What Do You Seek?

“What do you seek?” This is often the first question put to those thinking to enter the monastic life. The answer is often a generic one: life with Christ, God’s grace, or, perhaps, a life of service with and to others. Benedictine communities want a more considered answer to that question. In its chapter on “The Procedure for Receiving Members,” the Rule of Benedict advises, “Do not grant newcomers to the monastic life easy entry.” If newcomers persist in knocking at the door, says the rule, after four or five days they may be allowed to stay in the guest quarters for a few days. After that, they may stay in the novice house with other newcomers where they are patiently mentored by a senior member of the community. The novices are to be “clearly told all the hardships and difficulties that will lead to God.” Over the next several months, they are to thoroughly study the rule of Benedict. When they are ready to be received into the community they must promise in writing to abide by the rule, so that they are “well aware that … from this day they are no longer free to leave the monastery, nor to shake from their neck the yoke of the rule which, in the course of so prolonged a period of reflection, they were free either to reject or to accept.”

What do you seek? In today’s reading, we’re part of a large crowd travelling with Jesus as he makes his way to Jerusalem. What are we there for? Are we just traipsing after Jesus, cheering him on, or do we seek something deeper? Do we really want to hear what Jesus has to tell us?

Jesus has upped the ante! Last week at that Sabbath dinner party we heard Jesus remind us that we are to walk humbly with God, show kindness to those around us, and work for justice, especially for economic justice. Not unlike his sixth-century descendants, Jesus now flings a deeper challenge at us. “The patriarchal family is not the primary focus of your loyalty,” Jesus tells his would-be followers. “If you are one of my followers, you are part of a new family, made up of all those who have committed themselves to my way. And my way inevitably leads to the Cross, to that way of state execution that you know only too well. Consider well, count the cost, and make your plans carefully. If you want to follow me, be prepared to throw everything you’ve got into the pot.”

The message is clear: discipleship costs. In fact, it will cost us everything. Let’s unpack these words a little. This is the only time that the word “cost” appears in the entire New Testament. “Cost” is what we give up to get, preserve, make, or accomplish something. Cost may involve some sacrifice. Cost certainly involves effort and resources.

And discipleship? Discipleship is a process. Teihard de Chardin talks about the “slow work of God.” Discipleship is a transformative process in which we slowly, painfully, patiently, and painstakingly, become holier, become more and more like Jesus, become more and more the servants God expects us to be. Discipleship takes time. We will make false starts, and we will make mistakes, but we will, by the grace of God, grow, inch by inch. Discipleship involves letting go of all those attachments – attachments to luxury, toys, comforts, possessions, habits, activities, opinions, even overwork – whatever gets in the way of our focus on Jesus. At the heart of discipleship is transformation into people fully, intentionally, and whole-heartedly committed to Jesus’ way of life. In this transformation, God willing, we enter into a more intimate relationship with God, so that we cease being shallow and lackadaisical and become mature people of faith. Jesus fully warns us that growth in discipleship is a difficult process and that following him should change our entire lives. “If you cannot hear this call,” a pastor of a tall-steeple church told his affluent congregation, “then you ought to renounce your baptism.”

What do you seek? Do you really want to follow Jesus? Can you allow yourselves to be transformed by him? Many before us have sought that transformation and have ended up paying for it with their lives. When Luke wrote his gospel, the Romans were already persecuting followers of Jesus. Christians, including several prominent bishops, were martyred in the first three centuries of the church. Fifteenth-century Czech reformer Jan Hus and, in our own church, sixteenth-century Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer were among many Reformers whose steadfast commitment to what they believed was Jesus’ call cost them their lives. Other names from our own times come to mind. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about “the cost of discipleship” from a Nazi prison shortly before being hanged. Archbishop Oscar Romero, who sought economic justice for the poor in El Salvador, was gunned down in 1980 while saying Mass. Sr. Dorothy Stang was shot to death while ministering to the poor in a Brazilian rainforest. Martin Luther King lost his life pursuing his Biblically-grounded dream of a just, color-blind society. Others have borne the cost of loss of blood family. Pandita Ramabai, a nineteenth-century Hindu Brahmin, lost all ties to her caste when she became a Christian, even as she found an entirely new family working among the poor and disenfranchised in western India. And others, like Mother Teresa, have struggled with loneliness and desolation, even as they strove to follow Jesus into the poorest corners of the world. All understood the cost of faithfully following Jesus, and all willingly accepted that cost in return for the transformation wrought in them by God.

What do you seek? God willing, none of us is called to witness to our faith with our lives. But do we really want to follow Jesus, or do we just want to traipse behind, enjoying the ceremonial and occasionally cheering him on? Be assured, the Christian life is not for the faint-hearted! If we truly want to be numbered among Jesus’ disciples, there is a cost. At the very least, Jesus calls us to look at our lifestyle, to do some honest soul searching, to ask ourselves whether our lifestyle truly reflects our commitment to Christ. As the old quip says, “If you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

What is primary in our lives? Is it our commitment to Christ? Or do we let the demands of our secular lives overwhelm any time or energy we might give to God? How are we using our resources? We are not expected to become beggars, or to so impoverish ourselves that we are dependent on others’ charity. But are returning to God a portion of our treasure? I invite you to ponder your support of the church. Historically, 10% of one’s income was deemed an appropriate return to God. Where are you? If you are currently giving 1% of your income, can you give 2%? Can you give more? What about your time and talents? What return to God are you making of them? Are you growing in your relationship with God? If not, why not? What do you need to help you grow? What in your life should change so that you can spend more time with God? Is your sensitivity to the needs of others, especially to the needs of the poor, increasing? If not, what are some ways of immersing yourselves in the realities of their lives?

What do you seek? In her insightful commentary on the procedure for receiving members in the Rule of Benedict, Joan Chittister, herself a Benedictine, reminds us that, “The spiritual life is not a set of exercises appended to our ordinary routine. It is a complete reordering of our values and our priorities and our lives. Spirituality is not just a matter of joining the closest religious community or parish committee or faith-sharing group. Spirituality is that depth of soul that changes our lives and focuses our efforts and leads us to see the world differently than we ever did before.” The transformation that God offers us is “the process of a lifetime…. [I]t is not a spiritual quick fix…. It is the work of a lifetime that takes a lifetime to leaven us until, imperceptibly, we find ourselves changed into what we sought.”

What do you seek? Do you seek to be a faithful follower of Jesus? Know the cost of declaring yourself his disciple: ultimately it will be your whole life.

“In a little while, we will sing,

I can hear my Savior calling,
I can hear my Savior calling,
I can hear my Savior calling,
“Take thy cross and follow, follow Me.”
Where He leads me I will follow,
Where He leads me I will follow,
Where He leads me I will follow;
I’ll go with Him, with Him, all the way.”

I’ll go with him all the way. God grant that it may be so.