on the road again

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St MARY’S, NORTH OAMARU

TWENTY SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (August 28^th) 2022

 

 READINGS:

 

Jeremiah 18: 1-11

Psalm 139: 1-6, 13-18

Philemon 1-21

Luke 14: 25-33

 

 

As you may be aware, Luke constructed a large section of his Jesus story around a loose travelogue. It begins towards the end of Luke 9, at verse 51, and more or less ends with that pivotal scene when he weeps over the city that, as a Jew, he loves beyond words.

That aspect of Luke’s story is not unlike many of the heroic sagas and moral tales of Luke’s time, and Luke would have been thoroughly aware of that. Naturally he believed that his is a tale not of entertainment but of life and death – in we might say an eternal context. Jesus will weep over the city he loves, enter it, be crucified there, and then the story will not end.

Although there’s also a sense in which the story bifurcates, splits in two. The Acts narrative goes on to tell of the work of the spirit in taking Jesus and his gospel to the ends of the earth and perhaps of time. We could say there is a hidden parallel narrative – and that takes us into the story of the risen, ascended Christ, together with the expectation that he will in some way return again to wind up human and cosmic history, and declare all things finished and all things made new.

In that eternal framework, for want of a better phrase, Luke tells us that the upside down vision that Mary had, and of which she sang at the time of the Annunciation, is finally fulfilled. Mary told us that the poor will be exalted and the mighty torn down, and, to borrow the words of a much later woman, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. But I’m getting ahead of Luke’s story.

More of that another time, perhaps. But in the midst of Luke’s travelogue this week we have Jesus using powerful, provocative, almost offensive words to overthrow at least symbolically the very basis of almost every society. Love me. Hate all else.

Jesus is not giving us here, a basis for fratricide or matricide or any other cide or form of family murder. He is using hyperbole, dramatic exaggeration, forcefully to drive home his point.

Eleventh century saint, Anselm of Canterbury, devised an argument for the existence of God. That argument needn’t detain us here, Though it has kept philosophers entertained for centuries, as they either approve or disprove of it. But Anselm gave us the wonderful phrase “That than which no greater can be conceived.” Or, as I used to say to primary school religion classes, “the biggest thing in your life.” Fishing? Rugby? Money, sex, power, love, horses, sunsets? Your mother, your father? the list goes on endlessly and meaninglessly, as Jesus hints provocatively.

For in a vastly different context Jesus is using a similar tool to that of Anselm. What is the biggest most precious thing in our lives? Parents, children, loved ones? They should be pretty big factors in our lives. Shrink them, says Jesus. It's a big ask.

He goes on to speak of instruments of death, the cross. He puts following him into the context of love that is greater than life, greater than the love of life itself. It’s a very very intentional decision, the decision to follow Jesus.

When I left Darwin some years ago, I drove, not for the first time, across that great red continent. As I pulled out of our driveway onto the main highway south, my GPS announced “For 1375 kilometres go straight on.” At the end of 1375 kilometres the electronic voice announced “At the roundabout take the second exit.” After taking that exit in Alice Springs she announced, “For 1234 kilometres continue straight on.”

It had a feeling of resolution even in an age of air conditioned comfort, as I let out the clutch and headed south. Yet that is minuscule compared to the risky journey that Jesus of Nazareth calls us to. On the other hand, he does give us an eternity of help along the way.