demands of us, and disrupts assumptions of the status quo in the world. 

The demand of discipleship is named at the start of today’s Gospel: “A disciple is not above his teacher, not a servant above his master, it is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master.” (10:24-25a).

To be a disciple of Christ is to emulate Christ, to “be like” the teacher, to be like Jesus.

The demand is to bend our lives into a cruciform shape, for “whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:38)

It is a big ask.

The demand of discipleship is to conform our very selves ever more fully to the life of Jesus. 

In many instances, becoming more Christlike is slow and simple. 

It involves knowing God more and more fully by reading the Word of God, and spending time with God in prayer.

It may be giving someone a kind and uplifting word, because Christ has uplifted us.

Being patient with someone, because Christ is patient with us.

These simple acts are simple examples of the chipping away of our self-made lives, and conforming them more fully to the life of Christ. 

This is part of the process of what the great Western mystics refer to as divinization, and the progressive act of union with God. This is what the Eastern Orthodox refer to as Theosis or deification, wherein we progressively take on the attributes of God in our lives as disciples of Christ.

But sometimes, the demand of discipleship is heavier. 

For the earliest generations of Christians, it meant social & political isolation at best, and a horrific death at worst. 

For us, proclaiming the Gospel for the poor and the oppressed is not merely political theater - it is a response rooted in the beating heart of the Gospel, who is Christ.

And it can result in harassment, anger, vitriol, and even violence.

And Christ tells us, “Have no fear… do no fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.”

Discipleship comes with a cost. Sometimes it is social isolation. Sometimes its merely being in an uncomfortable situation. For some today in other parts of the world, it may mean their very lives.

But we are reminded that in our lifelong journey of discipleship, God is with us. Christ reminds us to be courageous, to take chances, to do the uncomfortable things because we are disciples.

St. Theresa of Avila, a Spanish nun, mystic, and one of the few women who are named as Doctors of the Church in the Roman tradition, wrote a poem in the 1500s remarking on what it means to be Christ’s body as the Church. A portion of the poem reads:

“Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours, yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on the world…”

This beautiful poem reminds us that until Christ returns, we are His very body as the Church, and to be the body of Christ means to strive to be like Christ and to do like Christ. Being bearers of truth and healing and reconciliation in a world in need of it.

Lastly, the Gospel today indicates that discipleship is disruptive.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

On Father’s day no less, Jesus tells us, “For I have come to set a man against his father…”!

These are uncomfortable words. 

These are disruptive words.

It counters the singular image of sweet baby Jesus, meek and mild.

The main theme of these harsh words suggests that the assumed norms of relationship - the assumed norms of who or what has power - is actually overturned in Christ.

To be a disciple, then, is to love those who society has deemed unloveable, to support the unsupported, to feed the hungry, to give attention to the ignored, to listen to the voices of the voiceless, to seek restoration to those who have been harmed.

This has, historically, not gone well for social orders which seek to keep a status quo. Which seek to oppress. Which seek to keep people separated and stratified. There is almost always social strife when humanity seeks to live more fully into the liberation offered, and demanded, by the Gospel.

Thus, discipleship is disruptive.

This sermon, I realize, has been a rather wide survey of some of the key elements of discipleship. Following Christ changes everything. Today’s Gospel invites us to consider the demand of discipleship, the cost of discipleship, and the disruption which discipleship may bring.

As we strive to know our savior, and conform our lives to His will, may we be willing to respond as the disciples do - and take that life changing call, to be with our Lord. Amen.