Sunday 7 September 2025
(Year C: 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Lectio
Divina:*
Psalm
90(89)
Meditatio:
“So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you
do not give up all your possessions”. (Luke 14:33)
Commentary (1,270 words):
So who was Luke writing for? This passage is unique to Luke
and suggests that life was particularly stressful for his audiences and
sources. There is, however, a similar passage in Matthew
10:34-39 although the latter omits any mention of a disciple’s spouse
and, instead of having the word ‘hate’, it uses the expression ‘love more’.
Luke, clearly, drew on Matthew or some source common to Luke and Matthew. Did
Luke lay on the emphasis and list of forgoing persons in light of the author’s
audience or actual political situation confronting gentile Christians in around
70 A.D.?
Perhaps a more faithful translation of the sense of the
original Semitic saying lying behind the Greek word misei for
‘hate’ in Luke 14:26 is ‘to love less than’. Discipleship is,
indeed, a very costly business and in the ultimate of situations we are called
upon to be ready to sacrifice even our very own lives. Thankfully, not many of
us will be called on to do this, literally. But, we are urged to lay down our
lives in love for each other and that includes those in our immediate families
and circles.
Mention of taking up one’s cross is found in all three
synoptic gospels and was part of our everyday language even up to a generation or
two ago. As in all the four gospels, to follow Jesus openly or in
secret was no picnic to use a modern colloquial phrase. Perhaps it
was not terribly unlike the predicament of hundreds of thousands of Christians,
today, in Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt, Gaza …. not to
mention the other persecuted minorities or majorities as the case may be.
Following a leader and pioneer like Jesus takes guts and lots of passion and
love.
A discipleship that makes demands of everyone
Use of the word ‘hate’ in Luke is a strong word. Yet, that
is how those who translated the saying of Jesus in this passage of Luke wrote
it. The notion of ‘hating’ anyone but especially ‘father and mother, wife and
children, brothers and sisters’ seems repugnant to us. But, wait for it – hear
that Jesus refers to hating ‘even life itself’ as a mark of discipleship. Taken
literally and without context, these verses can be used (and are used) by
dangerous religious cults to justify all types of ungodly and inhuman
behaviour. This is not the purpose or meaning of this passage of
Luke. The point is that in following Jesus we must be prepared to
put this following before all else. For some, it may mean following a community
path of lifelong celibacy in some specific calling. For others, it may mean
undergoing enormous risks to one’s life even if others are implicated as well.
A family man, saint Thomas More, said just before his execution, in 1553, ‘I
die the King’s good servant, but God’s first”. He was not to succumb to
persecution. Likewise, Thomas Cranmer who was on the opposite side
of the reformation refused, ultimately after wavering and under torture, to
succumb to persecution from the other side of that great tragedy.
Anyone prepared to follow Christ no matter who they are and
where they are at must reckon with the demands of discipleship. We may not be
able to count the cost in advance but we need to think it through and weigh the
seriousness of what is involved. Unlike
the tower builder or the king going to war in the examples cited by Jesus in
verses 28-32 of Luke 14 we have, ultimately, no back-up or resources other than
what God gives us as we place all our trust in Him. This is what the martyr Sophie
Scholl and her companions in the little White Rose movement
embarked on in 1942-43.
The final things
There is a place in every person’s heart and informed conscience where only God can go and where our final, ultimate decisions are made in the face of God and for which we take full responsibility no matter what. To arrive at this place of wisdom we will have to pass through many challenges and difficulties on life’s journey. Indeed, we must carry our daily cross of discipleship letting go of our possessions – spiritual, material and inter-personal. The four biblical ‘final things’ some of us were taught in catechism classes half a century ago, viz, death, judgment heaven and hell expand out to include the 7 final things: growing old, getting sick, dying, the infinite mercy and goodness of God, judgment, heaven and hell. One of the great advantages of being a believer is that there is hope beyond death and the fullness of life before it. The credo of the non-believer is thus: ‘I come from nowhere, I am going nowhere and my life has no meaning’.
In today’s Psalm, the psalmist ascribes this to likely
elderly and wise Moses reflecting back on his life while in the wilderness: ‘The
days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even
then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away’.
(Psalm
90:10).
Wisdom is not a matter of much study, learning and formal
qualification as it is of learning from suffering, mistakes and even our sins. Wisdom is a gift from on high, as it says in
today’s first reading, ‘who has learned your counsel, unless you have given
wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high?’ (Wisdom
9:17). A radical faith transforms our choices and preferences and leads us
towards others and not away from them as St Paul so clearly indicates in the
second reading today. It demands our all and nothing less.
Living from now on without regrets
Jeshua (he-who-saves), Jesus, came to save, to
redeem, to restore, to unite, to reconcile. Yet, his message and his sending of
us can, sometimes, have the altogether unintended and tragic consequence of
disrupting societies and families and tearing people apart because not everyone
will accept this message. Moreover, the message may be ‘lost in translation’ or
even cancelled out by the very bad behaviour of many Christians over the ages
and even today.
I am not sure about you but I think that many of us would
‘do things differently’ if we were able to go back to the beginning of our
lives. But, it took many years for us to learn this! And, we still
have a chance to start again today, now in such a way that we do not have
regrets at the end of our lives whenever that will be.
Oratio:
O merciful Lord, you did not spare your only Son but
delivered him up for us all.
Grant us courage and strength to take up the cross and follow him, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
(Collect
of the Word, Church of Ireland)
Footnotes *
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