“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.”
“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me
cannot be my disciple.”
“…none of you can become my disciple
if you do not give up all your possessions.”
This is the message of Jesus that we don’t want to hear.
Wouldn’t it be nicer to preach on the Epistle today?
After all when was the last time you heard a sermon on Philemon?
It’s a great little epistle to study.
It shows a very human side of Paul,
how he very adroitly twists Philemon’s arm
and lays it on rather thick:
“When I remember you in my prayers, I always thank my God…
I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love,
because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed - through you,
For this reason, though I am bold enough in Christ
to command you to do your duty,
yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—
and I, Paul, do this as an old man,
and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus.
I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus,
whose father I have become during my imprisonment.
Formerly he was useless to you,
but now he is indeed useful both to you and to me.
(That’s a pun on the meaning of the name Onesimus.)
I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you.
I wanted to keep him with me,
so that he might be of service to me in your place
during my imprisonment for the gospel;
but I preferred to do nothing without your consent,
in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced.
Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while,
so that you might have him back forever,
no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother—
especially to me but how much more to you, …
So if you consider me your partner,
welcome him as you would welcome me.
If he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything,
charge that to my account.
I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it.
I say nothing about your owing me even your own self.
Yes, brother, let me have this benefit from you in the Lord! …
Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you,
knowing that you will do even more than I say.
One thing more--prepare a guest room for me,
for I am hoping through your prayers to be restored to you.”
Well, who can say no to all that?!
Paul asks a lot of Philemon, and I bet he got it all.
But then there is the Gospel for today,
this message of Jesus that we don’t want to hear.
If we take his words seriously,
then it sure looks like Jesus is asking too much.
This is where he goes over the top.
“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.”
“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me
cannot be my disciple.”
“…none of you are able to become my disciple
if you do not give up all your possessions.”
You are not able.
Paul may ask a lot of Philemon,
but Jesus demands even more from his disciples.
And this Gospel reading for today is not the only passage
in which this radical message appears.
It’s in all four Gospels in seven different places!
So I guess we are going to have to pay attention to it.
Well, we do need to look at that word “hate” that appears here.
Does Jesus really mean for us to hate father and mother,
spouse and children, brothers and sisters, and even life itself?
Consider two kinds of hate.
One is the emotion of hate in which one person is reacting to another.
If we are reacting,
that means a relationship exists there, a connection and a violation.
The reaction of hate ties the one hating even more to the one hated.
There is very strong attachment in this kind of hate.
The other is what is indicated in this passage here in the Greek.
It means to turn forcefully away from, to renounce,
to turn away from attachment.
This is a kind of repentance, a letting go of prior circumstances,
a letting go of the way in which all prior relationships had been held.
Jesus is asking his disciples for this kind of renunciation.
But even at that, this is still extreme.
Disciples are asked to reframe all prior relationships
with family, with possessions, with self.
How can we possibly measure up to what Jesus is asking?
Very, very few have shown such utter abandonment of self
in following Jesus –
maybe St. Francis of Assisi and a few others
So for the rest of us, we need to be in a continual process
of spiritual formation, of spiritual growth
- working towards becoming a disciple, seeking to become a disciple -
as a life long process
until we are fully converted,
until we have finally become disciples.
The more I experience faith and trust in Jesus,
and the more I become aware of the Divine Presence,
the more I realize how utterly ignorant I am,
and how far I have to go to become an authentic disciple.
This passage is about the willingness to give up self identity
in terms of ego centric attachment to body and mind even,
to let that go in devotion to Jesus,
to lose one’s self in Jesus,
to call nothing “mine”
because there is no “me,” as I want to define me, left.
When there is no me left
then we are like Jesus,
then we can say we are true disciples.
However this is not anything we can accomplish by ourselves.
Yet we can cooperate in the process of formation,
being formed as disciples,
being formed into the image of God,
being formed as a new being in Christ.
The image of clay in the hands of the potter from Jeremiah
– this is a description of formation.
We can translate that image into the human situation:
We need to be as pliable as clay in order to be formed,
that is, we need to be open and willing to be changed.
There is very little substantial change that we can accomplish on our own
but we can discover the way of letting go
of our own self improvement projects
in order to be in that wonderful flow of life in the Spirit.
Counting the cost:
whether building a tower or waging a war
some forethought is called for.
Once you get started, you better be prepared
to see it through to the end,
to be ready to accept all the consequences for your choice,
and to do that it will cost you everything.
So in counting the cost
part of making it possible to meet that cost
is the conscious decision
to be active in fostering spiritual growth
now and in the future and for your whole life time.
Spiritual growth and Christian formation
is not about learning more and more facts and figures
about the Bible or the Church or liturgy,
although that can provide a context for spiritual discovery.
Formation happens through the spiritual disciplines
of prayer and meditation
and reflection on the texts of the Bible
and on the texts of our lives and where those two texts intersect.
Jesus is fully engaged, not self-absorbed, but natural and free;
no ego self is apparent in him.
and he is engaging others to come into this same fullness.
Jesus models discipleship for us,
and it is he who does the work in us
in making us his disciples.
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