Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 18:1-8

I recently received my annual solicitation letter from the organization called “Madonna of the Streets.” It began many years ago in Buffalo, where a friend of mine, a scientist at Roswell Park, together with a woman who ran a small restaurant, decided to do something about the increasing numbers of homeless people in downtown Buffalo and the surrounding areas. They began by making free meals available at the restaurant. Eventually they were feeding about two hundred people. This required getting support, and that is when they went full time into their efforts. My friend, a husband and father of two grown sons, resigned from his job and began to go door to door raising funds. Being a strong Catholic, he depended on God to provide, and it happened. The ministry now involves a homeless shelter, a homework house, a place where people of the streets can get cleaned up and get some decent clothing and counseling and helped with addiction and many other services available through volunteers – and they work out of an old inner city parish plant that was falling into disrepair. And the ministry of providing nutritious meals to the homeless continues. My friend was troubled by what he saw as injustice, and decided to do something about it.

Today we hear another one of those parables that seems simple on the surface, but probably isn't. Part of the reason is that Saint Luke sets us up; he tells us that Jesus told this parable to emphasize the necessity of praying always without growing weary. And so when we read the parable, we see ourselves represented by the widow and God represented by the judge. And then we expect that if we pray long enough and hard enough our prayers will be answered. And they aren't not always. You and I know that.

But I think we need to look at this parable differently. First, is the judge really standing in for God? Jesus calls him unjust, and he is arrogant, fearing neither God nor man. And he has no intention of listening to the widow. That doesn't sound much like the God Jesus talks about. And then, the widow. In Israel, widows were supposed to be rushed to the head of the line when they complained of injustice; the only ones who had precedence over the widow was the orphan. That was made very clear in the Laws of Moses. Widows and orphans, in fact, were numbered among those who were considered innocent unless proven guilty, the ones who would be called “just ones”, along with other categories; the foreigner in your midst; the poor being another group. Moses and the prophets had made it clear that God was on their side.

So when we keep that in mind, we see a widow who is being denied her God-given right to be heard. But eventually, the judge decides to hear her case and, it says, deliver a just decision for her.

Many of Jesus' parables end with an explicit comparison between someone in the parable and the Father. Remember the one about the father who would not give his son a scorpion if he asked for a fish? But in this parable, Jesus says, “Listen to what the dishonest judge says!” The dishonest judge is being embarrassed by the widow; if we read the original Greek, it would say “because this widow is giving me a black eye...” which was an expression meaning “public shaming”. In other words, despite the character of the judge, despite the fact that he starts out with no intention of hearing the widow's case, justice is eventually done.

So Jesus is telling this story to illustrate that God will deliver justice to his just ones who cry out to him; and Jesus says this will be done speedily. And then he laments, will he find faith on earth when he returns?

The widow never stopped pestering the judge to hear her case. She would call him on the phone, bang on his door, meet him in Starbucks when he was trying to get a coffee, walk up and down his sidewalk carrying a picket sign; she just wouldn't stop. And Jesus is saying the same thing will happen if his just ones do the same thing. If we go out and do something about injustice, if we make a nuisance of ourselves, if we never give up, God will give justice, and the more noise we make, the quicker it will happen. But it isn't happening, and it wasn't happening in Jesus' time, and there aren't many who cry out for justice and of those there aren't many who are persistent. And that's why he worries that he won't find faith.

I suspect any of us who have listened to Christ's words Sunday after Sunday are aware that justice was very high on His priority list. And at the same time we have to admit we could do more to bring about justice, to be the tools God uses to bring about the kingdom of God where justice rules. When we look at all the injustice in the world it is pretty overwhelming. We read about refugees from the middle east, especially Syria, who have lost everything, or the people of North Korea, who live in a country-sized prison. But there is plenty of injustice right here in our area; why shouldn't a kid growing up in Springfield have the same opportunity for education as one growing up in Longmeadow? And indeed, why should anyone have to live out of a shopping cart and seek shelter under a bridge at night? That's happening just a few miles from here.

So I guess a question we should ponder this week is how can we be better instruments of God's justice? Like the judge in Jesus' story I have the power to render justice but don't. Maybe I am the dishonest judge who refuses to render a just judgement.

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 17:11-19

What seems on the surface to be another healing story may be much deeper than that. After all, what conclusions can we draw for our own lives from the story of the ten lepers? That we should be grateful for what God has done for us? That we should always remember to give thanks? That we should cultivate an attitude of gratitude? Well, of course, those are good things, and we remember that one of the four kinds of prayer is to give thanks. We shouldn't let a day go by without counting our blessings and thanking God for them.

But listen to the gospel closely. First, the lepers cried out to Jesus from afar. They knew who he was, they called him by name, they named him Master. In those days before a person with leprosy was considered healed, he or she had to be inspected by a priest. Why a priest? Moses had laid down the conditions for re-admission into society way back in the book of Leviticus. The priest was to inspect every part of the skin and only if he could see nothing that resembled leprosy would he declare the person officially clean. There was a ceremony that went with that, involving the sacrificing of a dove, the sprinkling of the blood on the former leper, and the release of a second dove. The priests actually did a fair amount of this sort of thing, because there were several skin diseases which seemed to fall under the category of leprosy, and some healed by themselves.

Our ten lepers ask for pity. Obviously they want to be healed but Jesus does not heal them right then and there as he does so with so many other healings; he begins his healing by sending them to the authority who can admit them back into communion with the larger society; the real curse of the lepers is that they are isolated from their families and friends, reduced to begging and living apart from society.

Then on the way they are cleansed. As they were walking along, the disfigurement of their disease left them. Certainly they all noticed this. Nine of them probably danced all the way to the priests – they couldn't wait to complete what Jesus had began, and they were doing exactly what he told them to do. Probably they weren't thinking right then about going back and thanking him, but I'll bet they were thanking God, and I'll bet that if any of them were to run across Jesus in the future, they would thank him. Don't be hard on the nine.

One of the lepers realizes that he has been healed. All knew they were cleansed; one sees that not only is the leprosy gone, but he has been made whole again. That's the root of the word “healed” – to be made whole. The leprosy is gone, but all the consequences of having leprosy are gone as well. He can return to his family, he can go back to his job, he can have the company of his friends. One leper feels overwhelming gratitude because of what has been done, and can't wait to go back and thank Jesus, all the while glorifying God, praising God.

Finally, the leper falls at Jesus' feet and gives thanks. Now Saint Luke sneaks in a little theology here. The leper thanks Jesus, but Jesus says, has none but this foreigner returned to thank God? When you thank Jesus you are thanking God. There is another interesting thing here. Jesus acts surprised. This isn't the only time Jesus is surprised or disappointed; if you read the scriptures you will notice this. Is this because, being God he knows everything and simply acts surprised? I prefer to believe that it's because he's human and humans can be surprised, apparently even if they possess a divine nature. Jesus as a human being, even as the greatest human being ever, goes through life being surprised by God's plan. He is like us in all things except sin. Foreigners, even Samaritans being touched by God – that would be a new one for a Jew of Jesus' time.

But the big thing is that Jesus points out that the man is now saved, and that his faith has saved him. I think saved means more than healed, more than cleansed. It means that this Samaritan has come into the Kingdom of God, the very kingdom which Jesus has been proclaiming, and again, if we read the scriptures, a kingdom to which some have already been admitted, even before Jesus has been crucified and risen from the dead. And it is the Samaritan's faith that is the direct cause of salvation. His faith is what led him to glorify God and to come into Jesus' presence.

If we are Christian, we are aware that God is constantly touching us. Sometimes from a human perspective those touches bring about joy and sometimes sadness. When God touches us, it's like the lepers being cleansed. Often we just passively accept those touches, or we fight against them, but in the end we react, or we do nothing at all. The Samaritan realized that the touch of God which cleansed him affected him far more than “skin – deep.” As we mature in our Christianity we also seek meaning in those moments when we feel God's touch. We try to understand, we try to see where God is leading us. Sometimes when those touches cause suffering, we look into them and see that they are invitations to accompany Christ in his passion journey.

Learning to see the hand of God in the course of our ordinary life leads us to faith, and real faith ultimately leads us to Jesus. God in his mercy gives us everything we need, but ultimately, like the Prodigal Son, like the Samaritan leper, we need to make the decision to accept what God has to offer. That is what faith is all about – trusting in God's mercy, allowing God to take care of us, learning to say with Jesus, “Not my will, but your will be done.”

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 17:5-10

When I was very young I dreamed about being a cowboy – not a real one, but one like Roy Rodgers, who no one under fifty remembers anymore. He was very skilled with a rope and could lasso a criminal who was riding away on a fast horse. His gun skills were even greater, since he could shoot a gun out of an outlaw's hand without actually hurting the crook. When he went after the bad guys, in the end he would bring them back, singlehandedly, unharmed but bound and harmless. As time went on I shifted my allegiances to Superman. Oh, to fly, to have super strength – and x-ray vision as well. And all the time using my powers for good.

But in my imagination there was another kind of hero as well – the saint who could work miracles. I knew in my heart that I couldn't be another Roy Rodgers or Superman, but it seemed that I could be a saint, someone who could harness the very power of God to do good – and of course the stories of the saints abound with miracles. If I could just be holy enough … if I only knew the right prayers … And even at my age, there are still times when I meet someone with cancer or someone with Alzheimer's disease and wish that I had the kind of faith that would let me lay my hands on that person and cure him.

I think that's the kind of faith the apostles were asking for today. Jesus had demonstrated his ability to effect a miraculous cure, to cast out demons, to even raise the dead. The apostles even got a taste of that when they were sent out by Jesus to all the villages and towns to announce the good news. And just before this gospel reading. Jesus has been telling them that they have to learn to forgive “seventy times seven” and that if one of them scandalized a little one it would be better for that person to have a millstone tied around his neck and be thrown into the sea. He told them that if they wanted to be great, they had to become servants of each other. If the apostles wanted to follow Jesus and become real disciples, it seemed an impossible task – and it seemed as though this required more faith.

In my reading of the gospel story, I think Jesus was saying, “Do you think faith is something that I can increase or decrease? Do you think that if you had faith the size of a mustard seed you could tell this tree to go plant itself in the sea and it would?” And then Jesus goes on to the story of the worthless servants or unworthy slaves or useless slaves – all different ways of translating the Greek words in which the gospel was written. In any event, we are sort of shocked by this phrase and even by the whole story – the slave who comes in from working all day is expected to continue working until all his work is done. It would be ridiculous to expect his owner to wait on him. And assuming the slave did everything how could he be worthless, or useless? One of the commentaries I read said that the Greek word used here means something like “Not owed anything”. But it's still shocking.

Our problem is that we don't see slavery the way Jesus and his disciples did. In that time, a lot of the population were “slaves”. They were “owned” by a master until they worked off a debt; or they might have been captured in a war and given to wealthy landowners who had the muscle to keep them under control; or they might be people who had sold themselves into slavery because that way they could be guaranteed food and shelter. And we meet all of these kinds of slaves in scripture. People did not have the kind of image of slavery that we have today. It was part of life, and Paul calls himself a “slave for Christ” and John says that “although Jesus was divine, he took on the form of a slave”.

One thing about slaves in that time – there was a general understanding that the master took care of his slaves – remember the story of the prodigal son? There the son remembers that his father's slaves have abundant bread to eat.

So I hear Jesus telling his disciples, and that's you and I, that first of all, what they are asking of him no one can give; real faith depends on doing what you are supposed to do, day after day, year after year. If you say, “I've done all I am supposed to do” that's a false statement; as long as you are alive there is more to do. But on the other hand, Jesus is saying that you are like a slave in the household of a master; you have a place, you belong, you are secure. You don't have to earn your place and you won't be thrown out.

We don't like to see ourselves as slaves, especially as worthless or useless slaves. We don't like the idea that if we only had enough faith, life wouldn't be such a struggle, and that God could make things a lot easier if we could work miracles, if we could easily forgive, if we could avoid making mistakes as we raise our children or try to run our businesses and our households.

But we have been made members of our Father's household; we are adopted brothers and sisters of His Son, who became a slave for us; and the faith we are talking about is not a power that makes us into perfect or powerful human beings. Real faith is not power, it's not agreeing with certain truths, it's not the same as believing in God. Real faith is trusting that God has our real interests at heart, that He wants the best for us, that regardless of the circumstances, he will look after us and do everything in his power to take the slaves we are and raise us up to be His sons and daughters in the life to come.

And that is what makes our lives not only tolerable but joyful.

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 16:19-31

When I was young I lived in a community where almost everyone was Caucasian and Christian. We had a couple of Jewish families who were merchants, but they went to the Episcopalian Church. There was an African American family in town and a couple of Chinese families, who of course, operated Chinese restaurants. And there were a few native Americans. Our little town didn't have a problem with a few people like this and my father would often point to their presence as evidence of our tolerance.

My grandmother, on the other hand, had many interesting ideas. She knew that Polish people were basically mean. She didn't think much of Native Americans, and when a cousin of my grandfather announced that he was one eighth Sioux Indian, my grandmother had a fit, because of it was true she was married to someone who was one eighth Sioux Indian, and that wouldn't do at all. My grandmother had no love for the Irish, and it wasn't until I was in my late teens that I learned, not from her, that her own mother had been an Irish immigrant.

Prejudices soak in. In our town the people we all looked down upon were the “bums” who lived in the South End where most of the bars were. We referred to them as “winos” and laughed when we saw them sleeping in an alley or staggering down the street.

When I went off to college I had classmates from all over the country, in fact, all over the world. And as I got to know them, I learned that they could not be dismissed with a label, but they all had stories; they had families, they had people they loved; they believed in their religion, they loved the place in which they grew up. As a practicing physician I had patients from all walks of life. I learned that gay people and lesbians also had stories. Regardless of their life styles, they were rounded human beings, they had loved ones, they had ups and downs and goals and ambitions just like I did.

I think today Jesus is not talking about rich and poor, or asking the those who have a lot of the world's goods help out those who don't. Those are definitely things he wanted his followers to do, but he's asking more of us in this story.

Because, you see, I don't think the rich man was a sinner. I think he was a neurosurgeon or a trial lawyer or a financial planner or a banker – and I think he probably did pro-bono work or volunteered at his church and helped raise money for his favorite cause. And he wore an Armani suit and had a Rolex and drove a Porsche. And he had lunch at the Federal Club. And when he was downtown he saw what you and I see, a woman pushing a shopping cart, a man with a cardboard sign stating that he was homeless – maybe someone muttering to himself and rolling his eyes. People you would walk around and not meet their gaze.

We know that Jesus wants to reconcile sinners with God. We know he wants brothers to forgive each other before they offer sacrifice. We know he doesn't want Jews and Gentiles to hate each other. But for people to bridge the gulfs between them, they have to know each other's stories. Because once you know someone's story, they cease to be a member of a class, and become real human beings to you.

And that's really the rich man's sin. He never saw Lazarus as a brother, a fellow human being, a child of God. Not only does the rich man ignore the poor man on his doorstep during life, but even after death he asks Abraham to send Lazarus to put some water on his tongue; and when that doesn't work, he asks that Lazarus be sent to his brothers to warn them. Lazarus to the rich man is not a fellow human being, he is a thing, a member of a class, something to be used.

Is Jesus saying that people like that will go to hell? Not really. Jesus tells this story before he has won salvation for the human race. In those days people who believed in life after death believed that people would get justice in the next world, but it was all one world – Hades, or Sheol. The rich man is suffering because he does not see Lazarus, and indeed everyone else, as persons. In fact, of all the people on the earth, he is only concerned about his brothers; he doesn't want them to end up in his situation. But even there it's not because they are people; it's because they are blood relatives; they are “my brothers”. He wants to spare them because they are all that is left of him.

The man who never took the time to know the story of the person on the street, the one who is not like myself, will always be impoverished, because he will not see reality; he will only see an illusion, a reflection of himself. The rich man is not suffering in the next life because of a particular sin he committed or even a series of sins. He is suffering because he has cut himself off from other people during his life. His punishment is self-imposed, and even after death his attitude toward Lazarus does not change.

Part of being a Christian is to help those less fortunate, that's true. But maybe a maybe an even more important part is to overcome those things that divide us, those things that make us look at each other with suspicion, that make us cross the street so that we don't have to confront someone who is so different from us. Because when you think about it, almost all the problems in our world that have to do with people start because we don't make the effort to know the other person, to learn the other person's story.

I am the rich man. I don't get a kick out of fine clothes or fast cars, but I do enjoy food and I like the fact that I have enough money so that when I want something I can have it. There are people I meet every week that I don't really want to know better. Most of the time I am like the rich man and I step over him, or around him, or ignore her. But now and then I am kind of forced to stop and listen to his story. And once I've done that, that person is no longer an it, but now a you. During the rest of my life I ask God to help me so that I will always notice Lazarus and go out of my way to see him as a person. And once I recognize my brother or sister, I can't very well ignore their needs.

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 16:1-13

I always had trouble with this parable. Is Jesus praising someone who is dishonest? Is he talking about a master who laughs off his dishonest servant's further dishonesty? And then Jesus gives us some statements that don't seem to add up: Making friends with dishonest wealth? Being trustworthy with dishonest wealth? Is your wealth and mine dishonest?

I think what throws me off, and maybe you as well, is the description of the steward calling in his master's debtors and having them write off part of their debt, hoping that they will then welcome him into their homes when the servant gets fired.

In my reading, I found out that the servant had every right to do that. A steward would build his commission in to what was charged. And the commissions were strictly prescribed; fifty percent for olive oil, 20 percent for wheat, and other percentages for other commodities. It was recognition that although the master owned the land and the produce, the steward was the one who had to organize the harvest, and that meant paying workers. Whatever was left over he could keep. So our steward is simply writing off his commission. Those who owed the master money suddenly found themselves with more money in their pockets, and presumably, felt more favorable to the servant.

So we have a steward who is accused of squandering his master's property, and at the end of the story the master commends the dishonest steward. I suspect the steward was chronically dishonest, and that's what got him into trouble. When he was caught, he figured out a way to turn his situation to his advantage. That's why he is commended.

I think that's the situation Jesus and his listeners envision when Jesus interprets the parable for them. But Jesus goes on to make several statements about wealth and honesty and responsibility. When our translation says “dishonest wealth” the original Greek would be more like “the wealth this world values”. And that makes a little more sense. Jesus is telling us here that how we deal with our wealth has an impact on eternity. But at the same time, wealth is like nitroglycerin -- it can destroy us if we don't use it properly. And if you are like me, you've had trouble in your lives with that. How do we strike the right balance?

Because as Jesus says, it has to do with honesty. I know a family where the mother has a full time job and the father holds down two full-time jobs – reasonably well – paying jobs, too. And they have five children, all still young. Something seems out of balance. Maybe they are saying, “we are saving for our children's college education” or “we are saving so we don't become a burden on our children in our old age”. I'm not judging them, but if it were me, and I was honest, I hope I would recognize that whatever the reason money was getting in the way of my responsibilities to my family.

And Jesus is pointing out that more important than money are relationships – the steward, after all, uses wealth to form relationships. And that's another danger of worldly wealth – it has the power to come between people. If I have wealth, it follows that some people will try to take it away from me in some way or another. We get phone calls all day long asking for donations or offering to come to our house and see if we need something they are selling. And if some people will try to take my wealth, am I not going to be suspicious, even a little bit, of everyone? And if I don't have enough to get by on, won't that color my relationships with those who have more than they need?

And Jesus is pointing out that worldly wealth brings about responsibility. John Wesley, who founded the Methodist church, begin his career as a teacher, and had a salary of 30 british pounds a year. He lived on 28 and gave a way the other two. But as his salary went up, especially after he became a speaker in great demand, he continued to live on 28 pounds a year and gave away everything else. (They didn't have inflation in those days). He saw wealth as the opportunity to be of service to others. I think it's interesting that we Catholics contribute on the average 386 dollars per family per year to our parish church – even though that is the source of the most important things in our lives – the mass and Holy Eucharist, the source of reconciliation for our sins, the education of our children in our faith, and all the other spiritual benefits that flow from being members of a parish. In the Assembly of God, by the way, the contribution per family is about 1700 dollars per year.

And Jesus ends his discussion of wealth with the statement, “..No servant can serve two masters...You cannot serve God and mammon”. Some of us may have heard that mammon is the demon of wealth, but that understanding dates from the middle ages. In Jesus' time, mammon referred to profit, surplus, that which you have but don't need. And Jesus is simply saying – those of us who have more than we need are constantly faced with a choice; do we use that surplus for God or do we live for that wealth? Here in our wealthy town of Longmeadow, we need to be especially sensitive to what Jesus is telling us. Are we using our surplus wealth to store up in heaven what really matters?

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 15:1-32

There is a lot of humor in the bible if you know where to look. In our first story, you hear God telling Moses “Go down because your people, whom you brought out of egypt, have become corrupt.” After God gets through with his threat, Moses replies, “Why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt?” Sounds like a mom and dad arguing over who is most responsible for the kid's bad behavior.

Saint Thomas Aquinas said that the virtue closest to God was love, but mercy was the second. And perhaps there isn't really a difference; mercy is a form of love. The Gospel of Luke, which we read from today, has story after story about God's mercy. And today, we hear three stories in a row, and Jesus is making some very serious points with humor.

Put yourself in the mind of a first-century Jewish person. I know that's kind of difficult, but you almost have to do that to get what Jesus is really saying in these stories.

So if you are a religious Jew living in a community that depends on raising livestock and farming for its survival. You are under the political control of the Romans and Jewish people who have “sold out” and like powerless people everywhere, you turn to your religion and become more deeply involved. You listen to the teachers and try to live according to the law they proclaim. There are a lot of things in life that go without saying. And one of them is that you avoid people who are impure, who are at the edge of society, people like tax collectors, prostitutes, pagans, even Samaritans. When you pass one on the street, you ignore that person. A really good rabbi might even cross the street to avoid even the possibility of brushing against a sinner. So it is shocking to you to see that Jesus is very different from the other Jewish teachers in this regard. And if the pharisees are disturbed, you are as well; after all, they are people who live the law as well as humanly possible.

And that's when Jesus tells his stories. And if you were a first century Jew listening to him, it's almost as though Jesus piles one thing on top of another.

First, he says, “who among you would leave 99 sheep to find a lost one? The answer – none of us. That would really be foolish. But this shepherd does, and not only that, he does not lead the sheep back, he hoists it up on his shoulders. It is not a little lamb like in the pictures. A full-grown sheep may way 150 pounds. The shepherd does all the work, all that is necessary, to save the sheep, to re-unite it to the flock.

And the woman who lost a coin. We can sort of follow the logic as she frantically sweeps the house and checks under the bed and moves furniture around until she finds the coin. Like the shepherd, she does all the work. But then she throws a huge party, probably spending more than the coin was worth. That doesn't make sense either.

And to top it all off, Jesus throws in the last story, the story of a child who couldn't wait for his father to die, but wanted his inheritance right now; a son who upon receiving it, goes off and blows it all – we don't know on what, but we can be pretty sure it wasn't well invested. And he is reduced to taking care of pigs, and eating pig food. If you go back and read Jewish law, this young man deserves to be disowned; his father has every right to say, “he is not my son”. In fact, that's what Jewish law would tell the father to do. Why should someone like this disrespectful, rebellious first century juvenile delinquent be part of the community at all?

And the son comes to his senses and decides what he is going to say to his father; he would happily take any job if he can just eat and have a place to sleep. That's all he hopes for. But the father has been going up on a hill every day and looking off into the distance, hoping to see the son returning. And when he barely glimpses this, he runs to the son, again, doing all the work. And his welcome back is extravagant. And Jesus knows what people are thinking. And he puts those thoughts in the speech of the second son. And if we are honest, we sympathize with the second son. Lots of people have tried to create a back story for the second son to explain why he reacts this way. But Jesus gives his own back story – and it isn't satisfying at all; “we must celebrate because the one who was dead is now alive!”

Jesus tells the first story and the shepherds are shocked. He tells the second, and the women who are following him are shocked. And he tells the third, and everybody is shocked. And he leaves it at that.

When we hear these stories, we should allow ourselves to be shocked as well. Because Jesus is really talking about God's mercy. To the Jewish people the relationship with God is a covenant, and they've violated their end a lot of times and suffered the consequences. After suitable punishment, maybe over a few generations, God always brings them back; but their relationship with God is dependent on keeping God's law. That's what the Pharisees are concerned about. They want everyone who is Jewish to obey the law to the fullest, because that's when God will finally restore the Jewish people to their true position in the world – a light to the nations, a city on the hill. Unfortunately, I think a lot of us can identify with the pharisees – our relationship with God depends on what we do, how well we pray, how completely we avoid sin.

But what Jesus is saying is that God is not like that; God does all the work, if you are a dumb sheep or an inanimate coin, God will do all the work. If you are a prodigal son, God will do all the work the second you let him, because he has created you so that you can choose not to let him.

One of the insights of the mystics is that you draw closer to God by letting go of things, by “unlearning” what you know, by becoming like a little child. True religion should teach us how to empty ourselves out so that God can come in. Because that's all that stand between you and I and God.

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 14:25-33

In my home town of Helena, Montana, there was a place called Gerties Drive Inn at one end of Main Street. It was a hamburger joint, and you could get root beer and root beer floats. It was one of those places where you could drive up to a parking space, give your order into a speaker, and a young lady would come out with your order on a tray which could attach to your rolled down window. It was a very popular place, and during most of my youth, even into my college years, it was a hangout for teenagers and young families. Alas, it no longer exists, and places like McDonalds have overwhelmed these home-grown enterprises.

My grandfather never owned his own home or a new car. He worked as a bartender for a while, and a salesman in Montgomery Ward which for those of you who are not as old as I am, was the Walmart's of that day. My grandmother, although she was a trained nurse, had decided that part of being a lady was not to work outside of the home, leaving the providing for the family to the husband and father.

One day when I was driving my grandfather to a doctor's appointment, we passed Gertie's drive in. He remarked that the person who opened the place had invited him to go into business with him, which would involve a commitment of money and time, and would indeed he could lose everything. My grandfather turned down the offer, and told me that he would always regret that decision. If he had taken the chance he would be rich.

Today Jesus tells us what it takes to be a disciple. He is not telling us what it takes to get into heaven. That's a different question entirely. But he is telling us that if we want to walk the road he walked and make a real difference in the world, as he did, it will take three things; we will have to hate all those we would normally love; we would have to take up our crosses and follow him; and we would have to renounce all our possessions. My grandfather was faced with a similar challenge, and shrank from it. His life could have been completely different if he had only taken a chance.

Mother Theresa is being canonized today. She is an example of what it means to be a disciple. As a teenager, she wanted to give herself to Christ. She chose to enter a teaching order, the “Sisters of Loreto” and spent some time in Ireland learning English. In India, she learned Bengali, and spent twenty years teaching middle-class Indian children, and eventually be came headmistress of the school. She became increasingly appalled by the poverty she saw, and in 1948 she began her true vocation of ministering to the poorest of the poor. She gathered some young Indian Christian women about her, and that became the seed of the Missionaries of Charity, now consisting of more than 5000 sisters. She also started an order of priests and another of brothers. She went on to become an international celebrity and won a Nobel prize. She was honored all over the world during her lifetime, and shared her message with the United Nations, with presidents and Queen Elizabeth, lectured the pope, and even returned to Albania where she was honored there, despite the fact that the country had exiled or executed everyone who was a religious leader.

So what did she hate? She had a large family, and after she joined the Sisters of Loreto, she never saw any of them again. She had many close friends in the Sisters of Loreto, but after she left them she had no more contact with them. She did not, obviously, hate them. But the hebrew word which is translated as “hate” means something more like “to turn away from, to detach oneself from”. It means that you would never let anything come between you and what God is calling you to do.

So what was her cross? We have a lot of information about her interior life; after her death her confessor wrote about it. Saint Theresa, as a sister of Loreto, began to have the experience of hearing the voice of Jesus, which lead her to her true ministry. But after she established the Missionaries of Charity, she no longer had that interior re-assurance. In fact, according to her confessor, she felt abandoned by God. She even went through phases where she wasn't sure there was a god. And yet, her public face showed no sign of doubt or disbelief. That was her cross. That was the burden she carried all her life. And how did she renounce all her possessions? Even when she became a Sister of Loreto she didn't have much, but after she answered what she called “the call within a call” she had even less. Her earthly possessions consisted of a rosary and a change of clothing; one to wear while the other was washed. She had no car or indeed no home; she slept on the floor even when she was being put up in fine hotels in New York.

And she has been canonized. When I read her life story and see how clearly she followed Christ's call to discipleship, my first reaction is that that's impossible for me and maybe for most of us. But when you think about it, Mother Teresa couldn't have accomplished what she did without the support of literally thousands of people who held down jobs, raised families, owned cars and homes – because for every Teresa, for every Francis, there have to be people who do earn money and can give some of it away. And Mother Teresa herself recognized this when she said “it is not doing great things; it is doing little things well.” To be a disciple doesn't mean to do what Mother Teresa did. That's a special calling. But it does mean that as we go about our daily affairs, we do everything well; it means that we struggle to keep our priorities straight; Jesus comes first; we gratefully accept the burdens we have, because they bring us close to the cross; and we look at our posessions with the eyes of the poor, remembering always how privileged we are compared to most people in the world. I'm not giving you or I an excuse; because becoming a real disciple, although it's within everyone's grasp, is just as hard for us as for Mother Teresa. But well worth it.