23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time: Luke 14:25-33
In our country, it seems like we scarcely finish one election when we start talking about the next. Someone is always running for something! We are promised wonderful, amazing things if we vote for this person, and terrible things if we vote for someone else.
Imagine someone running for office who says something different. “If you vote for me, I will work hard to break up families and other communities. I will seek to lower wages and raise taxes. I will do my best to make our health care worse. If you vote for me, you will lose everything you love best!”
If anyone running for office spoke like this, we’d be too stunned to be angry. We’d wonder if this were some sort of sick joke. In any case, no one in their right mind would take such a politician seriously, let alone vote for that person.
And yet, isn’t this what Jesus seems to be telling us in our Gospel reading? “So, you want to be a disciple of mine, do you? Then, you’d better learn to hate your family, give up all your possessions, and get ready for a miserable life and a miserable death!” Not the best way to win friends and influence people, in this or any age.
Instead of our strange politician, however, imagine firefighters who are about to enter a burning building to save the people inside. The firefighters need to be on call, ready to leave home and family at a moment’s notice, in order to make everyone safer. They will take in with them only what they need to do their job. Anything more will weigh them down or get in the way. Even though firefighters are trained for such events, yet they can’t eliminate the risk to their own lives. They have to put themselves at some risk to save others. Everything else in their lives has to become secondary – at least for the moment – if the firefighters are going to fulfill their mission and save people trapped by a fire.
What Jesus is saying to us today comes much closer to what firefighters do than to the strange politician in our first example. Jesus sees a crowd following Him. He turns to them to tell them what following Him means. Jesus is not an ordinary rabbi or teacher. Following Him is not a hobby to be done in our spare time. Jesus comes to us as Messiah, Lord, and Son of God. He is on a rescue mission to save us from sin and death, a mission He calls the Kingdom of God. He comes to give us love, life, joy, and healing. He calls on each person who follows Him not only to accept Him as Lord and God, but to take on their own role in that rescue mission. Everything else in our lives, as good as it may be, is secondary to our role as disciples of Christ.
Most of us live our our calling within our families. Most of us are blessed to be part of families who usually support our Catholic faith and encourage it. Part of our calling, too, is to encourage them in living their faith. Some of us, nevertheless, will be called to literally leave our families in order to follow the Lord – for example, priests or sisters. Others may find that some relatives do not understand or support our faith. Some may actively oppose it or ridicule it. As important a gift as family is, family must always be secondary to our main calling to follow the Lord. Following the Lord is too important; there’s too much at stake.
It is the same with our possessions. At times, possessions can help us live out our calling from the Lord. At other times, possessions can be a burden or obstacle or temptation that lures us away from the Lord. Most of us will not be asked to literally give up all our possessions, but the Lord does want us to carry our possessions lightly and not invest too much of ourselves in them. The idea is that we are ready to give up at least some of our possessions at any time whenever the Lord may ask it of us. Our possessions are meant for our mission in Christ. We need the freedom to joyfully use them or give them whenever it will serve the Lord.
We can say the same about our lives in general. Many of us will not be asked to literally die for our faith. However, faithfulness to our part in God’s rescue mission may require that we put some part of our lives at risk in order to be a means of God’s love for others. It may be our reputation, our desire for anonymity or comfort. Again, it’s not that reputation or comfort are bad. No, the mission that God gives us is so important, so good, that we willingly and joyfully let ourselves be vulnerable in order to honor that mission.
So, then, where do we go from here?
We might do well to ask ourselves some questions, as an examination of conscience. What is the calling, the mission, that the Lord has given me now? Am I living it as though I really believed that this calling is from the Lord? Am I willing to place even the best gifts in my life in service to the Lord’s mission, trusting that He knows what I really need? Have I made the Lord even more important than family, than possessions, than my very life? When we make such a complete gift of ourselves to the Lord, we find that we do not really lose anything else that is good. He gives it all back to us, abundantly, so that we can serve Him and serve one another in love.