Proper 18 C Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Philemon 1-20; Luke 14:25-33 September 5, 2004 The Rev. J. Brian Ponder, Chaplain Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi In the name of God, who Creates, Redeems and Sanctifies. Amen. Imagine it. Tremendous crowds were traveling with Jesus. Not just disciples, but many, many people - wonderers, wanderers, dreamers, skeptics, spies, people of hope, cynics, people who wanted to believe, people - ordinary folks like you and me. And then, Jesus puts everything on the line. "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even life itself, cannot be my disciple." Jesus makes a distinction here. The distinction is the differentiation of traveling with him and following him. He shakes up the crowd. He rattles them. As in so many cases, Jesus sets things on end. These aren't pleasant words for us to hear, and they certainly would have been strange and off-putting to those who heard them. They're not pleasant, because they counter our fundamental - our primary - human relationships. They're not pleasant, because they speak beyond the notion of relationship and about people, individuals, loved ones. If we are to become disciples, are we to hate? The words aren't pleasant, because "hate" is not comforting. It's not joyous. It's harsh. It's radical. It's unsettling and unnerving. Surely the crowds traveling with Jesus knew the story of Israel. They were Jewish. They knew what it meant to be a people of promise. They knew what strict adherence to the law meant. They knew the reward associated with adherence to the law. They knew, also, the great import of familial affiliation, of lineage, of chosen-ness and salvation based upon relationship. Indeed, Jesus' words would have been antithetical to paradigmatic cultural and religious norms. Through our other lessons today, we get a glimpse of just what this may have meant to the people of Jesus' time. Our lesson from Deuteronomy presents Moses, the law giver who set forth a structured set of commands that, if followed, would lead to reward, indeed, possession of all that had been hoped for for so long - the promised land. The Jews were commanded to choose life or death, based on their following of the law, or disobedience to it. Possession and contentment - these are the things promised to God's people through Moses, if they obeyed. It involves a kind of bargaining, a this-for-that mentality. Jesus, though, comes along with a new twist to the message. Obedience is not about possession but rather loyalty and costly loyalty at that. We can gather from our Epistle lesson just what this new loyalty meant for Paul. It meant a new understanding of relationship, a new faithfulness based on a new equality rather than power structures and bargaining. Paul could have commanded Philemon to accept Onesimus back into his care, but chose not to do so. Rather, Paul urges Philemon to live out the new relationship through Christ which is meant for all - true brotherhood, or sisterhood in the faith as followers of Christ, where there is no distinction between Jew or Gentile, free or slave, or any number of differentiations that could have been made within society. Paul has understood the point of Jesus' message. Jesus is doing something new here, but does the crowd get it? Do we get it? What I see in this instance as part of the new relationship is a fundamental shift in an understanding from obedience to a God of proscription to one of invitation. The gist of what Jesus is saying in our gospel lesson is: "You're invited." Jesus says, "You're invited to come along, to join me in this endeavor, but there's a catch." Perhaps more appropriately put, he's saying "There are some things you should know. Following me will require a great deal, not just one time, not even two or three times but on a going-forward basis. And just when you thought you'd given all you could, discipleship's going to cost you just that much more." In other words, Jesus is telling them: "I can't promise you a tangible reward, one that you will savor in the days ahead, or one that you'll even enjoy in this lifetime." He's telling them that the reward is one that they can never "possess" and one that can never "possess" or "consume" them. Jesus makes no promise, as did Moses of possessions and contentment, but rather he makes a promise based on sufficiency. The invitation comes through a new awareness that Jesus reveals to the crowd. He could have easily told them to get lost. But no, he tells the crowd that from here out the road will only get more treacherous, steeper, and harder to navigate. I have this impression of the party coming to a screeching halt. "What's he talking about?" "Is he crazy?" "What?" Here, we have the benefit of knowing a fuller story than did the crowd who was following Jesus that day. Jesus is telling them: faith is no simple thing. He's telling them that there will be times of confusion, and sorrow, and misunderstanding and miscommunication. He's telling them, he's telling us, that discipleship is the only means towards perfection - not in our limited understanding of it, or our obsession with it, but rather that perfection in which all things are revealed, in which we see not in a mirror, but when we see face to face. Discipleship, Jesus tells us, means the giving over of ourselves completely, trusting the One who Creates, Redeems and Sanctifies. The giving up of possessions is the relinquishing of anything that may or could separate us from that fuller knowledge of God in Christ. And, it's about the giving up of those things that possess and consume us, as well. The throwing off of possessions - the import of which Jesus associates with family relationships - leads not only to a newer relationship, but to a new reality. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian, who was executed during World War II for the part he played in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Compelled by this understanding of discipleship, Bonhoeffer interpreted Jesus as being our means of invitation not merely to witness the passion of the cross, nor to simply to look on at the foot of the cross, but to the cross itself. He says in The Cost of Discipleship: The cross means sharing the suffering of Christ to the last and to the fullest. Only those thus totally committed in discipleship can experience the meaning of the cross. The cross is there, right from the beginning, [you] have only got to pick it up; there is no need to go out and look for a cross for [yourselves], no need for [you] deliberately to run after suffering. … As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death - we give over our lives to death. … [T]he cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls us, he bids us come and die. Our call to bear witness to the love of God in Christ is not an easy one. It's not easy in a world torn apart by true hatred and destruction. It's not easy in a world following September 11th, 2001, and in a world that turns a blind eye to the horrendous evils which continue to plague Sudan or Chechnya and all the other lands in our world so much in need of and desperation for true peace. Witnessing to the gospel of Christ is not even easy in the best of social or academic conditions on the campus of a university, or within a church divided on big issues. But we are called to bear witness to Christ. And these are crosses which we must bear. Jesus calls us into communion through invitation to the cross. He promises no rose gardens, but rather relationship, community and the opportunity for full understanding. Jesus offers hopefulness in the midst of death and depression, degradation and the wastelands that shatter our scattered lives. Jesus offers invitation counter to all closed doors with which we are met in this transitory life, all the crosses that compromise our full being and potential, those things which jeopardize the perfection of God's creation. By invitation we understand that it is at the cross where we meet Christ. It is at the cross that we know more fully, even as we have been fully known. It is at the cross that we see face to face. In the midst of many, many people - wonderers, wanderers, dreamers, skeptics, spies, people of hope, cynics, people who want to believe, people - Dare we pick up the cross? Dare we follow Christ?