The Cost of Discipleship
Stephen Terry
Commentary for the March 29, 2014
Sabbath School Lesson
“In your struggle against sin, you
have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” Hebrews 12:4, NIV
Several popular
preachers today proclaim that God wants us to be happy and prosperous and if we
only claim that promise, it will come true in our lives. For those who have
found this world to be a bleak, dark place that brings them heartache, anguish
and loss, a message that promises “beauty for ashes”[i]
can be very appealing. While it may be true that God wants only the best for
his children, does that really mean prosperity and never-ending material and
physical blessings in this life? Perhaps to answer that question we need only
look at the life of Jesus.
Our Savior
was born a simple carpenter’s Son. Small families of only one or two children
were not the norm in His day. While this could mean many hands to share the
labor, it also meant many mouths to feed and bodies to clothe. Perhaps Jesus
was familiar with the phrase “Too much month left at the end of the money.” In
any event, during His itinerant ministry, He did not even have a place to lay
his head.[ii]
When He died on the cross, He apparently had only the garments on His back
which were taken from Him and divided by his executioners.[iii]
If God were to overrule the evils of this world on behalf of anyone, we might
expect Him to do so for Jesus, but that was not the case.
But what
about His followers? Maybe Jesus was the only One who needed to suffer. Did He
somewhere promise that their lives would be prosperous and filled with
blessings? To the contrary, He called them to experience the pain of the cross
as He had done.[iv]
Not only suffering but strife was apparently to be their lot. Even family and
friends would turn against them.[v]
If that were not enough, they were warned that even some in the church would
seek to destroy them, believing that they were doing God’s will by doing so.[vi]
What would be the cause of all of this?
Perhaps the
suffering would arise because they identified with the suffering of the
down-trodden. Today, too many Christians consider their only obligation for
those who have been oppressed and denied equity and justice is to say “I will
pray for you.” But does that get us off the hook for responsibility to our
fellow man? The Epistle of James says, “No.” We read there “Suppose a brother
or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go
in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs,
what good is it?” (James 2:15-16, NIV) It appears that biblically we are to do
more than simply pray.
Some may
acknowledge this, but dispute how it is to be done. Some will vehemently deny
any role to government in redistributing blessings to benefit the
disadvantaged. They feel it should be entirely voluntary. However, they
overlook that had the “voluntary” redistribution to help those in need been
adequate, there would have been no poor for the government to be concerned
about.[vii]
To simply leave the poor to suffer in the interests of keeping everything
voluntary is perhaps a greater sin in the eyes of God than an over-reaching
government.
This brings
us to an interesting question. How much intervention on behalf of the needy is
adequate? Are we required to simply meet their needs through redistribution of
resources, or do we have an obligation to make war upon the causes of that need
as well? Of course it is not right to piously ignore the needs of others as
James has said, but is it also facile to meet the immediate needs of those who
are suffering without dealing with the factors that placed them there in the
first place?
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran martyr of World War II felt that it was not enough to
“bandage the victims under the wheel, but jam the spoke in the wheel itself.”[viii]
He eventually took this to its ultimate expression when he actively opposed
Nazism and participated in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, apparently
deeming him to be aVerführer, or seducer of the people. For this, he paid
with his life. Certainly this would be “resisting to the point of shedding your
blood,” but is this what Jesus meant by taking up the cross?
If we look to Jesus’ example, we can find many instances of Him meeting
the needs of the suffering around Him. However, we find no instance of His
advocating insurrection to correct social injustice. This is not for want of
injustice in his day. Herod’s murder of the innocents in Bethlehem[ix] or
the Galileans murdered by Pilate while offering sacrifices[x] would
probably qualify. But in the first instance the biblical narrative only reports
the event and does not call for a response, and in the second, Jesus does not
even demonstrate indignity that such a thing should happen. Strangely, while He
asserts that these things do not happen because of the degree of sinfulness of
the victims, He nonetheless tells the people that if they do not repent, they
also will perish.[xi]
Noticeably absent is any call for a revolutionary response.
Perhaps then the call to a social gospel is not a call to Liberation
Theology. This may be hard to take for those who believe that the only answer
to social injustice is political insurrection. An example might be the American
Civil War and the issue of slavery. While many helped runaway slaves and
exhorted others about its evils, the Underground Railroad that assisted the
slaves in fleeing their servitude was more on the level of brother helping
brother (or sister as the case may be). Some felt that this was not enough and
pushed for a more confrontational approach.
The argument that armed activism was necessary to end the abominable
practice of slavery was advanced by John Brown at Harper’s Ferry Arsenal.[xii]
Though he paid for his beliefs with his life, his “resisting unto blood” in
this instance was perhaps overwrought as God was apparently already marching
forward to deal with the issue. In the end, instead of the abolitionists being
the insurrectionists, the slave-holders became such with the opening salvos at
Fort Sumter. Eventually this produced the suitable circumstances for the
Emancipation Proclamation as Abraham Lincoln sought to deprive the rebellious
South of yet another resource that might enable them to go on fighting.[xiii]
The proclamation did not end the problems for the Africans who had
unwillingly come to our shores or their descendants as economic servitude often
replace physical. But over time, a momentum for change built up that eventually
brought about the Civil Rights legislation signed by President Lyndon Johnson.
While there were those who, like John Brown, felt that they should seize
justice with guns, it was the pacifism of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that won
hearts and created an overwhelming flood of support for change.[xiv] In
return for his efforts, he was jailed and in the end, assassinated. Perhaps,
his martyrdom comes close to demonstrating the meaning of Hebrews 12:4 lived
out in someone’s life in modern times. He certainly passively resisted and his
blood was shed for that cause.
This may be hard for us to understand half a century later. We live in
an era when it is maybe more difficult to overcome the inertia of simply
working each day, Monday through Friday, to pay for those things that will
allow us to enjoy the evenings and weekends without too much thought for those
around us. After all we have our late model cars, spacious homes, and big
screen televisions, and internet. We do not even have to go out into the weather
if we don’t want to except to go to work. Why should we jeopardize that with
concerns about our obligations to make sure that there is social justice for
others?
If we give some cast-off clothing we no longer consider stylish to the
thrift store and a few cans of beans that we don’t like to the local food
drives, isn’t that enough to meet any obligation we might have? After all,
Isaiah says that we are to clothe the naked and feed the hungry,[xv] so
won’t that check off a few boxes on our good deeds tally? Oh, yes, it also says
to provide shelter for the homeless, too, doesn’t it? Well isn’t there the
Mission for that? Wait, it says to bring them to MY house? But I use the NIV
and it doesn’t say that. God will judge me by that version, won’t He? I have no
problem with taking up a cross, but invite the homeless to my house? Come on!
Next thing you know, He will want me to befriend out and out criminals.[xvi]
