The Weight of Glory

I was recently co-leading a Bible study for teen workers at Morning Star Bible Camp. It was a great opportunity to stop and think about what’s really important in the Christian life. We decided to focus on discipleship – which, of course, is a pretty broad topic. One of the discussions we had was around counting the cost of being a disciple. Luke 14:25-35 (NIV) puts it pretty bluntly:

25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. 27 And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

28 “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? 29 For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, 30 saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’

31 “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33 In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

34 “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? 35 It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.

“Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

Clearly, we’re to carefully consider whether we wish to call ourselves a disciple of Jesus. Being a disciple does not come without cost – indeed, Jesus uses a powerful metaphor to describe what being a disciple is like: “whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple”. Perhaps, far-removed as we are (at least in Canada) from capital punishment, and particularly by such abominable means, this metaphor has lost some of its impact. But there’s no doubt that the people standing around Jesus on that road would have understood with perfect clarity the weight of Jesus’ words.

My students will tell you that I’m one for the “negative” bits, and perhaps it’s harder for me to consider the positive than the negative. So, it’s easy for me to consider “counting the cost” of discipleship. But, as my co-leader in the Bible study pointed out, “counting the cost” leaves you with a completely unbalanced balance-sheet. When one sits down to build a tower (or, in her example, to renovate and “flip” a house), you don’t only count what it will cost, but you count what it will be worth in the end. Elsewhere, Jesus puts it like this (Matthew 13:44-46, NIV):

44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. 45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. 46 When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.

These men realized that the kingdom of heaven was worth more than everything they had. That’s why they were happy to go out and sell everything – they recognized it to be the best investment they could make.

It somehow doesn’t seem very “Christian” to think about rewards and benefits when thinking about discipleship. It seems much more pious to think about cost. And yet, there it is – the promise of staggering reward. C.S. Lewis, in a sermon entitled The Weight of Glory, deals with this sense that it’s somehow improper to consider the wonderful rewards that God has in store for us. This is a sermon that is well-worth reading in it’s entirety, but the introduction goes something like this:

If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.