Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
Pentecost, Proper 8 C - June 26, 2022
For Jesus, Jerusalem is about healing and wholeness, mercy and forgiveness, peace, the dignity and holiness of all humanity, reconciliation with God and each other, overcoming death, and life fully lived. Jerusalem is about God’s dream for our life revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. In that regard, Jerusalem is a place of hope, fulfillment, and new life. We all have a Jerusalem---- values that guide and describe our life, values by which we live and for which we die. We all set our faces to go in a particular direction. What is your Jerusalem? In what direction is your face set? What drives you? What keeps you going when life is hard or lonely or overwhelming? Setting our face to go to Jesus’ Jerusalem is about becoming our best and truest selves, about living as if we believe that we are loved unconditionally and that there is nothing that we can do to earn God’s love. I think what matters most is not so much how we love God, but how we receive God’s love for us. My experience of Jesus’ Jerusalem is that it often eludes me and always challenges my priorities, beliefs, decisions, actions, and relationships. It usually asks me more questions than it answers. I suspect that is true for us all to some degree. How does our Jerusalem compare with Jesus’ Jerusalem?
Those questions are highlighted in the second part of our Gospel which is composed of a series of encounters in which the sincerity and faith of potential followers are put to the test. All things in this world are gifts of God, given to us so that we can know God more easily and love God and others more readily. But if any one of these gifts becomes the center of our lives---work, possessions, family, health, security---then they displace God. That’s what happening with these three people. Their excuses sound perfectly reasonable to us. Jesus sounds extreme. He’s not saying these things are bad but is pointing to that human tendency to replace the giver with the gift. The three potential followers remind us of just how much we can bury our hunger for God beneath our busyness, our routines, our preoccupation with our relationships. Jesus calls on them and us to set our eyes on the kingdom and to commit to it. Adopting a life of discipleship requires a shift in priorities. More than a private endeavor, it is an identity.
Jesus’ clarity is an example to us. All of who he is and what he does is based on his identity as the beloved of God. God is central. His relationship with God deepens all the dimensions of his life enabling him to engage in the most intimate relationships with others. So much of our lives are caught up in the tension between fear and longing---even our fear of intimacy with the God. Deepening our relationship to God can take surprising turns. It is not perpetual ecstasy. It’s more like a dance with a rhythm of approaches and withdrawals, of hiding and showing, of protecting, and sharing.
If we are going to set our face toward Jesus’ Jerusalem then we must first face up to the condition of our lives, the state of our world, and the direction we are headed. Paul reminds us that bondage takes many forms, and we must be courageous in naming them for ourselves. The harsh debates and infighting among the Galatian Christians were outward and visible signs of their ongoing enslavement. He is saying unequivocally that Christian freedom is not unrestrained permission to do whatever one pleases. Love is the way that freedom in Christ expresses itself. Debates over circumcision were taking precedence over loving one’s neighbor. He tells them to not use their freedom for self-indulgence. The “Flesh” is his shorthand for self-centered rather than God-centered living. The counterpoint to life in the flesh is life in the service of others. Christ’s love for us should shape the way we love.
If Jerusalem is about mercy and forgiveness, how can we withhold forgiveness? If Jerusalem is about the dignity and holiness of all humanity, how can we remain on the sidelines, silent, or indifferent in the face of injustice, discrimination, or prejudice. If Jerusalem is about peace, what about the wars we wage, the violence in our thoughts, words, and actions? If Jerusalem is about reconciliation with each other, on what basis do we scapegoat a people or a religion, exclude the foreigner, deny the refugee sanctuary? Do we reconcile only with those who are like us? If Jerusalem is about the defeat of death, and life fully lived, how does Jerusalem inform our conversations and debates about gun violence in this country? If Jerusalem is about the truth of God revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, how can we continue to promote or impose our personal and individual truths on another? These questions stand at the intersection of the Gospel, the world, and our lives.
Before Jesus had these conversations with the potential disciples, I’m sure he first had them within himself, working out for himself the meaning and cost for him to go to Jerusalem. Each one of those conversations is about letting go or giving up something of ourselves and our lives: a home, a sense of security, a place in society. If we set our face to go to Jerusalem, then we have put ourselves on a path of letting go of the past, the dead places, things, and parts of our lives, that can no longer give life or sustain growth. Today’s gospel does not allow for excuses, justifications, running away, or hiding.
To struggle honestly with our questions is the beginning of setting our face toward Jesus’ Jerusalem. We don’t know what happened to those three potential disciples, but we do know that the invitation he gave to them he also gives to us---to be single-minded in wanting, in choosing what best leads to a deepening of God’s love and life in us poured out in love for others. +Amen.
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