Post Script

Sometimes not everything gets said in a sermon.  Even though I did some flying around with my landing gear down, I still have some things that I need to get through with regard to Christian discipleship before I start thinking about Naaman the Syrian.  I found myself re-writing yesterday's sermon in my head as I went along. My wife noticed that there was a rather marked difference between the eight o'clock service and the ten o'clock service, and indeed there was.  In fact, if I had preached a third time it might have been different still.
The major thing that has crept up on me, that wasn't even in the original sermon plan except for the fact that I lifted the title from him, is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran Pastor who resisted the Nazis in various ways during WWII and who wrote a book called The Cost of Discipleship.  The book has nothing to do with fighting Hitler, but it has everything to do with the struggle to follow Jesus in a rather difficult and complicated world.
The text for yesterday was Luke 9: 51-62, where Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem and encounters people who will not receive him or follow him.  I also used Galatians 5 about the fruits of the spirit and notably: crucifying the parts of our lives that are not in line with those fruits.  Discipleship, especially once Jesus has set his face to go to Jerusalem, includes a cross of some sort or another.  What I've been thinking about, as a sort of post script to the sermon, is the way that the cross kind of creeps up on us as disciples.  The people who were following Jesus didn't see it coming.  What I know of Bonhoeffer's life tells me that, even as he wrote a book called The Cost of Discipleship, he certainly did not see his own death at the hands of the Nazis as an inevitable result of the actions that he felt compelled to undertake in his own struggle to follow Christ in some very difficult times.
As I mentioned in the sermon, Luke 9 is not the warm-fuzzy, group hug Jesus, Galatians is one of Paul's more bombastic letters, Bonhoeffer is no milquetoast either.  One of the things about Bonhoeffer's resistance to the Nazis that stands out is his involvement in a plan to assassinate Hitler.  While I doubt he was going to be the trigger man, assassination plots generally aren't associated with following Jesus, but when you're talking about Adolf Hitler, the rules get bent.
Then again, I wonder if Jesus would have taken that route.  I sort of doubt it.
That's what makes Christian discipleship so darn difficult, because the one we're trying to follow is so different from what we would do or think if left to our own devices.  Most of us, if we knew a cross was coming, would try very hard to avoid it, rather than walking towards it.  We might, like Bonhoeffer, have the grace to face the cross once the Nazis got a hold of them and they had no choice.  But would we, like Christ, set our face to go to Jerusalem, knowing that the cross was waiting.
What I notice though, is that the road to the cross is incremental, even for Christ.  Before he deals with one of his inner circle betraying him, he deals with the reality that not everyone is going to accept him into their lives, not everyone he calls is going to follow, not everyone who seems to "get it" really does get it.  Before he prays "let this cup pass from me," but still stays and obeys there are a thousand little choices that he must make to choose God's way, rather than what he wants.
This process of becoming a disciple is called sanctification, which means being made holy.  It is entirely different from justification, which simplistically means "being saved."  The two things are different.  You can "know Jesus," but not follow him.  You can hear him and resonate with his message about the kingdom of heaven, but the call is to follow him.  Follow him, walk the road that he walked.  This is not negating the grace of God, or saying that your salvation depends on what you do.  Jesus demonstrated by who he called and the way he called them that it's not about being qualified or "suitable" it's about answering the call away from yourself and your limitations.  He calls people that might mess up.  He calls people who might utterly fail.  He calls people who might not have the stomach for the fight, but he calls.
If we just stop with being saved, we're missing a whole lot.  Salvation means we are forgiven, sanctification means using our new-found grace and freedom to do something good and beautiful, it sometimes means facing up to a dramatic cross, other times it just means crucifying all the petty, small parts of ourselves that keep us from being people who reflect the glory of the kingdom of heaven.
The church, and the world, need more people who are serious about following Jesus, not just getting their tickets to heaven punched and then doing whatever they want, but I suppose it's a hard sell.  That's why I keep thinking about it on Monday, because I don't think that Sunday got it all worked out, even in the preacher's own head.