Jesus must be our first priority and our all.
Homily for Twenty-Third Sunday of the Year – 4 September 2022
The Gospel for this Mass is not easy to receive. Jesus is clearly not looking for admirers, spectators, or fans. The context of this teaching is that great multitudes, great crowds, were following Jesus, and he turned and gave them this incredibly challenging teaching on what it means to be his disciple.
The problem was that so many of the people were there for the spectacle. They wanted to see miracles and wonders, without giving anything of themselves. Perhaps some were fans or admirers of Jesus - they thought he was a great man or great religious teacher, but the problem with fans and admirers is that they do everything on their own terms. They remain admirers for as long as it suits them, or it is convenient for them. Fans, spectators, or admirers keep a safe distance, as it were; they don't get personally involved in terms of changing their lives or making radical choices for the one they are supposed to follow. Being a fan or an admirer suggests keeping our options open, reserving our independence.
No Middle Ground, No Neutrality
But Jesus does not want this kind of follower. So, he turns to them and lays out the demands of true discipleship. These demands are outrageously challenging; they ask for everything; they demand the total giving of oneself to Jesus. To understand and experience Jesus, calls for a radical response. There is no middle ground, no neutrality. Being a fan of Jesus, while it might aptly describe our human experience of the Christian life at times, doesn't really cut it.
In Mark's Gospel, right at the beginning of Jesus' public ministry we hear that Jesus went ahead, and his disciples followed, and they were amazed and afraid. You see, in the face of the person of Jesus, amazement and awe are more appropriate responses than admiration and approval.
The challenge to us this Sunday is obvious. By being at Mass we are signalling an intention to follow Jesus. To what extent are we like the multitudes, the huge crowds, who followed Jesus, but on their own terms. In what sense are we challenged by Jesus' call to true discipleship in the Gospel for this Mass?
Our Hearts Are Made for God
Our challenge as modern-day disciples of Jesus is to be followers in the truest, most complete sense. To be a disciple is to fully embrace the identity and mission of Jesus. Using the Semitic language of hyperbole, that is, strong exaggeration to make a profound point, Jesus speaks of us needing to hate everything, even family, in comparison to allegiance to him. Scripture scholars see in this statement a profound profession of Jesus' identity as the Son of God. If you think of it, no one other than God could make this kind of demand. This is what makes Christianity, and the person of Jesus unique among the world religions. No other religious founder before or since has made such a claim.
To be a disciple means to see and experience in Jesus the fulfilment of the deepest longings of our hearts; it means to know our life's purpose and meaning. Our hearts are made for God. As St Augustine prays in his Confessions: "You have made us for yourself O God and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you." And, as the saying goes, "If you seek God, if you want to know what God is like, God who is infinite, totally other, pure spirit - look to the human face of Jesus. Jesus is the image of the unseen, invisible God.
The Cost of Discipleship
Jesus goes on to challenge the crowd to the core with his talk of even hating one's own life and taking up our cross and follow him. Don't underestimate the disconcerting effect this would have had on the people. We modern Christians have domesticated the language of the cross too much. Remember that the cross was a brutal Roman form of execution. To really get the point we would do well to think on the horror of the cross and the terror the notion of the cross would have inspired in first century Palestinians under Roman domination.
The call of Jesus to accept the cross and renounce all our possessions is our programme of discipleship. To be a disciple of Jesus, to follow Jesus, it is necessary to put Jesus first in everything. Essentially, we could call this the cost of discipleship. If our Christian life seems easy; if it seems like the norm, a comfortable way of living and being in society, if it just seems part of our culture, our usual way of doing things ... it is not discipleship. Discipleship is always costly, and it is counter cultural.
So, discipleship involves a daily cross. This means a dying to self in giving up our own selfish and self-serving will, our own self-interest. It is struggling with our sinful impulses and inclinations, which are always about selfishness. Taking up our cross means struggling against our needs, our wants, what we think makes us happy, what gives us security - things like pleasure, power, popularity, possessions. The call to self-denial means a shift in the centre of one's life, an abandonment to God that involves letting go of all one's own attachments and agendas, even one's claim on one's life itself.
My God and My All
Identifying ourselves as disciples means a call to action, to service. Our action, our service, is based on an ever-deepening love-relationship with the Jesus. To love Jesus is to love those he loves, to serve those he serves. As Jesus says, "If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there my servant will be also." This is costly to us. It means giving up something of ourselves or what belongs to us and what is ours by right. The divine irony is that we save our lives through this kind of "losing" them. We increase in the measure that we give ourselves away. Our happiness increases in the measure that we serve others, give happiness to others.
Mother Teresa wrote a prayer in which she prayed, "Make us realise that it is only by frequent deaths of ourselves and our self-centred desires that we can come to live more fully; for it is only by dying with you that we can rise with you."
Being a disciple of Jesus does not happen by default or because of the family or culture that we are born into; it involves a sincere personal decision made with at least some grasp of the implications. To follow Jesus is not merely to accompany him as a passive spectator observing his healings, miracles and listening to his wise words.
One of the things that is so appealing about St Francis of Assisi, is his radical response to the call of Jesus in the Gospel. Last week we heard how he prayed over and over again through the night, "Who are you, Lord and what am I." On another occasion, Brother Bernard, one of his earliest brothers, observed him praying right through the night, over and over again, "My God and my All." This remains a kind of motto for the Franciscans to this day. St Francis got it right. He understood that God is everything to us, God comes first and demands our very selves. God is our all.
What would it take for us to throw in our lot completely with Jesus, to be a true disciple? What do we find most attractive about Jesus and being a follower; what draws us? Equally, what would we find most difficult? What are our doubts and fears? What do we long for in the depths of our hearts?
This Sunday, we are challenged to be true disciples. We must prefer Jesus to everything else in life, all our relationships and possessions. Jesus must be our first priority and our all.
