Proper 18 C +Dynamic, Grace-Filled Life + 9.4.16

Building an altar in the Community Garden

M. Campbell-Langdell

All Santos, Oxnard

(Jeremiah 18:1–11; Ps. 139:1–5, 12–17; Philemon 1–21; Luke 14:25–33)

“For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? (Luke 14:28)”

I got to see this firsthand last Saturday in the Community Garden, as we worked together on Sophia’s Gold Award project, and especially as I saw Don and Fernando planning and constructing a beautiful outdoor altar table. It is constructed of logs and an old recycled lab table, a perfect combination of God’s beautiful creation in raw form and human ingenuity that is inspired by God. Science and earth. Wonder and human searching, combined.

First to build the altar table, they had to measure everything carefully. They used a level. They experimented with different ways to support it- to use the lab table’s legs or the logs. But they carefully and cautiously proceeded so that it would be stable and durable.

Jesus wants us to be like this about our spiritual lives. To take time to think about how we can take on the commitment of living life for God and for cautiously entering in to that commitment to build a firm foundation.

Jesus does not want us to wander into following him as if it is not something that mattered, but to weigh and consider how following him changes things for us. Every day.

To live his way with intention.

Back in the 1930s and 1940s a German theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer became quite well known for his firm theological position about discipleship, and one of his books is called The Cost of Discipleship. He saw the church in Nazi Germany as basically allowing the Nazi government to take over and as forgetting its Christian duty to live the hard life of following Christ by challenging the steps that the Nazis were taking that were unchristian. Speaking more generally about how Christians can live, he compared cheap grace and costly grace. Cheap grace is the idea that we do not need to avoid sinful behavior because Christ’s death on the cross already paid the debt of all sin, and therefore we have no responsibility to reach out to God and convert our lives. Bonhoeffer said this is not really grace at all, but a lie. Instead, he said, we have costly grace. As he said:
“Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”[1]

And I think, if you forgive the very male-centered language, this is a bit of what Jesus is getting at here. He is saying that nothing can be more important than following him. Not your possessions. Not even your family.

He does not mean you have to actually hate your possessions or your family. Possessions can be important tools for living the Christian life, used correctly. Family – biological or chosen- can be important partners in living the Way of Jesus. But what Jesus means is that you cannot prefer your family above all things. You must prefer Jesus.

If you can sit down and say that he is your man, regardless of what happens, then you have calculated the cost.

If you can turn to him and ask for forgiveness, even when you know that even as you turn, you are forgiven, and you know that you also must forgive others; then you know the tension between the free gift of God’s forgiveness and our need to ask and to knock at the door of God’s heart. And to forgive others. To be honest, it is our hearts that need to count the cost, not God’s.

If you can look at your life and re-orient all your priorities in whatever area of your life- be they work, possessions, or family to being first about God and second about you, then you know the value of grace.

And you know the cost of following Jesus.

Then nothing will fail you. Even if the altar table you have built is knocked down, it can be put right in order to glorify God.

And yet, do not be surprised if you have to work with God a bit, and be a bit flexible on the way.

Because we are reminded in the text from Jeremiah today that we have a Potter God. Our God is a maker and re-molder of us, who are the clay. We change at times and need to adjust. As I saw Fernando and Don build the altar, I saw things get changed and chopped and re-worked, re-molded, as it were, to make an even better, stronger altar-table. And God does the same thing in our lives. Often multiple times over our lives. Which can be scary. There are scary overtones in the Jeremiah passage.
There was a tough moment this week when someone mistakenly tried to move the altar at the Community Garden and knocked it down. But we trust that it will be rebuilt, even stronger than before. The same can happen in our lives. Because God intends all of it for our good. Remember that.
And in following God we chase not after the gains of this world but after something just beyond our sight.

Following Jesus means being willing to give it all, but it is also a dynamic path. It is exciting to follow Jesus and to see where his path leads.

So sit down with yourself today and measure, how can I re-orient my life to Christ? Where am I called to a discipleship that costs me? Remembering that it is a grace that is worth it, because it brings us the only true life.

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[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (NY: MacMillan, 1963), 47.