Reflection on the Word for the Sunday of September 4, 2022
TO BE OR NOT TO BE A DISCIPLE – Luke 14:26-27,33
"14:26 "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. 14:27 Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.14:33 So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."
Sometimes we think, that it is up to our decision to become a disciple of Jesus. However, there was a theologian, who questioned that in the middle of the 16th century, called John Calvin, a Frenchman. He was a cleric and a lawyer hailing from Paris, who had to flee to Swiss, and after a while he became a powerful leader in the Protestant city of Geneva, and laid the foundation of Calvinism, as it spread throughout Europe and America.
Regarding discipleship or more accurately regarding salvation, Calvin had a quite narrow-hearted opinion, namely, that from the wholeness of the future generations, but before the Creation of the world, God had already preselected some people, ordered and destined to be saved to gain salvation by the irresistible grace of God.
Whoever was preselected, it did not matter what they wanted or even did later, because they were predestined for salvation. However, who were not preselected as chosen ones, howsoever they struggled, they could not gain salvation, according to Calvin. It practically means that God had also chosen people for eternal condemnation. This controversial doctrine of Calvin is called the double predestination.
Of course that this view had been challenged through centuries. Like, the Methodists hold that the salvation in Christ is offered by God to every single person on Earth, and it is our choice whether we accept or reject the touch of the Holy Spirit, which ceaselessly calls us to repent and to turn to God. As God’s divine spark resides also in our souls so the Creator made it sure that we must have free will.
The main commandment does not say that we have to serve God as slaves, but it says, that ‘ Love … God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ’ Any enforcement in love would destroy love itself, thus we must most certainly have free will.
Becoming a disciple, it is a call from God of course, as it is written in the letter of the Apostle James, that “ Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. ” Thusly we have to meet God halfway, as we have to make our own choice to become a disciple of Jesus.
Discipleship has a narrow meaning, a wider meaning and a general meaning.
The narrow meaning meant first the inner circle of Jesus, which was Peter and John and James. Secondly, it meant all the 12 Apostles plus the 500 hundred disciples around the 12 within the congregation of Jerusalem.
The wider meaning meant all the Gentile converts before the era of the Romanization, all, who believed that in the name of Jesus, God offers eternal life. The broadest and generalized meaning of the discipleship is the church membership, which is on paper over 2 billion, recently.
Nonetheless, it is absolutely not only astonishing, but nowadays it is seemingly mostly incomprehensible, especially regarding the very definition of discipleship, that Jesus told the audience that "So therefore whoever of you who doesn't renounce all his possessions, he can't be my disciple."
He required from his disciples that they had to give up all their possessions. This is also diamond clear from his conversation with the infamous young man as Jesus said to him in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 19, that "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have, and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."
But when the young man heard the saying, he went away sad, for he was one who had great possessions."
This request is incomprehensible in the modernity within the realm of the raging greed all around us, and it was an incomprehensible request within the medieval but emerging Protestantism, as well, where one of the Founding Documents of the Protestant Religious Revolution, the so called II. Helvetian Confession, written by Henrich Bullinger in 1562, says that "We do not disapprove of riches or rich men, if they be godly and use their riches well.”
It was for sure, that the ancient Apostolic order in the Jerusalem congregation understandably seemed a fantasy-utopia one and half millenium later in Swiss and Germany.
Nonetheless, Heinrich Bullinger was missing a point, namely that Jesus clearly rejects the owners of riches and the rich men by saying that " Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
Today, just as since time immemorial, we deem this ordinance of Jesus as an impossible requirement. If we gave up all our possessions, we could go homeless, dying of a heat-wave or of our arctic cold or hunger, or we could become a burden of the society and family.
Thus, for many today, and actually the sentiment is proportional to the size of the possessions, this requirement seems to be not only impossible, but even senseless.
However, before accusing Jesus with senselessness, we should know better, because whatever he said, it must makes sense, even if we have to oppose Heinrich Bullinger in order to side with Jesus, trusting Jesus, that he did not make an error in judgment by conveying an impossible commandment, needlessly charging innocent-ish rich people with a hard time regarding Heaven.
So then how the advise of Jesus makes sense? Actually, it makes sense all the way, though it was quite lost through long centuries.
That is for sure that throwing away or rather giving all our possessions to the needy, leaving ourselves without a safety net, is not only senseless, but not even advisable. However, Jesus had not ever said that, that you should throw away all your possessions without replacing it with a safety net. Quite the opposite.
It should be known to all that the group of the Jewish followers of Jesus had a nice but official nickname, The Poor. So, when he advised the infamous young man that you should sell everything, giving it to the poor and then follow me, it meant that you should sell everything, give it to the community of the Poor, to the community of the disciples of Jesus, and by this you may join the Community of the disciples.
It is a biblical fact, that the Community of the Poor had their possessions in common, and there was not needy among them, because they shared everything. Thus the person, who sold everything and gave up all his or her possessions, did not become homeless and beggar on the spot, but became a part of the common safety net, where there was nobody homeless among them, neither destitute or poverty stricken, exactly because they shared everything.
And actually this is exactly what the New Testament says about the Jerusalem Congregation, as it is clearly written in the Book of the Apostles, that “All who believed were together, and had all things common. They sold their possessions and goods, and distributed them to all, according as anyone had need."
Christianity, as it looks like, long, long time ago abandoned a major, and as it seems, an indispensable part of its mission, which is to change this world for the better according to the Lord’s Prayer.
"Your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven."
Maybe it is not too late to make it systematically and globally sure, that there shall be no poor among us, and by that we choose God’s blessings on Earth and the eternal life by the Grace of the Lord, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
