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When we
hear the words “disciple” and “discipleship,” our first thoughts
oftentimes focus immediately upon negative things, and especially those
things we will have to give up if we are to become the type of disciple
St. Paul describes in today’s epistle. Contemplating what we would be
required to give up, namely, our addictions to the pleasures of the
flesh—and we all know what these desires are as well as their roots in
selfishness and self-indulgence—we recognize immediately that
discipleship carries a very high cost.
For some of us,
discipleship would require:
·
shutting our mouths so that gossip, foul language, lies, rumors, or
angry and venomous words don’t escape our lips;
·
putting a cork in each of our two ears so that we neither listen to all
of the gossip nor revel in all of the rumors, falsehoods, lies, and
deceit;
·
closing our eyes to pornography and the illicit and immoral behaviors
depicted in the movies, on television, or on our laptop or desktop
screen so that we don’t spend our time fantasizing about engaging in
these behaviors ourselves; or,
·
reining in our feelings of anger and righteous indignation so that we
can care about others and love them despite the fact that they have hurt
us.
For others of us, discipleship would require that we stop living a lie.
For example, we’d need to admit that:
·
we no
longer need alcoholic beverages, marijuana, methamphetamines, cocaine,
or other narcotics and drugs to cope with life’s challenges and
difficulties or just to feel good;
·
we
must cut off an affair, to stop engaging in illicit and immoral sexual
relations and perversions, or to stop living together under the false
pretense that one is married; or,
·
we
must stop being married to our career and treating our spouse and family
members as if they the take second-place in our lives;
·
we
must turn away from wanting anything and everything we believe will make
us happy if we could only “have it all.”
Indeed, the price of discipleship—“freedom of spirit,” as St. Paul
describes it—is very steep, especially when we calculate its cost in
terms of giving up our addictions to the pleasures of the flesh.
However, the cost is worth the price we must pay because experience has
taught us that the pleasures of the flesh only make slaves of us and, in
the long run, make us very unhappy.
Long ago in the
seventh century, the Christian philosopher, Boethius, noted that true
happiness consists only in possessing those things that can never be
taken away. We are extremely unhappy, Boethius wrote in The
Consolation of Philosophy, when everything we believed would bring
us true and abiding happiness is taken away, especially if our
possessions are taken away unjustly. We know, of course, that death is
surely going to rob each and every one of us of every material
possession. So why do we put so much stock in desiring and acquiring
material possessions when we know they will only bring us momentary and
fleeting happiness, and that we ultimately must surrender each of them,
if not sooner than later, surely at the moment of death? Is it because
we are pleasure-addicted hedonists whose only happiness is found in
maximizing the pleasures of the flesh these things bring us?
While this
caricature may very accurately describe us, our true motives, and why we
don’t want to pay the cost of discipleship, all of that isn’t what Jesus
suggests is the real cost of discipleship. In today’s gospel, Jesus
says, “Let the dead bury the dead….No one who sets his hand to the plow
and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”
The simple fact
is that all too many of us are slaves of our past. We look at the
choices we’ve made to satisfy those desires of the flesh and how we’ve
become enslaved to them. We experience embarrassment and we blush with
shame when we are exposed in public for being the person we already know
we’ve chosen to become in private. We know, for example, we don’t
need drugs in order to be truly happy. But, try to convince a drug
addict of that truth. We also know we don’t need to fornicate to be
truly happy. But, try to convince a sex addict of that truth. And, we
really don’t need to possess every trinket and toy in order to be truly
happy. But, try to convince consumerists and materialists of that
truth.
Despite what
psychotherapists say, these are not “mistakes,” “errors in judgment,” or
“conditioned responses attributable to bad parenting.” No, these
outcomes are a direct consequence of freely-willed choices to seek our
happiness in the pleasures of the flesh rather than to seek our true
freedom in the spirit of God. Looking at ourselves soberly through
the prism of gospel truth, it oftentimes is very difficult to see in
ourselves the image and likeness of God—the spirit of God—first breathed
into us when God created us. Instead, we see a person of the flesh, a
creature enslaved by desire, who cannot but do what I want
to do because I have made the choices which have rendered me
incapable of doing what I know that I need to do.
Once enslaved,
the allure, the glamour, and the pleasures of the flesh are awfully
difficult for us to give up, to turn our backs on, and to walk away
from. To grasp ahold of the plow Jesus speaks about—the one that leads
us to the freedom of the Promised Land—and to leave behind everything
that affords such immense pleasure is difficult, indeed. It would
require a radical change of lifestyle that many—if not most of us—would
find almost impossible to make. (And, I don’t exclude myself from that
charge because, after all, priests are only human, too! Ordination
doesn’t make priests into something other than who we are by nature.
But, by grace, ordination does challenge priests to strive to be more so
who all of us are as creatures of God—the people filled with God’s
spirit—in order that the example of the ordained might prod and assist
others to love God and neighbor as they love themselves.)
While giving up
all of those pleasures of the flesh does make the cost of discipleship
awfully high and exacts a very personally price, this cost actually
pales when compared to the price Jesus speaks about when he says that
the people who look backwards to what they left behind are unfit for the
kingdom of God.
Jesus’ keen
insight into human nature—and especially into the psycho-spiritual
dynamics of sin—warns us that allowing the past to keep us from looking
toward that place where God wishes to lead us and from becoming that
person God wishes to make of us is an even more malignant evil than
being addicted to the desires of the flesh. Why? Because by
allowing the past to define who we are and to keep us from moving
forward into the freedom God has already given us through the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, we turn our back on God’s invitation to be
truly happy. As St. Paul noted in his letter to the extremely
hedonistic Galatians, “For freedom, Christ has set us free; to stand
firm and not to submit again to the yoke of slavery.”
Enslavement makes
us more
interested in grasping onto the past and too ashamed or fearful to let
it go than ready to ‘fess up the guilt we feel and to grasp onto the
grace of forgiveness and the freedom from sin already won for us. We
may have the very best of intentions and may even try to grasp ahold of
the plow’s handles. But, like Lot’s wife, the past exerts is influence
behind us and holds us back.
The Book of
Genesis (19:23-26) reminds us of this tendency:
As the
sun rose upon the earth and Lot entered Zoar, the Lord rained upon Sodom
and Gomorrah sulfurous fire from out of heaven. The Lord annihilated
those cities and the entire Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities
and the vegetation of the ground. Lot's wife looked back, and she
thereupon turned into a pillar of salt.
In a short poem entitled “Lot’s Wife,” the Russian poetess Anna
Akhmatova captures the essence of the struggle going on in this woman:
Holy
Lot was following God's angel,
He
seemed bright on the hill, huge and black.
But the
heart of Lot’s wife whispered stronger and stronger:
“It’s
not very late, you have time to look back
At
these rose turrets of your native Sodom,
The
square where you sang, and the yard where you spun,
The
windows where you looked outside from inside your cozy home
Where
you bore children for your beloved husband.”
She
looked --- and her eyes were instantly bound
By pain
--- they couldn't see any more at all:
Her
fleet feet now rooted themselves into the stony ground,
And her
body turned into a pillar of salt.
Who
will mourn her as one of Lot's family members?
Doesn't
she seem the smallest of losses to us?
But
somewhere deep in my heart I will always remember
The one
who gave her life up for a single glance back.
We share this tendency to look back to the past, to the pleasures we
afforded ourselves as we slowly grew addicted and enslaved to the
desires of the flesh and, by so doing, we discover our fleet feet now
rooted into the stony ground and our bodies turned into pillars of
salt. Our fellow travelers have moved along, following God’s lead,
toward the freedom of the Promised Land, having left us behind, as
slaves to the past.
It is not the
past we must grasp ahold of but the future where God is leading us! In
the fateful moment of decision, when we can chose to turn back once or
to glimpse forward into the unknown, it is forgiveness we long
for—forgiveness for the selfish and self-indulgent choices we have
made—and it is forgiveness we need if we are to grasp ahold of the plow
and to experience the true freedom of spirit St. Paul describes.
Summer is
typically the time of year when we vacate the dull and stifling routine
of our daily lives. It's not just a season for relaxing and
gaining a broader perspective upon our lives but, more importantly, to
recreate—that is, to “re-create” ourselves—by contemplating the person
we have become as well as the mystery of the person we can become. When
we vacate our comfortable premises and embark upon new environs, we can
open ourselves to new experiences and possibilities. This gift of time
affords us the opportunity to put enslavement behind and to grasp the
plow that will lead us forward into the freedom of the Promised Land.
God calls us this
day to give freedom of spirit not enslavement to flesh the highest
priority in our lives by giving up our selfish and self-serving pursuit
of pleasure as well as our fear of letting go of the past.
Why does God call
us?
Because God needs
us to enrich our relationships with our spouses and family members, or
neighbors and co-workers, and even with the people we dislike. Looking
ahead to the Promised Land rather than backwards to Sodom and Gomorrah,
God needs us to ease the suffering and sorrow of those who are near to
us and those who are far distant as well. In short, God needs us to
assist others to embrace the forgiveness won for them by Jesus Christ so
that they might also look forward to the freedom the Promised Land where
God is leading them and not to the enslavement of their own making.
This is the day
to make a fateful decision.
To make this
choice Jesus challenges his disciples to embrace the future by choosing
freedom. The cost of discipleship is high because we must deny our
flesh and its desires which enslave us. “Let the dead bury the dead,”
Jesus said. “No one who sets his hand to the plow and looks to what was
left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.” |
HOMILY
