Reading Mother Teresa--Discipleship

If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless. But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. Philippians 3:4–7

He’d assembled, up there at the front of the church, a museum of memorabilia, buttons and medals and trophies, honors tassels from high school grad, two diplomas and a suitably framed preaching license, a couple decades’ worth of accolades. This energetic young preacher, full of life and spirit, paraded us through his achievements with enough self-deprecation to make the trip humorous and memorable.

It was fetchingly accomplished, but the whole demonstration was rhetorical because once he’d reviewed his own life’s accomplishments – “best three-point shooter in junior high,” etc. – he bashed the whole business, saying what Paul is saying in Philippians, third chapter, that all such hoopla is meaningless, that whatsoever we might achieve in life means total zero in light of the eternity of God’s eternal love for us his own.

Memorably rhetorical, I’d put it. Memorable because it was really cute – a tongue-in-cheek recital of his own greatest hits, and rhetorical because it was a set up for the real punch line – “But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.”

“How many of us could say that?” he said, or words to that effect – that what we are, what we work for, what we want, our dreams and visions and desires – that all of that is less than zilch. How many of us would really give it all up for Christ?

He’s a young kid, full of energy, capable of breaking eardrums in his spirited enthusiasm. The church loves him and that’s wonderful.

But I think I’ve heard that sermon dozens of times before. What’s more, I don’t need a preacher to tell me that I care too much about what I do, about the very words I’m typing right now, the words you’re reading – their order, their precision, their beauty. I care a ton about what happens on this page, and I care a ton about other things as well – about my kids, my grandkids.

Our attachment to this world isn’t cheap or even transient, but I’m fully capable of asking myself, right now, whether these words are really worth my time, and – even more easily – whether the Green Bay Packers sweatshirt I just bought on e-bay (used!) is really something I needed or only something I wanted. The purpose of the sermon was to tell us to shape up our values, to align them with a confession of faith that places our love for the Lord above all else.

Here’s Mother Teresa on the purpose of the new order she was creating for the poor: “The missionary must die daily, if she wants to bring souls to God. She must be ready to pay the price He paid for souls, to walk in the way He walks in search of souls” (140).

Same chapter and verse. Same sermon.

But somehow, given her story, the gospel truth bleeds from the words and the ideas those words create. Somehow, given how she lived, that “same old, same old” has currency beyond anything I could imagine or inflict on my own.

Don’t get me wrong – that young preacher is wonderful, and there was nothing amiss in his sermon. But somehow, for me at least, reading those words from Mother Teresa creates a discourse that operates at a whole different level.

Honestly, I’m not indicting the preacher. He spoke the gospel.

But Mother Teresa really and truly lived it. She experienced death daily on the streets of Calcutta. She paid the price. She walked “in the way He walked in search of souls.”