Memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne, Parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Reading today’s passage from Jeremiah, I was reminded of another prophet (in my opinion he was a prophet). A modern day prophet living in the same setting that crafted saints like Maximillian Kolbe and John Paul the Great. This man was a Lutheran pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I was reminded of him because Jeremiah’s passage and the opening chapter of Bonhoeffer’s book, The Cost of Discipleship, are like long lost brothers separated by several thousand years.
Jeremiah writes this: “Are you to steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal, go after strange gods that you know not, and yet come to stand before me in this house which bears my name, and say: ‘We are safe; we can commit all these abominations again?’” Anyone who has read The Cost of Discipleship will be reminded of Bonhoeffer’s compelling discourse on ‘cheap grace.’ For those unfamiliar here are two portions of what Bonhoeffer wrote. With cheap grace “the world finds a cheap covering for its sin; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap Grace therefore amounts to … a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God” (46). And, “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate” (47).
This dividing line between cheap grace and its opposite, which he calls costly grace, is not somewhere out there. It is not the divide between Catholic and Protestant. It is not the divide between Liberal and Conservative. It is not the divide between others and me. The divide between cheap grace and costly grace is where the rubber hits the road. It is in my response to the Gospel and the Church’s response to her mission. The Church’s mission above all else is to preach the gospel and make disciples and that is where the divide between cheap and costly grace enters my life and yours.
Day in and day out, you and I have to choose between “the grace that we bestow ourselves” (47) or “the treasure hidden in the field … the pearl of great price … the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. … Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son … and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life” (47-48).
One of my son’s namesakes, St. Ignatius of Antioch, once wrote, “It is not that I want merely to be called a Christian, but to actually be one.” I believe he would ask us “Which one do you want to be?”
I think Jeremiah is asking, “Do you really want to be in covenant with God?”
And Bonhoeffer is asking us “Do you want the disillusion of cheap grace or the discipline of costly grace?”
I think it all boils down to, “Do want to be a disciple?”
- Spencer Hargadon