When it’s
your first time preaching a Sunday Mass in a new parish, you kind of hope for
an easy gospel passage to preach on. But,
I guess God has a different plan in mind, furnishing this teaching about hating
family and carrying instruments of torture around with us. God actually has a track record on waving
this passage in my face on occasions when I’d most like to avoid it. As you might recall, the Sunday readings
cycle round on a three-year rotation, and the Sunday corresponding to this one
three years ago, September 8th actually, I remember the date well,
because it was the occasion of my ordination to the diaconate. Just what I wanted! When I was welcoming my family to the
seminary to celebrate with me, they’d be subjected to a gospel claiming I was
meant to hate them!
Archbishop
Tobin from Indianapolis was the ordaining bishop, and I have to admit I can’t
quite remember every detail of what he said to us, with all the emotions that
were bubbling around inside of me on that day.
But, I do remember that he didn’t tackle that troubling verse, about
hating family, head on. He based
everything on the fact that Jesus gives this teaching while he’s on a
journey. Not just a journey,
really, this is the final journey of Jesus’ earthly ministry, his journey to
Jerusalem, where he knows he’ll be called upon to give his life, a journey that
Luke spends almost half of his gospel narrating, it’s so important to him. And Jesus uses the fact that he’s on a
journey and he’s addressing here crowds journeying with him, to reflect on the
journey that constitutes our lives. That’s
what our lives are, what it truly means to be church, to journey together to holiness. To walk in the path Christ marked out for us,
to do that with our sisters and brothers, to welcome others onto that journey,
and encourage others along the way, and to do that growing in our capacity to
live lives of authentic love, living in harmony with creation, with neighbor,
and with God. For that is our destiny,
to live heavenly forever, perfectly in love and harmony with all. And the Archbishop used this powerful image
of the Christian life to remind us who were about to be ordained, that we are
not exempted from discipleship by becoming deacons. In fact, the rite charged us to believe what
we read, teach what we believe and practice what we teach. We were being charged to do with the Church’s
authority what God delights in all Christians doing, journeying on this way,
and helping others along it.
When I
go on physical journeys, I am terrible at packing light. And that really comes out of anxiety, what if
spill food on these clothes? What if the
weather suddenly changes? What if there’s
a formal party, or a beach trip, or something else I can’t predict? What if there’s nothing going on and I’ve
finished all of these books? I cling to
stuff because I think it will solve all my problems. And Jesus invites us to stop clinging to
stuff and start embracing him and reaching out to neighbor, and we’ve only got
two hands, so there isn’t a third one to cling to stuff. He invites us to do this with more than our
physical stuff. He invites us to travel
unencumbered, to renounce all that we think defines us, all that we think gives
us security. That language of hating
family would have been just as shocking to its first hearers as it is to us,
but it wouldn’t have meant quite the same thing. It wouldn’t have been heard as being about an
emotion, but a practice; of renouncing any pretense that we can rely on our
family instead of trusting in God. The
same with our possessions, the same with whatever else we think will give us
security, our brains, our nationality, our strength, our connections. No, he invites us to walk with the crucified
one, knowing that it’s in him we find new life.
In my
time as a transitional deacon, I came to understand those words on a deeper
level than Archbishop Tobin had been able to convey to me on that ordination
day. I was working in a parish and was
asked to go visit a parish family who were facing eviction from their
home. I felt like I was checking off all
of the boxes on an evaluation form we might have used in seminary to measure
how ‘successful’ such a visit had been.
I’d come with two bags of groceries (practical assistance, check); I’d talked
to them about service agencies in town who might be able to help more long term
(referrals, check); we’d had a proper conversation about their feelings of fear
(counseling class, check); and, as I was about to leave, we prayed
(check?). Holding hands with this
family, praying and Our Father, we got to the words “give us this day our daily
bread” and for the first time in my life of praying that prayer, I realized
that they really meant it. Stripped of
any pretense they could satisfy their own hungers, they desperately asked God, “give
us this day our daily bread.” All my imaginary
check marks, which I thought gave me security, faded away. They hadn’t signed up for this, but in their
need they had come to a deeper more trusting dependence on God than years of
seminary or grace of orders had brought me.
That’s
the trusting dependence I want, that we need, because it’s what we’ll delight
beyond measure in in heaven. But I still
find it within myself to hold back, to try to row my own boat, to think I, or
my connections, can satisfy my deepest hungers.
Let’s embrace God, let’s reach out a hand to our neighbor, and let’s try
to drop what we’re clinging to.
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