The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost: Year C (Proper 18, BCP)
Saint David’s Church, West Seneca
9 September 2007
The Opening Day of the New Church School Year
Though we have arrived at the new year, we are, at the same time, on a journey that, inevitably, takes us to crossroads and points of decision, some of which seem to have no clear and certain right choices. No easy choices, No choices guaranteed to bear the fruit of satisfying results. Someone, somewhere, said, “life is on-the-job training”. It is true: We cannot rehearse this year, and get it right next. In some sense, what we choose at each moment is an irrevocable step along the road. And we are accountable for our actions; each choice we make shapes, bit by bit, the spiritual self that moves ever closer to God, or does not. Given that the only thing we can take with us from this life to the next is our relationship with God, there is surely urgency that is the other side of that feeling of safety.
The evangelist Luke tells us Jesus is on the fateful road to Jerusalem, teaching and healing as he goes. We have been hearing the story of that journey in the Gospel readings appointed through these summer weeks. We know from the scriptural accounts of Jesus’ ministry that some of those who were attracted by his proclamation of the kingdom in his person and in his message, grew to understand he was God’s anointed one. When Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” (Luke 9.18b), “They answered, ‘John the Baptist; but others, Elijah; and still others, that one of the ancient prophets has arisen’. He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered, ‘The Messiah of God.’” (Luke 9.19-20). Then Jesus told them what it meant to be Messiah: “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Luke 9.21-22). And he told them what it meant to be his followers: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross daily, and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9.23-24). This is the cost of discipleship. The Apostles Peter and Paul, who were martyred in Rome in the mid-first century, understood their love of Christ outweighed every other concern or obligation, including their very earthly lives.
Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9.51). We know the story of what happened there, which events we relive each year in the solemn days of Holy Week, and it seems, from his own predictions of his Passion, Jesus knew what awaited him, but he “set his face” to go to Jerusalem, nonetheless, to complete his mission. Perhaps he sounds harsh and unsympathetic and unyielding when he responds to well-meaning people he meets along the way. Someone said to him “’I will follow you, Lord; but first let me say farewell to those at my home.’ Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’” (Luke 9.61-62). The Lord Jesus, who sees into our hearts, knows our need for safety and security. He knows our responsibility to those who are dear to us, and he says, essentially, it’s easier to say the words than to put them into action, or as we say these days, easier to talk the talk than to walk the walk.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus has more hard words for us. “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” (Luke 14.26). Jesus is uncompromising; following him permits of no competing loyalties. Now, I want to point out that, when Jesus says “hate”, he is using a Semitic exaggeration, a figure of speech we no longer use. In his time, people expressed preference by pairing two things and saying, “I love A, and I hate B.” (Gee! I just knew algebra would come in handy someday!). The sense is, “I love A more than I love B”. It is not about emotions, not about affection and hostility, but about priorities. The earliest readers of Luke’s Gospel were members of a Church persecuted by the Roman Empire. Spreading the good news that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, the chosen one of God, and that the kingdom of God was very near was regarded as sedition. A decision to become a Christian might well have meant turning away from one’s family. At that time in history, if one person in a household were found to be a Christian, the entire household might be arrested and subjected to the cruelties inflicted on those who were perceived to be challenging the Emperor’s authority by their loyalty to a higher power, the Lord Jesus, the Son of God.
Paul challenged his friend Philemon on the matter of priorities, when he appealed to him on behalf of the runaway slave Onesimus, who had become a Christian, and helper to Paul. Paul wrote from prison, in some unspecified location. Philemon was a man of some wealth: he owned a house large enough for the Church to meet there; he was a slave-owner. He had a respected place in the community, but as we know even today, there is a certain give and take in that kind of situation. Other members of his community expected of him certain standards of behavior, a willingness to cooperate with others of his class. The usual punishment for a runaway slave was death, an understanding shared by Philemon and his fellow slave-owners. Paul asked Philemon to welcome Onesimus back as a beloved brother in Christ, and engaged to repay anything the slave owed. He asked Philemon to take an action that would put him at odds with members of his social group. The challenge Paul offered Philemon is the sort of challenge to faith any of us encounters in our day-to-day dealings. One obvious example is crude humor about those who do not look, or dress, or worship as “we” do, which is common, at work, at school, and sadly, sometimes in our homes. Such words dehumanize those whom the Lord Jesus loved, and calls us to love. Resistance, and objection, and teaching our children a better way will put us at odds with some others. But we are called in baptism to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus was not crucified because he was a nice guy who mainly wanted to be liked, and go along with the crowd. He was crucified because he lived that love that is the all-encompassing love of God, the love that gives itself without stint, without counting the cost.
If it sounds like this total commitment, with never a backward look, never a failure of faith, never a doubt or regret, is impossible, we must remember that the Lord Jesus does not ask us to go anywhere he has not gone before. In his life and human death, he knew all there is of our condition, its joy and its pain. That is what it means to say that the Son of God was perfectly, authentically, completely human, as he was at the same time, perfectly, authentically, completely divine. And he gives us himself to strengthen us, his friends, his followers, on the way. He who laid down his own life for us, asks us to lay down our lives for one another, in love, in service, in prayer. It is to this we were called in Baptism, this resurrection life in which we have been set free from the power of sin, and attachment to the things of this world, to serve Christ in one another and in his Name. It is for this we are fed at the Holy Table with Bread and Wine, which are, in a mystery beyond our knowing or telling, the very Body and most precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
