September 5, 2004 ­ Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost ­ Father Andrew Green

FIRST READING: Jeremiah 18: 1-11
PSALM: 139: 1-5, 12-17
SECOND READING: Philemon 1-12
GOSPEL: Luke 14: 25-33

Please be seated. That is, please be seated if you aren¹t already offended enough to walk out. Aren¹t you offended yet? If you were listening to the Scriptures today, you should be offended. There are things in each one of these Scriptures that ought to offend you, or, if listening to them with the ears of someone from the time in which they were written, there is offensive material in here.

Let¹s think of one ­ it is probably the biggest reach ­ Jeremiah. . . Jeremiah has something in it that is offensive. It has something in it that challenges the way we are used to doing business and some of the common assumptions that we have about God. Often, that offends us, because we don¹t like having our assumptions challenged, and we often react in anger about it. Now, what assumption is that, you might ask? No, I don¹t think God is literally a potter. That is not the assumption. Have you ever heard about God being unchangeable? A lot of our theology is built on God being unchangeable, and, so, a lot of folks, whenever they see something change, they say, "Wait! We can¹t do that, because God is unchangeable! God doesn¹t change". Well, read this particular passage. It says that God is like a potter, and, if the pot is not working out, He will make something else. "You are My chosen people. I have intended and promised that I am going to do great things for you, but, if you don¹t measure up, I might not". "I might change My mind" is what it actually says in there. But, it goes the other way, too. "There are some who are outcasts, and there are some who have been far away; and I have promised that I am going to destroy you". But then He says, "I changed my mind. I am going to bring you in. I am going to make you My people". The truth is that God does change. There are all sorts of examples, particularly in the Old Testament. Read the book of Jonah sometime. God intended to destroy Nineveh, but, then they all repented; and He said, "O.K. I won¹t". God is not quite as unchangeable as we humans like to think of Him, because we tend to take the unchangeableness and use it to amend or to support our own positions; so that you can¹t challenge my position. Because God is unchangeable, therefore, you can¹t challenge my position. (Now, don¹t try this this week on me, O.K.?).

The second one. . . Again, it might not come out, but the letter from Paul to Philemon should challenge us. Do you understand what Paul is asking for there? This is not a stewardship letter. He is not sending this out to the Parish inviting them to tithe. He is sending this letter to Philemon because he wants Philemon to release his slave so that his slave can serve Paul, and his slave can not be his anymore. Now, this is a pretty cool thing, right? But, in that era, if you released a slave, the slave was going to be forever known as so-and-so¹s former slave. Onesimus would be known as Philemon¹s freedman. He is not Onesimus, he is Philemon¹s freedman, now, instead of Philemon¹s slave. Paul is asking for something that was offensive in the culture. He was saying, "I want you to release Onesimus, and I don¹t want you to release him as a slave; I want you to release him and embrace him as a brother, as an equal". Paul is taking a shot at the social structure. It is not enough to just give Onesimus his freedom and let him make his own decisions, now, but he wants Philemon to embrace him as his brother and his equal. In fact, if you read it closely, I think he is saying, "I want you to embrace him and treat him like you would treat me, your mentor." So, that is something that, in that time and in that culture, would be offensive, because it challenged the norms with which all of the people had been raised.

But then, we get to the ones that are really more touchy for us, and I think more obvious. "If you don¹t hate your mother, hate your father (kids, close your ears), or your wife and children, you can¹t be My disciple. If you don¹t hate even your own life, you can¹t be My disciple". In reality, I don¹t think many people are offended by this, because, as I look out, eyes are glazed over, and it just goes over people¹s heads. If you are used to the typical liberal preacher, who is going to find a way to make sure you are not uncomfortable with the fact that Jesus said hate your mom and dad and your brothers and sisters, I want to tell you that I can¹t do that today. A friend of mine, a woman names Sara Dillon Brewer, is a scholar in New York, and she has kind of a blog and e-mail thing that she does on-line, and she is a New Testament scholar. She was saying, "Friends don¹t let friends translate like that". The word in Greek is a word for hate. It is the word Jesus uses for evil-doers ­ the way one should treat evil-doers. There is no way to make this say, "Well, Jesus doesn¹t really mean hate; He means love a little less. He doesn¹t mean this; He really means something that is the opposite, but we are more comfortable with". If you really thought about what Jesus was saying there, you would probably be offended. Jesus is talking to the people at that time, for whom family was critical. The father was next to God in authority, and, of course, the emperor is in there some place. Jesus is asking His followers to be willing to put nothing and no one between themselves and God¹s authority.

Now, there is some good news in this. Jesus is not asking you to be angry with your family. Jesus is not asking you to sacrifice warm and tender feelings for one another within the family. In this context, particularly in the New Testament and in that era, people weren¹t really concerned about how warm and fuzzy you felt toward each other. They were really talking about how we behave toward each other. So, when Jesus talks about hating your father and mother, He is not saying to be angry at them or to be enraged at them, but He is saying the opposite of loving. When you love, you want to draw somebody to you. To hate them is to put them off, to put them away from you, because, if they are in the way ­ if they are standing between you and what God has called you to ­ they are going to keep you from accomplishing it.

Now, this really meant something at that time, because Jesus was preaching to Jews, and, by following Him, they were putting themselves off from their families and from the synagogue. They were putting themselves off from the religious leadership, and, over time, they would put themselves over and against the secular leadership, too. So Jesus is really letting them know that they were going to be on the out¹s.

Now, the last and greatest offense, particularly for us Episcopalians, is when Jesus says, "You can¹t be My disciple if you don¹t give up all your possessions". You knew that was coming, didn¹t you? I mean, Episcopalians, I think, have been the protectors of possessions. You know, "You all can give it up, and we¹ll take care of it for you. We¹ll watch out for the stuff". But, the reality is that, just like family, just like position in society, just like trying to get God to bolster my own personal opinions as unchangeable, possessions can get between us and what God is calling us to. This is not one of those passages like the rich young man who came up and said, "What do I need to do to get into heaven?" And, Jesus says, "Well, what do you think?" He says, "Well, I do this, this, and this . . ." And Jesus said, "Great! You lack one thing. Give away everything you own and follow Me". And the guy went away sad because he had many possessions. Well, you know, as a preacher, I think I can legitimately say, "You know, Jesus was just talking to one guy, there. This was not one of those general statements to all disciples; this was that guy asking Him a specific question, and He gave him a specific answer. I know that, if I had come up there, He would have told me something different". This is not one of those. This is one where Jesus is talking to the whole group, and He is saying, "You can¹t be My disciples if you don¹t give up your possessions."

At the heart of it, we are made to be possessed as people. We are either going to be possessed by God, or we are going to be possessed by something else. It¹s not so much about our giving up our possessions as it is the fact of how often our possessions possess us. How often do our decisions about all sorts of things in our life revolve around our stuff, as opposed to what God is calling us to?

I won¹t go so far as to say that God really thinks stuff is cool, because that is not really the context of this Scripture. Jesus wants us to know that, in the act of following Him, we need to be willing to give up everything. He said to His disciples, "Unless you pick up your cross and follow Me, you can¹t be My disciples".

Now, I noticed that you have a beautiful cross on, a beautiful silver cross; and Anna has a beautiful cross. Those aren¹t the crosses Jesus is talking about. I have a nice glass one that Kevin had made for me, and it has little glittery stuff inside; and it¹s beautiful. The blue kind of matches the shirt I am wearing underneath this. That is not the cross that Jesus is talking about picking up. If you wanted to connect with what Jesus was talking about, what I want you to do is to go over to John¹s, dig around in the dumpster, fill up a bag, wrap it around your neck, and walk around with that for a while. Then you will have an idea of what Jesus is challenging His followers to when He says, "Pick up your cross and follow Me, or you can¹t be My disciples".

In everything, Jesus is asking us to turn away from, to put off, to hate those things that give us position, place, importance, and significance in the world and get rid of it all to follow Him. And He promises us that we will be a part of His Kingdom. But, if you walk around with a sack of garbage around your neck, there is no way to make it seem pretty. If you put your family off when they don¹t want to be put off, and they cut you off, it is not going to be fun. If you let go of all your possessions, and you find yourself wondering from day to day, "Why did I do that?", it is not going to be fun. But what God intends us to learn, I believe, is that, if we turn our dependencies and our hopes and everything else from possessions, from status, from family, and onto God, we can find the fulfillment and the peace that God has promised us.

This is where that idea of God as a potter comes back in, because, if we are all kind of those lumps of clay that God is trying to craft into a useful, sturdy, beautiful piece of pottery, we can trust that, if we get it wrong, God isn¹t going to give up, but is going to figure out how to make us into what God wants us to be some other way. God desires to constantly reach out to us and draw us in. As offensive as I am trying to say this language is, did you once hear Jesus say, "By the way, if you don¹t pick up your cross, just go to hell!"? Did you hear that? No, Jesus doesn¹t say that, does He? He doesn¹t say, "If you don¹t give up all your possessions, I won¹t love you". He just says, "You are not going to be able to be My disciples. You are not going to be able to follow where I go if you don¹t do that". But Jesus is still pitching for us. The Potter is still trying to find the right form for us, so that we might be useful, sturdy, and beautiful in His Kingdom.

AMEN