Luke: 14:25-33 September 4, 2022, Pentecost 13
The Reverend Gary Hamblin
Now large crowds were traveling with him; 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.
During this next week, with the summer holidays at an end, our children and grandchildren are returning to school. I’m sure it’s to the relief of many parents! For many children, and some parents, it’s a difficult time involving a separation, as the children turn toward a wider community for their learning. All of us many times in our lives experience separation or detachment or ‘turning away’ from something.
That’s what our granddaughters Olivia and Maeryn will go through this week as they return to school. Olivia will detach herself from a spending time with her mother and father along with her job in a grocery store when she steps into the room of her first year university classes; and Maeryn when she steps through her grade 10 classes, they’ll need to be persuaded that now it’s time to place their focus and energies on their schooling, for several hours a day, five days a week. I know all of you will remember some of that either as child or as a parent, or a grandparent. They’ll need to be empowered to face their new challenges.
If we understand that experience, we are a step closer to understanding today’s Gospel. That’s what this morning’s Gospel is all about: detachment, separation, turning toward something else, focusing on new life and learning.
Jesus is traveling through the villages and towns of Galilee. People are responding to him and beginning to follow him. Some are becoming very attached to him and his mission. Our gospel reading shows him stopping and attempting to dish out a bit of reality. He tells them that anyone who wishes to follow him will pay dearly for their commitment. The gospel’s author has Jesus saying: “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.” I don’t know about you, but I think that would be like pouring a few gallons of cold water over someone or hitting s/he with a brick. It has shock value. It’s jarring, to say the least. Hate my father, hate my mother, and hate my wife and children? That seems a bit much.
Now I don’t want to appear to be watering down the level of commitment it takes to be a disciple of Christ, but I think the word ‘hate’ has a different meaning than we, in 2022 Burnaby, place on it. In the Semitic world, the word ‘hate’, in the first century didn’t have the passion and anger that we ascribe to it. Instead, it meant detach or separate yourself from your mother or father or wife or children. It meant, turn toward Jesus, if you really mean it and follow him. We need to view it in this way, without the highly emotional underpinnings. Another translation of the bible, the Good News Bible has these words for the same passage: “Whoever comes to me cannot be my disciple unless he loves me more than he loves his father and his mother, his wife and his children, his brothers and his sisters and himself as well“ Jesus is trying to separate those who are serious from those who have a romantic or idealized view of what it means to commit yourself to a cause. It’s essential to love your parents, your wife, and your children and also be a disciple of Jesus. But, we need to understand that to be a disciple, we must commit ourselves fully. No halfway measure here.
This community of faith needs that commitment, just as Jesus needed the commitment of the people in Galilee. As Anglicans , if we are to empower people like yourself and myself to walk with God, we have a few strikes against us. We have to work just that much harder. Why? Because there are not many of us; because we have just started on the road to re-building after a time of decline over the past two years, thanks to covid and because the neighbourhoods surrounding our churches are probably watching us to see if we can do it. However, just one short year ago, in many churches, there was great concern that we might not be able to continue on. Because, unlike many organizations we like each other and we want to make our relationships stronger. We want to make a difference in our community, our society, and our neighbourhood. Yet another `because` is the fact that for too long we have waited for more Anglicans to come through the door on Sunday morning , just as we have always done. Long ago some churches lost the commitment and skills to go out to engage with people and invite them in.
To do that All Saints has worked harder than most communities do and there is a need to work even harder. To do so, we need to detach ourselves from our anxieties, our fears and all those thoughts that drag us down. The resentments and the ‘we cannot do it’ thoughts.
In the nineteenth century and earlier, the stagecoach was the major means of transportation in North America and Europe. Our vision of the stagecoach, of course comes from western movies. What we might not know is that the stagecoach had three different kinds of tickets – first class, second class and third class. If you had a first class ticket that meant you could remain seated during the entire trip no matter what happened. If the stagecoach got stuck in the mud, or had trouble making it up a steep hill, or if a wheel fell off, you could remain seated because you had a first class ticket.
If you had a second-class ticket, you could also remain seated, until there was a problem. In case of a problem, second-class ticket holders would have to get off until the problem was resolved. You could stand off to one side and watch as other people worked. You didn’t have to get your hands dirty. But second class ticket holders were not allowed to stay on board. When the stagecoach was unstuck, you’d get back on and take your seat.
If you had a third class ticket, you’d had to get off if there was a problem. Why? Because it was your responsibility to help solve the problem. You’d get out and push and help to fix a broken wheel or whatever was needed because you only had a third class ticket.
All Saints and other churches is a faith community much like the stage coach and we all need to be like the third class ticket holders. We don’t have the luxury of being first class ticket holders. Or, if I might paraphrase the words of Jesus, we need to detach ourselves from what holds us back and focus on what matters to us as members of our church, as disciples of Jesus, and continue putting our shoulders to the wheel. We need to see what God is up to, in our neighbourhood. “
A while ago I found out that an uncle of mine, who lived in North Vancouver, use to live on 17th Street, just west of Lonsdale. I remembered visiting uncle Jack and aunt Gladys in North Vancouver, sometime in the early 1980`s. They lived in an apartment in an old red brick building, about four stories high somewhere in North Vancouver but I couldn`t remember the street. Now that I knew the exact address, I went to the newly found address on 17th and was surprised to see that instead of an old four story red brick apartment building, there was now a ten story modern condominium complex, with penthouses on the top floor and parking below ground. No longer could I simply open up the entrance door and go wherever I wanted to go in the building. Now I had to press a button to request someone to let me through the front door. As I stood there in front of the building, I noticed that now, instead of older people of European descent going in and out the building, now there were people of a mixture of colours and clothing and languages. I thought to myself, `this is probably a good example of what God is up to in our neighbourhoods – a change in the people who now live here as compared to 30 years ago. For a moment, I wondered how my uncle Jack and Aunt Gladys, born in the last decade of the 19th century, who had lived in a small town in Saskatchewan most of their lives before moving to North Vancouver in the 1970`s, would manage living here and now. How would they be able to detach themselves from the things and ways of life they had grown up with in order to live in a very different world.
And I asked myself, how can All Saints, born several decades ago, like my uncle and aunt, and who lived through the 20th century, discover what God is up to in this neighbourhood, now, in the third decade of the 21st century. Clearly the neighbourhood and the people have changed dramatically, just in the last ten years. Can All Saints use the same approach to growing our church as they did in the earlier decades; or, do we need to look on our neighbourhood differently and use a different approach. Do we need to use a different approach to find out what God is up to in our 2022 neighbourhood. I answered myself with a yes, but first, we will have to detach ourselves from doing things the way you have always done them and be creative about the way we need to do them, now. The world has changed and the old ways of doing things don’t work anymore. Waiting for new people to come through the church door on Sunday doesn’t work anymore, if we want to grow as a church.
You’ll know about the great writer of such classic operas as “Madame Butterfly” and “La Boheme.” It is, of course, Puccini. When Puccini was young, he contracted cancer and decided to spend his last days writing his final opera, “Turandot”, which is one of his most polished pieces. When his friends and disciples said to him, “You’re ailing; take it easy and rest,” he’d always respond with, “I’m going to do as much as I can on my great masterwork and it’s up to you, my friends, to finish if I don’t.” Well, Puccini died before the opera was completed.
Now his friends had a choice. They could forever mourn their friend and return to life as usual – or they could build on his melody and complete what he started. They chose the latter. And so, in 1926 at the famous La Scala Opera House in Milan, Italy, Puccini’s opera was played for the first time, conducted by the famed conductor Arturo Toscanini.
When it came to the part in the opera where the master, Puccini, stopped writing when he died, Toscanini stopped everything, turned around with eyes welling up with tears, and said to the large audience, “This is where the master, our beloved Puccini ends.” And he wept. But then, after a few moments, he lifted up his head, smiled broadly, and said, “And this is where his friends began.” Then he finished conducting the opera.
To us, the friends of All Saints, we cannot rest on our laurels of the past. In our efforts to build our individual and our community’s relationship with God, we need to be continually beginning again, like the friends of Puccini. We need to embrace a new way – like Olivia and Maeryn our granddaughters. That’s what being a disciple means. To you who are new members of this faith community of All Saints, your time and energy is urgently required. In being committed, you are turning yourselves toward the spiritual health of both yourselves and your community. We gratefully acknowledge the people who, since the founding of All Saints, Burnaby have put momentous prayer and effort to make this church what it is today. But that was then. This is now.