Twenty-third Sunday in Course
Today’s Gospel is so unnerving, even shocking, that we might in our meditation forget about the other readings. The lessons we can learn from the wisdom books of Scripture are good foundations for our appreciation of the teachings of Jesus. I like to think of our first reading as kind of a fusing together of older wisdom from the book of Job and of Qoheleth/Ecclesiastes. In fact, modern scientists should feel at home with the thought, “scarce do we guess the things on earth, and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty; but when things are in heaven, who can search them out?” To Job, who has looked at his afflictions and complained to God, the Lord asks questions like, “Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?” and numerous other questions to which Job can only answer “I don’t know.” (Job 38:17) Modern science tells us that one of the most significant foundational principles underlying itself is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. So we should start all our thinking, all our meditation, with the understanding that we are weak and lacking in understanding, and, yes, prone to error and sin.
But we gather each Lord’s Day with a deeper and more lasting understanding–that we are in Christ as His redeemed mystical body. By His life, death and resurrection we have been sacramentally freed from sin and turned toward our ultimate destiny, union with the Trinity in heaven. At the end of our earthly life, if we fall asleep after a life of love of God and our neighbor, He will fill us at that wonderful daybreak with His loving kindness. Moreover, here on earth, His Holy Spirit fills our minds and hearts so that we can be Christ’s witnesses to a world full of people who are longing for His fullness. We can and must attract others to His perfect Beauty, Goodness and Truth.
St. Paul was in prison several times during his ministry, so we don’t know for certain when he wrote to Philemon from jail. The commentators tell us that “It provides us with a good example of how Paul could bring his apostolic authority to bear upon a member of one of his communities in order to encourage him to act in a responsible, Christian way.” But I think it’s an example of a charitable “guilt trip.” Philemon was rich enough to own property, and slaves to work on that property. Onesimus was one such slave, and as Paul is writing, he is an escaped slave. If returned to the owner, a slave could be punished for running away, all the way to flogging and even death. Paul knew he had a responsibility in law to send the man back, but he never seems to have passed up an opportunity to preach the Gospel of Love.
Onesimus has become a Christian at Paul’s hands and is now a brother in Christ of all who profess Jesus as Lord. Paul has come to love him so much that he identifies the man with his own heart. He claims that he could have kept Onesimus as a servant, because of the debt Philemon owes for his own conversion. In sending him back, he sends him as more than what he was as servant of Philemon. He is now a brother in Christ, so he should be welcomed, not whipped. Read the whole letter at home this week–it’s the shortest one we have, and one of the most intimate.
Now to understand the rather surprising words of Jesus to us in the Gospel, we should first remind ourselves of what hyperbole is, and what it does. Hyperbole is literary exaggeration toward some desired effect. So when Jesus is telling us that following Him means hating everything and everyone else, He uses strong language to mean “preferring everything else less than Me.” Going back to our OT readings, let’s remind ourselves of what the wisdom of the world really is. The world tells us that the ego is to be regarded more highly than anything or anyone else. We learn that when we are infants and everybody is at our beck and call. I’m uncomfortable so I cry and somebody comes running to change my diaper or burp me or feed me or I’m just in a crabby mood and want everybody to be just as unhappy as I am, so I keep crying.
Jesus has the chutzpah to tell us to hold everything, even ourselves, in less regard than Himself. Now that’s one of two things. He’s either the most arrogant guy who ever lived, or He is God in the flesh, and is quite right to demand our total obedience and love. We have to carry our own cross and follow Him on the road to Calvary, to die to ourselves just as He died, to fill up in our own lives what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.
So today, the most important day of our lives until our last day, Christ is challenging us to decide. He wants it all. He wants us to hold nothing back. We are building a structure, a church of living stones, that requires each of us to commit everything to it. If there is anything needed that we don’t have, we must ask Christ to help us find it, and apply it to the task. We are going into battle with a Satanic foe, a culture of death that wants to take everything good and turn it into selfish, evil purposes. We can’t hold anything back there, either. We must ask Christ to send His Holy Spirit into this community so we can endure the struggle and emerge with our good consciences intact. O Lord, we are mere humans, but humans filled with Your own Spirit. Strengthen us for the building, for the waging battle, for the daily work needed to build Your Kingdom, and draw others to You who are the source of all goodness, beauty and truth. Amen.
