Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
August 26, 2018
Scriptures: Joshua 24:14-17 and John 6:60-69
I have a question that
I want to invite you to consider:
Should following Jesus
always be easy?
I have a story to
share with you.
You can probably
imagine that Germany in the 1930s was not an easy place to be. The Nazi party came to power in January of
1933 and gradually began changing how things were done. These changes included the church in Germany
– both the Protestant church and the Roman Catholic Church. Just as all other institutions in the country
fell under the power of Hitler and the Nazi party, those in charge thought that
the church should also come under the authority of the government.
I do have to say that
the Roman Catholic Church generally did better at resisting these changes –
after all, they considered the Pope to be the head of the church, so how could
Chancellor Hitler be the head of the church.
But generally the Protestant churches tended to accept the imposed
changes. On the surface, it seemed to be
a win-win situation. From the churches’
perspective, they would still be allowed to gather to worship – as long as they
preached only what the government told them that they could preach. And from the government perspective, they now
had a mouthpiece in the church to hold up their propaganda.
But as the months
passed, a group of theologians and pastors came to the realization that this
was not a good situation. In May of
1934, from across denominations – Lutheran, Reformed, and United – they
gathered in the town of Barmen, in western Germany near Dusseldorf and
Köln. After a very intensive couple of
days of meeting including some all-nighters, they signed the Barmen
Declaration.
This isn’t a very long
document. Two sides of a single
page. But it contains some very powerful
and dangerous words. It proclaimed that
the church existed only for God. It
proclaimed that there is no part of our individual lives or our communal life
as the church that doesn’t belong to God.
It proclaimed that the church could not be manipulated for any purpose
other than God’s mission. It proclaimed
that Jesus Christ is the one true head of the church and that no other person
or group could be the head of the church.
These were dangerous
words in 1930s Germany. Without naming
names or specifics, those who signed the Barmen Declaration were declaring that
they were going to stand firm against Hitler and the entire Nazi party.
They broke away from
their established denominations who were compromising in order to survive, and
formed the Confessing Church in Germany.
They founded a Pastor’s Emergency Fund to support pastors who lost their
positions either due to Jewish ancestry or because they had opposed the
government. And as you might imagine,
most of the people who signed the Barmen Declaration did not survive the war.
They had been faced
with a difficult decision – to compromise their beliefs, or to stay true to
what they believed, despite the risk.
Should following Jesus
always be easy?
One theologian in a
similar situation to those who signed the Barmen Declaration was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was just a little bit too
young to have been involved in the meeting in Barmen, but he was also a pastor
and theologian in 1930s Germany who resisted what Hitler was trying to do to
the church.
One of Bonhoeffer's
better-known books is The Cost of
Discipleship, and in this book he argues that being a disciple of Jesus
isn’t supposed to be easy. We have to be
willing to go where Christ calls us; and do what Christ calls us to do. God’s grace is freely given, but it comes at
a great cost – the death of God-in-Jesus on a cross. If we accept this grace without being willing
to be transformed into disciples, then we turn this costly grace into cheap
grace.[1]
And Bonhoeffer wasn’t
just writing empty words. The Cost of Discipleship was published
in 1937. In April 1943, Bonhoeffer was
arrested, and in April 1945 he was executed in Flossenbürg concentration camp,
just 2 weeks before that camp was liberated and a month before Nazi Germany
surrendered. The cost of Bonhoeffer's
discipleship was his life.
Should following Jesus
always be easy?
We’ve been reading
through Chapter 6 of John’s gospel over the past 5 weeks, and Jesus’ teachings
have been getting more and more difficult as we have continued. Remember that the chapter started with the
miracle of feeding 5000 hungry people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. This was the easy part of the message. The people liked this miracle. They liked it so much that the followed Jesus
across the Sea of Galilee. When they
caught up with Jesus, he accused them of being more interested in bread for
their bellies than in following Jesus who is the Bread of Life. It didn’t take long for the teaching to get
difficult.
From there, Jesus gets
more and more difficult to listen to. He
claimed that he didn’t just want to feed people’s bodies, that he wanted to
feed all of them and in exchange they were to follow him with body, mind, and
spirit.
And then we got to
last week’s reading where Jesus uses dramatic language of cannibalism to tell
people that you are what you eat. “Those
who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (John 6:56).
And in today’s
reading, we get the response of the crowd.
“This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” (John 6:60), and many
of his followers turned back and no longer went about with him (John 6:66).
Should following Jesus
always be easy?
I think that the
answer to this question has to be no.
Each one of us, individually and collectively as the church, is going to
face at some point in our lives a moment when it isn’t going to be easy to be a
follower of Jesus. Hopefully our moment
of decision won’t be as dramatic as it was for Bonhoeffer or for those who
gathered in Barmen in 1934. I don’t know
what big moments of decision we are going to face in our lifetimes. Some of my thoughts are that one these decision
points might be around climate change, and the things that all of us do every
day that contribute to the climate changes that are affecting so many people around
the world. Or maybe another decision
point might revolve around reconciliation with our Indigenous siblings here in
Canada. I don’t know – I can’t predict
the future.
But I do know that we
will face moments when choosing to do the right thing – choosing to be a
disciple or follower of Jesus is going to be difficult.
But the good news is that
it isn’t a once-and-forever decision. We
are always being given a chance to choose, and if we choose wrongly today, we
will have another opportunity to choose tomorrow. Remember those well-known words from Joshua
that we heard this morning – when Joshua addresses the people who have just
crossed the Jordan River into the land that God had promised to them and to
their ancestors after 40 years of wandering in the desert. Joshua demands of them – “Choose this
day whom you will serve.” And
tomorrow, choose this day whom you will serve.
And the next day, choose this day whom you will serve.
And may we, like
Peter, answer this call. “Lord, to whom
else can we go? You have the words of
eternal life” (John 6:68). And Jesus
will feed us again and again with the Bread of Life, until we become what we
eat.
Should following Jesus
always be easy?
No; but the good news
is that the God who calls us also feeds us with the Bread of Life to sustain us
for the journey; and God working in us transforms us more and more into the
Body of Christ so that we are able to do far more than we ever could do on our
own.
Thanks be to God for
the Bread of Life!
[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, trans. R. H. Fuller, with the assistance
of Irmgard Booth (London: SCM Press, 1959), 41-53.
The beginning of the Barmen Declaration (in translation)
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