The first Christians didn’t have to wonder what in
the world Jesus meant by carrying the cross or hating family relationships or
even life itself. The cost of discipleship was not hypothetical or expressed by
increased personal piety or putting an extra something in the offering plate.
They carried real life crosses to real life places of crucifixion. They were
kicked out of synagogues, disowned by families, excluded from participating in
commerce and dragged into courts for confessing Christ. Our problem, if we want
to call it that, is that no one cares if we follow Christ or not and we are
certainly not persecuted for our beliefs. Oh I know we can’t have officially
endorsed Christian prayer in secular schools anymore and the Christ has gone
missing from Christmas and media caricatures of Christians are generally
negative but do you really want to compare that to being torn apart by wild
beasts in the arena? I get a tax break from the IRS for being a minister for
goodness sake! No. We are still very much in the mainstream of societal life
and so our counting the cost is not nearly as expensive as it was in the past
or is in the present for Christians in places like the Sudan or Palestine or
Syria. So how do we count the cost when where we live subsidizes our belief system rather than trying to stamp it out? Speaking for
myself, I will confess that whatever I do it will not be enough. Not because I
can’t but because at some level I won’t. I have grown comfortable with one foot
planted firmly in the world I love while trying to keep a toe hold in the land
I long for. I have borrowed against the unfinished building and accepted terms
of peace even before counting the opposing forces. But then that is why Jesus
was crucified isn’t it? For the cost I am unwilling to pay, the cross I won’t
carry, the ways I will not forsake. Well, yes. But that cannot be where it
ends. There is, I believe, a hope in the heart of the One who carried the cross
for us that one day in our confession of not being willing our feet firmly
planted in the ways of the world will slip and our toes will take a firmer
grip in the world that will be until standing up in the here and now those who
won’t… finally will.
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