23rd Sunday Year C - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2010

Today’s Gospel Reading seems a fairly insensitive choice in the light of Father’s Day: Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother … cannot be my disciple.

Perhaps the blow is softened a bit when the context is widened: 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. Things seem to get even more perplexing by Jesus’ further observations: Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple; and then, None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. One way or the other, Jesus’ insistence was great way to thin out (what Luke called): the large crowds (who) were traveling with him.

Well, here we are this morning, hardly a large crowd – but we’re here, and we doubtless class ourselves as disciples. Have we paid the price _hated our families, hated our own life, carried the cross, given up all our possessions? Or - Haven’t we heard him? or Haven’t we taken him seriously? or Do we think that he must have meant something else?

Perhaps, I belong to that third category – to some extent. It could be that Jesus meant something a bit different from what some of the words suggest. In fact, the word translated as hate need not be quite as stark as that. It means something more like to be prepared to let go of, or to leave aside, or to see as less important for the sake of other greater – conflicting – values.

So Jesus is effectively saying: Important and all as family ties are, there are greater values; and in case of conflict, even family ties are not absolute. In Jesus’ day, family ties were fiercely patriarchal. The father controlled everything. Women and children had no rights. And the relentless social patriarchal system controlled the father. Jesus’ teaching was quite counter-cultural; and would have been seen by most people as destabilizing society – and confusing.

Even in our own modern world, despite our frequent idealizing, many family relationships are quite dysfunctional, and riddled with compulsive ties of dependence and co-dependence. And, even in the best of families, maturity means neither dependence nor independence, but mature interdependence, motivated by love.

I think that the clue to understand much of what Jesus is saying is there in his final comment: None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. With this proviso: possessions is not the only, nor the better, translation.

The meaning is not only possessions, that is, things, goods or wealth. It is more possessing – which is a personal attitude towards goods and wealth, and, especially, towards people.

In our normal insecurity, we want to possess, to control. We can even seek to possess and to control those we love. We can seek to possess, to control, to dominate and to exploit our world. We do so, whether we notice it or not, because we feel insecure. In mature relationships, people who truly love don’t possess, don’t control - they appreciate, they trust.

As we grow closer to God, we see that all is gift: people, loved ones, the environment, wealth and goods. As we learn to approach them in that light, we learn to see ourselves as lavishly gifted. We learn to be grateful.We learn to respect. We begin to experience true freedom.

That is what Jesus is always on about – not imposing burdens, but setting us free. But we need, perhaps, to grow in wisdom if we are to see it. And, it helps to be part-time contemplatives.