23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Wisdom 9:13-18b; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Lk 14:25-33

VIDEO

What should we make of
the words of our Lord in today’s Gospel?
His examples of the builder and the general
would seem to counsel prudent calculation:
don’t start projects you can’t finish;
don’t get into fights you can’t win.
But when he tells his listeners
that to be his disciple you must
hate your family and even your own life,
take up your cross and follow after him,
renounce all of your possessions…
well, this sounds pretty reckless 
and imprudent.

But what if our sense of what is prudent,
our capacity to calculate,
changes when being Jesus’ disciple
comes into the equation?
I’m not any sort of mathematician,
but it seems to me a bit like trying 
to introduce infinity into basic math
(those of you with math-phobia 
might want to tune out for a minute
and read the bulletin or something).
For example, since the value 
of five-plus-one is larger than five
and a thousand-plus-one 
is larger than a thousand
and a billion-plus-one
is larger than a billion,
you might think that the value
of infinity-plus-one 
would be larger than infinity.
But it’s not, since “infinity” is, by definition,
that than which nothing can be larger. 
So infinity-plus-one would still be infinity—
indeed, infinity-plus-infinity
would still be infinity.
You can’t treat infinity
like a number in making basic calculations,
because it is not a value among other values
but rather it is the concept of limitlessness.
As someone once put it, “infinity”
is a shorthand way of saying
“what would happen if we kept going?”

(Those of you who are math-phobic
can now tune back in,
because the math is over.)
The point is that being Jesus’s disciple,
following him on the way of the cross,
entering the kingdom he proclaims,
is not a value among other values,
something that can be a factor 
in calculating our life plans.
Rather, it is an invitation to live a life
that hurls us beyond the limited horizon
that the world offers us.
It is an invitation to step into 
the wild world of God’s limitless love,
the God whose counsel
no mortal can comprehend
and whose intentions are beyond conception.
It is an invitation that makes us ask,
“what would happen if we kept going?”

The book of Wisdom says,
“the deliberations of mortals are timid,
and unsure are our plans.”
Our problem as humans
is that we believe too little;
in our calculations, we underestimate
the limitlessness of the journey
that Jesus is inviting us to join.
We want to weigh the value of following him
against things of real but finite value,
like family and possessions 
and our own lives.
Jesus invites us to count the cost
of being his disciple
not so that we can put a number on it,
but only so that we can realize
that it is beyond calculation;
it costs both everything and nothing;
it demands the totality of our life,
it demands that we keep going
beyond the limits 
of what we have to give, 
but only so that we can realize 
that everything is already given us, 
everything is already gift.
And realizing this will change our lives.

Our second reading gives us 
a bit of the letter Paul wrote 
to a Christian named Philemon,
a letter that was borne to him by Onesimus, 
who had been one of Philemon’s slaves.
Onesimus had fled the household of Philemon
and encountered Paul and his preaching 
and had been baptized as a Christian.
He desires to remain with Paul, 
but Paul sends him back to Philemon,
telling him to receive Onesimus
“no longer as a slave
but more than a slave, a brother.”
Onesimus is not exactly freed—
he is to return to be a part 
of Philemon’s household—
but neither is he a slave.
Now that they are both Christians,
now that they have both taken up the cross,
now that they have joined Jesus 
on the journey without limits,
the relationship of Onesimus and Philemon
is radically changed:

Philemon can no longer 
be master of Onesimus
but must become his brother.
Think what this might mean 
in their social context,
in which slaves and brothers were people
of quite different kinds of value.
However useful your slave might be to you,
the value of a brother or a sister
would always be more.
To treat one who had been a slave 
as a family member
could be seen as a gross insult
to other members of the household;
as if the elevation of the slave’s status
were a reduction of everyone else’s.
Some might even see Philemon’s act as
“hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters.”
Were Philemon to calculate the cost,
he might well decide that welcoming Onesimus
back into the household as a brother
is simply not worth it.

But Paul is inviting Philemon 
to be not timid in his deliberations,
to calculate not in the terms 
of the values of his world
but to open himself up
to the limitless love of God,
to look at Onesimus, 
who has become his spiritual equal 
in the waters of Baptism,
and ask himself,
“what would happen if we kept going?”
What would happen if we pressed forward
with our newfound brotherhood in Christ?
Can the call to be Jesus’ disciple
lead us to places of love and communion
that we cannot even now imagine?
Can it lead to a life together
where there are no slaves and masters?
Who can conceive what the Lord intends?

And for us too,
what might happen if we kept going,
if we let the infinite kingdom 
disrupt our calculations?
What love and communion might await us
if we let go of everything to follow Jesus?
What impassible borders could be crossed?
What irreparable harms could be healed?
What unimaginable gifts could be received?
We should pray that being a disciple of Jesus
would hurl us beyond the limits
of what we think possible,
and tune our hearts to God’s intentions.
We should pray that God, in his mercy,
might have mercy on us all.

 

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Wisdom 9:13-18b; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33

In today’s Gospel, Jesus offers two brief parables—
one about a man building a tower
and the other about a king preparing to go to war.
He seems to offer us a clear message:
before you begin something
make sure you know what your endgame is.
Before you start to build,
make sure you have the funds to finish;
before you march to war
make sure you have an army big enough to win.
Clear and sensible advice
that is useful, if maybe a bit obvious.
The thing is,
I generally find that when it seems like Jesus
is dispensing clear and sensible advice—
when he is saying something obvious—
it is a good idea to go back and look again,
since “obvious” is not really Jesus’ style.

A glance back at the Gospel reading
proves this to be true.
For the apparently clear and sensible advice
about planning your endgame,
is preceded and followed
by some of Jesus’
most confusing and shocking statements.
He says that anyone who comes to him
without hating
father and mother,
wife and children,
brothers and sisters,
and even one’s own life,
cannot be his disciple.
Anyone who does not renounce
all their possessions
cannot be his disciple.
Shocking statements,
even offensive statements.
Does Jesus really want us
to hate our parents,
our spouses,
our children and siblings?
Does he really expect us to give up
all our possessions?
Who does he think he is?

Of course, the relevant question here
is not who Jesus thinks he is,
but who we think he is.
To know who Jesus is
is to know him as the one
for whom we should be willing
to give up everything,
because he gives us everything,
even life eternal.
To know Jesus is to know him
as the one through whom
everything came to be,
in whom everything hangs together,
who gives us everything that we are and have,
who gives us nothing less than God’s kingdom.
How do you calculate the cost
when the cost is everything
because that which is sought is infinite?
How do you plan your endgame
when your end is eternal life with God?

This perhaps accounts for
the vehemence of Jesus’ words:
hate your parents and spouse and siblings
and even your own life;
give up all of your possessions.
Jesus is not, I think, telling us to loathe and abhor
those whom we have hitherto loved and adored.
Nor is he, I think, telling us to make ourselves destitute—
though from St. Anthony of Egypt
to St. Francis of Assisi
to St. Teresa of Kolkata
people have found in this a route to holiness.
But he is telling us that,
as we calculate our costs,
as we plan our endgame,
these things that we hold so dear
count as nothing.
Even those human relationships
that represent what is best,
what is most noble,
what is most fulfilling in this life—
indeed, even this life itself—
cannot tip the balance
when weighed against the infinite good
of being Jesus’ disciple.

But that is not all than can be said
about our human relationships.
Later in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus says,
“there is no one who has left house or wife
or brothers or parents or children,
for the sake of the kingdom of God,
who will not get back very much more in this age,
and in the age to come eternal life.”
The relationships we surrender
for the sake of being Jesus’ disciple
are not lost to us
but are transformed.
Once they are no longer figured into
our calculation of costs,
once they play no role in our endgame,
once we place them into Jesus’ hands,
we find that we receive them in a new way,
as divine gifts.
Once they no longer must bear the weight
of giving meaning and purpose to our lives
they can become for us
joyful signs of God’s goodness to us.

So Jesus’s shocking call
to hate our loved ones
so that we might be his disciples
is a call to let our relationships
be radically transformed by following him.
It is a call to plan and calculate
in a new way;
it is a call to plan an endgame
where the end is life eternal.
Being a disciple of Jesus is not one more thing
that we try to fit into our life;
it is our life.
Following Jesus is not one factor among others
that we must figure into our endgame;
it is the endgame.
We know that it is only when our offerings
of bread and wine
are placed on the altar,
given into God’s hands,
that they can become for us
the gift of Christ’s body and blood.
In the same way, let us place
all that we have and love—
parents and spouses,
children and siblings—
into God’s hands,
so that we can receive them back transformed,
into the precious gifts of God
given in love to God’s people.

________________
Video recording of the homily.

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Wisdom 9:13-18b; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:24-33

As the leaders of our nation continue their deliberations
concerning military intervention in Syria,
we are presented in today’s Gospel with a parable
about counting the costs of our commitments:
“What king marching into battle would not first sit down
and decide whether with ten thousand troops
he can successfully oppose another king
advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops?”
Jesus’s point in telling this parable is not, of course,
about the art of war,
but about what it means to be his disciple.
Yet it reminds us of what we would sometimes forget:
war is a costly business.
It is not something into which one dips one’s toe,
while hoping to avoid paying
the price of human suffering that war exacts.
If you choose to wage war, you must bear the burden
of homes destroyed and lives lost,
of unforeseen repercussions,
and the risk of unleashing even greater evil
than the evil that you wish to restrain.
War is not something one ought to enter into lightly.

In his parable, Jesus uses the cost of war
to prod us think about the cost of being his disciple.
Just as the ruler who contemplates going to war
must consider what it would cost to win the war,
so too one who wants to be a follower of Jesus
must consider the cost of such discipleship.
Jesus puts the cost of discipleship
in the starkest terms possible:
“If anyone comes to me
without hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.”

Biblical scholars are quick to point out
that the word we here translate as “hating”
refers not so much to an emotion one feels
as to a fundamental choice one makes:
it is a matter of giving preference
to one thing over another.
So Jesus is saying that our relationship
to parents, spouse, children, siblings, and even oneself
must be seen as less important than our relationship to him.
Of course in Jesus’ culture,
when ties of family were so strong,
this is still pretty shocking –
you would prefer this stranger to your family?
“Hating” probably pretty effectively conveys the force
that his words would have had on his hearers:
Jesus is telling them that the cost of being his disciple
is to be willing to put nothing ahead of him,
to prefer nothing to the life of following him,
to be separated from your loved ones
if that is what it takes to be his disciple.
As if to drive the point home, Jesus adds:
“Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.”
Just as a ruler
must face up to the cost of waging war,
so too the disciple of Jesus
must face up to the cost of following him,
and that cost is nothing less
than sharing in the cross of Jesus himself.

Each one of us has been called to be a disciple of Jesus.
Indeed, that simply is what it means to be a Christian.
Jesus’s call to take up one’s own cross and follow after him
is not addressed only to the apostles
or to the ordained or to the vowed religious.
It is the call of each and every one of us
who dare to claim the name Christian,
who in baptism have been marked with Christ’s cross
and called to walk as children of the light.
We are the one’s who must count the cost of following Jesus
and who must be willing to give up everything for his sake.

Of course, this makes no sense if Jesus is just some guy
who had some good ideas
about ways to make the world a better place
or ways to attain a more happy life.
It only makes sense if being Jesus’ disciple
is something worth more that everything else put together;
it only makes sense if Jesus is the one
in whom all that we have given up
will be restored to us in God’s kingdom;
it only makes sense if Jesus
is who we profess him to be in the creed:
“God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God.”
But if Jesus is who we profess him to be,
then the cost of following him
is balanced by the joy flowing from his saving power.

Even more than war,
the struggle to follow Jesus is a costly business,
demanding absolute commitment.
And in a time of wars and rumors of war
we must ask ourselves anew
whether we truly wish to be his followers.
In a world torn by violence, death, and destruction
we are called to count the cost
of being disciples of the prince of peace.
But in counting that cost, let us never forget
that the one who calls us to follow
is the very source of life itself: Jesus Christ.