A Sermon preached on the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity (Proper 18), September 7, 2025, at the Anglican Church of St Thomas the Apostle, Kefalas, Crete, Greece, a chaplaincy of the Diocese in Europe.

The readings were: Philemon 1-25, Psalm 1, and Luke 14:25-33

One of the longest-running programmes on US television is a game show called “The Price is Right.” Originally broadcast from 1957-1965, it started up again in 1972 with the host Bob Barker, and it continued with him until 2007, a remarkable thirty-five year run. Since then the comedian Drew Carey has been the host, and it is now entering its fifty-fourth season. The gist of the show is that contestants must guess the costs of particular items without going over the retail price. There are a variety of games within the show. I did not know this, but apparently it has been exported or imitated in some fifty-one countries, including versions on an English-language network in Canada (with host Howie Mandel) and French-speaking Canada, as well as the United Kingdom (with a variety of hosts, including the well-named Bruce Forsyth).

I never got into the show, and never understood the attraction, and as a kid glued to the television I preferred Bob Barker’s earlier show Truth or Consequences. Well, as the phrase goes, De gustibus non est disputandum – in matters of taste there is no arguing.

One price that the show never addressed, though, is the cost of discipleship. What does it cost to follow Jesus?

Cheap Grace and Costly Grace

The German Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) in 1937 published a book that has since become a classic, The Cost of Discipleship. In the first chapter he contrasts what he calls cheap grace with costly grace. It is an idea he first came across when attending an Afrrican-American church in Harlem, while at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Interpreting it for his German Lutheran audience he wrote:

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate . . [It is to hear the gospel preached as follows: ] “Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness.

Costly grace is the acceptance by a believer that with the gift of salvation, given in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, that one is transformed. Salvation is not something just imputed to the person and otherwise leaves them unchanged, but it should radically change the way in which a person behaves. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17,

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being!

Christian discipleship calls into question, then, the way of the world – politics, mores, values, behaviours – and puts them under the powerful light of Christ. 

For Bonhoeffer this was more than just a theological idea. He lived in the era of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Germany. Although he had the opportunity of living outside of the Third Reich, he chose to return to Germany and live in dissent from the Nazi regime. While Hitler tried to force all Protestant churches into one organisation under a German National Bishop, Bonhoeffer and others founded what they called the Confessing Church, which rejected government control, as well as many of the violent racist policies that had been decreed since 1933. Bonhoeffer taught at its underground seminary and built networks across the country. Ultimately Bonhoeffer became involved in the resistance, and sought to communicate with the Allies in 1943, mainly by meeting Bishop George Bell of the Church of England in Sweden. Apparently he was aware of various plots to assassinate Hitler, and while he struggled with the violence this required, he was not a pacifist. He was arrested in 1943 and judicially murdered  in April 1945, not long before the end of the war. Bonhoeffer knew that the price of discipleship was one’s life, one’s soul and body, and in his case he was willing to be literally put to death for following his Lord. 

The Cost of Obedience

The gospel reading from Luke puts the cost in strong terms:

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. . . . So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”

Is this to be taken literally? One commentator suggested that Hebrew and Aramaic may not have had the shades of meaning that English has that allow one to rank virtues, and so one has to use the extreme language or nothing. Perhaps. It may simply be hyperbolic language, deliberately overstating the case in order to make a point. Or, it may need to be taken literally. St Francis of Assisi was famously in great conflict with his father over his choice to live in poverty and literal obedience to the commandments of God. It was not that he hated his father, but his disobedience appeared that way. Likewise, he and the Franciscans gave up their belongings and lived by begging. Some ultra-Franciscans, known as Spirituals, were adamant about owning absolutely nothing. You may recall that in Umberto Eco’s book “The Name of the Rose” the ecclesiastics gathered in the library-monastery in order to debate whether Christ owned his own clothes.

Most of us have implicitly chosen not to take this commandment literally, but it does raise the question about our values. Do we own our possessions, or are we owned by them? To what extent is our consumer society warping our ability to live Christian lives? Is God more important than family, or do we somehow transform the values so that they considered equivalent? What cost are we willing to bear to follow Christ, as individuals and collectively?

The Cost of Freedom

It is not often that we read a whole book of the Bible in one go, but that is what we did this morning when Barbara read the Letter of Paul to Philemon. I do recall that at a Clergy Conference in the Diocese of Niagara my friend and Hebrew scholar Walter Deller had the attendees, on the first night, read the whole of the Book of Deuteronomy; I think it took them some two and a half hours, and some of the clergy were not happy! Well, fortunately, Philemon is only twenty-five verses long and Barbara’s reading was pretty normal in length. It may have been written on a single sheet of papyrus, the First Century equivalent of a postcard.

It is not immediately clear what is going on in the letter until one reads it several times. The letter is from Paul to Philemon. Both are Christians, and Paul evidently played a major role in Philemon’s becoming a follower of Jesus, for he writes of the recipient’s “owing me even your own self.” Philemon owned a slave named Onesimus whose name means “Useful”. Onesimus has run away from Philemon and woulnd up in the same place as Paul, whether by accident or design. Onesimus has now become a Christian, and while the slave has been useful to Paul in his imprisonment, probably bringing food and carrying out other tasks, he is now being sent back to Philemon. However, Paul urges him to accept Onesimus back not as a slave but as “more than a slave, a beloved brother” – implicitly telling Philemon to free him.

The freeing of slaves was fairly common in the ancient Roman Empire – slavery was not based on ethnic or racial lines, but on the vagaries of war – if you lost a war and were not killed, you were usually sold by the conquerors for profit; Julius Caesar made his fortune primarily by selling Gauls as slaves. Household slaves, like the type that Onesimus probably was, were more likely to be freed than those working in the fields, and freedmen automatically gained the citizenship of their owners, and were in a client-patron relationship with them.

Paul uses a variety of arguments to persuade Philemon to do his bidding. He asserts that he could command him to do it, but says he wants Philemon to do it voluntarily (this is like being “voluntold” to do something). He invites Philemon to treat Onesimus as he would treat Paul, and he points out his suffering as an old man and as a prisoner for Christ.

While we have no direct evidence of the outcome, Ignatius of Antioch (who died circa 108 CE) mentions an Onesimus who was an early bishop in Ephesus. Was it the same person?

In any case, the cost of discipleship for Philemon is clear – the cost of the slave Onesimus. The price for a healthy slave varied, but 2000 denarii is what one might have paid for a labourer in the early Empire; the translation of this sum into modern values is sheer speculation, but as a denarius is a day’s wage, 100,000 Euros might be an approximation. By any standard, this is a lot of money. How would you feel if your pastor wrote you to say that you need to spend 100,000€ in obedience to Christ?

The Personal Decision to Pay the Cost

While people might make suggestions to us about what we might do in obedience to Christ, the understanding today is that each of us needs to make a personal decision about what that is. We recognise that we may not necessarily get it right, but we trust that God has already forgiven us as we proceed in faith and get it wrong. Having been saved, we need to still work out our salvation in fear and trembling, and to pay the costs that that work demands.

For some of us it may simply be living in the world apparently normal lives, but sanctifying the relationships we have. As a young man Martin Luther thought that, like Francis of Assisi, he needed to join a religious community which enjoined celibacy, prayer, and poverty, in his case, the Augustinian Friars (the same order to which the current Pope, Leo XIV, belongs). In the midst of the Reformation, and after many trials and much progress, Luther turned towards married life in 1525 by marrying an ex-nun, Katharina von Bora, who bore him six children. His example not only inspired other parts of Europe to have clergy be allowed to marry (such as the Church of England), but also presented a model and argument for the holiness of family life that was so often deprecated by the religious orders.

How might we work out that salvation in fear and trembling? Here are a few suggestions.

• Make time for prayer. It can be simple, like the Lord’s Prayer three times a day. It can be contemplative prayer (meditation) in which one says a prayer phrase repeatedly to enter a state in which the soul listens. Perhaps we might say the Daily Offices of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. Perhaps we might follow the Ignatian practice of examining every evening the events of the day. The cost for any of these is the time and effort to make this a regular practice.
• Study. The cost might again be time, but also the cost of engaging in conversation with other Christians about scripture or theological issues. There may be a cost for materials, such as books, or residency at a workshop.
• Action. How do we act on our personal beliefs? This might involve the cost of making a donation to a charity or a group that advocates for particular causes, such as Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), A Rocha UK, or Amnesty International. We might get involved in their campaigns lobbying politicians. As people in Europe we are blessed with civil rights to do more than just vote, but to organise and act. How do we speak truth to power? How do we collectively, whether through government or non-governmental agencies, reach out and help our neighbours, especially those most marginal in our society?

In all of this you will see that I am not directive, although I probably could be! I believe, though, that the cost of discipleship will look different for each of us, just as it did for Bonhoeffer, and for Philemon and Paul. My hope and prayer is that in all of this we are truly transformed, and as individuals and collectively we become ever more like Jesus Christ, and that people will see our good works and give God glory.