Readings of the day: Wisdom 9:13-18b; Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33
23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
Full disclosure: Yesterday was my brother Eric’s and (officially) new sister-in-law Chelsea’s wedding at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Sherwood Park, a great celebration of love, family, friendship and, dare I say, Christian discipleship. What exactly, then, does Jesus mean when he says, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate their father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters… and even their life itself cannot be my disciple”? How many of us here now, maybe with your family or friends, are here because you in fact really hate your father or mother, husband, wife, or children, brothers or sisters, or even your own life? And petty squabbles and, kids, sibling rivalries do not count. Jesus says we really need to hate each other to be his disciples, right?
Well, not quite. At least I
hope that, having just celebrated my brother Eric’s and sister-in-law Chelsea’s
wedding, I am now not supposed to hate them and the rest of my family if I want
to be Jesus’ disciple! I think we may understand what Jesus says in today’s
Gospel a little better with a brief lesson in Greek, because Jesus’ original
meaning when he asks us to hate “father and mother, spouse and children, brothers
and sisters… and even [our] life” in order to be his disciple gets lost in
translation to English. When Jesus asks us to hate “father and mother, spouse
and children, brothers and sisters… and even [our] life” in order to be his
disciple, the word we hear as “hate” is from the Greek misei. In English, words like “miser” or “miserly,” for somebody
who is not very generous with his or her money, derive from this Greek word.
So, does this mean that Jesus’
ultimate disciple would be somebody like Ebenezer Scrooge? Well, again, not
quite. Misei in Greek means, more
precisely, “to treat as nothing”; “as of minimal to no importance.” This may
still be troublesome for those of us who love our families and like to spend a
lot of time with them, as I do. One great blessing I have when I have taught
here at St. Joseph’s College is to live, for a few months of the year, in the
same city as most of my immediate family and many of my closest friends. I
would have difficulty being Jesus’ disciple if this meant treating my family as
if they were not important. This is simply not my reality; my experience.
But to be Jesus’ disciple, I
think Jesus is saying to us today, is a question of priorities. Even if (as I
hope we all do) we love our mothers and fathers, our wives, our husbands, our
children, and know the beauty and dignity of our own lives, Jesus is asking us
to put God first. Jesus is inviting us to put our relationship with God above
all the other great relationships we may have with people closest to us and however
much we may love our own lives. Compared with our relationship with God, Jesus
invites us to consider even the greatest of our relationships with other people
and with ourselves (and certainly our own ego) as of minimal to no importance.
This is especially because all our relationships with other people—our families
and close friends—and our ability to recognize and love the dignity of our own
lives all find their source in God.
If we understand Jesus’ saying
that, to be his disciple, we must “hate… father and mother, spouse and
children, brothers and sisters… and even [our] life” in this way, this may also
help us to place what Jesus says to us in the context of our other readings
today, from Wisdom, the Psalms, and Philemon.
The Book of Wisdom, not
surprisingly, invites us to prioritize and seek after wisdom. Now, the Book of
Wisdom is a strange book of the Bible. It, like several books that make up the
so-called “wisdom literature” of the Old Testament—Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,
Sirach, some of the Psalms, and Wisdom—barely mention God and at times include
statements that are theologically problematic if they are not interpreted
carefully. We hear even today, for example, that “a perishable body weighs down
the soul, and this earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind.” Texts like this
would be used by people on the fringes of the early Church called Gnostics
(from another Greek word, gnosis,
that means “knowledge”), who taught that the human body is like a prison
dwelling from which the soul had to free itself to go to heaven. This teaching,
and the Gnostics’ view that there is knowledge, gnosis, that is essential for our salvation that is outside the
Bible or the teaching of the Church handed on from Jesus’ Apostles, were
eventually condemned by the Church as heresy. But the Biblical wisdom
literature is also peculiar in that it mentions God sparingly and, at face
value, tends to prioritize human faculties like wisdom over anything divine.
At least today’s reading from
Wisdom acknowledges a divine source (who remains unnamed, but still) of wisdom.
The Book of Wisdom asks, “Who has learned your counsel, unless you have given
wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high”? So, if Wisdom prioritizes or
glorifies wisdom above all, we could say that it does so because to prioritize
or glorify wisdom is to point us to the source of all wisdom, the ultimate source
of “all that is good,” whom we call God.
Like the Book of Wisdom and
Luke’s Gospel, St. Paul’s letter to Philemon also calls us to discern priorities.
Philemon is the shortest and one of the latest of St. Paul’s letters that are
included in our Bible. St. Paul writes from prison to a wealthy Christian of
the time, Philemon, who was possibly a bishop or other leader of the Church and
who owned slaves, but whose slave Onesimus had run away from him. In the
meantime, Onesimus had become a Christian (possibly baptized by Paul) and was
being accompanied and taught by St. Paul in the Christian faith. If the Old
Testament Book of Wisdom prioritizes the human faculty of wisdom, Philemon
gives pride of place to virtues like forgiveness and reconciliation. Like
wisdom, forgiveness and reconciliation point us to our utmost priority, God.
Who here has forgiven or reconciled with another person, or been forgiven, not
least in the sacrament of reconciliation, and so knows of what I speak?
Philemon, whom St. Paul
addresses with this brief yet moving letter, was in no way obligated to receive
Onesimus back as his slave, much less as “a beloved brother” in Christ as St.
Paul asks of him. St. Paul knows this; he knows Philemon’s legal rights toward
Onesimus, yet he asks Philemon to receive Onesimus back anyway, using
affectionate terms for Onesimus like “my child” and describing his relationship
with Onesimus like that of a father to a son.
St. Paul’s letter to Philemon,
Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, our Psalm today, and the Book of Wisdom all point us to
our ultimate priority, who is God. But each reading we hear today points us to
God in a different way. In the letter to Philemon, the way to God is through
practice of the virtues of forgiveness and reconciliation, especially when we
are not required to forgive somebody; to receive that person back as “a beloved
brother” or sister. Forgiveness and reconciliation without conditions is how
God acts toward us when we stray from God and hurt one another by our sin.
Unlike Onesimus, though, we do not begin as slaves; we begin as beloved people,
created in God’s own image and likeness.
Our Psalm, like the Book of
Wisdom, prioritize wisdom among ways of seeking God first. To know the
shortness of our earthly days is, in a way paradoxically, to know the “favour”
and “steadfast love” of the LORD for us; to know God as the source of our life,
both our finite life on earth and our eternal life with God in heaven for which
this life is our preparation.
In this earthly life, family
and close friends can help us to prepare for eternal life by acting as examples
of God’s love toward us, and our acting as examples of God’s love toward them.
It will be unlikely for us, but it does happen still in our world today that
people, Christians, are asked to choose in a moment between love for family,
friends, and this life, and God. It is for these moments especially that Jesus
says, “Whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
