“As if he should never die.”

Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18, Year C (September 4, 2022).

View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: Proper 18C (Track 2)

Preached at Christ Episcopal Church, Jordan, New York

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Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said 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. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, `This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions." (Luke 14:25-33)

Edited Transcript

In case in case you missed it on other Sundays, Jesus would like you to know that following him is not supposed to be easy.

Right. This is a hard reading. And I do think it's important to start out with putting a little context around the word hate. Because Jesus has never been one to shy away from division for the sake of integrity. He's never been one to shy away from conflict for the sake of what is right. But he's not calling us to violence or to hatred in the sense of rage and anger at one another. You can look at today's text from Deuteronomy and see that there's a tradition of blessings and curses, life and death, the sort of holding two extremes. So we talk about love and hate. When Jesus talks about serving God and Mammon, serving God and money, he says, a slave cannot serve two masters. He either loves one and hates the other, or hates, hates that one and loves the other. And so this idea of love and hate, hate is not so much about being mad at or disliking or being angry at. In this case, what Jesus is talking about today, being angry at or disliking or being violent toward our family.

But it's this sense of when you're put to the test. What will I choose? If it's God? Will I put God first? Or will I turn from God for the love of something else? Still not easy, right? Still kind of a really hard deal.

As I was thinking about this love and hate, and we look at Jesus saying unless unless you hate your father, your mother, your spouse, and your children, your siblings. You can't be my disciple. Unless you give up all your possessions. You can't be my disciple unless you give up everything.

What kept coming up for me was St. Augustine, in his Confessions. He talks about having a friend that he loved. And he said it was like we were two bodies with a single soul. That's how much he loved his friend. And his friend died. And Augustine in his Confessions writes, basically, on the one hand, I wanted to die. Because I didn't know how I could go on without this soul partner, this person who was half of me. And on the other hand, I was afraid to die because what was left of him, was me. That's how much these two loved each other.

And Augustine writes to God, he said, God, I loved this man, as though he would never die. I loved him as though he would never die. In other words, he let his love be so full and so complete, he was ALL IN. As though he was not afraid to lose this friend. In loving his friend, he kept no part of himself in reserve.

Think about the ways that we might protect ourselves reserve part of ourselves. So that when we lose the thing or the person that we love, we aren't completely devastated. But that's not what we do is it? I think Augustine nailed it when he said, when I love, I love what I love, as though it would never die, as though it were permanent. As though I would always have it. I'm all in with what I love.

And Augustine compares this to what it means to love God who is indeed permanent. And because he's St. Augustine, he does a little bit of, you know, maybe, maybe I should have realized that in loving my friend I was really loving You. And that all of our love is really about love for God.

But to me what's important, it's not so much whether Augustine was right or wrong to love his friend that way. Whether he should have had his eye on God instead. Because he did! I mean, that was his whole life, he had his eye on God.

What's important to me is that he shows us what it really means to walk the way of love, which is to be all in. To hold no possession, no part of ourselves, we don't hold anything back when we set out to love.

And I think this is so deeply human that we don't even think about it. We don't set out to say, Okay, well, I'm gonna go all in with loving this person, we just find ourselves throughout our lives doing that. And that's why when the people we love die, we're gutted. It's like something was was ripped out of our own bodies. The loss is so great, because the love was so real. And so great. And because we were so deeply, deeply in love.

In Jesus' teaching to the crowd today. He talks about cost. And he talks about calculating the cost before you set out. What king before starting a military campaign wouldn't figure out if he was going to win or not? And what architect before building a tower wouldn't figure out if if she had enough money for all the supplies? Jesus brackets—he's got this unless you hate your family, unless you give up all your possessions and in the middle—he talks about people calculating the cost for a project. If you don't know you can see it all the way through don't bother to start at all.

But the thing is, if we're already following Jesus, basically we're already all in. By the time we've begun to follow Jesus, by the time we've committed ourselves to being people who love, it is too late to figure out whether we're going to win or not. It is too late to figure out if we're going to be able to finish that project.

We're already all in with love. And again, looking at St. Augustine, we we do that naturally, that's part of what life is and, and we know instinctively that if we're going to be people who when it comes to love, hold ourselves in reserve, in order to protect ourselves from loss... We know it's not life would have been worth living. It's only worthwhile if we're all in no matter what the cost is. We all know that really deeply because we've all paid the cost. And we will again.

And I think what Jesus is also inviting us to—when he says, hate your mother, hate your father, hate your spouse, hate your children. He's saying, what would it be like—this is tricky!—but what would it be like if that all-in love... what would it be like if we didn't hold it in reserve, just for our father and mother, just for our spouse and our children, just for our sibling, our brother and our sister, or just for our friend?

But what if that unreserved love extended to everybody? What if that is what Jesus means? It's not about not loving the people you already love. It's not about not loving the people that you would already pay any cost for. But what if you would pay any cost for someone you don't even know yet? What if you would pay any cost for the people driving by this church? What if you could love THEM all-in, unreservedly?

It's kind of like looking back at last week's scripture: what if you could invite not just mom and dad to the banquet, not just your spouse and your children to the banquet? But what if you could invite the blind and the lame and the stranger, the immigrant? Whoever can't pay you back? What if you could invite them to to be part of your family?

Because that's what God has made us, right? God said, through Jesus, God is our Father. As Paul would write we are all one in Christ Jesus, one family.

So this week let's remember the ones who we have loved as though they would never die. Let's hold them in our hearts. And let's look for where that love can spill over and be shared with the ones we don't love yet, but who are also our family in God. Amen.