July 8: 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Ez 2:2-5; Ps 123:1-2, 2, 3-4; 2 Cor 12:7-10; Mk 6:1-6

Cost of discipleship

The “Cost of Discipleship” is the title of a famous book written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young Lutheran pastor and theologian who lived during the Nazi era in Germany. A brilliant and winsome man, he had spent some time studying at Union Theological Seminary in New York. 

He was a staunch opponent of Hitler from the very beginning, convinced that Hitler and his Nazi ideology was opposed to the Gospel. Even though many of his friends urged him to live abroad to escape the wrath of the Nazis, Bonhoeffer believed it was his duty to remain in Germany and be part of the church there.  

He and some colleagues founded a clandestine seminary to prepare ministers of the Gospel courageous enough to withstand Hitler’s regime. Ultimately, Bonhoeffer was arrested and executed by hanging in April 1945, a short time before the allies liberated the Flossenburg concentration camp where he was imprisoned. 

Bonhoeffer was a genuine Christian martyr and his book “The Cost of Discipleship” reflected the dire circumstances in which he had to live and proclaim the Gospel. He warned his fellow Christians against being lured by what he called “cheap grace” — living a Christian life that simply conformed to the mores of the time.

Bonhoeffer’s heroic witness came to mind when I reviewed the readings for this Sunday. Each of the readings speak about the cost that sometimes must be paid when one is willing to speak the truth, to proclaim God’s word in circumstances when it is not comfortable to do so.  

In the first reading from Ezekiel, God warns the prophet that the people to whom he is being sent can be “hard of face and obstinate of heart.” Ezekiel is urged to be steadfast so that whether the people “heed or resist — for they are a rebellious house — they shall know that a prophet has been among them.”

The Psalm assigned for today also strikes this note. The psalmist asks for God’s mercy “for we are more than sated with contempt; with the mockery of the arrogant, with the contempt of the proud.” 

More than once in his letters, the apostle Paul lamented the rejection and suffering he endured when preaching the Gospel. In today’s reading from Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians he tells his readers that he had been given a “thorn in the flesh” to keep him from being arrogant (probably referring to some visible physical disability he endured) and goes on to refer to “weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and constraints” he has experienced “for the sake of Christ.”

All these readings amplify today’s selection from Mark’s Gospel that tells of Jesus’ rude reception in his hometown of Nazareth. When Jesus preaches in the synagogue there, the congregation is critical: “Where did this man get all this? … Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? Are not his sisters here with us?” In other words, who does he think he is? 

So distressed was Jesus by this reception, that “he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them.”

The mood of the Scripture readings this Sunday make us sit up straight and think about our own experience. Are we willing to give witness to Gospel values, even if it might cause us to be viewed as annoying, or worse? 

I think of all that is swirling through our political and social climate these days: vilifying strangers rather than being hospitable to them; crude language used to characterize the views of those with whom we disagree; casual acceptance of pornography; indifference to falsehoods and deception in our political life and workplace. We are not called as Christians to be obnoxious or to adopt a “holier-than-thou” demeanor.  

But all of us recognize moments when we choose to conform to get along rather than live and speak the truth of the Gospel. This is when we realize the “cost of discipleship.”