Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran theologian, educator, author and pastor who was martyred during the Nazi regime because of his faith and total commitment to Christ, once wrote, "Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance…..Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in a field…and the pearl of great price for which one will gladly go and sell all that they have…Costly grace is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him."

As we continue to celebrate Easter we have models of people who lived lives of full commitment – people who practiced costly grace. The lives of Paul and Barnabas as well as the lives of many who lived in those early years of Christianity were examples of people who daily chose to be faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles as well as the Reading from the Book of Revelation takes place in a tumultuous time. During the reign of the Emperor Nero, hostilities against believers in Jesus escalated. In July 64 C.E. a third of the city was destroyed by fire. The Roman historian Tacitus recorded in his Annals that in order to escape suspicion of having started the fires to further his rebuilding projects, Nero found scapegoats among a people "hated for their crimes, the mob called Christians." Peter and Paul were martyred during Nero’s reign of terror.

In addition Paul insisted on preaching first to the Jewish community. And many of them became followers of Jesus. They didn’t necessarily leave their Jewish tradition – but followed Him. But when this threatened the status quo – when this New Way seemed to undermine the power that were – the leaders of the Jewish community began to attempt to get rid of Paul and Barnabas and any others who would preach this way.

And so Paul proclaims that the way is not exclusive but rather is for all. He quotes from Isaiah that this way would be a light for all the nations and a means of salvation to the ends of earth. In other words it would be for all who would accept it, a means to eternal life. And of course this was turning the tables and altering the course – and it made Paul and Barnabas and the rest not too popular with the guardians of the ways things were.

So we see that Paul and Barnabas and any who would be faithful to the Gospel – to the Shepherd – had a difficult road. But they believed in that costly grace. They could not be lukewarm. They had to embrace the message of Jesus totally – and that would come with a price. Because their ears were tuned to the message of the Shepherd they heard differently and walked in a unique way. They stood out – they challenged those about them.

Interestingly enough this weekend we can commemorate another person who walked differently and embraced what he believed wholly. May 6 marks the day that Henry David Thoreau, the naturalist and social critic died in 1862.

Although Thoreau subscribed to no organized religion, there was in him something of the Taoist sage and the desert father. He like Paul and Barnabas and others who lived fully felt an intense need to dispense with socially defined values and instead to experience life "first hand." It was this desire that led him in 1845 to his famous retreat to Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts. There he sought to escape a world in which "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." He said: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Walden Pond for Thoreau, as the desert was for the ascetics desert dwellers was not an escape but a place to embrace the opportunity for inner discovery. "There are continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him." This sojourn of two years at Walden was his opportunity to listen to the voice calling him so that he might live fully and authentically. He was listening to his own Shepherd.

One of the results of this was his realization that he couldn’t abide with slavery in his nation. And even though Massachusetts was "free state" he said he found it intolerable to live in a country in which slavery was permitted.

"How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also."

His fight against slavery landed him in jail for a short time. But the real result was his essay "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience." In it he said that "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."

In fact Thoreau had little impact on his time. But he doggedly went forward living what he believed. He practiced "costly grace" But his thought inspired Leo Tolstoy and from Tolstoy Mahatma Gandhi was inspired. And eventually Gandhi inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. And so Thoreau’s listening to what was calling him, his faithfulness to his belief came back to make a great effect on so many.

And Paul and Barnabas’ faithfulness fostered grace and goodness in others.

And we listen today to them and pray that we too might hear the voice of the Shepherd calling us so that as we participate in Easter Joy we might live fully the Gospel we believe in. Indeed this full living will cost – but the payback is salvation.