Becoming Disciples (Mark 8:27-38, Proper 19B, September 16, 2012)

Becoming Disciples

Mark 8:27-38
Proper 19B
September 16, 2012

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

Our denomination’s leaders are worried.  They’ve been worried for some time about the health of the United Methodist Church.  Ever since the days of John Wesley we’ve kept track of everything we can count: attendance, membership, baptisms, deaths, class attendance in Sunday School, number of Sunday School staff, numbers transferred in and out, members of UMW and on and on.  From time to time we add a new category.  We count and we report.  We used to report every year.  Now we’re going to report every week and bishops and district superintendents will be watching.  They’ll be looking at these numbers to see if we’re a “vital” congregation.  They’ll be looking at these numbers to see if I’m an effective pastor.

Our denomination’s leaders are worried.  They’re worried because the United Methodist Church has been shrinking in numbers since the early sixties.  That’s as far as total numbers of members is concerned.  Actually, the high-water mark of the Methodist Church membership as a percentage of the total population of the United States was reached in about 1880.  We’ve been shrinking ever since.

Our denomination’s leaders are worried because they can see where this is headed and they don’t like it.  The anxiety of our leaders can be seen in the steady stream of turn-around strategies coming out of our quadrennial General Conferences.  This anxiety fosters a nostalgic longing for the movement founded by the mythic figures of a bygone heroic age.  This anxiety trickles down.  It looks for scapegoats. 

The pressure will be on, in ways that it hasn’t been on before, to show an increase in membership.  Each year a certain number of members die, move away, transfer to other churches, or become inactive.  One measure of our vitality will be our ability to bring in more members than we lose.  There will be other measures, of course, but that will be one of them.

I’ll be the first to admit that I like numbers that grow.  I’m an American, after all, and we Americans believe deep in our collective souls that more is better than less, bigger is better than smaller.  I like looking out at our sanctuary on a Sunday morning and seeing the pews filled.  The hymns sound better, for one thing, but it just looks and feels better, too.  We had a hundred forty-five people in worship last week.  We had over fifty kids in Sunday School.  And this past Wednesday we had fifteen students in Confirmation class.  These are good things, all other things being equal.

But all other things are not equal. 

When we take our very American anxiety to the gospels we discover that Jesus shows a stunning lack of concern for numbers and bottom lines.  Take the story in Mark’s gospel that we just heard.

This story marks the turning point of Mark.  Up to this point Jesus had done some preaching.  He had healed some people.  He had drawn some crowds.  He had had a run-in or two with the religious authorities.  He gathered a small group of men and women around him.  He zigzagged his way back and forth across Galilee between the mostly Jewish side of the lake and the mostly gentile side of the lake.

Now, however, he and his disciples are just outside of Caesarea-Philippi, way up in the north.  From here they will continually move to the south, toward Jerusalem and the showdown with the powers that be in Roman Palestine.

For the first time he tells his disciples what this showdown will mean: Jesus will die.  He will be rejected by the authorities.  He will be murdered.  And he will rise again on the third day.

This was a shock to his followers, obviously, since Peter immediately takes him aside to talk him out of it.  Jesus makes it clear, however, that, however rational and sensible a strategy it may be to avoid this death, God’s path lies through this death, not around it.

And then Jesus turned to the crowd and told them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  Here are the terms under which they (and we) may become Jesus’ disciples:  First, they are to deny themselves.  That word, translated “deny,” is only used in one other place in Mark and that is when Peter denies Jesus.  Peter claims to have no idea who Jesus is or to have any relationship with him.  So, to deny ourselves is to give up all sense of ownership of ourselves.  Second, they are to take up their cross.  In the shadow of the Roman city Caesarea-Philippi this can only mean that being Jesus’ followers will make them enemies of the state.  Third, they are to follow Jesus.  He will deny himself.  He will take up his cross.  Those who follow Jesus will do the same.  It’s harsh and hard, but he asks nothing of us that he does not ask of himself.

The vital and growing congregation currently gathered around him will surely feel the effects of the hard line that he is taking.  And it does.  In Mark his congregation will dwindle and shrink until, at the moment of Jesus’ greatest faithfulness, his congregation will have no members.  All will be scattered.  This will not look good on Jesus’ dashboard. 

It’s not what we expect or even understand.  Jesus seems totally unconcerned with the number of members in his movement.  Instead, his whole focus is on walking the path that God has set before him and in calling others to walk that path with him.

In the August newsletter I shared with you that a group of leaders in our congregation had asked themselves the question, “What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus?”  I’ve been wrestling with that question.  I eventually came up with a page-long meditation.  One thing became very clear to me as I worked on this exercise: If I define being a disciple of Jesus the way he does, then the gap between the life to which Jesus has called me and the life that I actually live is enormous. 

But I have decided that this is okay.  Not that there is a gap, but that Jesus holds up a definition of discipleship that is beyond me.  The standard that Jesus holds up is the one toward which I commit myself to live.  There are resting places but there is no home between where I am and discipleship as Jesus describes it.  I’d rather have it that way than to adjust the goal to where I am. 

Last week we started a new Confirmation class.  As I said, we had fifteen students.  The class is both seventh and eighth graders, but that is still big for our church, at least for recent years.  In the normal course of things in April fifteen young people will join our congregation as professing members. 

But I will tell you what I told them on Wednesday.  I’m not much more interested in their joining the church than Jesus was in signing up more members for his movement.  I’m not really interested in membership, the dashboard notwithstanding.  I am, however, vitally interested in discipleship.  I am vitally interested in their becoming followers of Jesus.  I know this is no easy thing, but I have decided not to protect them from the summons that Jesus has issued.  Jesus asks of them far more than they have asked of themselves.  We have promised to accompany them on this baptismal journey of theirs.  If we are to keep our promises, we, too, will have to hear Jesus ask far more of us than we have asked of ourselves.  We will have to hear Jesus call us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him.

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