The Unbridgeable Gap (Luke 16:19 - 31)

      A cab driver dies and goes to heaven, and when he gets to the Pearly Gates, St. Peter looks him up in the Big Book and says “Get yourself a silk robe and a golden staff, and go on up into Heaven.”  A preacher’s next in line, and he’s been looking on with great interest – if a cabby gets a silk robe and a golden staff, what would he, a man of God, get?  And St. Peter looks him up in the Big Book, and says “Ok . . . we’ll let you in.  Grab that cotton robe over there and that stick, and you’re in.”  And the preacher’s astonished, and he says “But I’m a man of the cloth. You gave that cab driver a gold staff and a silk robe . . . surely I rate higher than a cabby!”  St Peter just stares at him and says  “Look.  We’re only interested in results around here.  When you preached, people slept.  But when that cabby drove, people prayed.”

      We’ve all heard stories like that, haven’t we?  Stories about folks dying and going to heaven, maybe two nuns and a priest, or a priest and a rabbi . . . and they meet St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, or they run into Aristotle or Plato or Cary Grant, and the point is, we know they’re just stories.  They’re part of our common folk-lore, told mainly for amusement . . . well, in Jesus’ day, there were also folk-tales floating around about what happens after you die, and in today’s parable, Jesus retells one of them, only with a decidedly Christian twist.  And because it is a parable, we can’t draw any conclusions from it about the nature of Hades, even whether it exists or not, or the nature of any punishment, or anything.  It’s a tale told to make a point, and that’s our task today—to ferret out just what that point might be.

      One more thing: as you listen to my retelling of this parable, I invite you to put yourselves in the shoes of the first century people who heard it . . . not the Pharisees to whom it was originally told, but Luke’s audience some fifty years after the crucifixion.  Pretend that you’re in a house church somewhere in Palestine, as Luke reads these words aloud to you, and listen to the story again:

      It proceeds in three acts.  Act One is a tableau, a snapshot of the way things are for the rich man and Lazarus.  The rich man is almost ridiculously well off . . . he’s robed in purple, which was available only to the super-rich, and may indicate he was a member of the Royal family . . . he feasted sumptuously every day, every day was a feast day to him, and you can picture him at his table, stuffed into purple robes and fine linens, stuffed with food so he’s almost bursting at the seams, his whole life is sumptuously stuffed, stuffed, stuffed . . . and in our tableau – like in a warped Christmas pageant – in our tableau, outside the gates that shut out the riff-raff, that close him off from the outside world, lies a poor man named Lazarus, whose very name is evocative, it comes from Eleazar, which means “God helps” . . . and Lazarus lays at the rich man’s gate, covered with sores – and our 1^st-century religious mind shouts unclean! unclean! – and he longs to eat the food cast off from the rich man’s table, to taste the bread used to wipe the grease off the rich man’s mouth . . . and Lazarus is too weak to beat away the dogs that roam the Jerusalem garbage heaps, and they lick his sores . . . and so here’s the scene, here’s the tableau: the rich man, stuffed with sumptuous-ness, sated with food and drink and money, and just a few feet away, separated by table and gate, Lazarus, belly protruding from malnutrition, flies and dogs feeding on his body’s open wounds.

      Act Two.  Lazarus dies, and the angels carry him tenderly aloft, caressing his seeping body – he’s not unclean to God’s messengers! – and dare we guess how he dies?  Could it be starvation, or some infection in his sores . . . or does he freeze to death one night, as the homeless sometimes do, while the rich man takes a hot bath, and retires to satin sheets?  Or maybe the dogs . . . well, the parable tells us little, and it says even less about the rich man’s death . . . whereas Lazarus is borne up by angels, when the rich man dies, he is simply buried.

      Act Three. We’re in Hades, where the dead are gathered before judgment, but the rich man’s already getting a little taste of his, he’s already being tormented, but he can see Abraham far away with Lazarus at his side – the Greek says “in his bosom.”  And we know that Abraham’s bosom is just about the best place for a good Jew to be, and oy vey!  Are we astonished!  Because as good citizens of the first century, we naturally believe that anything good in life is a result of God’s favor, and anything bad is a result of God’s displeasure, and the rich guy certainly had plenty of good stuff, and the poor man certainly had nothing but bad, so the rich man must have really pleased God, while the poor man must’ve have really irritated God . . . but here’s a major reversal of our expectations, it’s downright shocking, to tell you the truth, because we as good citizens of the first century, we expect the rich guy to continue to receive the goods – he must have earned it, after all—and Lazarus to continue to receive the boot.

      And the rich man may have thought so too, because he calls out to Father Abraham and says “Have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to cool me off,” and we note that even with this shocking reversal of fortune, he still expects the poor man to step and fetch it, to bring him his Big Mac and fries.  But Abraham says “Child” – for the rich guy is a child of Abraham – he says “Child . . . during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus evil things . . . but now, he’s comforted, and you’re in agony.” And we begin to get it . . . we begin to remember other teachings of Jesus . . . like  “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled . . . but woe to you rich, for you have received your consolation.”

      And then Abraham tells the rich man something chilling . . . between you and us there’s a great chasm, and no one can cross from you to us, or from us to you . . . he’s telling the rich man that poor folks like Lazarus aren't his servants any more, the roles they played in life have been nullified, they’ve been un-done, but there’s something else, too, for if Lazarus can’t cross that chasm, neither can the rich man, and we can’t help but think of the barriers put up in real life . . . the gate, the stuffed-full table, the purple finery and most of all, all those social strictures about who’s unclean and who’s clean, what kind of behavior is acceptable and what's not,  who’s in and who’s out . . . and we can’t help think of the bitter irony – the rich man could have easily crossed those barriers in life, he could have easily opened the gate and brought the poor man into his home, or gone out to be with him, but now he can’t.  It’s too late, they’re forever separate.

      And the rich man says “Father, I beg you to send Lazarus” –he still can’t keep from viewing him as a servant –  “I beg you to send him to my brothers, to warn them, so they won’t come here to this place of torment, so they won’t get in the same jam as I.”  And Abraham says they have Moses and the prophets to warn them, that should be enough, and we know exactly what he’s saying, for didn’t Moses say “Do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor” . . . didn’t Isaiah say the worship God desires is for us to “share our bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into our houses?” The commands to feed and nurture and welcome the poor are not new, they’re right there in the Bible—the rich man and his brothers should have known it all along.

      And finally, as our little play comes to a close, while we’re still reeling from the intensity of it all, from its audacious, revelatory power, we see that the rich guy knows his brothers all too well, that they will not follow the law of their ancestors, but he’s gotta try one last time: “if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.”  And Abraham’s response is like a cold, hard knife to his gut – “if they don’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

      Ouch . . . even if someone rises from the dead . . . well, if that’s not a big, fat hint to everyone living on the other side of the resurrection, I don’t know what is . . . somebody has risen from the dead, all right, somebody with a capital S, and so we’re really in the same boat as all those 1^st Century hearers of Luke’s gospel . . . like them, we’ve not only had the revelation of Moses and the prophets, like the rich guy and his five brothers, we’ve had the teachings of Jesus Christ which, if they’re consistent at all are consistently on the side of the least of these . . .  and yet the poor are definitely still with us, after all that . . . seems like the parable is right, “they” haven’t been convinced even after someone has risen from the dead . . .

      But there’s a crucial question here . . . who are “they”?  Who haven’t been convinced?  Well, we’ve seen the rich guy and poor guys, they’re staples of Jesus’ teaching, embodiments of his categories of the first and last, whose positions will be reversed, and that surely happens in this parable, but the thing about this one is that it’s all about the gaps . . .  Jesus carefully sets it up so that the gap between them is enormous: there’s this super-rich dude over here, this hyper-well-off guy dressed like a rock star, who feasted every day, not just on the high holy days, and he’s contrasted to the scabby, smelly guy who lives outside his gate in the gutters, who holds out his hand as the rich guy glides past every day in his smoke-windowed Bentley . . . it’s this gap between them that Jesus plays up, and when the reversal happens, when the last becomes first and the first last, he has Abraham point it ironically out, he says “between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so” . . . the gap you created in life has now come back to haunt you . . .

      And I wish I could soften the hard edge of this parable, but I can’t.  After all this revelation, after all the prophets’ teaching and Jesus’ teaching and now his death and resurrection, there is still a huge gap between the haves and have nots . . . and if you have any doubt where we middle-class Christians stand, where we are in this parable, a trip to a website called “Global Rich List” dot com will seal the deal . . . I entered Pam and my combined, modestly-middle-class, salaries—and found that we are in the top .19% of richest folks in the world.  Even folks making the federal poverty level for a family of four—about 18,000 dollars—are in the top 5 % . . . it’s fair to say that if you take the whole world – and God made the folks in the Sudan just as much as he did us here in the States – none of us are among the poor . . . and yet, we all have to watch our budgets, don’t we?  In America, we can make $5000, more than 85% of the rest of the world and still not have enough to eat . . . so in the sense that it’s all relative, we aren’t in with the rich guy in the parable, at least as far as this country is concerned . . . so if we’re not with the super, over-the-top rich, and we’re not with the poorest of the lie-in-the-ditch, covered-with-sores poor, with whom can we stand?  How can we identify with this parable?

      Well, there’s one more group here . . . the rich guy – who’s already doomed, remember – wants to send Lazarus back to warn his brothers about all of this, and what does Jesus say?  The law and the prophets 'oughta’ be enough . . . they know what to do . . . and I think that may be where we kind of fit, isn’t it?  We’re here on earth, we know there’s grinding poverty, even 2,000 years and hundreds of million of Christians after our Lord Jesus – that ultimate victim, that ultimate innocent Lazarus – rose from the grave.  You see, Jesus is a witness to it, his whole life is. . . a witness to God’s ultimate concern for the weakest among us . . . and yet 2000 years later, poverty and oppression still haunt our world.  2000 years later, there are still chasms yawning between our poor and us . . . deep canyons of class, race and of social status.  But like the rich man’s brothers – and unlike the rich man himself – the chasms between us and them are not unbridgeable . . . there is still time for us to bridge that gap, to welcome the poor and disenfranchised and oppressed inside our gates of privilege . . . question is, will we do it before it’s too late?  Amen.

Parabolic Speech (Luke 16:1 - 9)

      We’ve talked before about how the topic Jesus teaches on the most—by far—is money, and here we go with another teaching . . . but even by the standards of Jesus’ parables – which can be hard to interpret – this is a doozy.  The manager – or steward as in some translations – is dismissed from his job and hatches a scheme to get in good with the neighbors, and so he falsifies his master’s records and reduces their debt . . . and the confounding thing is that he’s commended for it by the master – the same person who dismissed him commends him for acting shrewdly.  Shrewdly?  Well, I suppose that it’s shrewd, at least as far as the steward’s concerned – he’s just secured himself some goodwill from his master’s clients, but it’s at the his master’s expense, it’s by being a dishonest manager – and note that it isn’t until the end that he’s called that.  Does Jesus really want us to applaud this self-serving behavior?

      Well, that’s why they call it a parable . . . they’re not noted for easiness to comprehend  . . . and the first thing to do when trying to interpret one is figure out where it begins and ends.  The beginning of this one is easy: “Then Jesus said to the disciples ‘There was a rich man who had a manager.’” Pretty cut-and-dried.  But it’s the ending that has given interpreters fits.  Our reading ends like this:  “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”  But that sounds more like an interpretation of the story, or a comment on the story, not part of the story itself.  A similar thing can be said of the next-to-the-last phrase: “for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”  Like the last sentence in our reading, it seems like a comment on the parable than the parable itself.  In fact, most scholars think that the parable itself ends in the first part of verse eight: “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he acted shrewdly.”

      A question you might ask is: “Why does it matter?”  Well, it goes back to the way the Gospels were written . . . at the time of the first writings – the time of Mark – there were no lengthy, written records of Jesus’ teachings.  There were oral traditions, snippets of sayings and stories told by Jesus, passed down from early Christian to early Christian . . . a woman in the market might say to another “Did you hear the story the master told about the Good Samaritan” and she’d launch into that parable as she’d heard it . . . or maybe a kitchen worker would tell his cohort “Did you hear what Jesus said about plucking corn on the Sabbath, he said ‘the Sabbath was made for humans, and not humans for the Sabbath . . .’” And what the Gospel writers did was to put these stories and sayings together in an arrangement that was meaningful to them . . . and so the parable of the dishonest manager probably came to Luke as a “bare” story, most likely ending with the steward’s commendation, and then Luke took some Jesus-sayings that he’d heard or collected—there were a bunch of those floating around, just bare sayings—Luke took some of those and stuck ‘em on the end of the parable as an interpretation.

      And the interpretation Luke gives it – which were, remember, composed of Jesus’ own sayings – says something about rewarding shrewdness.  The children of this age – that’s the worldly, non-Christians – are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation – their fellow, worldly non-Christians – than are the children of light.  That’s Luke and his church members, or these days, us.  And so the interpretation of this – which has been preached from pulpits from time immemorial – is that we children of God ought to be a little more shrewd in how we use the stuff we have, kind of like those children of the world.  We’re supposed to make friends for ourselves by means of this dishonest wealth – perhaps a better translation is “wealth of unrighteousness” or “worldly wealth” – so that when it’s gone, we might be welcomed into the eternal homes, where all the women are strong, all the men good looking, and all the children above average.

      And that’s not a bad interpretation, is it?  I mean, as Psalm 24 says, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,” including the all “worldly wealth,” whether unrighteous or not.  Certainly we Christians ought not to squander it, as the dishonest manager was accused of doing at the beginning of the parable.  Certainly we are charged with using it prudently, even shrewdly, to further the kingdom of God.  After all, didn’t Jesus say “Be wise” same word in Greek as shrewd – “Be shrewd as serpents, and innocent as doves?”  Shrewdness – although we often view it in a negative light – has positive connotations as well . . . if you’re shrewd you don’t get cheated, and certainly one of our jobs here on earth is to keep God from getting cheated, isn’t it?

      Use what’s given to you wisely, this interpretation says . . . don’t waste it like the dishonest manager . . . and any preacher worth her salt could take that and spin it into a whole riff on our spend-happy lives, where we think nothing of pouring money down an automobile rat-hole, but groan every time we give to the church, or to the poor . . . as a matter of fact, I think I have . ..

      And yet . . . could Jesus really be commending the guy for being dishonest?  Could he really be patting him on the back for thinking of himself, for trickily using his position to secure for himself a soft landing, a golden parachute when he doesn’t deserve one?  It still seems – to me, anyway – to make little sense.  It seems to me that there’s something I don’t know, something . . . missing.  So I went looking—on the internet, natch!—and found the missing piece of the puzzle.  And like a lot of “missing pieces” from scripture, it’s missing only to us here in the 20th Century.  As we’ve mentioned before, first-century Palestine was an honor-shame society.  And in one of those, honor was more important than wealth.  It determined one’s social status, one’s place in the community, and consequently one’s ability to do business.  Most importantly, honor and power were directly related, and power was understood as the ability to exercise control over the behavior of others.  And if a man couldn’t control his underlings, he had little honor, and therefore a low standing, a low amount of power, within society.

      Now.  Let’s read the parable of the dishonest manager with this in mind.  A land-owner hears that his steward has been misappropriating – Luke says “squandering” or wasting – his property.  His honor and community status are threatened by all the talk, all the whispering going on: “Did you hear how his underling took him to the cleaners?   He can’t even control his employees, for Pete’s sake . . . how can he expect us to do business with him?”  So to save face, the master does the only thing he can, and he tells the steward to hit the road.

      Meanwhile, the steward’s in a panic.  He now has a reputation for dishonoring his master, so nobody in his right mind will hire him . . . if he loses his position as steward, he’ll likely end up a common field hand, or worse yet, a penniless beggar by the side of the road . . . he says “I’m too weak to dig and too ashamed to beg” and it’s literally a matter of his own life, which would be brutal and short as either a field hand or a beggar.  So he hatches a plot to restore his master’s honor, and at the same time save his reputation as an honest steward.  “I’ve decided what to do,” he says, “so that when I’m dismissed as manager, I’ll be welcomed into the households of other employers.”  He forgives a portion of the amount owed by his master's debtors. Word gets out, and people assume the steward is acting on the master's orders—note that there’s no indication they know he’s been fired—so it makes the master look generous and charitable in their eyes. The prestige and honor gained by such benevolence far outweigh the monetary loss to the master.

      The master hears about it, commends the manager for his shrewdness, and everyone lives happily ever after . . . the master’s honor has been restored and the manager will likely keep his job, but even if he doesn’t, his honor has been restored, and he can get a job somewhere else.

      In this reading, at least the master is not commending the steward for his dishonesty, but why does Jesus tell this story in the first place?  For what reason does he tell his disciples a story about honor lost and restored?  Is shrewdness really what he’s talking about?  If it is, it is just about the only place in the Gospels that he does (except for that wise as snakes, innocent as doves thing, that is).  To put it another way, just what is it that Jesus sees as commendable about the servant’s actions?  Well, maybe we should stop concentrating on the method of what the manager did – a “dishonest” adjusting of the books – and look at its content: what he did was to forgive a debt.  What he did was an act of compassion.  And God is all about forgiveness, all about compassion.

      This makes even more sense if we look at our story’s context, specifically what comes immediately before it in Luke: the Parable of the Prodigal Son or, as it’s more accurately called, the Parable of the Forgiving Father.  A son squanders his inheritance (note the same word, “squander,” in our parable), and he – like the manager – comes up with a plan to get back into his father’s good graces: he’ll throw himself on his father’s mercy and say that he’s unworthy to be his son, but before he can do it, when his father sees him from afar, he has compassion for his son and runs up to him, hugs his neck, and forgives him on the spot.  Jesus – and it’s especially true in Luke’s Gospel – places a high regard on compassion and forgiveness, and in fact we might say that it’s a defining trait of God’s who is, after all, love.

      And in our parable, it’s not the father-figure, it’s not the master, who forgives, but the servant . . . and if you treat it allegorically, God the master commends God’s servants, God’s stewards, the managers of God’s wealth on earth—that’s us—for showing forgiveness, for showing compassion.  And there seems to be a clear progression from the Parable of the Prodigal Son, where the master (the stand-in for God, remember) forgives, to the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, where the stand-in for us does the same.  Just as God the master, God the Lord, God the eternal parent forgives us, just as God shows compassion and love for us, we as God’s children, as the stewards of God’s manifold grace, are called to show forgiveness and compassion in our dealings with others.

      The Lord’s prayer says the same thing, only a lot more compactly: Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.  We ask God to forgive our sins just like we forgive others.  One makes no sense without the other . . . Our forgiveness is conditioned on God’s forgiveness, it’s imbedded in it . . . without God’s forgiveness, we can no more forgive others than we can walk to the moon on our own two little feet.  And by modeling this forgiveness, by showing it to the world, we demonstrate Gods to everyone we meet.  In a real sense, we “restore” our master’s honor, we reveal God’s true nature – as a God of compassion, as a God of forgiveness, as a God of love – to ourselves, and to our friends and neighbors outside the church.

      Forgiveness is a defining characteristic of God, and so it should be a defining  characteristic of us, as God’s children.  And the good news, friends, is that it is as good for us as it is for the person we have forgiven.  Maybe even more so:  anger can build up inside us so that we corrode on the inside like a derelict ship, rotting away at anchor.  It is well known that forgiving our neighbor, our friends, even our enemies, releases us, renews us, and un-twists our insides.

      And there’s more good news . . . it’s in the compassion of the manager, the compassion that he shows to debtors like you and me.  We are servants of that master, servants of God, and at the same time debtors, creatures who owe a tremendous amount to our creator.  And just as we have been forgiven, just as we have been showed compassion, we too are called to forgive, in the sure and complete knowledge that we are first forgiven, wholly and completely, by God, our savior.  Amen.

Remembrance and Hope -- 9/11 Remembrance, 15th Anniversary (2 Corinthians 4:1, 5 - 10)

Do you remember where you were on 9/11?  I remember where I was.  On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I was at our home perched on a hillside overlooking highway 101 and the Pacific Ocean.  It was in my first parish in Gold Beach, Oregon, and I was a newly-minted pastor—we called ourselves ministers of the Word and Sacrament back then.  I stumbled out of bed at my usual hour—about 6 o’clock—flipped on the TV next to the big picture windows, and saw a picture of a building in the distance, smoke billowing out of it, and I remember thinking “What the heck . . . where’s Good Morning America?  Where’s Diane Sawyer?”  And then, there she was, reporting: “A plane has hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center."

I sat riveted, staring at the images on the screen, as they cut between cameras at a fixed position and onboard ABC’s New York affiliate’s helicopter.  I had no sooner gotten into my head what was thought at first to be an accident than a deadly bloom broke out on the South Tower, and it became clear that a second plane had hit that building, it began to dawn on everyone that New York City was under attack.

What about you?  What do you remember?  Do you remember the Pentagon and yet another airliner?  I do . . . The largest office building in the world, wreathed in black smoke, reports of evacuation.  A congresswoman from California recalls seeing the conflagration in the distance, and being told to run away from the Capitol building, just run, and she did, fleeing with her colleagues down Pennsylvania Avenue.  Turns out, their instincts were right: the Capitol building was the target of the fourth plane, and would’ve been hit if its passengers hadn't risen up . . . Four planes.  Four pilots, four co-pilots.  Four sets of stewards, four loads of passengers, 246 souls in all.

Do you remember what happened next?  Do you remember that the worst was yet to come?  I do . . . I remember the incredible, silent collapse—silent to those of us not there, anyway.  Covered on every network, mirrored on every screen, I remember the gasps of the anchors—Diane and Charlie and Katie and Matt—as first one then the other of the towers pancaked down upon themselves.  Watching it, we knew that whoever was left in those flattened stairways, offices and halls couldn't have survived the crush of steel and stone.

And then the images began . . . the planes hitting, over and over and over, from different angles and sides as more and more video is discovered.  The fire-balls, the jagged, airliner-shaped holes, and the jumpers, plunging over a thousand feet to the ground.  The collapse of the towers—over and over and over—and the cloud of smoke and debris that rolling down the New York streets like a toxic fog.  The images played again and again until it seemed they were burned into our retinas, until they haunted our sleep.

Thousands were killed—nearly three thousand, to be exact—and thousands more were stranded in Nova Scotia when U.S. airspace was closed.  Wall Street was closed until the 17^th, and world finances were disrupted.  At the same time, the country came together, for a few months anyway, and for a time, church attendance picked up.  But along with the good came the not-so-much . . . Despite President Bush saying that Islam was not the problem per se, there developed a strain of anti-Muslim sentiment that has continued to this day.  Human beings are, as Paul says, treasure in clay jars, fragile and fallible.

And yet, even though some of our brothers and sisters succumbed to the hysteria, the church as a whole was a source of light in the days following 9/11.  In those first days after the attack, the churches played a vital role in giving the country space to pray, space to communally grieve.  At my first parish in Oregon, on the edge of the continent, we opened our sanctuary for prayer on that Friday, as I understand this congregation did as well, and we were always available for sanctuary and counseling.  Indeed, the poor in spirit were blessed, those who mourn were comforted, and the merciful received mercy as the church fulfilled its vocation as demonstration of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

And here's the thing: we were able—and are able—to do this only through the grace of God.  It is only by God’s mercy that we are able to be merciful.  God’s grace and mercy powers us and empowers us, and we become a conduit, a pipeline for that mercy to others.  And it is precisely in that that our hope and courage lies.  We do not proclaim ourselves for the simple reason that we can't do it ourselves, we are clay jars.  But though we are those jars, we are filled with God’s mercy and strength.  We can be afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed, so that through us Christ, who is the light of the world, might shine forth in the darkness.  Amen.

Priorities, Priorities (Luke 14:25 - 33)

Just when we thought it was safe to come back into the sanctuary, up pops this passage in the Lectionary.  Just when we thought Jesus  s\was all about healing and dinner invitations, shepherds and celestial choirs of angels, he comes out with this:  “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.”  And all of a sudden, we’re cast into the black pit of despair—or at least the pothole of rationalization—‘cause how many of us hate our children?  How many hate our parents and brothers and sisters?  How many of us hate life itself?

 Yet, here it is in black and white.  And we shouldn't be surprised, exactly, because he's been leading up to it . . . After all, isn't Jesus the one who, when his mother and brothers wanted to see him, refused, saying that those who do the will of God are his mother and brothers?  And isn’t he the one who asked “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division,” and then proceeded to say just what he is gong to divide: father against son, and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother?

And when I hear these things, especially in an election year, I can't help but think that all the politicians who go on and on about “Christian family values” haven't read the gospels . .. Thankfully, neither of the presidential candidates are running on them. But plenty of down-ballot candidates are.  And here in today's passage, Jesus puts it as starkly as he can:  whoever doesn't hate dear ol’ ma and pa, spouse and kiddies, and your bratty little brother, can't be his disciple.  And further, whoever does not carry the cross can’t be his disciple, either, and this may be even more disturbing, cause we know how that ended, we know what carrying the cross got him.

So what gives here?  What’s Jesus trying to say?  And if he’s saying what it looks like he's saying, how much does it apply to us? Hate is such a strong word . . . Is it really necessary for his disciples to hate their fathers and mothers, wives and children et cetera, et cetera? Well . . . I think yes and no. On the one hand,  Jesus was not above a little hyperbole to make a point.  Remember what he said about those who'd cause a “little one” to stumble, that it would be better for Sodom and Gomorrah?  And he called Pharisees snakes, vipers and whitewashed tombs . . . it’s clear Jesus wasn't above a little hyperbole to make a point.

On the other hand, it's possible that “hate” is a little too strong a translation of the Greek verb miseo in this context.  According to one authority, here it means “prefer less” or “love less” . . . prefer one’s family less, on this case, than serving the gospel.  Thus, if this reading is right, to be a disciple one must prioritize one’s life around the work of the gospel.

It's important to notice that Jesus is talking to a crowd here, not simply those who are already his followers . . . he's telling them what it takes to be one of his disciples . . . And it looks like not everyone is cut out to be one.  Just like builders must count nails and boards before they build, and kings must count the enemy before they go to war, so must potential followers count the cost of discipleship before they sign on the dotted line.  Was there a constant stream of disciple wannabes, stars in their eyes, heads full of feasts and miracles?  Was Jesus telling them “not so fast . . . There's a cost involved.  You must put me first, you must put the Good News first. Not first after your children or grandchildren, not after your poor sick mama, but first.”

Not only that, he says, whoever doesn't carry the cross and follow him cannot be his disciples, and though our translation doesn't catch it, it actually says whoever doesn't carry their cross and follow him.  This brings up the question of each person's cross perhaps being different . . . Is the cross of those who would be his disciples precisely reordering their priorities, putting Jesus first, along with  all the pain and anguish that might follow?

We who are on the other side of the crucifixion see that phrase  and think “martyrdom,” but it could be that he was referring to suffering in general . . . You must bear your cross, you must suffer for to be a disciple.  That’s kind of how John Calvin saw it . . . For him, bearing our cross meant to obey God even in our pain and loss, in facing the tragedies, trials, and griefs of life. To Calvin, the image of the cross of Christ appeals to the Christian imagination to help us better bear suffering and pain.

Well.  As kind of a topper, Jesus lays it all out: “none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”  And I can see all the wannabes screeching to a halt and back-pedaling, or maybe strolling on by, whistling, as if they were really going somewhere else all along . . . its one thing to hate all your people, to diss your In-laws—honey, we can't go see your folks, Jesus says not to—but to give up all your stuff . . . But Jesus knows that possessions just drag you down, just get in the way.  For him, disciples should be lean and mean gospel preaching machines, and this shouldn't be a big surprise, either, because earlier in Luke's gospel he tells those he sends to wear only the clothes on their back, and be dependent on the kindness of strangers wherever they go. And over the years, various folks have taken these commands very seriously, including St. Francis and his followers and all monastic orders that I know of.  The Rule of Benedict, in fact, is designed to facilitate living out the gospel, perhaps especially the giving up of our worldly possessions part.

Once again, Calvin weighed in on this issue, interpreting these teachings moderately, as calling for proper use of the gifts of God in daily life, both things of necessity, or needs, and things of delight, aka pleasures.  Calvin recommended a simplicity of life in which we understand ourselves to be on an earthly pilgrimage toward home. We become free from both undue privation and from excessive indulgence.  According to Calvin, Jesus’ commands, especially in light of the entire gospel, free his followers from the ills brought on by too much stuff, which not only weighs us down, but can come to own us as we worry about theft, repair, maintenance . . . Like the guy with large barns, if he didn't have all that stuff he wouldn't have to build the barns.

But, Calvin believed, we aren't called to asceticism, either, nor are we called to starve.  Indeed, it would be unreasonable these days to give away all we have, putting a burden on others to support us when we have the means of supporting ourselves.  As in all things, it's a balancing act: theres a middle way between being held back by our stuff and being a burden on others.  At the very least, Christians should think through these issues from time to time, checking in with ourselves to see whether or not the balance has become weighted too heavily one way or another.

And what about the priorities thing?  How are we to handle the sheer complexity of modern life, with so many things competing for our time, so many loyalties to juggle?  Scholar Ronald Byars puts it like this: “"When loyalties compete, they need to be sorted out according to some priority. For those who hear a call to discipleship, Jesus himself becomes the sorting principle. The embodiment of self-offering love, of mercy and compassion, is our “true north.”"

What this means to each one of us is likely to look different.  Does our biological family take precedence over our “church” family, or does’ Jesus redefinition of family as everyone who does God’s work hold sway?  Do we schedule vacations or other activities around our church duties or the other way around?  Again, the balance will vary with each individual, but I think as followers of Jesus the Christ we should give it deep consideration and prayer.  Amen.