13 Pentecost, Cp18, September 8, 2019
Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Psalm 1
Philemon 1-20 Luke 14:25-33
Traditionalism can be the celebration of the "good ol' days." Remember the good "ol' days." For many Americans, the good ol' days refer to the 1950's and early 60'swhen the middle class took off. Track homes in the suburbs, the Cleaver family of Ward, June, Wally and the Beave. Mom June stayed at home and greeted the kids after school in short high heels with fresh brownies and then presented father Ward with his pipe and newspaper so he could chill before the domestic goddess finished preparing dinner. Freeways, dams and infrastructure galore; and people forget that such good ol' days of Eisenhower actually had a 91 percent tax on the most wealthy so that the American dream could be realized for more Americans. Much of our discontent today is among people who hold the 50's as the ideal norm but also by the people for whom the 50's were not so good because of lack of consciousness about racism, sexism and the undiscovered dignity of people who could not could not even be recognized.
A love for the good ol' days is called nostalgia. And do you know what "algia" means? It means pain. The present is so painful to adjust to, we have to hearken back to the times about which we have memories of a life that was better or seemingly conflict free, but we know that memories of the good ol' days are highly selective. Every age has its own pain inducing "nostalgia" because the truth of life is dynamic change.
The times of Jesus and the early church were days of dynamic change. And it was difficult for God's people to adjust to change. People resorted to nostalgia. The answer to nostalgia included visualization myths. Remember the only good times in the history of Israel, the few years when David was King. Everything after David became progressively worse for the people of Israel. Hence the myth of the return of someone anointed by God like David to make everything right in Israel again. "O, God, let us have another David, another Messiah to come and knock heads and prove his messiahship by removing the occupying Romans from our land and giving us back our land."
And you know what? Jesus was not that kind of Messiah. Families who held onto the myth of a Davidic Messiah could not see Jesus as fitting the bill. But people who had the mystical experience of the Risen Christ, understood that the experience which came after the suffering of Jesus on the cross was proof and definition of a Messiah of a different order than simply a successful military king for the land of Israel. Jesus as the Risen Christ, Messiah was to become a conqueror of hearts and lives for not just the people of Israel but for people of the entire world. And so ensued the development a major new faith paradigm.
George Bernard Shaw who was quoted by Oscar Wilde said that the American and British people were those divided by having a common language. This is funny and true because we also have a lot in common because we do have a common language.
The early churches and the synagogues of the same era consisted of people who were divided by having a common God, but who had different notions of the Messiah. People who hold important things in common can still experience such intense disagreement on faith practice that they can result in such mutual rejection that foster events of what can be called "hate." One could even say that Americans now are people divided by having a common flag and constitution. One can certainly note the significant experience of "hatred" expressed in our public life today.
The shocking words of Jesus regarding hating of father, mother and life itself seem to contradict his other words about loving God being inconsistent with hating one's brother, or the Sermon on the Mount injunction to love our enemies and do good to those who persecute us. Or what about the commandment which says we should honor our father and mother?
We cannot read the words regarding hate in isolation with everything in the words of the oracle of Christ that were delivered in the community which wrote the Gospel of Luke, many years after Jesus was on this earth.
It does help us to have a dime's worth of knowledge about the Greek word for life in this Gospel. The word for the life that one is supposed to hate is "psuche" or the life of the mind, emotions and the will. The Greek word for physical life was "bios." So the hate of life that Jesus is proposing is not one which promotes "suicide." The education program promoted by both John the Baptist and Jesus was called repentance. The Greek word for repentance is "metanoia," which literally means the "after mind," or the "new mind." St. Paul wrote that we are to be in the process of the continual renewing of our mind. When something is renewed, there is the death or leaving of what was before. A new paradigm gives new answers to new questions; so one eschews the old and inadequate and one eschews the people who try to prevent creative advance into what is new and more adequate for spiritual growth. Can we understand how the oracle words of Jesus in the community of Luke's Gospel was the effort to say to membership that dynamic growth involves change? It involves leaving former loyalties and it involves a break with the people in one's past who do not want to let one go to pursue the creative advance.
It perhaps can be said that the entire New Testament is writings of the people who left an older paradigm of a vision regarding God and embraced the Risen Christ who was to be made accessible to all people in the world. The Christian paradigm was a radical evangelistic Christo-Judaism. St. Paul and Peter were those who did not think followers of Christ could wait around for all of the Gentile people to come to the wisdom of circumcision and "kosher" eating regulations; they regarded these to be items of secondary identity and less important than the evidence of Gentiles receiving the Holy Spirit to change their lives.
One of the reasons Christian
people in the past have found themselves vulnerable to anti-Semitic behaviors
is because the New Testament recounts the "events of hatred" among
people who actually had a common God. Rather than accept the fact that
Jews and Christians have different missions in our world, some people have
chosen to live in the "events of hatred" which characterized our
separation into our different missions.
The punchline of today's Gospel
actually refers to good probability planning. If you're going to war,
plan ahead with good strategies. If you're going to build a tower, you
have to plan to have the right material in advance. Essentially, the
oracle of the Risen Christ was telling the early church: Don't get caught in
nostalgia. Incorporate dynamic change into your planning process.
Why? That is the way that life is.
The Risen Christ was saying,
"Things are changing and that's natural. And those who deny change
must be resisted in their painful nostalgia. To deny change is not good
planning in life.
The early church were
understanding the Risen Christ to be saying, "Folks, the land of Israel
will not be delivered from the Romans by another King David." In fact, the
Romans sacked Jerusalem and the Temple. The Risen Christ was saying to them, "You are going to have to deal
with living in the cities of the Roman Empire. That is change which is
forced upon all. How do you deal with it?" Do you retreat to the
cloistered synagogue community, stay ritually pure and hope for the appearance
of a great one like David? Or do you embrace the winsomeness of the Risen
Christ for all people, Jews and Gentiles. And do you slowly and silently
conquer the Roman Empire from within the hearts of all?
St. Paul had to rebuke Philemon
in a letter. "Philemon you are the owner of the runaway slave
Onesimus in the Roman slave culture, but in the Risen Christ there is no slave
nor free, but a new creation. So, you are to receive Onesimus back into
your household without punishment and receive him as your equal Christian brother.
This is the new Risen Christ paradigm. You must hate your old self in
your old ways, the one who wants to punish Onesimus for "breaking the
rules.""
Friends, you and I are called to
include dynamic change in the future of our lives, as individuals and as a
parish community. We may have to "hate" former versions of
ourselves in order to be renewed in our minds so that we can find fresh answers
to the new situations.
Today, we are invited to let
our discipleship to Christ cure our tendency toward painful nostalgia.
Let us with hope celebrate an always already better future. Amen
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