Barriers To The Cross

September 9, 2007     Proper 18 C

Jeremiah 18:1-11             Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

Philemon 1-21         St. Luke 14:25-33

     Our Gospel reading is the conclusion to a major section of Luke's presentation of Jesus' teachings about who belongs at the wedding feast of heaven. Jesus has just told a parable about such a feast to which many who were invited did not come and so the doors were opened to the physically injured and outcasts. When he finished this story someone at table said that the ones who eat at the heavenly banquet will certainly be blessed. What we hear today is Jesus' reply.

On the face of it, Jesus seems to propose three devastating and inhuman requirements for becoming his disciple: hate one's family  (v. 25); carry the cross (v. 26); give up all possessions (v. 33) - even though "half" sufficed for Zacchaeus in 19:8.

As usual, the literary context and a culturally appropriate reading scenario help us "foreigners" to better understand our strange-sounding ancestors in the faith.

Jesus has been invited for a meal at the home of a leading Pharisee  (Luke 24:1). The cultural world of Jesus required that people- especially the elite- "eat with their own kind, within their own class."

The fact that Jesus is often a guest of Pharisees has led some scholars to suggest that Jesus himself was a Pharisee. Whatever the case, he never failed to challenge their beliefs and practices in the interest of offering better alternatives.

It is this Middle-Eastern understanding of "meals" that helps a  "foreigner" to understand Jesus' comments on discipleship in today's reading,

A follower of Jesus who ceased "networking" by means of meals would jeopardize a family's very existence. The disciple must then choose between allegiance to the family and allegiance to Jesus.

Choosing Jesus is thus equivalent to letting one's family go,  "hating" the family. Hate is more suitably translated "prefer," that is, one who "hates" family actually prefers another group to the family.

Recall the tight-knit nature of the Middle-Eastern family. The ideal marriage partner is a first cousin. Sons, married and single, remain with the father. Everyone "controls" one another. Life in these circumstances can be very stifling, very suffocating. Following Jesus and joining a new, family would be very liberating and exhilarating.

There is, of course, a price to pay for such freedom. In theMiddle East, the main rule of behavior is: family first! A disciple who deliberately cuts ties with family and social network will lose the ordinary means of making a living. This is the "economic cross" the disciple has chosen to carry.

True, by joining a new family consisting of other disciples of Jesus, a "family-hating" person presumably has a new source of livelihood.

No longer able to make claims to a livelihood based on blood ties and advantageous social network, members of this new family have to rely on "hospitality," which in the Middle East is extended exclusively by strangers to strangers (see Luke 9:4-5; 10:3-12). This risk-filled option is quite a cross to carry.

Jesus' recommendation of vigilance against possessiveness comes in one of the harshest passages found in the New Testament, a saying about family life. "If any of you comes to me without turning your back on father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters, indeed your very self, you cannot be my follower." We must, rather, take up our cross and follow him in discipleship.

Clearly he is speaking here of renouncing our loved ones as possessions or as barriers to the redeeming cross.

We can never possess another. (This is why Paul, in his Letter to Philemon, undercuts slavery by insisting that Onesimus is not a slave, but a loved brother.) What is more, we can never be another's god. Nor can another human serve as ours.

Clearly, a disciple who has accepted these challenging exhortations will effectively have given up everything. Therefore, a would-be disciple must seriously calculate the costs.

Two brief parables (about construction and waging war) drive this point home. Anyone who weakens and abandons this determination will become the butt of ridicule and shame. A disciple must remain firmly committed.

The behavior Jesus proposes is liberating and heroic but costly. Jesus' attitude toward family values give his followers much to think about.

Listen to the comments of John Cassian an early Church Father who lived from AD 360-433):

The person who does not renounce his possessions cannot be my disciple. The tradition of the Fathers and the authority of holy scripture both affirm that there are three renunciations which every one of us must strive to practice. To these let us turn our attention.

First, on the material level, we have to despise all worldly wealth and possessions; secondly, we must reject our former way of life with its vices and attachments, both physical and spiritual; and thirdly, we should withdraw our mind from all that is transitory and visible to contemplate solely what lies in the future and to desire what is unseen.

We read that the Lord commanded Abraham to make all three renunciations at once when he said to him: Leave your country and your kindred and your father's house. First he said your country, meaning worldly wealth and possessions; secondly your kindred, that is our former way of living, with its habits and vices which have grown up with us and are as familiar to us as custom and kin; thirdly your father's house, in other words every secular memory aroused by what we see.

This forgetfulness will be achieved when, dead with Christ to the elemental spirits of this world, we contemplate as the apostle says, not the things that are seen but those that are unseen, for what is seen is temporal but what is unseen is eternal.

It will be achieved when in our hearts we leave this temporal and visible house and turn the eyes of our mind toward that in which we shall live for ever; when, though living in the world, we cease to follow the spirit of the world in order to fight for the Lord, proclaiming by our holy way of life that, as the apostle says, our homeland is in heaven.

Words that are as fitting today in the 21^st century as they were when first heard in the 4^th. The challenge for each generation of hearers, not only those who hear the words of the Church Fathers, but the words of Jesus himself, is to determine what the barriers to the cross are for them. Things that we might assume to be good can be detrimental if they become a barrier to the cross. We cannot simply hear the words of Jesus from the 1^st century and not make a connection to the 21^st.

How can we in the 21^st century hear the same words from the 1^st and apply them to our lives? In some cases it is difficult. In this case it might be a bit easier. Anything that draws our eyes and minds away from Jesus and his call to us to follow is a barrier. I cannot tell you what that is in your life. But certainly you know. The challenge then is the same for us as it was for Jesus' first hearers: to recognize the barriers to the cross, and to get rid of them. When we are freed from the barriers, it is then that we are free to follow where Jesus calls us to go.