“21^st Century Discipleship:

Reports from the Field”

(Romans 12:1-2)

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds…”

You’ve heard me say plenty of times how seriously I feel our Christian faith is in conflict with the broader culture in which we live.  As a pastor, I don’t live in a bubble.  My knowledge of our culture is obviously drawn from school communities my kids have been a part of, from daily life in our own neighborhood, from the news media, the advertising world, and so on.  Still, it’s high time to hear from the rest of you, who don’t spend most of the week in a church job like me. I’ve titled today’s sermon on 21^st century discipleship “Reports from the Field” so we can talk about what’s it like to be out there living the regular life of a grad student, high school student, business manager, professor, hospital employee, soccer mom, baseball dad, retiree … and to come to worship each week and run into gospel texts like the ones we’ve been reading. I’m curious to know if you feel the rub – do you sense that the way the gospel calls us to live is different than the way we’d all live if we just went along with the rest of society?

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds…”

Food for thought: My mom once shared with me that she was deeply upset about the direction our country was headed; she just couldn’t stand the thought of sitting back and letting it all happen.  She felt a need to join a subversive organization of some kind to take a public stand, to make it clear that her priorities, values, dreams were dramatically different from those of the broader culture. It wasn’t long before she realized with great relief that she already belonged to a subversive organization – her local Presbyterian Church, which like our own congregation is working to feed the hungry and promote alternatives to war and take an active stand for social justice.

Not everyone sees the church that way.  If you played word association with the average person on the street, or even with the average church  member, I’m not sure “subversive” is the first word that would pop into their minds when you said the word “church,” but it’s worth considering whether it’s an apt description.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed…”

At any rate, today we’re going to try group proclamation of the Word.  You’ll see there on the last couple pages of your bulletin a few questions and a few quotations to help get the juices flowing.

First the questions:

How would you define Christian discipleship?

Is it fairly easy to live as a Christian disciple between Sundays?  Where are the challenges?

In what ways does living a Christian life allow you to slide under the radar, if you will, among your neighbors and colleagues?  Where does it have you standing out?  Where should it?

Do your friends outside of church know what it means to you to be follower of Jesus?  How have you talked about that, or demonstrated that, with them?

As you think for just a moment about how you might respond when I begin to pass around the mike, I’ll draw your attention to a few quotations for your consideration as well – these too are printed in the bulletin, so you can glance back at them later on:

“One man I know describes it this way.  ‘On Sunday morning,’ he says, ‘I walk into a world that is the way God meant it to be.  People are considerate of one another.  Strangers are welcomed.  We pray for justice and peace.  Our sins are forgiven.  We all face in one direction, and we worship the same God.  When it’s over, I get in my car to drive home feeling so full of love it’s unbelievable, but by the time I’ve gone twenty minutes down the road it has already begun to wear off.  By Monday morning it’s all gone and I’ve got another whole week to wait until Sunday rolls around again.’  It’s not a new problem he describes.  From the very beginning, being a Christian has meant being a sojourner in a strange land.”

Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life, pp.25-34

“The church is a colony, an island of one culture in the middle of another.  In baptism our citizenship is transferred from one dominion to another, and we become, in whatever culture we find ourselves, resident aliens… to be resident but alien is a formula for loneliness that few of us can sustain… Christians can survive only by supporting one another through the countless small acts through which we tell one another we are not alone, that God is with us.”

Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, Resident Aliens, pp. 12-13

“Christians are not naturally born… Christians are intentionally made by an adventuresome church.”

Willimon and Hauerwas, Resident Aliens, p. 19

“In our culture of ‘seeker sensitivity’ and radical inclusivity, the great temptation is to compromise the cost of discipleship in order to draw a larger crowd.  With the most sincere hearts, we do not want to see anyone walk away from Jesus because of the discomfort of his cross, so we clip the claws on the Lion a little.”

Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary

Radical, p. 104

“Have you any idea how hard it is to be a sophomore and a Christian at the same time?”

Willimon and Hauerwas, quoting one of their university students, Resident Aliens, p. 154

[several minutes of reactions, responses from congregation…]

Thank you for joining the conversation about Discipleship – and for doing so not just here in worship but at the Men’s Breakfast and at the Wednesday small group and in our 9:15 class on Sunday mornings too.

It’s a conversation I hope will continue, because it’s so important to be reminded (often) that we are in this thing together.

May God honor our efforts to become ever more faithful disciples, empowering us to live as we are called to live - not conformed to this world, but transformed and renewed by the Spirit.

And all God’s preachers said: AMEN.