Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign this is Sundays with Bishop Ken.
Thanks for sharing some quiet time with the Lord today. We welcome guest reader Brenda Piazza.
Brenda is a parishioner of St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Mendon, New York, where she joyfully serves in a variety of ministries.
Brenda also shares her gifts with us each liturgical season, narrating our little book's reflections.
And now, here is today's Gospel and Homily.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: A reading from the Holy Gospel According to Luke Great crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and addressed them.
If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
Which of you, wishing to construct a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion.
Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work, the onlookers should laugh at him and say, this one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.
Or what? King marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with 10,000 troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with 20,000 troops.
But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms.
In the same way, any one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.
The Gospel of the Lord this is another of those Gospel passages that can seem harsh, and it's definitely not one of the passages we like to hear.
But as I often say, we are a full Gospel church.
We don't pick and choose our favorite gospels.
We walk through all of them Sunday after Sunday, and we take what's there.
Passages like this force us to go down to a deeper level and ask ourselves some questions we might not otherwise have asked.
Let's do that from the start. It helps to know Luke wrote his Gospel in Greek, as did the other three gospel writers.
The Greek word for hate doesn't carry with it the emotion the English word hate conveys.
It simply has to do with choice preference.
If it comes between this and that, I choose this rather than that.
In Greek, this would be conveyed by saying, in comparison, I love this and hate that.
But it comes off differently in English.
Matthew in his Gospel doesn't use the word hate.
He has Jesus saying, whoever loves father or mother more than me cannot be my disciple.
About 15 years before Luke wrote his gospel, in the year 66, there was a Jewish uprising against the Romans, led by some revolutionaries called Zealots As a result, the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem.
And in 70 AD the revolutionaries were defeated and slaughtered.
The Temple was destroyed and the Romans ruled with an iron fist.
Now, up until that time, Jews who became Christians were able to follow their Jewish traditions.
They worshiped at the Temple, went to the synagogue, observed the holy days, the food laws and so forth.
They were still fully Jewish.
It's simply that they believed in Jesus as the Messiah sent by God.
And they gathered regularly to celebrate Eucharist.
The events surrounding the unsuccessful revolt changed all that.
This uprising wasn't supported by all the Jewish people in Jerusalem.
And Jewish Christians were among those who didn't support it.
When it was over and when Roman oppressive measures were taken, the synagogue leaders no longer tolerated Jews who were also Christians.
They said you had to get in or get out.
If you believed in Jesus as the Messiah, you could no longer come to the synagogue.
For Jewish people at the time, their religious practices and traditions were part of their whole life. Their family life, social life, civic life, work life.
To decide to be a disciple of Jesus was to be cut off from all of this.
It was a difficult choice and it split families.
Sons and daughters were cut off from their parents, brothers, sisters, from one another.
So Luke was writing after this had happened, and it colored his words.
True disciples had to commit themselves to Jesus at their deepest level, even at the cost of family members.
It can also be helpful to look at a live example.
In 1529, Thomas More was made Lord Chancellor of England.
He was a popular choice. He was bright, witty and much loved by those who knew him, including King Henry viii.
But when Henry divorced his wife Catherine and married Anne, he wanted all his subjects to support that decision.
They had to sign an oath that they agreed his marriage to Catherine was null and void, that his future children would be legitimate successors to the crown, and finally, that Henry was the only supreme head of the Church of England.
Thomas Moore could not accept this.
So he quietly resigned his position as Lord Chancellor.
And he refused to sign the oath.
He didn't speak out against the king, but he refused to sign the oath.
There is an old legal tradition going back to the Romans, that silence implies consent.
Thomas maintained that if he didn't speak out, he committed no crime.
But Henry had Thomas arrested and placed in the Tower of London.
The penalty for refusing to sign the oath was death.
Thomas's wife pleaded with him to sign.
Most everybody had, including the bishops of England.
But Thomas said he couldn't do it with integrity.
Margaret, his favorite daughter, begged him to sign.
But he didn't Finally, a trial was held, false witnesses were brought forward, and Thomas was condemned and executed.
Thomas didn't hate his wife or his children or his own life, but his commitment to God was at the deepest level, and if it cost him everything, so be it.
This can help put today's gospel passage in perspective.
Now we can begin to see what this gospel is about.
I have to ask myself, what is the level of my belief in my attachment to my commitment to Jesus Christ?
My first reaction might be to say, well, of course Jesus comes first, above anyone or anything else.
That's the correct answer.
But is it real?
Is it true in my life, not only in theory, but in practice?
Well, if it is real true, then it shows up in the way I live my life.
Then Jesus is more than someone I admire, a friend in need.
To be a disciple of the Lord means I walk in his footsteps, follow a different way of life, live the teachings he taught.
It affects everything.
Is Jesus at that level in my life?
I need to give it some serious thought.
When we come to the Eucharist, we do think about it.
We do more than think. We commit ourselves.
When the gifts of bread and wine are brought forward and placed on the altar and they represent us.
We place ourselves on the altar and in the Eucharistic prayer we join with the Lord as He gives Himself entirely to the Father.
When we come forward for Communion and the consecrated bread and wine are offered to us, we say Amen.
It's no small word to say.
Through that word we commit ourselves entirely, totally to the Lord above all else.
At this Eucharist and at every Eucharist, I call upon all of us to do that.
The Eucharist is not a time and place for timid souls.
Only the brave come to this table, and we come not with part of our lives, the religious part, but with everything.
May the Lord, who called each of us by name to be his disciples, help us to respond not timidly, but with an amen that comes from deep, deep within us.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us today.
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