Twenty-third Sunday Cycle C
Who are we without our stuff?
we are citizens of consumption
We are American consumers more often than we are American voters. Americans are brand-identified. Our patterns of consumption define us, and project who we are.
We are PCs or Macs; Blackberries, Palms or iPhones; Nike or New Balance; fair trade or free trade.
We know how cool we are based on whether we choose Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Explorer to surf the web
I'm not saying I am any different.
I know which type of countertop I prefer
I even know which fast food chain I would rather eat at. I buy as well as the next person. I just wonder who it is we are without our stuff.
The question raised first by the passage from the Gospel of Luke is: who are these people without their families?
The Gospel of Luke passage we heard gives a series of renunciations. "'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."
The first two are renunciations of family and of life.
The third is a renunciation of possessions: "So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."
My favorite aspects of the Gospel of Luke include remarkable inclusion of women as agents, and the fact that this portrayal of Jesus is of a guy who enjoys his food and drink.
I can identify with that Jesus.
Another characteristic of this gospel is the frequent mention of the need to give up or step away from material things.
The disciples were told they would need nothing to go on their journeys.
This makes me squirm.
I like to be prepared, and being prepared usually means buying the best tent or water bottle from the right sporting goods store.
What I like to think of as the most awkward part of this passage is the whole hate thing - "hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters."
Awkward
I've already been thinking about the worst-case scenario.
I'm thinking about people who leave their families and don't speak to them ever again because of bad experiences with abuse or rejection.
I'm thinking about people who choose to cut themselves off, or are cut off because they have been abandoned or disowned.
But I want to know what this "hate" thing is about.
I find myself having a intercultural encounter with this text, written in a time when family/tribal affiliation was everything.
Everyone was "son of" or "daughter of."
Entire families converted, or didn't.
Families provided access, security, inheritance rights, a way to make a living.
When I think about who in this vast and varied collection of Scriptural traditions had no family connections enabling them to navigate their societies, I think of widows and orphans and aliens in a foreign land.
All these people were in such desperate disenfranchised straits because they did not have a family by which they were provided access to the means of survival.
So, Voluntarily stepping outside of the family structure seems, to be blunt, nuts. " it may be helpful to know that some scholars say this term translated as "hate" was not a rejection but a different understanding of priorities.
To hate one's family was a way of saying that family would not be the primary affiliation or the only choice.
In the passages leading up to this one, Jesus has been speaking to potential disciples hanging out at the home of a prominent Pharisee.
Those listening were "interested inquirers and admirers."
These were not committed disciples, these were the seekers of the day.
But Here Jesus is speaking to people who are considering commitment, and it sounds like he wants them to have a sense of the import of such a decision.
This text gets the point across.
Discipleship comes first, before family, before life, and before our stuff.
A decision to follow Jesus requires thinking all the way through the possible consequences of discipleship.
Jesus wants us to do a cost-benefit analysis and a risk assessment.
And the Gospel of Luke makes this message sticky by giving examples of what could happen when people don't plan ahead,
and by using the language of hate.
This dramatic language makes a point: that discipleship is beyond most experiences.
It isn't convenient.
It might cost us everything.
After all, if loyalty to Jesus comes first, then everything, even the fundamental social structures of family and things, comes second.
This passage follows the parables where Jesus suggests to the host of a luncheon or dinner:
"do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors," but invite "the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind."
Following through on inviting those who cannot repay you has to be dangerous.
The passage states: "Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple."
Seriously, Jesus?
Yes, seriously.
Because following Jesus is serious business.
I like a challenge as much as anyone, but I'm not ready to answer this challenge with a definitive yes.
What about a definitive maybe?
How about a definitive I'll think about it?
Perhaps the life of Christian discipleship is a work in progress.
We may still be pondering these words of Jesus as we decide, each day, whether we will be disciples.
Who are we without our stuff?
The question is, who are we when we define ourselves as disciples instead of the people of stuff?
What might happen then?
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