As a child, I am told by my mother and aunt, that I was a penny pincher.  Knowing myself now, I’m not sure that I believe them, but I guess I will take their word for it.  They say I would pinch and penny until it bled which is probably due to the fact that usually a penny or two was all I had.  I grew up in a lower middle class family with little extra money to spare.  The times when I did have my few extra pennies or those special two dollar bills my great-grandmother was fond of giving me, I would hold on to that money for dear life.  I would go to the store with my mother and look down the toy aisle or look down the candy but instead of buying the first thing I saw or even the forth or fifth thing I saw, I would hold on to that little pocket of money in the hope that at the next store, I would find something truly worthy of my savings.  As a poor young kid with very little extra money, I was very aware of the cost of any item I might like to buy.  It had to be worth spending so much. According to our passage in Luke, our discipleship is very costly. In fact, after hearing a passage from the bible where the cost of discipleship is hating your family, bearing the cross, and renouncing all that you might have, some of you might want to head for the door or go back and see if you missed some fine print when you signed up to join the church.  But is the cost really that high?

If we look to history the answer is yes and probably even higher.  From the time of the early church, through the Reformation, and even to this day around the world in places like China and Afghanistan the cost of being a disciple of Jesus Christ is death.  You would be hard pressed to find an early disciple who was not crucified, stoned to death, or fed to lions. Many of our Reformation fathers were burned at the stake. Missionaries today around the world, whose only crime is trying to spread the gospel, are dying for following Christ command “to make disciples and baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Christian martyrs in every time and age have thought that it is not to high a price to give ones life to be a follower of Jesus Christ. 

But that being said the question still remains is the cost really that high for us?  The answer is probably not. Martyrdom for being a disciple of Jesus Christ is a price that is and has always been a price paid by a relative few.  But that does not let the rest of us off the hook.  There still is all that pesky talk about hating our families, bearing the cross, and renouncing all that we may have.  That cost does remain for the rest of us and we struggle with even its reduced burden.  Our society works in an almost antithetical way to Jesus’ parable and all these stories of great Christian disciples.  We hate the cost.  We like cheap.  We like discounts and rebates, coupons to try to get a particular item for less than the cost, but paying the full cost is against our sensibilities.  We want the freebie or the handout.  Or the easy way.  Why pay full cost when we can go down the road to the discount center or Walmart and get it for less?  My fear is that this discount way of life has snuck into our faith life so much that even the lowest cost of discipleship is too high. And maybe that is what Jesus is trying to warn his disciples against in this parable.  The kind of discount faith and discipleship that says coming to church on Christmas and Easter is enough.  The discount faith that says once I answer that altar call Jesus and I are cool. The kind of discount faith that does not know enough to expect more from the church.  You have heard the expression you get what you paid for, well the same is true with your faith life. 

I place the blame squarely on us in the church.  Somehow we moved from discipleship costing our very lives, hating our families, bearing our cross, to not expecting anything.  Come to Sunday School when you want.  Come to worship when its convenient.  At the point, where we started to treat the church and Sunday worship as a inconvenience is about the point where it started to be worth a lot less than the cost.  Two stories of business.  First story: Once upon a time, when a bottle of Pepsi or Coke sold for a nickel, the Pepsi executives got the brilliant idea to double the size of the Pepsi bottle.  There thinking was that the consumer would want to get twice as much for their money.  Instead Pepsi got the reputation as that cheap, not very good soda.  Coke continue to soar.  Second story: Once upon a time, a cup of coffee cost less than a dollar usually less than fifty cents.  The founders of Starbucks thought that they could sell coffee for four dollars a cup if the consumer thought the coffee was worth it.  Millions of cappuccinos and thousands of Starbucks stores later they are doing just that.  The point is that if the consumer believes in the product, they are willing to pay the cost.  Too often today the value of the church, the value of the life spent following Jesus Christ is lost.  The society hears the bad press about scandal after scandal. They do not hear about the transformation or the grace or the forgiveness of sin or the coming Kingdom of God and because of that they believe that the church is not worthwhile.  They believe that the church and discipleship is not worth the cost.  You see the early disciples, the Reformation fathers, those Korean missionaries that died in Afghanistan they all believed that the church is worth it and that the church is meaningful and relevant today.

          What makes the church relevant today?  What would make somebody want to join the church?  What makes the church worth the cost of discipleship?  Gone are the days when the doors of this church could be swung open and people would gravitate to it.  What is it that this church and Jesus Christ offer that is worthy to have people follow?  What is worth the cost? Throughout Jesus’ ministry, he worked for transformation in this world and that is worth the cost.  Jesus came into our world and radically change the status quo and that is worth the cost. Whether it was taking fishermen and tax collectors and turning them into minister or healing sick and blind and that is worth the cost.  Jesus came to lift up, make whole, reconfigure, forgive, heal, and so much more and that is worth the cost.  He came to save the world so that we can both live into that salvation now and enjoy it forever and that is worth the cost.  It is here in this church that fruits of that salvation and transformation are made most manifest, the fellowship that we have with one another here, in world a so divide and polarized.  The grace that we can show one another as forgiven people in a world torn apart by sin and violence.  The night and day transformations that can happen when the Holy Spirit truly moves and works in our lives. And the continued transformation that happen as we grow spiritually with one another.  All of that, all of that is worth the cost.  Never forget that the important part of this cost of discipleship is not what is lost or given up.  It is the grace that is gained by our continued and sacrificial following of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.