The Rev. Austin K. Rios
4th September 2022: Proper 18
It must have been shocking for those large crowds to hear—as shocking as it is to us today.
Picture the scene with me for a moment.
As Jesus’ healing, teaching, and exorcising power grows in the Gospel of Luke, so do the crowds that follow him.
To the Roman occupiers and the Jewish hierarchy charged with maintaining social order, the Nazareth-based movement went from nuisance to noteworthy in such a short time—and all due to the power of the Holy Spirit flowing from Jesus’ intimate and direct connection to God.
Crowds this large meant power, and such power was a threat to keeping things the way they were.
I can almost picture the smirks on those authorities faces when Jesus stood before these hopeful masses this day and told them without guile, “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.”
Surely this harsh language would scatter the crowd for good and put an end to the movement before it did any more damage.
And yet, this is not what happened.
Instead the movement only grew stronger.
It bears mentioning that the crowds would have had some familiarity with the term “hate” being used in a way other than to signal open hostility that leads to violence.
In the book of Psalms and Proverbs, there are multiple examples of the faithful being asked to love wisdom and hate wickedness and falsehood.
The strong language in that wisdom literature was meant to highlight what was at stake, not to encourage a faithful person to devote their lives to hating.
But even if Jesus isn’t telling the crowd to hate their families in a way that leads to hostility and violence, he still is making a MAJOR countercultural claim.
Which is this—there is nothing more important in this world—not your parents, your children, your brothers and sisters, nor any possession that you may have on this earth—NOTHING is more important than the new life and family fellowship to which I call you.
All the miracles, all the power flowing from the Holy Spirit, and all the wisdom teachings point to this reality—to be in right relationship with God and neighbor you must be prepared to let go of anything that binds you to the world’s way of being.
To be part of the Jesus movement, and the power of God that animates it, we have to be unfettered and willing to be led into deeper levels of compassion, sacrifice, and community.
Jesus follows up this shocking invitation by explaining to his hearers that the journey is long and hard and will require EVERYTHING of them.
Such calls for total commitment and sacrifice are pretty foreign in our day and age.
We are more familiar with calls to patriotism, partisanship, or ideological purity—even though such appeals are usually about controlling the current social order instead of reshaping it along the lines of Jesus’ mission.
As he will show though the example of his life, Jesus’ alternative kingdom—that generates the abundance of life which God always intended for us and for all creation— arises through personal sacrifices that seed and tend the garden of healed and restored relationships.
Those who wish to horde power and hold fast to the system of domination that passes for worldly wisdom—those who actively oppose God’s kingdom and justice in favor of their own—dismiss Jesus’ call to sacrifice as foolishness.
But when the crowds began to really believe that Jesus was right about this hard path leading to life and lasting peace, that’s when the initial dismissals of those smirking authorities began to expand into plots to extinguish Jesus’ life.
We who witness this encounter today in scripture have the benefit of knowing how the story unfolds from here.
We know that Jesus’ words and movement will so threaten the powers of his day that they will sentence him to die on a cross and raise him up as an example of what will happen to other would-be insurrectionists.
We also know that the cross is not the end—that the power of God raised Jesus to new life and that the new family and community he called us to privilege as primary was fully born into the mystical body we call the church after his ascension.
And we have countless examples of saints and other faithful ancestors putting this wisdom first in their own lives and seeing it change the world into a foretaste of God’s eternal reign rather than the nightmare it can too often be.
This is exactly what is happening in the relationship work Paul is negotiating in the Letter to Philemon.
Rather than seeing Onesimus as a runaway slave that deserves to be punished according to the world’s wisdom, Paul begs Philemon to receive Onesimus as a brother in Christ instead.
Because of Christ, the old categories do not apply—slave and free, Jew or Greek, male or female.
Paul exercises authority over Philemon even though he’s a prisoner of the state, and because Paul has placed the proclamation of the Gospel above even his own life—because he’s chosen Jesus’ hard way of servanthood— his appeal to Philemon has weight and the power to transform.
Such is the way with all those who heed Jesus’ call to value this path of transformation and reimagining, and its demands, above all else in their lives.
Above the sense of duty and fealty to family, to country, and to any possession that might vie for our allegiance.
Jesus called the crowds back then and calls us each today to follow where he leads—down the difficult way of love and sacrifice that will pit us against those who have vested interest in the world staying unchanged.
What do you need to do this week to reaffirm your commitment to this path and the reimagined web of relationships we call St. Paul’s and the Church?
How might you give of your gifts and sacrifice so that this alternative kingdom can be known, felt, and proclaimed in a world that still needs to be transformed by it?
Make no mistake, Jesus asks this of all of us—and his appeal is true and powerful because he first gave all so that we could make this choice.
Let us resolve to follow in his footsteps—to join with St. Paul, our many ancestors in the faith, and the saints of God sitting in the pew next to you in committing ourselves to this journey of faith.
To turn our time, resources and attention away from that which leads to death and enslavement and channel our love, our souls, and our minds toward the life-giving, and difficult, way of Christ.