NewCreation

Homily for Sunday 13 in Ordinary Time Year A

Hello, my sisters and brothers. As you can see, I'm in different surroundings — in fact, back in Madrid on a very, very bright, warm summer's day. This weekend is also Pride weekend, so I hope you can see I'm wearing a nice sign of the same. And in fact that matter comes up in today's Gospel in strong ways. One of the key words that is used in Matthew's Gospel is: if someone does not do something, they are not worthy of me. The word is "axios," which I'm glad to say our Greek and Russian Orthodox sisters and brothers in the United States and elsewhere gave as the name to their LGBT-friendly believers' group, Worthy. It's a similar sense to using "pride" — normally a word for a sin — in the sense of: actually, we're okay. But to go further into today's Gospel text: this is a text which at least some of us will have heard in a very nasty binary way in the past, and I'm hoping to do something with that today. Let me just bring it out. "Anyone who prefers father or mother to me is not worthy of me; anyone who prefers son or daughter to me is not worthy of me." Well, you will perhaps know people whose extremely religious parents have completely rejected their daughters or sons on discovering that they are gay or lesbian, simply on the grounds that they are convinced that they need to do that to follow Jesus, and that Jesus is ordering them to. Then you have this line: "Anyone who does not take up his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy of me." Again, this is a phrase that has been used to say to gay people: homosexuality is your cross, you must take it up and follow my footsteps — meaning, don't be who you are for Jesus' sake. And then, even more tragically perhaps: "Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it." And unfortunately you get many high-ranking ecclesiastics who at some stage or other have decided that they were prepared to sacrifice who they really are on the altar of approval from other ecclesiastical hierarchs who've done the same thing. And so they end up as people without persons, people without souls, people who have lost who they are and gained the world — gained the fancy dress, the pomp, all of that stuff — and yet there's nothing there. There's no real thing. There's no empathy or heart. So, just to point out that the binary reading of this passage has had terrible consequences. So let's try to have a slightly less harmful look at it. The first thing I want to point out is that what we have here is three lines concerning, if you prefer, someone over and above me, and then if you receive someone. So there are three "if you prefer" and "if you receive." What I want to bring out is, I think, how all of these circle around the question of shame and dangerousness. I think that anyone who assumes that these instructions to the Twelve, to the Apostles, who are about to embark upon a life of extreme dangerousness which will lead to the martyrdom of most of them eventually — Jesus is preparing them for a life of dangerousness where they must be prepared to occupy the place of shame. So I'd suggest that it's something more or less like this that's going on. Preferring mother or father, or preferring son or daughter, means grasping on to the identity, the safe identity that is given by family structure, rather than realizing that every generation — particularly now in our modern world, where the speed of the changing of the patterns of desire between generations is so fast, so much faster than in the ancient world — but that negotiating the change with a criterion other than holding on to the values of the previous generation, or being eager simply to protect those of a younger generation, that the constant working through of what is really going on, what it really is to follow Jesus, is going to require constant working out of the in-between. How do I both love my intergenerational siblings, my parents, and my intergenerational siblings, my children? And what does it mean to run the risk of finding myself in a place of shame, of disgrace, and of actual physical danger by walking in his footsteps? This is not a question of cutting yourself off. This is a question of working through what it means. constantly working through what it means, always knowing that actually the more you grasp onto something, thinking that that's giving you a security, a goodness, the more dangerous that is, the more you are at risk of winning your life but actually losing yourself. Who we become is always through negotiating the in-between of life, and the spirit looks like finding ourselves being converted at every possible interstice of relationships — very difficult, very painful, quite humiliating — and that which brings us to life. And then the flip side of that are the three: "Anyone who welcomes," and "the one who welcomes you welcomes me," and "those who welcome me welcome the one who sent me" — suggesting that here the positive side of this is going on in the midst of what is apparently a very dangerous and a shame-inspiring world. Actually, the one who is the fullness of glory, the one who opens us up to reality, will be received as we receive his representative Jesus in our midst. And those who receive us, because they recognize that despite everything we are the bearers of something truthful, we are the bearers of something to do with life in the midst of all the closed-down, frightened, shame-rejecting structures of this world — in that degree they are receiving God through receiving us who have received Jesus. But that this is reality that is breaking through in the midst of that breakdown. "Anyone who works with a prophet will have a prophet's reward." And the Old Testament reading we have gives us this nice account of the prophet Elisha. But remember, it wasn't simply a couple of rich people with a nice house with a spare roof garden thinking, "Oh, this fellow seems a decent sort of fellow, let's build him a nice little hut." No. It's dangerous to receive a prophet. If you receive a prophet, the chances are that the police will want to know why you're harboring such a dangerous person. Prophets come with baggage. If you have received them, it means that you're already on the inside of receiving the truth that they bring, and you will already start to be able to perceive the world as they perceive it. You will enter into prophecy: dangerous novelty will come upon you, but it will be true. And the same with receiving a holy person. A holy person doesn't mean just simply someone nice who goes on lots of diets and things like that. It means a person who, because they're holy – because they're just, is actually the word in the text – because they're just, is likely to be the source of danger. And if they're a source of danger and you welcome them, it's because you're already on the inside of the story. Ditto, "even if you give a glass of water to one of my disciples" means the very fact that you're aware that someone is in danger of being lynched, and he is, or she is, running through the streets fleeing from whoever the authorities are, and you give them a glass of water: that's because secretly you're on their side. And even if you're secretly on the other side, you're already beginning to share the reward for being a disciple. In other words, Jesus is saying: I am the in-between. As you renegotiate your in-between generationally, you will come to me, and the criteria will be: are you prepared to go to the place of dangerousness and follow me in what seems to be a shameful walk to abandonment and loss, in which case you will have life? Or are you going to hold on to the security and the rejection of all that, in which case you will hold on to your life in the security and never become who you really are? And then he's also saying: receive me in the others, and these are signs that you're already on the inside. I'm in-between you and all those realities. I'm in-between – this seems to be the definition of the Holy Spirit: the in-between. And Jesus is preparing his disciples for when, through life in the Spirit, they will start to receive the in-between that comes from the company of prophets, just persons, and disciples, which means the enlivenment of being prepared to live in a place of shame and danger without being dominated by its fear, and so being brought to life in Christ. This is Jesus's instructions to his disciples, to his apostles. This is instruction to us. And I hope that we can learn to live this in-between with joy, without too much fear. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.