Pentecost 13C - Sunday, September 8, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
Pentecost 13C - Sunday, September 8, 2019

Jeremiah 18:1-11
Philemon 1-21
Luke 14:25-33

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

Our Gospel begins with two sayings about discipleship, followed by two brief stories or parables to illustrate the importance of counting the cost and giving up all. The first saying is framed in stark language: "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" (14:25). The word “hate” punctures pious romanticism. “Hate” may be hyperbole, but it does not underestimate the potential costs of discipleship. Life meets everyone with choices involving a measure of sacrifice and loss. Cost requires effort and resources.

Luke’s text begins and ends with hard words. Discipleship takes priority over security. Jesus speaks to the importance of loyalty and allegiance over all other competing loyalties, including family, self-interest, and possessions. When we do not consider the cost, then we are like a builder who makes no budget for a project or a king who makes no contingency plans for a battle. Both are bound to fail.

Jesus calls people to a kind of discipleship that is not cheap or easy, and not to be entered into without deep consideration of the consequences. Three times in this passage Jesus says that without a definite decision a person cannot be his disciple. It cannot be done on impulse.

We will always prefer preaching and teaching about God's covenant loyalty, rather than the covenant loyalty that is expected from us in return. Salvation is not merely a transaction. It is, at heart, a covenant relationship. And no relationship lasts without loyal commitments expressed in action.

This is what Paul is asking Philemon to do. The situation is delicate and illustrates Paul’s discipleship. He calls on this wealthy Hellenistic Christian not to fall back on the reigning patterns of prestige, discrimination, domination and violence that structured daily life in his day as it does in ours. He urges him to put aside past grudges, the need to be in control, and to not worry about respectability in favor of what is just and right. He calls on him to free a slave and forgive a debt, reminding him of the cost of Christian discipleship. Philemon is to renounce his privilege and be willing to suffer loss, socially and economically. He is asking Philemon to begin anew with Onesimus.

The Letter to Philemon has been called the most human of the Christian Scriptures as well as the most neglected of Paul’s letters. It shows how all of us are born into sinful systems, but we can and must, through Jesus Christ, find the love necessary to reconcile broken relationships, not in the abstract but in the real lives we live. Family is reconfigured by this new faith. Discipleship moves us beyond comfortable kinship ties to forge new relationships.

The privatization of the spiritual life blossomed in the nineteenth century, but many still cling to the notion that the purpose of the spiritual life is to enable people to flee the world for the sake of personal sanctification. It’s a spirituality that practices religion but does not identify with the Gospel message that embodies it. Jesus was concerned with helping people transform their lives. As disciples, we cannot be silent bystanders as homeless, uneducated, and abused children grow into illiterate, unemployed adults. We cannot stand by passively and accept institutional racism, social and economic injustice and constitutional changes that serve the privileged few. We cannot stand by and quietly accept the hateful, political slurs against the poor, women and people of color. We cannot accept the political corruption that erodes and destroys. As disciples, we are called to experience costly grace by being God's prophetic voice in the world. This requires us to give up our need to acquire, our yearning for success, our petty jealousies, our denigrating stereotypes, our prejudices and hatreds, and to examine our thoughts, words, and actions which keep us from the Christlike transformation necessary for discipleship. Discipleship is a process. It takes time and involves false starts and modest successes as we grow into the fullness of our humanity. As disciples we learn to face life’s challenges and joys with a spirit of love, hope, faith, and peace that leads us to deeper spirituality and prophetic witness.

As Christians and as monastics Jesus is calling us on an adventure that is full of tension, healing, bold thinking, and new life. We need to get specific because the abstract is a temptation. Abstraction, keeping things general, is a way to keep reconciliation at arm’s length. At the heart of discipleship is transformation. The cost is not just accumulating new information about life or even changing our behavior to align with Jesus’ teaching. Following him means that we cannot be shallow or uncommitted. As part of this transformation, the cost of discipleship means entering into an intimate relationship with Christ that teaches us that obedience to God is not blind. It is a thought-provoking and deliberate process in which we grow in our ability to ask the tough questions, not only of God but of ourselves. It’s awareness that brings about transformation.

In our country today we have lost the holy gift of awareness of the world’s needs. What we do and say, see and respond to, in our own day is the real seed of our own sanctification. It is the times we live in that are our call to courage. No exception is made for anyone. None of us, however isolated from the rest of life, is forgiven the responsibility. To be spiritually mature, we must each be about something greater than ourselves. We must think beyond our own small world to the effect issues are having on others and make a response. The quality of life we create around us as followers of Jesus is meant to seed new life, new hope, new dynamism, the very essence of a new world community.

Our first reading from Jeremiah makes the point that God is the potter and we are the clay. A potter does not work aimlessly, neither does God. Every turn of the wheel matters. God means to shape us for purposes that often exceed our vision and imagination, and which certainly exceed our preoccupations. The relationship between potter and clay, divine artisan and called community, is dynamic. God is determined, out of love for the world, to shape a community who bears witness to God’s redemptive purposes.

We and our endeavors to be the church are in God’s hands. We are not called to manipulate and manufacture the outcome; we are called to be faithful to the Gospel, to become new creations, works of art made by our Creator. A potter is not indifferent to the condition of the clay, so God is not indifferent to the way our collective life is taking shape. It’s our task to become good, pliable, usable clay. God is deeply invested in our common life. As the discarded clay of a misshapen vessel can be reworked into a new shape, so God can raise up out of the ruins of a community’s self-indulgence or indifference a new faithfulness and usefulness, practicing forgiveness, breaking silence about matters of justice, placing compassion ahead of self-interest.

Participating in the creative work of God is as messy and risky as working with clay. Expect to get dirty and face failure as we respond to the potter’s hand. Jeremiah leaves us with the vision of God up to the elbows in our making and remaking. The divine Potter hovers over us, shaping and reshaping us for our high calling as vessels of divine love and justice.  +Amen.