During the course of my long career as a pastor I have heard it said from parishioners here and in other parishes I have served, as a kind of mantra, and usually at times when the leadership is trying to put together this or that committee, that the church is a voluntary organization. I have never subscribed to that theory. Now, you might think that in these tougher, leaner times when the church is struggling to maintain itself against threats from without and against monumental pressures from within, when grit and determination are required to a degree that perhaps has not been necessary for generations, I would be tempted finally to give in and admit that the church is made up of dedicated volunteers; but I am still not persuaded. In fact, the current dark time I think we are going through has convinced me all the more that the church is decidedly not a mere association of like-minded people volunteering their time and energy to keep what some regard as a sinking ship afloat. To my mind it is exactly these tougher times that has put the volunteer theory to the test, and it is here especially that we find it lacking and wanting; for it is precisely the volunteers who are bailing out, because they have nothing to hold them except their own will. In this situation I often think of that famous line from Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship: “When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die.” That is obviously the kind of thing one does not do voluntarily.

“As [Jesus and his disciples] were going along the road,” so we hear in today’s gospel, “someone said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’” Bonhoeffer comments: “The first disciple offers to follow Jesus without waiting to be called. Jesus damps his ardor by warning him that he does not know what he is doing. In fact he is quite incapable of knowing. That is the meaning of Jesus’ answer—he shows the would-be disciple what life with him involves. We hear the words of One who is on his way to the cross….No man can choose such a life for himself. No man can call himself to such a destiny, says Jesus…The gulf between a voluntary offer to follow and genuine discipleship is clear” [The Cost of Discipleship].

We see something very much like this in the story of the prophet Elijah calling his successor prophet Elisha. I believe that the parallels to that OT story that we find in our gospel story are not accidental. After Elijah receives a command from the Lord to anoint Elisha his successor, Elijah almost seems to stumble upon Elisha who is in his field plowing with 12 oxen. “Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you,” Elisha says as he drops the reigns to run after Elijah. But when Elijah rebuffs Elisha’s request to kiss his parents, Elisha goes back to the plow and livestock and immediately slaughters the oxen so that he can set out with Elijah, abandoning on the spot his former life and even refusing, as Elijah indicated he should, to say his goodbyes.

There is a distinct echo of that story of Elijah and Elisha in Jesus’ admonition to another of his would-be followers, who wanting to follow Jesus, pleaded with him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” “Let the dead bury their own dead,” Jesus answers him abruptly; “but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” We hear still another echo of that OT story in a third person’s offer to follow Jesus, but only, the man says like Elisha, after he says farewell to the folks back home. Jesus chides this would-be follower too in words that evoke Elisha’s boiling the oxen with the wood from the plow, thus destroying everything about his past so that he could follow Elijah unconditionally: “No one,” Jesus tells the man, “who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Bonhoeffer remarks about this particular offer to follow Jesus: “The third would-be disciple,” Bonhoeffer writes, “like the first, thinks that following Christ means that he must make the offer on his own initiative….[This third would-be disciple] is bold enough to stipulate his own terms….Discipleship for him is a possibility which can only be realized when certain conditions have been fulfilled. This is to reduce discipleship to the level of human understanding. First you must do this and then you must do that. There is a right time for everything. The disciple places himself at the Master’s disposal, but at the same time retains the right to dictate his own terms. For then discipleship is no longer discipleship, but a program of our own to be arranged to suit ourselves, and to be judged in accordance with the standards of a rational ethic. The trouble with this third would-be disciple is that at the very moment he expresses his willingness to follow, he ceases to want to follow at all. By making his offer on his own terms, he alters the whole position, for discipleship can tolerate no conditions which might come between Jesus and our obedience to him.”

Bonhoeffer then makes one more crucial comment, as a kind of summary now directed at his readers: “If we would follow Jesus,” Bonhoeffer wrote, “we must take certain definite steps. The first step, which follows the call, cuts the disciple off from his previous existence. The call to follow at once produces a new situation. To stay in the old situation makes discipleship impossible.”

The call to follow Jesus confronts one with a new situation that once the confrontation is engaged, cannot be avoided; for the call precipitates a new situation, a disruption of business as usual, and thus creates a certain understandable discomfort. And so we prefer to regard ourselves as volunteers, because volunteers don’t have to forsake their past nor take on more than they are comfortable handling. They are not looking for their world to be turned upside down, nor do they generally want to deal with too much change and confrontation. Volunteers assume they have a right to set their own terms and conditions, or at least to negotiate them. They want to be free to keep at least one foot planted in what is familiar and comfortable.

But Christ calls us to take the leap of faith into a life and ministry that can be fraught with dangers, uncertainties and risks, to a new life from which there is no turning back. Discipleship means devotion to a new Master who promises that in him all will be made new. Such a life is hard for us to accept, because we crave safety and security. And we want to be free to come and go, watch from the sidelines, or bail out if necessary. We can take on new ventures, but not at the expense of our associations and connections, or of our old habits and familiar haunts.

“When Christ calls a man,” Bonhoeffer said, “he bids him come and die.” To follow Jesus we must leave everything behind. This does not mean that we reject our fathers and our mothers—certainly not! We are not to let anything hinder us from living our new life in Christ. We are not being asked to turn away from our parents—the 4th commandment still holds. Rather, we are invited to live into the future with Christ, who frees us from our past, a past out of which he calls us and to which we have died, a past that is no longer able to hold us or determine who we are or tell us whose ultimately we shall be.

-Amen-