September 9, 2007: 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time
Wisdom 9:13-18 Philemon 9-10, 12-17 Luke 14:25-33
To the church in the diaspora[1]
& to the church of the unchurched[2]
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you, Lord.
Great crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and addressed them, saying, “Whoever does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
Who of you wishing to construct a tower does not first get estimates of what it will cost to get the job done? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding yourself unable to finish the work, onlookers will laugh at you and say, ‘There’s a guy who began something but didn’t have the resources to finish it.’ Or what king marching into battle does not first sit down and estimate whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand? If he can’t, then while the enemy king is still far off, he’ll send a delegation to ask for terms of peace. In the same way,” Jesus concluded, “whoever does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:25-33).
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
Introduction
Jesus’ sweeping exhortation
Once Jesus tells a parable of a foolish rich farmer who builds bigger and better barns and bins but dies before he can enjoy his abundant life. Jesus then points to the wise birds of the air which have neither barns nor bins filled with harvest but are fed by the Father in heaven. He points also to the wise lilies of the field which do not spin cloth nor sew but are more beautifully bedecked than King Solomon himself. “So don’t live in fear, little flock,” he exhorts us. “It has pleased the Father in heaven to give you the kingdom. Go, sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor” (Lk 12: 22-33).
Jesus gave the same sweeping exhortation to a rich young man who came up to him one day and asked, “Master what must I do to gain eternal life?” He replied, “You know the commandments: `Do not commit adultery, do not commit murder, do not steal, do not accuse anyone falsely, respect your father and mother.’” “I have observed all these commandments from my youth,” the man replied. “Then there’s one more thing left for you to do,” Jesus responded. “Go, sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven. Then come back and follow me.” Luke adds, “At that, the young man’s face fell because he had many possessions” (Lk 18:18-23).
The same sweeping exhortation is found in today’s gospel. In spelling out the cost of discipleship Jesus say we must be like a man who is going to build a tower, and who first sits down and estimates the cost in labor and materials. Or we must be like a king who plans to go to war, and who first sits down and figures out what he needs to overcome a superior enemy. Then Jesus sets before us the cost of discipleship, saying, “Whoever does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:25-33).
Unreal & even undesirable
Jesus’ sweeping exhortation to renounce all one’s possessions presents a problem. Not only does the rich young man’s face fall at it but ours also falls. Renouncing all our possessions is very unreal for most of us, especially in a society fired up by capitalism and consumerism. It’s also very undesirable for most of us who are not ready to give up those wonderful possessions of ours which are the marvelous fruit of technology and our own human sweat. Those possessions make our lives human, rich and pleasant.
I’m not ready to renounce my Toyota Rav. It takes my dog Simeon and me to the lake at early dawn every day and to the grocery store to buy daily bread. I’m not ready to renounce my flat-screen 32 inch TV (a surprise gift from my sister’s son). It helps me escape from the real world as I watch a good football game on a brisk Sunday afternoon in November. My TV also keeps me in touch with the real world of man’s inhumanity to man in Iraq, and also of man’s inhumanity to dogs in southeastern Virginia where Michael Vick lives. TV keeps me abreast of human events and provides me with something meaningful to say in the Sunday homily.
I’m not ready to renounce my house which has sheltered me for a good twenty eight years, and on which I spent much money and labor of love to make it a cozy home. At this moment of my life I am called to renounce it and move away to a safer and more benign neighborhood, but I do so very reluctantly. I’m not ready to renounce my miraculous computer which has freed me from the horrors of the old typewriter, which gives me access to the cyber world of e-mail, and which paves an incredible super-information highway right through my study. By no means am I ready to sell my possessions and give the money to the poor.
Making sense out of it
Because Jesus’ exhortation to renounce all our possessions seemed very unreal and undesirable, the church (not ready to dismiss it out of hand) historically farmed it out to a special class of people called monks and nuns who took a vow of poverty. That, in a sense, salved the conscience of the church which could point to her special class of people and protest that she has heeded Jesus’ exhortation.
Like the church we, too, are not ready to dismiss out of hand Jesus’ exhortation of renunciation. Unlike the church we are not ready to farm it out to others. We want to make some realistic and desirable sense out of it, so that we can intelligently appropriate it to ourselves. Yes, we even want to give Jesus’ sweeping exhortation (and the very Gospel itself) the power to make our faces fall! For as Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador and champion of the poor (assassinated at Mass by gunshot right after his homily) once said, “A church that doesn't provoke any crisis, a gospel that doesn't unsettle us, a word of God that doesn't get under one's skin [or doesn’t make our faces fall] -- what good are they!”
How do we make sense out of Jesus’ sweeping exhortation, so that we can intelligently appropriate it?
Possessions in our hearts and heads
Perhaps it is because we are so materialistically-minded that we always see possessions only as things we can hold in our hands like ipods, iphones, blackberries, gps and jewelry; or things we can touch like nice autos or homes. Believe it with every fiber of our being that there are possessions which are not things we can hold in our hands or touch. Believe it with every fiber of our being that there are possessions in our hearts and heads which deserve and demand Christian renunciation far more urgently than any thing we could possibly hold in our hands or touch.
Ideological possessions
There are ideological possessions. We remember (because we can never forget) the Nazi ideology of the past century. That was the unspeakable and deadly possession in Nazi hearts and heads that only the tall, the blue-eyed and the blond (the Master-race) had a right to live. That deadly possession in Nazi hearts and heads mapped out the Final Solution which rounded up the Jews, loaded them into box cars and hauled them off to concentration camps. That deadly possession in Nazi hearts and heads built the crematoria and ignited the ovens of the Holocaust which turned six million Jews into a burnt offering to their ideology.
There are, indeed, possessions in our hearts and heads which deserve and demand Christian renunciation far more urgently than any thing we can hold in our hands or touch.
Fundamentalist possessions
In these times, we are beset with Islamic fundamentalism. That’s a possession in the hearts and heads of those who claim either explicitly or implicitly that there is only one way and culture: the Islamic way and culture. All men should wear beards. All women should hide their existence under berkas. All true believers should fall to their knees in prayer five times a day. Everything else is an infidel world! Outside the mosque there is no salvation! (It reminds us Catholics of our own painful past when we, too, insisted that outside the church there is no salvation.)
This coming Tuesday is sixth anniversary of that apocalyptic event which brought down the Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan and three thousand innocent human beings. That unspeakable event was perpetrated, approved and blessed by an extreme Islamic ideology -- a possession in the heads and hearts of those who claim that Islam is the only way, and every other way is infidel and has to go. That ideology is very much afoot these day. It preoccupies us 24/7. It is in restless search of inflicting something even more catastrophic and apocalyptic than 9/11.
There are, indeed, possessions in our hearts and heads which deserve and demand Christian renunciation far more urgently than any thing we hold in our hands or touch.
Theological possessions
And yes, there are also theological possessions. These are the dogmatic possessions in the heads and hearts of church people who claim and proclaim that anything there is to be said about issues like human sexuality, artificial birth control, homosexuality, divorce, celibacy, ordination of women, open communion, etc. has already been said. Yes, even to the church (and especially to the church) which should mirror the poor Christ who “emptied himself” (Phil 2:5-7), Jesus says, “You cannot be my disciple unless you renounce your possessions.” You cannot be my disciple unless you’re ready to renounce your final, unchallengeable answers to these issues, especially when the Holy Spirit breathing in the Sensus Fidelium[3] asks you to renounce them.
Emotional possessions
Not only Nazis, Islamic fundamentalists and the dogmatic ecclesiastics have possessions in their heads and hearts which demand renunciation, so do we. We have emotional possessions which demand renunciation more urgently than anything we can hold in our hands or touch.
You can ask almost anything of us human beings, but, by gum, don’t ask us to renounce our personal prized possession of an anger which has us talking angrily to ourselves through months and even through whole years of our lives. That kills our human spirit. Or, by gum, don’t ask us to renounce our personal prized possession of endless self-pity which has us constantly licking our wounds so that they never heal, and which so immobilizes us that we never get up and get on with life. That, too, kills the spirit. Or, by gum, don’t ask us to renounce our personal prized possession of worry which is afraid to relax and put ourselves into the arms of the Father in heaven who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field. Our anger, self-pity and worry, as a way of life, are personal possessions which demand Christian renunciation far more urgently than any thing we can hold in our hands or touch.
Conclusion
A conviction of fifty years
Years ago I received a letter from a woman who accidentally stumbled into Old St. Mary’s 10 AM Mass and later wrote back a very long letter. She berated me for not giving the prescribed absolution at the penitential rite; and for not reciting the Gloria prescribed for Sunday Mass, and for not reading the gospel in its entirety; and for not using the masculine nouns prescribed by the church but instead changing them to gender-neutral words; and for not taking Communion at the time prescribed for the priest (i.e., before the faithful) and for not reading the concluding prayer and giving the dismissal as prescribed by the Church. (This is a shortened version of her letter.) What a long list of possessions I thought to myself! And none of them are in her hands; they’re all in her head and heart.
That kind of stuff has built up in me through 56 years of priesthood a fierce conviction that our worst possessions are in our heads and hearts and not in our hands. In my book they demand Christian renunciation far more urgently than does my Rav or my TV or my computer or my wonderful home or any other material possession I can hold or touch. The thought that I don’t have to renounce them but may keep them, and use and enjoy them, lifts my spirit. But the thought that I have to give up some of the stuff that’s in my head and heart makes my face fall. And that’s what good Gospel does to us!
[1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. It’s now come to mean the migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral home or parish!
[2] By “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
[3] In Catholic theology the sensus fidelium is the beliefs, consciences and experience of good and honest Catholics, and it is a valid source of religious truth for Catholics.
