• In Christ, god becomes one of us.


• In the Holy Spirit, God can become all of us.

      Summer has come, and with it the familiar frustration of orange road signs signaling detours. On Friday, as I drove from Newton to Needham, I couldn’t get off an exit on Route 9, so the signs got me to snake around toward West Roxbury. A while ago, I found that the bridge in Dorchester Lower Mills at the old chocolate factory is closed, so you can’t get from Dorchester into Milton. From what I know of  the lifestyle in Milton, they probably love it that way. But detours teach us something new. And they promise that the right way will soon be righter.

       The rest of this sermon may be just such a detour. Today’s Gospel traces the path of discipleship: a path of sacrifice and trust required to follow God’s call. Jesus’s message especially recalls the most unforgettable line from perhaps the greatest religious classic of the twentieth century. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Christian martyr of the Nazis, wrote in The Cost of Discipleship that “When Christ calls a person, he bids them come and die.” In 1940s Germany, that Christ embodied the authority and Bonhoeffer embodied the obedience needed to stand up against a real anti-Christ. As with Jesus, Bonhoeffer did not fear those who killed his body, he acknowledged Christ before his enemies, his persecutors fell, and they did not prevail.

      Yet this model of discipleship, based on obedience and subjugation, made me realize that the roads to discipleship have been under re-construction for some years, and some spiritual writers have been like a road crew tearing up outworn paths under our feet. Yes, of course, God’s invitation to discipleship strengthens us for new paths or blesses the paths we’re already on. But traditional rhetoric about discipleship may get in the way of  finding the real path, the real God. So let’s follow the detour.

      What do I mean by outworn paths?  I’m thinking of a popular path that follows Jesus as if he were saying, “Drop what you’re doing and do what I do.” Or with a slight shift, “. . . do what I tell you” – a spirituality rather like Simon Says (or for Catholics, Simon Peter says).  Maybe we need this at some points in our journey.      

      However, real problems begin when we turn Jesus into a role model, as if his unique personality -- with all the limitations of his temperament and his gender and his culture -- could ever offer a universal pattern for us to imitate. WWJD – What would Jesus do? You’ll see bumper stickers, key rings, and refrigerator magnets promote this familiar advice.  Now if  this does inspire you, please tune me out, but frankly, the way Jesus did some things would be inappropriate and wrong for us.

      His job is to redeem our individuality, not rob us of it. Following Jesus does not mean us becoming more like Jesus. Rather, discipleship is about letting God becoming more like each of us. God needs every one of us to express the fullness of God’s Self.  This means learning to become the unrepeatable creature God created you to be. 

      That is why the gift of the Spirit – which we receive in baptism or in other ways known to God – the gift of the Spirit assures you of God’s companionship. As you sort through your sins and your gifts, you will reach that deep wisdom within you that springs fresh from God and lets God come alive now, in your style, your rhythm, in Jamaica Plain or Marblehead or wherever you live or work or find a parking space.

      For in Christ, God becomes one of us. But in the Holy Spirit, God becomes all of us. The Spirit cannot find enough ways to come into our world. This is the deep logic when we pray, “Our  Father.” This gives us courage to face the question of  Provincetown poet Mary Oliver, when she asks, “What are YOU going to do with your one  wild and precious life?”

      Thanks to a parishioner here at Emmanuel, my detour around Christian conformism leads to another path. That parishioner has graciously allowed me to reflect on the correspondence between us, provided I protect her anonymity. So I’ll call this person Abby, because that was long the name for another anonymous Emmanuelite and I thank you, Abby, for what follows.

      You see, quite a while ago, I said in one sermon, “The response to a religious epiphany is not admiration, but obedience.” My words evoked some lively reactions. Abby wrote me this – and I paraphrase her – “On obedience, Jim, you may consider yourself willful, but I am just the opposite. … I cannot imagine what it is like to be willful. … I have always been ultra dutiful, which is why I react so strongly against your idea of obedience and discipleship. Obedience feels dangerous, unsafe, harmful, because it has led me to willingly accept a lot of abuse to the point of becoming my own oppressor. I would have followed some people over a cliff in Jesus’s name, so obedience has brought me all the wrong things. This is why my heart cries ‘NO!’ when you or Jesus recommend obedience.”

      Abby and I went on to remember how this kind of misguided obedient discipleship has locked women and minorities into victimhood and injustice. Soon we recalled that the root of obedience is the Latin “ob-audire”, “to listen carefully”, a patient skill in relationship, not a trick of subjugation. That prompted Abby to copy out for me the words of the Benedictine Joan Chittister who comments that “Real obedience depends on wanting to listen to the voice of God in the human community, not wanting to be forced to do [something] . . . ”.1   So discipleship and obedience involve a willingness to engage in balanced relationship and attentive community.

      They mean engaging the self, not abandoning the self. Of course, that doesn’t make it easier. To yearn the way God yearns for our truest self to emerge, that exacts integrity. Abby wrote, “Being obedient to the self  which is God’s deepest desire for me, yes, that feels like right discipleship. Of course, even there I can feel reluctance. I rebel, or I get distracted, from my own deepest call. This is the tension between one’s dark side that hides from the Light, running from the God who only wants to run toward me.” Abby continues,  “I have come, however, to see that God is with me in all my good choices, coaxing or supporting as the case may require. God is only absent when I choose to run in the other direction, and I suspect God is actually not absent even there.”

      So, yes, discipleship is about rigor, but the rigor of rightful longing. When the prophets felt God burning in their bones, they found the fire to stand up against injustice. When Jesus felt God caring for every last hair on his head, Jesus found power to live out his calling with a come-what-may urgency. That’s because God grows bigger in the world when we overcome our sins and ignorance to do what is creative or just or kind.

      Marianne Williamson, in a passage often ascribed to Nelson Mandela, captures this new spirit of discipleship when she writes,
            “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?’ Actually, who are you NOT to be? You  are a child  of  God.  Your playing small does not serve the world. . . . We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us. It is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we give other people permission to do the same [and thereby asssist in the liberation of the world].”(2)2
Thus far Williamson.

      So after our detour, how can we not delight in the road to discipleship? In Christ, God becomes one of us. But in the Holy Spirit, God can become all of us.