Homily for 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (4 September 2022)
[Unedited transcript; texts: Luke 14:25-33, Dt 33:8-11, Psalm 2:2]
We left Luke’s Gospel last week with a fellow guest at a banquet that Jesus was attending in the house of a Pharisee raising the question of blessed is the one who eats bread in the Kingdom of God. Jesus’s response to that was to tell the parable of the great wedding which, remember, finishes with a whole lot of people, unexpected people being invited. And that’s what we jump over until we come to this week’s Gospel.
This week’s Gospel immediately starts with large crowds travelling with him. In other words, we’ve moved out of the group of immediately the disciples and the Pharisees and the discussion about the banquet, and now we’ve got the large crowds, we’ve got ‘here comes everybody’ travelling with him. And he’s turning and saying to them: 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.
So typically we go “oh, that sounds awful, sort of say to masochistic demands”. Very probably, in fact, people at the time would have understood that he’s saying, basically, the followers, my followers are going to be Levites – Levites of the new kingdom, Levites of the new temple, and more than Levites. This is what Moses, this was the blessing that Moses gave towards the end of the Book of Deuteronomy. He gives a blessing to each of the tribes, but this is his blessing to Levite, and of Levi he said: Give to Levi or Thunim and your Urim to the loyal one whom you tested at Masa, with whom you contended at the waters of Mariba, who said of his father and mother: I regard them not. He ignored his kin and did not acknowledge his children for they observed your word and kept your covenant. They teach Jacob your ordinances and Israel your law, they place incense before you and hold burnt offerings on your altar. Bless, oh Lord, his substance and accept the work of his hands, crush the line of his adversaries, of those that hate him, so that they do not rise again”.
Lovely thoughts but the notion therefore that one of the things that distinguished the tribe of Levi was that they despise, count as nothing their relationship with father and mother, wife and children, brother and sisters, and even their own substance, their own being. That was something that would have been comprehensible to the time with relation to the Levite. Of course it would have been taken to be hyperbole but so Jesus is saying: if you want to come and follow me, it’s actually going to be a new form of being a Levite. And it’s not only the mother and wife, and children, mother and father, wife and children, brothers and sisters, so the previous generation, the siblings and the dependents -wives and children – that you’re going to have to distance yourself from. And even life itself, even your own being, your own throat in Aramaic, which I earlier translated as ass – your own point of where things really matter to you. You’re going to have to be able to stand loose from that despise it.
Then he says: whoever does not carry the cross and follow me, cannot be my disciple. So the first is despising the family, so that’s the Levitical thing – cannot be my disciple. The next one is whoever does not carry the cross and follow me, cannot be my disciple. And our commentators typically say, or commentators of a certain generation say: Oh yes, this must be written post-resurrection (of course, the whole New Testament was written post-resurrection), but Jesus can’t have actually said that because he probably didn’t know that he was going to be killed on a cross. Recent studies say, no this is not implausible at all that Jesus should have referred to carrying the cross.
The word is stavros, stauron from which we get staff or stave eventually, at least we get that from mid-German. Unlike the pictures we see in our stations of the cross of Jesus carrying the whole thing – the cross beam and the central staff – prisoners at that time would carry the stave, the staff, the central pole. And this is something which is interesting that at the time the notion of crucifixion referred to a variety of things. It referred to what we classically understand as the particular nasty form of Roman punishment. But more broadly it was understood as anything to do with wood. So hanging, impaling and classic crucifixion would have had the carrying of the stave or staff. And what’s key about those things from a Jewish perspective, from a Hebrews perspective, is that that was particularly the punishment associated with idolatry.
So Jesus is not saying here as it were after the fact: I’m going to be crucified. He’s saying: whosoever does not carry the stave, which means bearing the shame of being one who is going to be executed for idolatry, and follow me, cannot be my disciple. In other words, it’s not just that the Levite is going to be a new sort of Levite but is going to be assumed to be an idolater and therefore the sort of person who should be put to death on the wood. In other words, this is a perp walk with shame. What’s being talked about here is a perp walk with shame. It’s one of the key factors that everybody remembers about the Roman form of crucifixion which was the most shameful death. But we forget that actually the ancient Middle East had many shameful forms of death but this particular one, particularly for the Hebrew people, had all the shame that was associated with idolatry. So Jesus is saying: whoever is not prepared to undergo the perp walk of being thought to be an idolater, cannot be my disciple.
And then he gives two examples which of course do feed back to what is going to happen to him: for which of you intending to build a tower does not first sit down and estimate the cost to see whether he’s enough to complete it? Reasonable enough. Otherwise, when he’s laid a foundation and is not able to finish it, all who see it will begin to ridicule him saying: This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.
And of course, this links back to the people mocking Jesus on the cross, saying – and the verb for mocking appears at the crucifixion scene – he saved others, himself he cannot save.
And of course, what was Jesus doing he was fulfilling his promise to build the new temple, the laying of the foundation. The word here for foundation is typically used for the building of the temple. In the Book of Ezra they describe to the Persian king how that’s what they did and how they haven’t yet finished the temple so as to get permission from the Persian king to carry on finishing the temple.
So Jesus is saying both beforehand what it’s going to look like following me is like a perp walk with the form of death that is given to shameful idolaters. And after the fact he’s saying: this is what I’ve actually enacted for you. So following me is looking at the shame. But curiously they think that I was not able to finish it but in fact, it was exactly in my finishing it that their mockery was reversed.
Or what king going out to wage war against another king will not sit down first and consider whether he’s able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? – So again we think: splendid advice, you know. We’re watching this with Ukrainians and Russians, we are used to thinking about battalions and so forth – seems sage advice. But the hint here again is to a psalm – Psalm 2, to be exact which is referred to in the Act of the Apostle, so it was perfectly clear that they remembered this:
“Why do the nations conspire and the people’s plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and his anointed. Let us burst their bonds asunder and cast their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord has them in division.”
So here he’s referring to these kings and saying: oh you’ve got to calculate what it’s going to be like to follow me but in fact, what it’s going to look like to follow me – that’s to say, the Lord’s anointed – is going to look like having absolutely no weapons, no arms. All those who have weapons and arms are going to be utterly confounded, confused, they’re going to be cast asunder, they’re going to take as much counsel as they like, and all their council will be vanity.
Because the Lord’s anointed will be high and lifted up and will be coming to reign from the cross. That’s what they cannot possibly imagine in their counselling together. So he’s setting this out and then he says: So, therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your – the Greek word here is – I’m just going to get this right – hyparchousin – which can mean possessions but it actually means more: it means ‘your being’, ‘your essence’, any advantage you might have, your profit. So it means anything that profiteth, to use nice Jacobite language.
So therefore none of you can become disciples if you do not give up anything that might give you an advantage: your very being, your possessions – everything. He’s saying that the greatest strength, the strength of the Lord and his anointed, the one who is actually going to be able to fulfil the building of the new tower, is the one who is treated as nought by family, friends and children, and has lost all the things that hold him or her in being. This is a tremendously, as you can imagine, difficult teaching saying: if you want to follow me, it’s not a question of I demand that you engage in pseudomasachistic exercises; it’s that any leverage that gives you being now is gonna get in the way of your being weak enough to conquer all these forces.
Just from my own personal experience, I remember coming across this verse or this parable with amazement at the time when I was being interrogated by the cardinal of Sao Paulo who wanted to throw me out of the priesthood. And I remember that this particular point about losing everything was the only strength I could possibly have. So I said to him: you’re welcome, you can take it all away, I’m not going to concentrate, you can take everything away, I have absolutely nothing and I think I’m doing this in obedience by losing everything. I will be given to be whatever priest I am supposed to be and I’m still living in the hope that that was true by having lost everything, and then rather amazingly was reaffirmed in my priesthood by the Holy Father. I’ve been trying to work out what that means but it’s the ability to lose anything that profiteth you that is going to give you the strength to be able to participate in the banquet.