Sermon - The Rev. Elise A. Feyerherm - September 4th, 2022

One of my students from BU is taking the fall semester off – she is going to walk the Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrimage route in Europe that ends at the tomb of St. James the Greater in Santiago de Compostela, on the northwest coast of Spain. The route, it is said, is not itself difficult, but it is long, especially for modern-day humans who are not accustomed to walking ten, twenty, or even thirty miles in one day. The most popular route is five hundred miles long, so it is not undertaken lightly.

Because this is an ancient path, and Christians and others have been following it for centuries, there are plenty of hostels and other accommodations along the way, dedicated to offering hospitality and community to weary pilgrims. It is not meant to be a dangerous or life-threatening adventure, but it does require regular sustenance and a lot of self-care to go the distance. You need the right kind of walking shoes, well broken in. You need a good map, outerwear for inclement weather, probably a good walking stick, and a hat to keep the sun off. You need lots of midday snacks, and plenty of water. 

Walking the Camino is not something one does at the spur of the moment. It takes planning, and preparation, and commitment. It is not something one can do on one’s day off, or in a week’s vacation. To walk the Camino means putting aside the life one has been living, at least for a month, and giving oneself fully to the journey, both physically and spiritually. While you are on the Camino, you are a pilgrim, first and foremost. I have never walked the Camino, but I know those who have, and I hear that it changes you in ways you never expect.

Jesus said to those traveling with him, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?” 

The language Jesus uses can seem harsh – language that is jarring and even unwelcome, about hating one’s family and even life itself. One might even suspect that Jesus is warning us off the journey, giving less prepared followers a dignified way out. Those who bought their walking shoes yesterday and haven’t broken them in; those who forgot to stock up on snacks, or who up until yesterday were confirmed couch potatoes – this is our chance to cancel our reservations. He wants us to know what we’re getting ourselves into. 

If a month-long trek to Santiago de Compostela requires a careful assessment of one’s abilities and the assurance that one has estimated the physical and material and spiritual cost, how much more should the prospect of journeying with Jesus make us stop and think, what am I getting myself into?

In a certain sense, I and many of us didn’t have a choice – I was baptized when I was less than two weeks old, plunged into the Body of Christ and called to discipleship before I was barely conscious. One could argue that such an early induction gives me an easy out, an escape clause in the contract. I didn’t make the decision myself; how could I count the cost?

But my parents certainly knew what they were doing; and I believe that God calls all of us in ways that transcend our ability to choose for ourselves. Most of all I believe, with the ancient church, that the sacrament of baptism is no idle ceremony – it actually changes us, changes our destiny, whether we are conscious of it or not. And although I did not make the choice initially to set out on this pilgrimage, I have been given many chances along the way to look at the map, survey my resources, and decide whether to keep going. Many chances – daily chances, in fact.

It's a good thing, because even after decades of thinking about and trying to follow Jesus, I still forget how much it costs. Everyone forgets. And everyone needs to be reminded. Look at Philemon – a dear friend and co-worker of the apostle Paul, in whose very house a gathering of Jesus’ followers met regularly. We don’t know how old Philemon is, but we can assume that he was baptized as an adult – he took the plunge, made the decision to give his life to Christ on his own, perhaps even estimating the cost and deeming it worth the price. This was a time when following Jesus could get you killed, as was true for Paul and Peter and other disciples. We can imagine that Philemon was willing to take up his cross.

But even Philemon needed to be reminded of the cost of following Jesus. He was probably a prosperous man, given that he had a house in which the church could meet. It doesn’t look to me as if Philemon had given up all his possessions – far from it. He had at least one slave, Onesimus; perhaps he had others. 

Slavery was endemic in ancient Rome – some estimate that 10-20% of people were enslaved, which in the first century added up to 5 or 10 million people. According to the British Museum, “Under Roman law, enslaved people had no personal rights and were regarded as the property of their masters. They could be bought, sold, and mistreated at will and were unable to own property, enter into a contract, or legally marry.” 

So here is Philemon – he has given himself to following Jesus, and so has Onesimus, who was enslaved by him and has been doing ministry with Paul during Paul’s imprisonment. He is a dear friend of Paul’s, and a co-worker. And yet he continues to participate in one of Rome’s many systems of oppression, no matter how well he treats those whom he has enslaved. In this facet of his life, Philemon has accepted a brutal system that is fundamentally opposed to Jesus’ embodiment of God’s reign of justice, peace, freedom, and love. 

Interpretations of what Paul is asking Philemon to do vary. The letter has over history been used to justify enslavement, since Paul does not explicitly condemn the practice. 

I hear something different, more challenging. I hear Paul reminding his friend of the cost of following Jesus, calling him to take stock of how his life is actually keeping him from being Jesus’ disciple. “I am sending him…back to you,” Paul writes, “so that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother…[W]elcome him as you would welcome me.” 

For Philemon to welcome Onesimus back as a beloved brother, as he would welcome Paul himself, seems to me to exclude the possibility that Onesimus would continue to be enslaved. I hear Paul saying, if you want to follow Jesus, you cannot think that you can own and control anyone, let alone a sibling in Christ. This is Philemon’s wake-up call, confronting him with his own acceptance of the brutality of empire and his resistance to giving up all that is anathema to God’s reign. Philemon may have estimated the cost at the beginning of his pilgrimage, but it was incomplete, maybe even half-hearted. Who knows. In any case, this was, as we say, a “come to Jesus” moment. Literally.

God knows, I need these “come to Jesus” moments all the time. Every time I come to this table to preside and then to take into my body the Body and Blood of Christ, I need to ask, have I really faced up to the costs of going on this journey? I worry sometimes, that when we invite everyone to the table, we aren’t clear enough about what receiving the sacrament might require of us. Like baptism, the Eucharist changes us. Christ lays claim to us at the altar. This is food and sustenance, yes, but it is also potent and challenging food. It literally binds us within the Body of Christ, a body that in its first incarnation was hung on a cross. Jesus has told us that in his Body’s continued life on earth, we can expect nothing less than the cross.

This is not about coming to the table “worthily.” All of us are “worthy” simply because of our desperate need and God’s undying love for us. But we need to remind ourselves from time to time what Jesus is actually asking of us when we bring our children or ourselves to baptism, when we take into ourselves the Body and Blood of Christ. We will be changed. Things and identities we thought essential will need to be left by the side of the path. But our hearts will be refreshed in Christ, and in the joy of taking this road together. There is no camino more worth taking than the one we are on, right now.