Mysticism and the Cost of Discipleship

Good morning!  You know, I have been preaching up here for awhile now, and I’ve realized in my preaching that in order to help bring the gospel home to people I’ve had to reveal many different facets of myself.  Sometimes Keven the Teacher has had to appear behind this pulpit, taking you deep within the history and the language of the Scriptures to help you see their insights.  Sometimes there is Keven the News Reporter, telling you of current events and local concerns.  Still other times there is Keven the family man, wryly telling bad jokes and recounting wild stories as the situation warrants.  Today, however, I must bring out someone different.  In my honest estimation, our gospel text for today is by far the toughest lesson a Christian must learn.  It is not tough in the sense our lesson is difficult to understand, the language and context are clear enough.  It is also not tough because it is hard to relate to, indeed it strikes to the innermost core of the Christian life, moreso than any news report or statistic ever could.  It is tough because it makes a very clear demand of us; it imposes a dire reality so incredible and so fearsome that the sinful human mind often has but one recourse: to find any excuse to minimize that demand or simply ignore it entirely.  It is for that reason I bring out a Keven you may not have seen much before.  Today I am not the History Teacher or the Campfire Storyteller.  Today, I am Keven the Mystic.

                Keven the Mystic doesn’t really hide himself.  He’s really always been there.  Keven the Mystic is a gentleman you see, he doesn’t like to impose or cause a stir.  Indeed, in our own very secular world Keven the Mystic tends to upset people.  God has always been close to me, akin to an ever-present watchfulness, and my service to Him has led me on many an unexpected and uncomfortable adventure.  As many before me in the mystical tradition, I admit I have had premonitions of the future, dreams that would tell me of events and experiences days before they would happen.  I also see the responses to my prayers in the mundane workings of the world around me, and believe it or not, I have also performed an exorcism or two.  These things don’t make me special or an authority in and of themselves; they are merely a part of who I am and how I see the world.  It would be many years ago now, I was in the middle of my seminary career and working as a nighttime security guard for a medical device plant in nearby Plymouth.  It was a boring job, but the people were nice enough.  The other security guard on shift was a Muslim, and his family was from Somalia.  We would talk about the Koran a lot because that’s obviously what interested him, and I of course took the opportunity not only to learn about his faith but also share mine.  Every day, however, he would try to convert me away from Christianity and what was funny about it was that he used the exact same arguments and evangelistic techniques the Baptists used to try to convert me away from Lutheranism at Bethel.  I can’t tell you how hard it was for me not to smile.

                As time went on, however, the building we guarded began to have…well, certain things happen.   At first the cleaners would come out of areas with a very haunted expressions, and eventually they would demand to be transferred or they would just quit.  Then the murmurings and rumors would begin to circulate until at last one of the workers at the factory asked me in a very hushed tone, “Keven…is this building…I mean…have you seen…”  “Is the building haunted?” I replied, finishing the question they were too afraid to even ask.  I dismissed it, telling them that quite honestly while we had gotten strange reports, neither I nor my partner had experienced anything out of the ordinary.  They smiled that awkward, unsure little smile you get when you want to be assured that what the person is saying is true, but somewhere down deep you still aren’t convinced.  Well, then my partner and I did have an experience.  He quit that very night in fact and I never saw him again.  Now, for those of us who have had mystic experiences, one of the first things you have to contend with is that there is never going to be enough proof to make people believe you.  Rampant fear, distortion of the senses, predisposition toward belief, all these things you can throw at the situation and walk away thinking the people having those experiences are just crazy.  But the fact is I graduated college just two courses shy of double-majoring in psychology and Legal Studies.  I am aware of what clinical hallucinations look like, and none of us in that building fit the bill.  I graduated law school with my Juris Doctorate, I know what it takes to be declared legally insane and I know that people who have bought supposed haunted houses have sued the previous owner for damages and have won.  I also have graduated seminary, and am very much a believer when our ancestors tell us through our Scriptures that the Physical and Spiritual are not as separated as we like to think they are.

                Now, I am not here to regale you with ghost stories nor am I here to convince you of bogeymen.  As a theologian and a minister it is clear that such things are at best lesser matters over which the faithful can and should disagree.  I told you that story, that experience, to prime you for another one.  And if that story made your chest tighten, if you found yourself holding your breath and your heart racing just a tiny bit, believe me when I say to you “You haven’t seen anything, yet.”

                While that story that I just told was certainly one mystical experience of mine, it certainly was not the first.  My first mystical experience was in my first year of law school, of all places.  I’d done a lot to get there.  I got good grades in college.  My family was successful, the family business was successful.  My father and his brothers took a small dirt-moving company in rural Texas to a business that built roads and bridges, that laid foundations for great buildings in several of the southern states.  My father worked hard, my family was happy, and we wanted for nothing.  Indeed, my graduation present had been a brand new 1997 Ford F-150 extended cab.  Everything was looking fabulous and I was on track to be one of the youngest attorneys on record. 

                It was a crisp fall evening, and I had just gotten out of one of our Intervarsity club meetings at Hamline.  I was a good little Lutheran, probably a little too close to becoming a 5 point Calvinist at the time, but that is neither here nor there.  The autumn leaves were falling off the trees, caught by a quick breeze and carried off to who knows where.  The street was strangely dark that night, the lamps only illuminating so much despite the moon being full.  My mind was afire there on that sidewalk, and I excitedly explored new ideas and thoughts brought on by that Intervarsity experience.  I don’t really remember what I was thinking that night, but I do remember when God interrupted it.  For whatever reason, whatever my train of thought was, it shifted, and this idea suddenly came into my head.  “If you could live a bad life so another could have a good one, would you?”  I shook my head as a man suddenly coming out of dream.  It was an odd idea, and I tried to dismiss it as I kept walking on that lonely street.  The idea wouldn’t leave, though.  “You have had a good life up to now.  You have money, family, and a bright career ahead of you.  If it were possible, would you trade all that so someone else could have a good life instead of you.”  And then I stopped.  And when I stopped I had actual words enter my mind, not loud but definitely not from me.  They said, “Keven, would you really?”  I thought about it deeply for a minute or two, and then, in my heart of hearts, I answered, “Yes.  Yes, I would.”

                To say that the rest of that year was…horrible, would be an understatement.  Indeed, what happened would continue on for the next several.  Almost immediately after that moment my parent’s marriage fell apart.  My Father found a mistress, the business failed and was sued into bankruptcy.  We lost the house and I lost my mother to pain pills.  My brother…moved away.  All we knew living up here was that Kent had dropped out of flight mechanics school and someone else was suddenly living in his home.  Under no circumstances would he tell us where my brother was, and neither was he very forthcoming about who he was or really even why he was there.  The police were sent more than once, but with absolutely no success.  We really thought he was dead.  Law School, of course, was nothing less than an absolute hell.  The teachers there lie to you about how to get good grades, and with all the family issues going on, I ended up graduating late.  Even after graduation it would take me two years to be able to even take the bar exam.  I passed it but the Minnesota Bar had grave concerns about my family’s debts.  I got my rejection letter from the Bar a week after I had been fired from my security job – over Christmas.

                I was unemployed for six months.  To make sure my father wasn’t homeless, my wife and I took him in, but I had no idea how manipulative that man was, and he damned near almost cost me my marriage.  One night, I tried to sleep but couldn’t.  Alone with my thoughts like that fall evening so many years ago, my mind poured over every horror I’d been through, every trauma.  Unemployed, my own Father trying to ruin my family, and my son Brendan … we couldn’t even afford diapers for him.  All these became a waking nightmare there in the dead of that night, and finally, remembering that conversation I had with God on that lonely little sidewalk near Hamline, I cried up to heaven, “Please God, no more!”  and then I threw my arms up, like an abused step-child expecting to be hit.  I’m ashamed of it now, but that’s what I did.

                And I wasn’t hit.  Indeed, just the opposite.  A few days later, one of my resumes finally came through.  I got a well paying job on the spot.  It wasn’t going to last forever, but it got us on our feet.  We paid debts, kicked my father out, and moved someplace far more conducive to raising a family.  There was still years and years of hard work ahead of us, but we got there, and the nightmare was over.  It was finally over.

                When I began this sermon, I told you this text was by far the most difficult lesson for a Christian to learn, so difficult I see even other preachers try to avoid talking about it.  I see pastors with 6 figure incomes, new cars, and nice houses; Christian attorneys, people who by now who are partners in law firms, and they both say them say thing.  “Jesus didn’t really mean all your possessions” “He’s not that serious about this discipleship stuff.”  and when they do I have to try to hold back a smile.  I wish God had just taken my money.  Believe me now when I tell you, Jesus is very serious about this discipleship stuff.   When Jesus is telling his audience that they must hate their families, that they must abandon all that they possess and take up their own personal cross, he is not saying Christianity is a one hour a week commitment.  He makes no bones about the cost of following him and he is quite clear about the pricetag: it will cost you everything.  In your service to him you will be broken and remade, you will have what you hold dearest ripped away from you and you will give it up gladly.  You know you are owed nothing.   

                And as a Christian, you will give it up.  You will learn to be ever more mindful about what you value more than God and you will take steps to remove it.  You will wake up every day, painfully aware of everything that will go wrong and that you will remain powerless to affect any of it.  It is not because God is angry with us or that God hates us, or that God wants this life for us as his children.  Rather we come to the mature knowledge that in a world where sex trafficking and slavery have officially reached all time highs, where children are homeless and starving in rich industrialized countries, and where murder, corruption and rape run rampant, we come to solemn and sober realization that God has higher priorities than making sure I have an enjoyable day, an enjoyable week, or even an enjoyable life.  And because this is the world we find ourselves in, a world so completely devoid of even the most passing resemblance of compassion and justice, as a disciple of Jesus you become all too aware that if God takes something from you it is not for no reason.  You will not only give up what you claim, you will do so gladly, for after living in such a world of pain how can you not give the Maker what He needs to fix it? 

                The reality is we as Christians do give everything to God knowing full well God gives most of it back, and though the day will be far beyond our ability to handle, God will sustain us, and somehow we will make it through to see tomorrow.  But make no mistake, Jesus is not asking for our family or our things, he is asking for our Gethsemane.  He is asking in what circumstances will we be shaken, in what circumstances will we be abandoned and betrayed, so overcome with fear that we too will be found sweating blood.  And in that moment, Jesus asks us do we love God enough to trust Him, no matter the outcome?

                And so, in conclusion, as your pastor, I must ask, “How serious are you about this Christianity thing?”  Because the Church does not fail because of lack of churchgoers, it fails fail due to lack of Christians.  Amen and Amen.