September 9, 2007
The Rev. James Richardson
Interim Rector, All Souls Parish
Jeremiah 18: 1-11
Psalm 139: 1-5, 13-18
Philemon 1-21
Luke 14: 25-33

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children cannot be my disciple.” Alleluia!

What?

Well, here we are again back at Jesus’ dysfunctional family. If you feel like you just heard this, you are not losing your marbles. Yes, we heard a very similar lesson three weeks ago. Somehow Luke sounds like he wants us to build the Church based on a dysfunctional family, and maybe that is not so far off.

The other lessons don’t seem much better today, and let me remind you again that I don’t pick them. What can do we do with these biblical lessons today? It is tempting to avoid them – this one from Luke is known as one of the “hard sayings” of Jesus, and with good reason. It is tempting to avoid all this and talk about something else.

But let’s see what we can do here. First, I want to point out an obvious truth: All of us are the sum total of our stories, and how we tell our stories says a great deal about us. Second, I want to point out a truth that is less obvious: How we listen to stories – how we listen to other people’s stories – also says a great about us.

So I want step back a few paces, and look a little at how we listen to the Bible – how do we hear these stories? To do that, I am taking a page from the contemporary theologian James Alison, who is a former Dominican monk. Alison writes in one of his books, called On Being Liked, that the Bible is like a Lego set – it has thousands of pieces, and you can put the pieces together and make a Lego bridge in many shapes, colors and sizes.

Nowadays, some folks don’t even bother to build a Lego bridge. They take their favorite biblical Lego piece and hurl it at someone who doesn’t agree with them, and then that someone picks up their favorite Lego piece and throws it back, and they have a Lego fight. Hey, I am good at it – I am seminary trained – and it feels pretty good when I land a zinger with a Biblical Lego piece.

But rather than stay in the sandbox, let’s build a couple of Lego bridges today.

There are familiar, conventional ways of putting together the Lego set. Here is one way: From the Prophet Jeremiah, we get a Lego piece telling us that God will bring evil against you unless you “amend your ways.” And from Psalm 139, we get this Lego piece: “Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!” You don’t hear that this morning because instead you sang Hymn 702, which is a paraphrase of the psalm. But, trust me, the slaying of the wicked is in the psalm.

Onto the next Lego pieces: Paul’s Letter to Philemon doesn’t fit this bridge very well, so we are going to leave those pieces in the Lego box for now and look for pieces from the Gospel of Luke: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother…” That one fits. Then take up your cross and get ready to be crucified. You get the idea. Those pieces fit this bridge, so we will use them.

What emerges is a wrathful, vengeful God who must be endlessly satisfied. That is the way much of our culture – much of the religious world – builds a Lego set out of these biblical pieces.

Or, to mix up our metaphors a bit, James Alison compares this image of God to a hurricane that is ripping across the Gulf of Mexico – if you can just stay inside the eye of the hurricane you will be safe – and since it is a small eye, very few people will fit inside, so you better hate your mother and father, your brother and sister, so you can keep them out of the eye of the hurricane, or their might not be enough room for you. So that is one way of building our biblical Lego set, and it fits the pieces. It is one sermon that we can hear today, and maybe that is enough sermon for you, and if so, then may many blessings keep you safe inside of the eye of the hurricane.

But maybe there is another way of building this Biblical Lego set. Let me suggest that we might just build a bridge that is a little closer to how Jesus intends us to hear the Word of God. From Jeremiah, we hear how we are like a piece of clay that is a piece of spoiled, shapeless mud, and how God is a potter who will mold us into a beautiful jar. From Psalm 139 we hear of a God who is with us from the time we are in our mother’s womb and knows us in our sitting down and our rising up, in our journeys and in our resting places. We hear about God who never gives up on us.

Then this extraordinary – and brief – letter from Paul to Philemon. The letter has no outward theological content, but don’t let outward appearances fool you. Paul is writing to Philemon asking him to free his slave, Onesimus, who has escaped. Paul sends Onesimus back to his owner, Philemon, and Paul asks Philemon to free his slave, to see his slave as a “beloved brother.” Paul wants both slave and owner to be changed and freed from the economy of humans owning other humans. By the way, it is thought that this little snippet of a Paul letter was kept and cherished by the early church because Onesimus was, in fact, freed from slavery, and went on to become a bishop. The name Onesimus is Greek for “Useful.”

And then we come to Jesus and his teaching that is really not at all about joining a dysfunctional family. Rather, Jesus is talking about living your life without letting your possessions possess you. Walk lightly through the world, share all that you have. If you don’t, those things you love the most in this world can own you, and will block you from experiencing the love of God. There is an amazing thread running through all of these biblical lessons today – that thread is amazing grace. In fact, I would suggest that all of these lessons are about the power of God’s Grace to transform lives.

Grace is difficult to define, so the biblical writers use these images to tell us about grace – the potter shaping clay, the psalm celebrating God who traces our journey; the slave owner who frees his slave, and the followers of Jesus who give away everything so that they can have everything. Grace is the power of God to change our lives in ways we can hardly now imagine.

Jesus is also talking about obstacles to living into the full promise of God’s Grace. We are flawed – yes, sinful – human beings. We do bad stuff to each other and to ourselves. The classic definition of sin is to think you are more powerful than God and to therefore separate yourself from God. But God seeks us out anyway, over and over. God never gives up on us, and like a potter, molds us from our sitting down to our rising up.

I believe Jesus came to free us from our sins. Jesus, as God living among us, shows us how God yearns for us to see and experience God as a loving, forgiving parent who came to be with us, and surrendered to death to show us that death has no power over us. Not even death will possess you.

Yet things still get in our way. Jesus, in the lesson today, calls us to “take up our Cross” – to give up that which holds you captive. When Jesus talks about “taking up your cross,” he is, in fact, talking about dying, but not physical dying per se. Rather, Jesus talks of dying to the those things that harm and enslave you so that you can live into the promise of God’s love and mercy.

Jesus asks: what holds you captive? What are your “possessions”? Is it anger toward someone or something? Is it an old way of doing things that no longer works? Is it an addiction – alcohol, tobacco, drugs? Jesus tells us to give it away – all of it. You will gain everything when you do. There are questions that come out of this: Can we trust God to give us the strength to do what we need to do? Will we trust the potter with our life? Will we let God free us from whatever slavery holds us? The answers drive at the heart of the meaning of faith.

And that brings me to this: Can we trust God enough to trust each other? Can we see in each other the face of Christ, no matter what our differences, or our arguments, and truly become the One body of Christ?

That is for each of us to answer by how we live our life. The good news is that God’s amazing grace will light our path, and show us how to live into the prayer – the “collect” – that began our service today.

Let us pray, Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Amen.