Now the great multitudes accompanied him; and he
turned to them and said to them, “If any one comes to me and does not hate his
own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even
his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and
come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a
tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to
complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to
finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build, and
was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going to encounter another king in war,
will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand
to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the
other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace. So
therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your
possessions.” Luke14:25-33.
The
Gospel for this Sunday [September 8] looks
like the worst possible challenge for a
preacher. On its surface there is one contradiction after another: we are to reject
our loved ones, calculate the odds for making any changes in our lives, give
away the things we treasure, and then take a leap of faith so we can follow
Jesus. As my children used to say, “Big Whoop!”
As I
said, on the surface all that sure looks to me like a contradiction -- not only to the values of the teaching of
Jesus, but the heart of who we are as families. But after struggling with this Scripture
for a long time, it seems to me that the key to this Sunday’s gospel and to
much of our lives as Christians may be in that last word about our “possessions.”
Note that the word is not “belongings,” but possessions. Or, to shift to the subjective
pluperfect subjunctive (I’m kidding) it is about the things that possess us. I’m
pretty sure Jesus is talking about the things in our lives which possess us,
which work to diminish our identity, our authenticity, our God given vocation
as human beings.
As
an almost frivolous example, many years ago I inherited a lovely piece of
furniture, a Queen Anne Highboy. But whenever I moved, and was looking a new
house, the first question was always, “How will this house accommodate the
Queen Anne Highboy?” The obvious question arose, “Did I own the Highboy or did
the Highboy own me?”
On a
more critical level, sometimes it is our children who possess us. There are
parents of children who have quite clearly chosen a path toward
self-destruction; parents who will sacrifice everything for that child, with
the result that both parent and child end up with . . .or being nothing. My Senior Warden in Madison, Wisconsin had adult
son who for years was drunk or shooting up one substance or another -- and in
the process had run through a good bit of her money. He was, of course, always
repentant: “Honest, Mom, this is the last time.”
One
December night, though, when the time was 2 am and the temperature was 12 degrees
outside and it was snowing, Henry was knocking on her door. He just wanted a warm
place and a few dollars. Natalie said,
“No.” The only way to love him was to reject being possessed by him or owned by
him. And that can happen with any aspect of our lives.
Every
level of our lives: note Jesus uses the word “hate,” not despise. He is talking
about all those ties which more than bind. They choke our life, our
possibilities, our souls. And it’s not that these things are imposed on us. Sometimes
we create them out of own need. Shortly
after my wife, Ann, and I were married and trying to sort through all the
complications of a blended family, Ann noticed something in my pattern of
raising my own children. So she remarked, “You know something, Tom. Our job as
parents is to raise our children to respect us, not to love us. If they end up
loving us, that is a wonderful bonus, a gift. But when we raise them to love
us, we cripple them for a lifetime. So, too, when we clergy or teachers
condition our parishioners, our students to love us, we cripple them.
All this is not unlike those who volunteer for one thing
after another out of a sense of guilt or duty. Make no mistake about it, the
recipients of their care know what is going on. It’s no secret. The worst thing
about that is that it ends up as Sloppy Agape. It’s not about loving or caring:
it is about being loved . . being affirmed. . and being relieved
of guilt.
Some would say that one of the requirements of tough love
is detachment -- of not being possessed by. It’s refusing to idolize anything,
anyone – not even the church, not even Jesus. That’s true. Sometimes we are tricked
into wanting to be just like Jesus and we lose sight of ourselves and our
unique place in world, in the kingdom.
This
church was born from two traditions which, in the cause of being fully engaged
with the living God, claimed the reality of Protestant, from the root meaning
of “protesting.” The Lutheran and Anglican churches are committed to protesting
everything that is less than or a distortion of the vision, the life of being
in Christ.
There is a rhythm to our time together in worship. We
begin with our confession of sin, offering up all those ways our lives are
possessed by the things, patterns, commitments, and emotional states that keep
us from living lives of love and fullness and deep joy – lives for which we
have been created by God. Week after week, there is that process of confessing,
letting go. And then, with open hands, we receive the sacrament of Holy
Communion, opening ourselves to God’s loving support and empowerment –
empowerment for growing into our full authenticity and completeness. Week by
week it is letting go and receiving:
letting go and receiving.
So let us step back. Is Jesus saying that we can’t love
our children, parents, friends? Of course not.
But we are not to possess or be possessed by them. We don’t own our
children, our spouses, parents, friends. They come to us as gifts, as all
things come to us, as gifts. It should
never come down to a matter of control. .but gratitude.
To be a disciple: in my experience, one of the reasons we
call Jesus “the Christ” is that in his words, in his ways, in his presence we
see. . or surmise a quality, a depth of life and living that is far beyond
anything that the world can offer. We see in him, I think, an invitation for
living and loving, of integrity and the joy of serving. It is an invitation to
a life of standing over against all that is life sapping or life denying and
standing with the poor and those who struggle or are beaten down. There is
nothing like it.
So how to sum it all up, put it all together? I
think if I had to choose one character (not from the Bible) as an example of vocation
in the kind of world we are living in, it would be Murray, in Herb Gardner's
play, "A Thousand Clowns." Murray
does not sound very religious, but a wise person would say that he is talking
about life as it is given to us, and speaking deeply about the things of the
spirit. Because Murray has been a pretty unconventional guardian for his young
nephew, a social worker has come to see about taking the boy away.
At one point, the social worker
speaks sharply to Murray, saying "Murray, you've got to come back to
reality!" Murray responds,
"Well, O.K., but only as a tourist," echoing St. Paul’s words about
our being citizens of heaven, ambassadors from another world. Then Murray talks
about the child's future and in these words we may find something of our own
vocation:
“And he started to make lists this
year. Lists of everything: subway stops, underwear, what he's gonna do next
week. If somebody doesn't watch out he'll start making lists of what he's gonna
do for the next ten years. Hey, suppose they put him in with a whole family of
list-makers? He'll learn to know
everything before it happens, he'll learn how to be one of the nice dead
people. .I just want him to stay with me till I can be sure he won't turn into
Norman Nothing. I want to be sure he'll know when he's chickening out on
himself. I want him to get to know exactly the special thing he is or else he
won't notice it when it starts to go. I
want him to stay awake and know who the phonies are. I want him to know how to
holler and put up an argument, I want a little guts to show before I can let
him go. I want to be sure he sees all the wild possibilities. I want him to
know it's worth all the trouble just to give the world a little goosing when
you get the chance. And I want him to know the subtle, sneaky, important reason
why he was born a human being and not a chair.”
That's the crucial thing about living, all of living. Along with all
that troubles or delights us from day to day and all the crises that befall us,
it is the reaching for that subtle, sneaky, important reason why we were born
human beings and not chairs that mark us as disciples of the Lord of Life.
