Ed and Joanne are a couple who were both raised in the church but now have nothing to do with institutional religion. They've boiled their religious belief down to one essential: "Not to get clobbered by life." Years of religious education never taught either of them how to really cope with life. They said it only made them more neurotic. "There isn't a church in all of America I want to go to," said Joanne. So over the last 10 years they have begun to build their own religious philosophy, salvaging bits of the Christian tradition they liked and chucking the rest. The first to go were an angry, vengeful God and Hell. "That's just something they say to scare you," Ed said. They kept Jesus, "because Jesus is big on love."

From the local bookstore, in a bulging section called “ Spirituality," they discovered Ashland's own Neale Donald Walsch, whose book, "Conversations With God," has become a runaway bestseller. Worship, for Ed and Joanne, now consists of listening to tapes of Walsch having his conversation with God, who is played by Ed Asner. (1)

Ed and Joanne are your neighbors. They are your sons and daughters. This movement toward an eclectic, private spirituality is transforming religious faith and practice all over the world, and it's neither all good, nor all bad. It just happens to be the way it is these days. The reason I bring it up this morning is threefold.  First, we’re receiving a wonderful group of new members into our church family; secondly, our Gospel lesson is about the call to discipleship and, thirdly, immediately after worship we’re going to be voting on how we build this church. Both what we believe and how we practice what we believe has profound social, theological and even political implications. If discipleship implies community and responsibility, which I believe it does, and if so many have obviously felt called to follow a more private, non-institutional brand of spirituality, then I'm interested in counting the cost.

Traditionalists worried that the sixties might kill off God. It hasn't happened. In 1966 Time Magazine's cover asked the question: "Is God Dead?" More than 30 years later, 95% of Americans say they believe in God, more than any other Western country. But many view spirituality as an individual, private matter with few ties to a congregation or community.

Publishers call this phenomenon "private spirituality." "This should be called the ME-lennium," quipped one critic. "People are not building community, they're building individual comfort zones." "We've trivialized God," he says. "Most popular books on spirituality assume God is the butler who serves you for one reason - to give you a happy life. We've turned God into divine Prozac."

Contrast this with the ministry of Methodism's founding father, John Wesley, whose "social Gospel" set the stage for a religious revival of individual and corporate responsibility. Contrast it with the message of Martin Luther King, Jr. who believed strongly in the power of love to transform both individual lives and human society. Finally, contrast the message of divine Prozac with the message of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. While teaching in an underground seminary during Hitler's bloody reign of terror he wrote a famous book entitled The Cost of Discipleship. In it he made a distinction between "cheap grace" and "costly grace."

Bonhoeffer believed that there's a subtle danger in the Christian faith. The good news is that we are loved unconditionally. It's a wonderful gift, able to transform and heal the wounded soul. We are acceptable to God just as we are. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ is also about redeeming love, which refuses to leave us just as we are! The unconditional love of God is an empowering love that challenges us to change and to grow, to become someone new and better than we were before we were called to follow. This is nothing less than a call to responsibility, a call to commitment and to community. Cheap grace, Bonhoeffer said, is attending church simply to claim that warm and fuzzy unconditional love that demands nothing in return. Costly grace is opening ourselves to the transforming love of Christ, which calls us to a discipleship of individual responsibility and social commitment.

I am not ready to give up on the church as an agent of personal and social transformation. As United Methodists in this community we have a niche, a natural constituency. There are people in this town who need what we have to offer, which is the love of Christ with a social conscience and a sense of personal and political responsibility. There are also people in this community who have gifts that we can put to good use, people who are looking for a way that they can make a difference. We can be that way! We can help point people in the direction of a purpose which is bigger than themselves, a reason for being which challenges them to be more than they are. The cross and flame of United Methodism stands for more than a warm heart, it stands for the fire of commitment and a belief that Christian discipleship implies both personal and corporate responsibility.

The message of this morning's Gospel lesson, the message I want to share with both our new and established United Methodists, the message of our building program is that we, as individuals and as a growing church, are being called to discipleship. We have a ministry in this community that can offer hope and change lives. It's a high calling, and it comes at the cost of personal commitment. 

May God bless and empower us as disciples of Jesus Christ, called to be in the ministry of this church and community. Amen.

 (1) "Beyond 2000: Many Shape Unique Religions At Home," Washington Post, 1/17/2000