Homilies for the Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time:
• Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C - Don L. Fischer
• Not My Disciple Unless... - Rev. Walter J. Burghardt, SJ

SCRIPTURE: Wisdom 9:13-18b; Philemon 9-10,12-17; Luke 14:25-33

It’s very important to open our imaginations to the images we find in the Scriptures. I am going to begin my reflection today with an image I want you to have in mind while we talk this morning: It’s an image of Jesus walking along the road. Behind him and around him are a number of people following him. Jesus is intent on this road; he is moving with determination. He knows where he is going to go. Everyone is focused on following him. In this image, we see Jesus turning to all those following him and asking a very important question. I think what he’s really asking everyone is: Do you know what you are doing? Do you understand where I am taking you? Do you understand what we are walking toward, what we are doing? Because Jesus was such an attractive figure, I would think that people would be drawn to him immediately. It would be interesting if we could take that image of the twenty, thirty, forty, fifty people walking with him, take each of them aside and ask them: What are you doing? Why are you following this man? I can think of a million reasons why people would follow Jesus. He is attractive. He is interesting. He seems free. He seems to know what he wants. He instills confidence. Others might see him as powerful, able to do magical tricks. He could heal people. People might say, “I am following Jesus because I want to learn how to do that. Then, I can go back to where I live and really be somebody. In fact, it could probably be pretty lucrative. Teach me this great power you have, Jesus. I’d like to learn it.”

There are all kinds of ways in which people are drawn to the figure of Jesus. As he is moving along, and he turns and asks them this question, he poses some ideas for the people to contemplate. They are very interesting. Let’s look at all three of these ideas because they are loaded with meaning. First, he turns and says, “Excuse me, do you all realize you can’t go with me unless you are willing to hate your brother, your father, your mother, your sister, your family? Do you realize I am asking you to cut ties with all of those people?” Then he’s also saying, “You know, there is something in this work I have that is about building something up. Do you think you can build that; do you think you have enough resources to build this powerful, tower-like thing we call Christianity? Also, there are going to be some battles in this whole process that we will be dealing with. Do you have the strength to deal with these battles?” It’s interesting that the questions are: “Can you renounce everything? Can you build something extraordinary? And, can you fight the battle? Can you take care of all the forces that are going to work against your following me.” I think the fascinating answer to all of these questions is not, “Yes, yes, yes.” I think the correct answer, if we follow Jesus, is to say, “No, no, no. No, we don’t have the strength to do all of this. We can’t do it on our own.” Let’s look at the reading from the book of Wisdom. What basically is happening here is that the author is saying to human beings, “It’s hard to figure things out. It’s hard to figure out the practical things of life. It’s hard to figure out how to deal with relationships. It’s hard to handle situations that come up.” At the time the book of Wisdom was written, there wasn’t as much scientific exploration, so people weren’t as aware of everything going on around them in the world, in terms of science and physics. In any case, the author is saying that is really difficult to figure out things that are able to be figured out by human beings. But it is impossible to figure out the things of heaven. Or about God.

The spiritual world is simply out of the realm of our ability to completely figure it out. But then, if we cannot figure out God or understand him, the reading tells us that we have a God who reveals things to us. We have a God who longs to share his wisdom. The fact that God desires to share this wisdom with us means we can know it, in a sense. We don’t figure it out; we can be told something that helps us understand. Even though these mysteries of God remain somewhat hidden, we are given enough wisdom so that “our paths can be straight.” A straight path is simply an image of moving in a certain direction. The direction is clear, as opposed to wandering around in circles. A straight path is an image of progress, of moving and developing. Of changing. Not in the way the world imagines development, change and improvement, but in the way the gospel imagines it. The gospel way is a deepening of understanding, entering more and more into the mystery. We feel more and more this mysterious relationship we have with God, and it becomes more and more real. In the first reading we have an image of dealing with things that are difficult, things beyond our comprehension — but we have a God who is there to teach. We have a God who is there to share wisdom, to show us. This is who Jesus is. He is God made manifest in our midst, not just giving us words but example after example. He gives us image after image so that we can understand what we are invited to participate in, called the spiritual life, called the church, called the kingdom.

The reading from Paul to Philemon offers the image of a relationship. In the opening statement, Paul describes himself as an older man who is now imprisoned. He has befriended a young man named Onesimus. Onesimus is the slave of Philemon. Paul writes a letter to Philemon and says, “I have met this slave of yours. We have bonded. He has been extraordinarily helpful. We have been partners in our work in this prison situation. I really have enjoyed working with him. I would rather he stayed with me. But he is obviously coming back to you. I want to ask you to think about something. I want you to take this man back, not as a slave, but as a partner.” Not as somebody who works for Philemon, but as someone who works with him. This may seem like a silly example, but think about it in terms of what it is really saying. The work that Paul is doing, the work of Christ to establish the kingdom, is about changing the pattern of relationships. It’s about trying to move people out of a relationship, particularly with God, of slave and master. A slave doesn’t necessarily have to know where the heart of his master is; he just has to do the things his master has demanded. The relationship is not personal or intimate. It is basically impersonal. In fact, it probably works better if the relationship is impersonal. Then, the slave does whatever the master wills. What Paul is inviting us to imagine is that we can have a relationship with God that very easily falls into that of master and slave. We are obviously the slaves, doing whatever God wants, knowing that he will take care of us. We don’t get paid exactly, but we will be taken care of, with a place to live and work to do. Paul is trying to indirectly say to Philemon that this kingdom Jesus has come to establish is very different from the worldly kingdom. Paul wants Philemon to understand that the kingdom is about partnership. The kingdom is about an intimate relationship. The pattern for this is our relationship with God. What Paul is trying to do is to change Philemon’s image of the kingdom: This man, your slave, has been taken from you for awhile, and when he returns, there should be a brand-new relationship. Paul asks Philomen, “If you can accept me as a partner, can you accept Onesimus in the same way?”

Let’s take this image of partnership and look at it. God is inviting us into partnership with him; that’s the new relationship. That’s the kind of relationship people are going to enter into with Jesus if they are really going to follow him. If there is one thing that is so obvious in the life of Jesus, it is that Jesus was always working in partnership with God. Jesus was never working out of his own stuff. I would think that Jesus basically felt incapable of doing the work he was called to do. He didn’t have that feeling as a kind of dread, anxiety or fear as we often do when we feel we aren’t enough. Rather, he had it as a kind of honest acceptance of who he was. He had complete confidence and a faithful recognition that God was there to give him all the things he needed at the moment he needed them to accomplish the work. The rich man who comes up to Jesus says, “You are so good, Jesus.” Jesus responds by saying, “Why do you call me good. It is my Father who is good.” That’s another way of saying, “Why do you give me credit for all of the things I have done. All these things have been done through me.” Many other times Jesus would say, “You know, the things that you see me do? These are not things that are in Jesus Christ of Nazareth as a unique quality I possess. These things come to me from the Father. I use this power. This power is as available to you as it is to me. In fact, the power that I have is in some cases less than the power that you have. You can do even greater things than even I have done.” What an incredible statement! So clearly, Jesus says this power, the divine power, flows through him.

Let’s return to the image of Jesus walking with his people in the gospel. Jesus says the first thing his followers need to do is to cut loose of all their preconceived notions. We need to change the way we think: The way we have imagined God, and the way we have imagined the kingdom. One of the strongest influences in us — more than teachers, more than church — is family. We grow into more of our preconceived notions out of the experiences of our family more than anything else. One of the first things Jesus says is: “If you are really going to be my follower, you need to cut loose of your preconceived notions, from the conventional understanding of things, and open your heart to something that maybe you have never seen before and never imagined before. But be open. Be receptive to new ways of seeing.” The other part of Jesus’s message refers to the way we embrace Christianity. Many times we think we need to get into the Christian way of life by making ourselves really strong. There is something about a tower that is like our egos. It is like a powerful image that can be seen by everyone. In the ancient world, a tower is a symbol of power and strength. There is even the image of the tower of Babel, where the tower was an image of people in the Old Testament trying to reach God. Jesus says we need to think twice about whether we can do this work and really be good at it. If we think we have enough in order to do it, that we are enough for this, we may need to think twice. Jesus says he is going to show us that we really don’t have the strength to do this work. That’s one of the reasons why we always remain weak in this whole system. Why we don’t have the sense of complete autonomy, as strong agents of God. No, we always remain weak and dependent upon God’s mercy, his forgiveness, understanding and grace.

The implication is that we don’t have enough on our own to build the tower. We know there are all kinds of forces working against anyone who speaks the truth or tries to live a full life. Or for those who try to be honest. The enemies are strong. Jesus asks his followers, “Do you think you can handle the heat? Can you handle the pressure? Can you take on all the forces that will be working against you?” If we think we can do this, we should reconsider. The gospel image compares this to a battle. If we think we can beat twenty-thousand enemy soldiers with only ten thousand on our side, we should think twice. Maybe we need to negotiate peace. I think this is a principle found throughout Scripture: We, as human beings, are strong. We have a lot of energy and strength. But the forces that can work against us, in many ways, are stronger than our human spirit. Evil is stronger than the human spirit. We do have an enemy that is greater than us, and we need to work with that enemy. I think it’s interesting that Jesus conquered evil by working with it. Not by destroying evil using its own means, but by negotiating peace. Jesus gave in to evil. Somehow, in the act of giving in to evil, Jesus overcame it. Jesus was not afraid of evil. He did not give evil more power than it really has. Jesus did not see evil as something that could win. The images are very potent and effective, as we contemplate our journey of following Christ. How is it we are supposed to imagine the work of building the kingdom? How are we supposed to imagine the work of following Jesus? It has everything to do with being open to things we have never seen before, to recognize that what we call a full, rich life is not something we can create ourselves. It is not something we can build ourselves. We need to grapple with all the elements that would work against us and not go out there and try to destroy everything. In that way, I think Jesus can smile as he continues to walk with his followers, saying, “At least they have an idea of what this is all going to take.”

© 2001, Don L. Fischer

I trust that today's Gospel had you "taking gas." If not, you weren't really listening. What does it take to be a disciple of Christ? Not one of the original Twelve—Peter, James, John; simply a follower of Christ, a Christian. Oh yes, you must be baptized, must believe in the Lord Jesus, must live all ten of the Commandments. But, if you can credit St. Luke's Christ, you must add three mind-boggling conditions. (1) You have to hate your father and mother, your wife or husband, your children, your brothers and sisters, even your own life. (2) You have to carry whatever cross Christ or life lays on you—preferably with a smile. (3) You have to give up every possession you own.

How does that grab you? Is it possible to make human and Christian sense out of the three conditions, without emasculating the mind of Christ? We have to try; at some point every Christian with the use of reason has to try. Your life depends on it—your life "in Christ."

I

First, you cannot be a follower of Jesus unless you hate—hate just about everybody you have good reason to love. If you take "hate" literally, there's a problem here. To hate means to have a great aversion to someone or something, often with ill will, to dislike intensely, to detest, to abhor. Elsewhere Jesus made it crystal-clear that his followers may not hate anyone that way—and that includes Iran's Ayatollah or Palestine's Arafat, Hitler or Stalin, drug dealers or Savings & Loan managers, Ku Kluxers or unrepentant rapists. He insisted that the second great commandment is to love your neighbor as you love yourself—no matter who the neighbor happens to be, whatever the color or class, the religion or sex. He declared solemnly: "You have heard that it was said, `You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Mt 5:43—44). And the most difficult command of all: "Love one another as I have loved you" (Jn 15:12). Love unto crucifixion.

Obviously you cannot have it both ways: Love everybody and hate your family. What then?1 Look at the context. Jesus is on his journey to Jerusalem, the road to death. Great crowds surround him, all sorts of people, many of them willing to join up with him but without appraising the cost. He wants them to think it over seriously. Remember the example he gave? What king before waging war doesn't sit down with his kitchen cabinet and ask, "Tell me, can our 10,000 rout their 20,000?" So, you who yearn to follow me, think it over. To be my disciple is extraordinarily difficult. Absolutely nobody, absolutely nothing, comes before me. I am your one Lord and Master. In case of conflict, your nearest and dearest take second place.

How do I know this is what Jesus meant? I turn to the corresponding text in Matthew. How does Jesus put it in Matthew? "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Mt 10:37).

There you have, in simple language, without exaggeration, the first condition for a Christian: Jesus is number one in your life; no one, no matter how close to you in love, no one comes before him. What Jesus wants, Jesus gets. Forget the word "hate"; the simpler sentence is tough enough.2 Putting Jesus at the top of one's love list has done over the centuries what Jesus predicted: It has all too often "set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's foes will be those of his own household" (Mt 10:35—36).

So then, question one in Christian hardball: Where does Christ rank in my day-to-day existence? Not only in general, but when the chips are down, when I have to choose between rival loves: Christ or money, Christ or power, Christ or fame, Christ or sex, Christ or pleasure.

II

But making Jesus numero uno is not enough. To be his disciple, to be a genuine Christian, calls for a second condition: You have to carry a cross. Here you touch the very core of Christianity: I mean the mystery of suffering, history's endless tale of tears. No human escapes it—believer or atheist, Christian or Jew, black or white, young or old. And the forms the human cross takes are legion: the acne on an adolescent's cheek, the heartbreak of a dear one's death, the schizophrenia that severs a personality, the AIDS that riddles the flesh, a world war that took 50 million lives, the war on the womb that takes 50 million more each year. It's all around you—on a flaming runway in Sioux City, on the drug-infested streets of D.C. It covers whole newspapers each day; it is part and parcel of human living. It's in your past—your family history; it's in your present—in your bones and marrow; it shadows your future—what will tomorrow bring?

So far, sheer fact: Like it or not, a cross is, or will be, intimate to your life. Your task and mine is to take sheer fact and transform it. Into what? Into Christian living. Keep suffering from degenerating into sheer waste. Integrate it into your life, keep your life from schizophrenia, manic today, depressive tomorrow. Take the pain that seems so useless, so senseless, so frustrating, and make it life-giving, even a source of profound joy.

But surely, Father, you jest. By what alchemy is such a transformation possible? I jest not, believe me. I jest not because here, if anywhere, what I preach has to be real, has to hit you where you live. I shall not unveil the mystery of suffering, explain to your satisfaction why you blew an exam or contracted cancer, why crib deaths take place and children are born with Down's syndrome, why sinners apparently have such a good time and you saints are all mucked up. I do not know why.

But this I do know: If God-in-flesh hung on a cross for three hours till his heart gave out, suffering has to have a profound place in the story of salvation—in your story. It has to make sense—even if you and I are too earth-bound to see it.

But there is a sliver of light. Central to Christian suffering is a crucial sentence of St. Paul: "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church" (Col 1:24). Sheer pain is not a blessing; simply to take pleasure in pain makes you a candidate for a masochists' club. I don't race Georgetown's streets shouting the joys of chronic colitis. Behind Paul's gospel of suffering is a profound realization: To make human or Christian sense, pain must have a purpose.

You experience it on a human level every day. Soldiers give their lives courageously... for their country. Mothers endure torment...for a child to be born. A fireman braves a burning building... to save an elderly woman. Archbishop Romero falls beneath a hail of bullets ... to defend his Salvadoran people. It is purpose that transmutes sheer suffering into sacrifice. And the one purpose that overshadows all others is...love. Such was the driving force behind Jesus' journey to Jerusalem: "God so loved the world..." (Jn 3:16). And all this—Bethlehem to Calvary—out of love for men and women most of whom
do not know him, or know him and pass him by, or give him grudgingly an hour a week, or never weep though he bleeds—who work and play, live and love, no differently than if he had never lived or died.

And so for you. Christ's sacrifice, the self-giving that saves a world, is not yet finished. Oh yes, his cross is the world's salvation. But in God's wisdom you and I have to take that cross to ourselves, carry it on our own shoulders. And that we do each time we murmur in the midst of any distress, "For you, Lord."

But that is not all. Suffering with and for Jesus is not a private pact, a neat deal between Jesus and me. It resonates, vibrates worldwide. Somewhere in Antoine de Saint Exupéry's The Little Prince you will find an insightful sentence: "There is no pain nor passion that does not radiate to the ends of the earth." In our theology, your sacrifice and mine, our suffering out of love, can bring God's grace to a suffering servant next door and to the farthest reaches of the earth, to Georgetown and Capetown. But only if we endure out of love. Whether it's a migraine headache or agony of spirit, whether it's a cancer-riddled body on a hospital bed or the age-old patience of the Polish people, no suffering need be wasted. What I endure out of love God touches to others—to give courage, to deepen faith, rekindle hope, enliven love. Quite concretely, how each of you lives the Christ-life rests in large measure on how all of you carry your cross. No suffering need be wasted—not if you love enough.

III

Ready for a third condition? To follow Jesus, to be his disciple, you have to give up all you have. All of you? Certainly sounds like it. But the problem with each Sunday Gospel is that you get an extract, a snippet, out of a larger whole; the passage you hear is not in context. I recall a Catholic priest quoted as preaching "To hell with the Catholic Church." What was not quoted was his next sentence, "So say the enemies of the Church."

It is only rarely that you can pluck a single sentence from the Gospels and think you know the mind of Jesus. So here. Where riches, possessions, are at stake, even Scripture scholars shake their heads, especially over Luke.3 On the one hand, you have a radical Jesus. I mean the Jesus who rails at riches: "Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation" (Lk 6:24). God's kingdom belongs to the poor (v. 20). This is the Jesus who sees riches as simply evil. On the other hand, you have the moderate Jesus. I mean the Jesus who never tells his dear friends Lazarus, Martha, and Mary to give up all they have; the Jesus who proclaims salvation to little Zacchaeus because he promises half of his wealth to the poor (Lk 19:8). This is the Jesus who counsels prudent use of what you have to help the less fortunate; who advises you to share what you have; who knows from experience how generous his well-to-do friends can be, and loves them for it.

Which is the real Jesus? Only a semester in Scripture could do justice to the problem.4 But a church is not a classroom, a liturgy not a lecture. Still, the very paradox that vexes the biblicist—radical Jesus or moderate Jesus—can speak eloquently to all of us who want to follow him.

The radical Jesus stands before us as a constant challenge. We know from sad experience that a peril lurks in possessions, in anything we humans own: a condo in Colorado or a Cabbage Patch doll, high intelligence or a high-C voice, a fabulous figure or a salary in six figures, computer wizardry or political power. The peril? Simply that it's mine, and it can dominate my existence, manipulate me. If it does, all else takes second place—including Christ. I no longer hear his voice, am deaf to his command or counsel: to give it all up or only half, to care and to share, to let go. The radical Jesus poses a perennial question: What rules my life?

The moderate Jesus turns our attention away from peril to opportunity: the potential in my possessions. In the last analysis, whatever is mine (save for sin) is a gift. Even if it stems from my brilliance, that brilliance itself owes its origin to God—to the God who gave me life. But a gift of God is best used if it is shared. Each of you is gifted—much as your modesty may demur. It matters not what your specific possessions are: millions or the widow's mite, intelligence or influence, wit or wisdom, compassion or competitiveness, personality or power, aggressiveness or gentleness, profound faith or buoyant hope or limitless love. Use them as Jesus invites or commands you. To a few he may say: Give all your worldly wealth to the poor and come, follow me in utter trust. To most: Share what you have; use it for your sisters and brothers. Employ your intelligence to free enslaved minds, your power to produce peace, your compassion to heal fragmented hearts, your hope to destroy another's despair, your love to make life livable for the unloved.

Good friends: Today's Gospel is "heavy metal." And still, it is the gospel—literally, "good news," "glad tidings." What's so good and glad about it? It answers a critical question: How shall I live? (1) Make sure that no person however deeply loved, no thing however precious, pre-empts the place Christ should occupy in your priorities. (2) Put every pain to profit, make it a saving grace for others, by linking your cross to Calvary. (3) Whatever your gifts, don't clutch them greedily, share them—as Christ asks it of you.

The result will surprise you, perhaps already has: You will experience a deep-seated joy not even Madonna or the Redskins can supply. For when you live the way Jesus lived, you will feel the way Jesus felt. Ain't anything like it.

From Dare to Be Christ (c) 1991 Paulist Press.