23rd Sunday Year C

See Commentary on Luke 14:25-33 in Luke 14:25-35


Homily 1 - 2007

The Gospel tells us that Jesus was on his way. At one level, he was on his way from Galilee to Jerusalem. At another level, he was on his way towards resurrected life – though that way went via Calvary, via failure, uncertainty, testing, physical death, and, more importantly, the complete death of his ego.

What might resurrected life be like? What sort of living might it consist of? From what we can work out, it would involve at least being totally authentic, trusting God, loving – undiluted, unconditionally, forgiving, hoping in others.

That, at the least, is probably Jesus’ now experience of being alive and risen. He didn’t get it by the wave of a wand, or as a pure gift. He gradually grew into it, and honed and perfected it through his response to the variety of challenges that came to a head as he faced into death.

He saw the way of discipleship following the same path – leading to the fullness of human life, beyond the fullness of human life, to a sharing in his risen life – but he constantly warned that the way led by way of dispossession, and of escaping from the pervasive power of the ego. Like his, it involves growth toward integrity, facing reality full on, expanding our capacity to love and to forgive, learning to trust God. Negatively expressed, it is the way of waking up to all our addictions – the way of dispossession.

As a community of disciples, as Church, living in a world filled with both goodness and badness (and everything in between), we are called to stand out like the light of the world – highlighting what’s good, and also what’s evil, and helping to note the difference – identifying and supporting the prophets, as well as exposing those false prophets leading us into a world of fantasy, unreality, denial and disengagement from the real challenges.

The APEC Conference is in full swing. In full swing at a time when we are beginning to be increasingly confronted with the destructive effects of global warming. It’s about economic cooperation, for growth and development.

What could global development for all the people of the world possibly consist of? What would it look like? At the moment, millions live in poverty; 850 million go to bed hungry each night.

Is the aim of economic development that all come to share something close to the life-style that we in the West are living? In this fragile, limited planet, is that possible? Or would we prefer a world where some have all they need and most lack necessities? As it is now!

If we were to look at the challenge to use and to distribute the world’s resources fairly, I think that there are two questions that we need to face: how can the quality of life of the poor be improved? and, also, and just as important, if the first is to achieved, how can the quality of life of the developed wealthy world be reduced?

Jesus talked today about giving up possessions. That is the way for his disciples. He could hardly be more explicit. Is anyone in the Church of disciples listening? or taking him seriously? Are we the light of the world? Do people see us as tireless champions of the way of dispossession, of detachment, of simplicity, of simply enough? Do they even hear us asking the question and seeking for answers?

So many of us in the West are addicted to our lifestyle, to economic growth, because we think, without ever stopping to check it out, that that’s the way to human fulfilment. When people no longer believe in God, they tend to believe, desperately, in anything. Only trusting God gives freedom.


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.


Homily 3 - 2013

Jesus obviously did not care about numbers.  He was not interested in retaining the crowds following him.  He certainly did not seem to listen to any PR consultants or follow the advice of spin doctors.  “You can join with me,” he said, “only if you are prepared to hate your family, stand up for what I stand for … and pay the price in suffering, ridicule and even death.  And, just for good measure, give up all your possessions.”

Has he been quoted properly? or translated accurately?  Well, perhaps, not quite; but the message is still pretty stark.  Hating family members does not quite catch his meaning.  But family entanglements and family pressures cannot stand in the way of following conscience or of living a life wholeheartedly oriented, as was Jesus, to genuinely, actually, loving people.  And giving up all your possessions calls for some nuancing.  Possessions here mean those things we cling to and value because they somehow reassure us who we are and help us to feel important.  It could be our assets or our income; it could be our professional status, or our achievements, or our influence in the community, or whatever.

Why Jesus mentions things like that is because they so easily hinder our true human growth and our genuine freedom.  Unhealthy co-dependence can be rife in families and destroy people’s true personalities and human dignity.  Possessions can possess their owners, sap their real freedom, and prevent their coming to own their true selves.  Discipleship is ultimately about true self-knowledge.  It is the freedom to see others as they truly are and to reach out to them with respect and compassion – all the time sitting lightly with what it might cost. 

Today is Child Protection Sunday.  As a Church, we do not have a good track-record here with our shameful history of clerical sexual abuse.  Thank God that the Church has set up good procedural safeguards for future situations; but it still has someway to go.  We need to look harder at some basic issues like the formation of priests, the continuing clerical sub-culture, and the on-going need to hold each other responsible.  One respected author I read was of the opinion that, given the quite inadequate formation provided in seminaries and religious houses of formation, the surprising thing was not that so many offended but so few.

Then there was the instinctive response by some bishops to prioritise damage control, to protect the Church’s reputation as much as possible and its assets, and, in the process, overlook the enormous harm done to the victims.  There were extenuating circumstances, certainly, like the general ignorance, until about twenty-five years ago, of the deep, on-going harm done to victims; and the addictiveness of pedophilia; along with the poor advice given by lawyers and insurers.

Yet, somehow, the clerical culture pervading the Church was always there, favouring the priest; and continues to linger on.  Many victims still feel that they are not being heard nor are their needs being addressed adequately.  It is important, also, to realise that the abused children are not the only victims.  Their parents and family and friends have also suffered terribly.  Many of them felt rejected by their fellow-parishioners, and judged and even condemned – especially if they spoke out.  Ordinary Catholics like you also suffer from the fall-out.  Generally Church members have felt hostile towards victims who have spoken out [and are still be doing so], and towards the press for the on-going publicity.  Why so? We all need to change.  

Perhaps we all need to listen harder to today’s Gospel.  It applies not just to us as individuals but to us, too, as Church.  The Church needs to sit lightly with reputation, and influence.  They do not define who we truly are.  We need to let go of everything that possesses us.  Unfortunately, the crosses we have to carry always seem to be the wrong ones, certainly the ones we don’t want to carry.  We do not need to be looked up to by the crowds; but we do need to keep on struggling to grow ever more authentic – even when we feel confused and hurting.  

Crosses hurt.  Ask Jesus!


 Homily 4 - 2016 

What do you make of today’s Gospel? “If people come after me and do not hate their father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and indeed their own life, they cannot be disciples of mine.“ Hardly a sensitive passage to give us for Fathers’ Day! It went on: “Whoever do not carry their cross and follow me cannot be disciples of mine.” Until it eventually concluded: “Whoever do not leave behind all they possess cannot be disciples of mine.” Little wonder that Jesus made few inroads into mainstream Judaism. The surprising thing is that there are so many of us here. 

Today’s Gospel passage raises the question, Where do we habitually hear the Gospel from? From the point of view of the child that we were when we first heard it, and when most of it simply washed over our heads? Or do we hear it now as contemplative adults, after we have experienced something of the potential attractiveness of the Reign of God and found ourselves intrigued by the exciting newsworthiness of the Good News; after, that is, we have begun the process of what most translations unhappily translate as Repent.

If we have begun to look with adult eyes at today’s Gospel, then something disturbs us about this business of hating father, mother, etc., not to the extent that we effectively stop listening, but that we ask ourselves seriously whatever was Jesus driving at. It helps if we learn from somewhere that in the Aramaic language that Jesus spoke [so also in the mindset], there was no word equivalent to our English “prefer” – [which Jesus would otherwise have used]. So Jesus was not recommending hatred, but discernment and the sorting out of sometimes conflicting priorities. He was obviously serious about that, because family life in the Eastern Mediterranean was oppressively and suffocatingly patriarchal. The father ruled, undisputed, the life of the extended family, as did the mother within the domestic setting. The whole culture ensured that no one dared question the status quo – family honour was clearly at stake. Jesus, however, was insistent, against prevailing culture, that in his community of disciples members were to see each other as brothers and sisters, and treat each other as equals because of the profound dignity of even the least and the youngest. There was to be no patriarchy, no despotic monarchical domineering, over others’ lives.

Not much has changed over the centuries. So many contemporary families are highly dysfunctional. We are at last admitting that domestic violence is a crushing problem; yet sadly we are still at a loss to know how to counter it effectively. Should we Christians be at the forefront of the campaign?

Most of us are old enough to remember back to the 70s, and the musical “Godspell”. I love the song, “O dear Lord, three things I pray: To see Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly, follow Thee more nearly, day by day …”. It is a great prayer for ongoing conversion; and taps clearly into the mind and heart of Jesus. Everything begins with our seeing God ever more clearly, and coming to see our world with the eyes of that loving God. That takes conscious effort. It takes time. It takes silence. It takes pondering. Following on from seeing God, we hope, we pray, that we may love God more dearly. That love tends to happen of itself, provided we agree gradually to let go of our frantic need to control even how we stand before God [as if we could in the slightest way influence God’s infinitely passionate love for us!]. Then, and only then, can we begin truly to follow the way of Christ more nearly. And we might find, perhaps to our surprise, that, as we experience greater and greater inner freedom, we gently come to notice that we are no longer driven by our former addictive possessiveness. In fact, even if Jesus had not recommended it, we might let go, trim down, uninvited.


 Homily 5 - 2019

Today, Child Protection Sunday, brings National Child Protection Week to an end. You will find a prayer relevant to the occasion on the back of this week’s Parish Bulletin. Do you remember how Pope Francis, a couple of years back, suggested that we Catholics might do a regular act of penance to remind ourselves of the sins of sexual abuse that have occurred in the Church and to support particularly all victims of abuse? I think it was a great idea.

The Royal Commission strongly charged the Church to change its culture that hid the sins, and protected the priest and religious abusers rather than the children they abused; and that contributed to the climate where such behavior was more likely to occur. One response to that challenge on the part of the Australian Bishops has been to call the National Plenary Council. I notice in today’s Parish Bulletin that there will be a gathering here after Mass on the last Sunday of this month precisely to follow up on the Listening and Discernment process in preparation for the Council. Do make that a priority if you possibly can.

Changing the Church’s culture… Today’s Gospel passage is relevant in its own way to that challenge. In both brief stories in the passage, you will have noticed how Jesus emphasised the need, in relation to the first project, to “first sit down and work out the cost”; and in relation to the second, once more “to first sit down and consider”.

In undertaking change, I think there are two things that we need to “consider”, and to be very clear about – not just what we want to happen in the future, but, equally importantly, we need to identify and to name what we need to change. And for many parishioners, it is this issue of what needs to change that stirs up strong emotional reactions. When we are talking about cultural changes, we are talking about what we are familiar with, what we have taken for granted and feel comfortable with, perhaps what we have always done, perhaps even what unconsciously we take as defining “the Catholic way”.

Differences of opinion here may not be just academic or theological issues but can be felt very personally, and lead to vigourous disagreements, even arguments.

The early Church faced similar problems. Family members from Jewish families who became Christian disciples abandoned many of the attitudes and practices that other family members who did not change took very seriously, were proud of and defended strongly. Families were divided, frequently beyond repair. That involved pain, real pain. It was one clear instance, one frequent instance, where Christian disciples unavoidably faced the need to “carry their cross” if they were to follow Jesus seriously.

In lots of ways, I think that the outcome of the Plenary Council will test our maturity as Catholics. If the Council voters do bite the bullet and introduce significant changes, people who have been basically content with what has been long familiar will possibly feel disoriented and insecure, and find themselves reacting emotionally. If the Council holds back from significant change, those who have been anticipating something more will feel disappointed and tempted to lose hope, and some may quietly walk away.

Have we been trustingly and honestly praying that the Spirit will guide the Church? Is that what we really want? Or do we want “our side” to “win”? Are we willing to accept and to live with whatever the outcome? There is solely one ‘winning’ in the Church – and that happens only when we grow in mutual love. If we are disappointed, we “carry our cross” – and continue to respond in love. Yet Jesus makes no secret that growing in love does mean “giving up all our possessions”, not necessarily the material ones, but those that really matter to us, the emotional responses and intellectual convictions – and keep on surrendering ourselves and our Church to God’s Spirit.


Homily 6 - 2022

While many people are celebrating today as Fathers’ Day, the universal Church is marking what it calls the “Season of Creation”, lasting for the whole month of September. The Church asks all Catholics to deepen our sense of responsibility for what we are increasingly coming to recognise as our fragile and threatened environment. As I was previewing today’s Readings earlier in the week, I began pondering what light they might possibly throw on our current responsibilities as Christian citizens in the midst of our ever-changing world.

Today’s Gospel presents a challenge. We need to realise that Jesus and his contemporaries often spoke in extremes. So not surprisingly, in today’s passage, we find Jesus thinking and speaking in terms of loving and hating, with no middle ground; and also of giving up all of one’s possessions — all or nothing at all! Given that tendency, as we often find in the Gospels, Jesus' words are not to be taken literally in every case. However, we certainly do need to take him seriously. So, let us turn down the volume sufficiently to be able to hear what Jesus might really be saying to us.

Jesus constantly warned his disciples to expect differences and disagreements on the home front. He insisted that disciples not simply accept the customary values and assumptions of family members or even of society in general. If business as usual were simply to go on as always, there would have been little need for him to become flesh and dwell among us.

Jesus, after all, had a radical message of necessary social change if our world is to live truly in peace. He was so convinced of this need, unpopular as it was, that it led to his eventual rejection and tortured crucifixion. Within this context, Jesus had carefully instructed his disciples to learn from him how to love others who were unresponsive to his message. He insisted that they were never to hate them, even in the face of deep disagreement and personal danger.

That was in fact his core message. It is possible.

Not surprisingly, he also insisted that they not be shocked that living according to his vision and values would often have a financial impact — even if rarely going as far as literally requiring their surrendering all their assets. Jesus' vision of social change would certainly impact the political realm. Jesus’ crucifixion itself resulted from a political decision — though in his day such decisions were rarely determined democratically.

Given the current world order, environmental responsibility can be adequately exercised only by co-operative political action. In a democratic society, whom we align with and how we vote often become intrinsically moral issues — questions of conscience.

It is through our regular exercise of conscience that we learn God’s will in general and develop the wisdom to apply it in frequently complex situations. Given this involvement of conscience, I was struck by the observation mentioned in today’s first Reading:

“As for your intention [O God], who could have learnt it,
had you not granted Wisdom
and sent your holy spirit from above?”

The writer made two clear statements: firstly, that discovering God’s intentions is a skill, a virtue, that needs to be learnt.  Because of life's complexities, our judgment can rarely be definitive. It is an on-going task, an on-going possibility, a gift of God that needs to be asked for in prayer.

The writer’s second point, confirming the first, was that the reliable operation of conscience requires on our part a conscious effort to tune in to God’s Spirit, to become familiar with the Spirit’s voice [as it were] — not only on rare occasions, but whenever we face the challenging decisions that life regularly presents to us.