Sermon for September 8, 2019 - Proper 18C - The Rev'd Isaac Provencio Martinez

Proper 18 Year C – Track 2

Deut. 30:15-20; Ps. 1; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33

Good morning, St. Paul’s! It is a real blessing to break open the Word with you this morning. For those of you who are new to St. Paul’s or whom I haven’t met yet, my name is Isaac Martinez and I’m so thrilled to serve as a curate here. But, Jeff, I’m going to have start taking a real hard look at the readings before I agree to any more preaching dates. First Sodom and Gomorrah over the summer, and now today’s Gospel? C’mon!

But on a more serious note, church, I do think Jesus’s words this morning are summoning us to a very difficult task, just not the one we might imagine.

Before I get to that though, I want to tell you a story. As some of you might know, a crucial part of the formation process to become an Episcopal priest is to spend part of the year as a hospital chaplain. Last year, I was lucky enough to do my internship not too far from here at Beth Israel Deaconess. To be quite honest with you, going into that summer, I was very anxious. Sure, I can be charming and kind, but did I really have what it takes to sit with people going through some of the worst times in their lives? What could I offer that was anything more than an “I’m sorry” or “I hope you get better” and maybe a nice prayer?

But beneath that self-doubt lay something deeper: fear—a fear that if I couldn’t be a good chaplain, that would mean I wouldn’t make a very good priest. And if I couldn’t be a good priest, then who would I be? I started my internship last summer with my very identity at stake.

And in some ways, I was right to have those fears and worries. There was a lot at stake. But over the course of that summer, I kept turning to the reason why I was in this program at all, the call to ministry I had felt even as a child. I learned to develop and trust my pastoral intuition. I prayed like I never had before, in ways I never had before. I went to worship on Sunday with a new sense that I wasn’t just there for myself, but for my patients. I was blessed and I was able to be a blessing. I had to go across all kinds of societal boundaries to care for people. And at the end of a difficult but thrilling summer, I was able to rest, giving me a chance to look back and take stock of just how far I had come, what it had cost, and how I had changed. Turn, learn, pray, worship, bless, go, rest. These are simple words that describe a multitude of practices that led me to a deeper understanding of my identity, not as a chaplain or a priest, but as a disciple, a follower of Jesus and his Way of Love.

Now, it might be a little incongruous to introduce “Living the Way of Love,” our parish’s guiding model for this program year, with a Gospel reading where Jesus seems to tell us the opposite. As your curate, part of my responsibility is to lead our ministries with our children and young people. So it’s particularly jarring for me to hear Jesus speak these words, “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?” Hate, Jesus, really? We’re supposed to love our neighbor, but hate our own families? We’re supposed to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and the imprisoned, all while hating our own lives? How do we make sense of that?

First, it’s important to note that our evangelist, Luke, is engaging in a bit of hyperbole here. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus’s teaching is put like this: “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.” In this passage, hate becomes a metaphor for subordinating our family loyalties to our allegiance to Jesus and his way.[1] We are not called to emotionally hate our families, but rather to love the Incarnated God more than we do our own families.

But why, you might ask? Well, historically, we must remember that Jesus was endeavoring to create a new understanding of what “family” meant. In the ancient world, which family you were born into determined almost your entire life, whether you were rich or poor, what your occupation and status in society were, and if you had any measure of control over your individual life. To an extent that’s hard to imagine for us today, with our concepts of a “middle class” and “economic mobility,” so much of what life meant, so much of a person’s very identity, depended on who their family was.

And here we come to the difficult part of today’s reading and, I think, of so many stages of our Christian pilgrimage. Jesus is not actually asking us to despise our parents, spouses, children, and siblings. He’s asking for something more. He’s asking us to put him before and beyond anything else in this world. He’s asking us to be willing to renounce everything we possess, even our own identities, our own understandings of who we are. He is asking for our very lives.

He knows this is a big ask. He’s not trying to hoodwink the crowd that’s following him. He is brutally honest with them. Before you become my disciple, count the cost, he says, like someone trying to build a tower, or a king who wants to go to war. Know what you’re getting yourself into.

Turn, learn, pray, worship, bless, go, rest. This is the path we are on, not just this year, but as long as we seek to follow Jesus and be his disciples.

And at this point, my friends, you might be wondering, is it worth it? I like my life, you might be thinking, I’ve got it pretty good. Or, maybe, you’re like me, and, you’ve spent a lot of time and spilt a lot of tears to come to terms with who you really are. Is it worth it to give all that up, just for a radical teacher who was put to death on a cross 2000 years ago?

Is it worth it?

Turn. Take a breath. Listen to these words of Jesus, from the same Gospel of Luke: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Yes, that is a messiah I choose to follow.

Is it worth it? Learn. Pray. Worship.

Is it worth it? Bless. Go.

Is it worth it? Rest.

This Way of Love is not a mere journey and these are not single stages along it. This is a cycle, a spiral, that draws ever deeper into the heart of the God who made us and who loves us and who is always with us.

Is being a disciple worth the cost? Let us live this Way of Love, and I think we will find out together. Amen.

[1] Mt. 10:37—Jeanine K. Brown points out this parallel on Working Preacher.