Luke 14:25 – 33
My dear wife decided that we should
re-organize our garage and paint it, so that's what I've been doing
this past week. I should point out that when we moved into our house
in 1984, there was stuff in the garage from the previous owner. Much
of it was left-over vinyl siding which I saved, never knowing when I
would have to replace a piece. There were chunks of wood as well,
which I did not throw out, having grown up with a grandfather and a
dad who both did not throw out wood, in case they would ever need it
to build something. We then proceeded to cram thirty-five years of
other stuff in the garage. So as I was beginning to clean out the
garage I ran across two suitcases that we had purchased the first
time we took a couple of grandchildren on a trip – they were seven
and five. As I looked at them, I thought, these are full of
memories, I'll keep them. My dear wife quickly brought me back to
reality, pointing out that the grandchildren were now in college and
we had a whole closet full of newer and better luggage, which we did
not use. So I agreed to take them to the Longmeadow swap shop. When
I got there the man told me to toss them in the trash bin, because
they got suitcases all the time. I thought about bringing them home,
then with a pain that tore through my very soul, I tossed them in the
dumpster. There is a point to this story.
The gospel of today reminds us of
Saint Anthony of the Desert, Saint Francis of Assisi, and countless
other saints who literally renounced their possessions, left their
families and carried their crosses and followed Jesus. But not all
the saints renounced everything, or left their families, although I
suspect everyone who gets to heaven has to carry a cross. And while
Jesus' words are harsh here, we hear him in other gospels telling us
that the important thing is to believe in him, to trust him, and it
says nothing about family or possessions. And that is the emphasis
of Saint Paul as well.
So I think of the Martins, Louis and
Zelle, the parents of Therese of Liseaux. They are canonized saints
– they are in heaven, but they lived a very middle class life, not
wanting for much; they raised eight children and made their living
running a business that manufactured items made of silk. Louis ran
the business end and Zelle the factory; they employed people, they
had friends and relatives, and if you had met them you would be
impressed, I'm sure, but you probably wouldn't see a relationship
between this passage from Luke and their lives. Of course they bore
their crosses. Zelle died of breast cancer just a few years after
Therese was born; Louis spend the last part of his life physically
and mentally impaired. And you can think of other canonized saints
who acted as though they had missed the class when this gospel was
taught – Saint Margaret of Scotland; Saint Louis of France; Saint
Henry of Bavaria, Saint Stephen of Hungary, Saint Thomas More –
they all had lots of possessions and families they cared about.
So what does this gospel, these
seemingly harsh words of Jesus, have to do with us? I don't hate my
relatives, although there may be one or two ... I hope I'll be able
to carry my cross, but I haven't renounced my possessions. Is Jesus
just being hyperbolic? Is this mere rhetoric?
I think we need to look at the other
part of this gospel, the part about the tower builder or the king.
Jesus is giving reasonable advice here; before you begin something,
make sure you will be able to finish it. And I think this puts the
other words in context.
In the language of Jesus' time, the
word “hate” didn't mean what it means today. It was more like
Jesus would have said, “You must prefer me to even those you love;
and when he calls on us to renounce our possession, it isn't like the
young man whom he told to sell all he had and give it to the poor;
renounce is a different word. So I think for you and I this gospel
should lead us to three questions:
Are there people in our lives that we
prefer to Jesus? A child, a spouse, a best friend whom we could not
envision ourselves without? How do they get in the way of our
relationship with Jesus? They may not even be aware that they are in
the way. The fact is that everyone with whom we have a relationship
is potentially a rival of Jesus. So we have to evaluate our
relationships in view of this possibility.
The second question: are there
possessions standing between you and Jesus? If you are like me,
probably. That was the point of my suitcase story. I can go through
my home and find things I've had for years and have no more use for,
and yet, I hang on to them for sentimental reasons, or because I
might possibly have a use for them in the future, or maybe one of my
grandchildren will need it. My own children, by the way, have
expressed no interest in taking any of my stuff. So attachments can
slow us down, they can distort our thinking; and as Jesus told us in
another passage, store up treasures in heaven, not here on earth.
The third question: am I prepared to
carry my cross and follow Jesus? Some of us are already bearing
heavy crosses, and others, like me, very tiny ones. But we all have
crosses. There are circumstances in everyone's life that they would
rather be different. We can name our crosses, and they can get in
the way of our relationship with Jesus by leading us to self-pity or
despair. Or, and this is the greatest thing about Christianity, we
can use our crosses to draw closer to Jesus. My mother used to tell
me when I scraped my knee as a little kid and came to her howling,
“Offer it up”. We all knew in those days that there was
something about suffering that could potentially draw us closer to
God. And when we take advantage of that, with His help, we are
walking with him to Calvary and then to resurrection.
So Jesus tells us today to be wary of
people, possessions and pain, because they can all get in the way of
our being his disciples – or, if our perspective is right, they can
help us be better disciples.
