Listen to the audio version here (sorry about the bumps and shuffling at the beginning!)
Happy new year…At least
that’s how it often feels at the beginning of September, especialy if you have
any connection with the teaching profession, or have children at school or
university, or are a student yourself. It’s a time when all sorts of groups and
activities start up again after the summer break, so there’s all sorts of
informal learning in the offing as well. Whether you are a four-year-old
heading off into your reception class in uniform that’s miles too big, or an
adult starting a new evening class , the start of the academic year can seem as
if it is full of promise. But that promise often doesn’t last long. By
Christmas we start to realise that it isn’t enough just to sign up, or even
turn up. If we want to learn anything, we have to work at it, and give up our time
and energy to it. However skilful our teachers, if we don’t concentrate and
practice very little is going to sink in. Learning doesn’t happen by magic. No
one else can do it for you. You have to apply your own brain to the task, and
that can be hard going.
Today’s Gospel reading is all
about learning. Jesus is talking to the
crowds who follow him – large crowds, we are told. He’s very popular. People enjoy
his stories and marvel at his miracles. He’s got a lot of fans. But it soon
becomes clear that he doesn’t want fans. He wants disciples. “Disciple” literally
means “learner”. It comes from
the same Latin word that gives us “discipline”. Disciples are people who engage in
disciplined, intentional work in order to learn something.
What does it take to become a
disciple of Jesus, to learn from him? Jesus had some pretty challenging things
to say about it. “You can’t learn from me” , he said, “unless you
give up all your possessions. You can’t learn from me unless you are prepared
to hate your family, and even your own life.” It’s very strong stuff, and
we need to be careful how we read it. It’s
a good example of a passage where you’ve got to understand the context if you aren’t to end up in a terrible mess.
Jesus is using deliberately
provocative, over-the-top language because he needs this large, excited crowd
to understand what following him might lead to. It’s one thing to tag along for
the ride for a day or two, maybe even to be healed of some illness that has
been troubling them, but allying themselves with him in the long-term is
another matter. That will involve radical change, and maybe radical sacrifice
too. He wants to offer them something which will transform them, setting them
free forever, not just for a day or two, but there’ll be a price to pay. If
they want to be learners rather than just hangers-on, they will need to commit
themselves, and to be prepared to give up whatever gets in the way of that
commitment.
“None of you can become my
disciple – my learner – if you do not give up all your possessions.”
We might be tempted to switch
off at this point, defeated by the scale of that statement, but let’s hang on
in there with Jesus and really listen. He
isn’t saying that we should live without material things. That would be impossible.
We have to eat. We need clothes and shelter. No one can live without material
stuff. And, in any case, the Bible doesn’t say that material things are
bad. In fact, it takes quite the
opposite view. It starts with a wonderful celebration of the material stuff of
the world. God made it, says the book of Genesis, and pronounced it “very
good”. The Bible is full of celebration of the goodness and generosity of God; “wine
that gladdens the human heart and oil that makes the face shine” as Psalm 104 puts it. Many philosophies and
religions of the time saw the material world as evil, a prison for immaterial
souls, but the Jewish people disagreed. They proclaimed that it was mightily blessed
by God. So Jesus isn’t calling us to a body-defying, self- punishing asceticism
here. What he is warning against are “possessions”, not just material things in
themselves.
What’s the difference? Material
stuff is the stuff that is all around me, the stuff I am made of. A possession
is something I possess, something I control, something I can grasp and keep, or
think I can , something I think of as “mine”.
I don’t know if you’ve come
across the Toddlers’ Laws of Possession, but if you have ever had small
children you will recognise the sentiment. This is what they say a toddler is
thinking:
If I like it, it's mine.
If it's in my hand, it's mine.
If I can take it from you,
it's mine.
If I had it a little while
ago, it's mine.
If it's mine, it must
never appear to be yours in any way.
If I'm doing or building
something, all the pieces are mine.
If I’ve got one like it,
it's mine.
If I saw it first, it's
mine.
If you are playing with it
and you put it down, it’s mine.
If it’s broken, it’s
yours.
If it’s broken but you are
enjoying playing with the pieces, it’s mine again.
If there’s any doubt about
it, it’s mine.
That’s what possession looks like – and it’s not just
toddlers who behave like this. We all do to some extent. The problem with this
attitude is not just that it causes conflict; it’s that it’s based on a chain of
misconceptions.
An attitude of possession is only possible if we believe that
we can “own” things – land, goods, people, status, jobs – that they can
be exclusively, permanently “ours” in some sense, but that isn’t ever really
the case. All that we have has come to us from others. “Our” physical bodies
are built from the genetic material of our parents and the food that the good
earth gives us. “Our” achievements have been gained with the help of teachers,
parents, and many others who have encouraged us along the way or paved the way
for what we have done. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. “Our” goods are
produced by the labour of others . “Our” homes and communities are built and
maintained by the skills of those who can do things we can’t – building,
engineering, problem-solving. We may pay for these goods and services, but we
depend on others having the skills and willingness to do the task in the first
place. And the money we use to buy them
is earned because someone else has decided they want to pay for what we offer. Without
others, including many we will never see or know, we would have nothing. We
couldn’t survive, let along thrive, without them. So In what sense is anything we have really “ours”.
And the things we think of as “ours” are only ever lent to
us. We hold them for the course of our brief lives at the very most, and maybe
not even that. They can slip from our hands in a moment. Those Syrian refugees who have landed on our shores
with nothing had homes, jobs and belongings they thought were theirs forever,
but now they’ve only got the clothes they stand up in. Redundancy or illness
can strip away overnight the things we thought were ours to keep – our money, our
health, the future we were hoping for. If we have relied on these things for
our sense of self-worth, if we have hedged ourselves about with our
possessions, hoping they’ll protect us forever from helplessness and want, we’ll
find ourselves in deep trouble. What are we to do without them? If we have let
our possessions defined us, who are we without them?
Even our families, says Jesus, can become a problem if we
treat them as things to possess and control, or allow them to treat us that
way. Families can be wonderful. They can
give us safe space to grow into the people God wants us to be, but if we place
all our hope and security in them, if we try to be everything to them and
expect them to be everything to us, to meet all our needs, we set ourselves up for
failure and heartache.
The second reading we heard today – the whole of the very
short letter of Paul to Philemon – underlines that danger. Paul’s in prison,
but he’s not alone there. Onesimus, a slave belonging to Philemon, is with him,
not as a prisoner but as a helper to him. We don’t know why Onesimus is with
Paul. He might have run away from Philemon, or been sent away by him to serve
Paul, but in the course of his time with him, he has become a Christian. Now
Paul is sending him home, but he’s hoping that Philemon will be able to see
Onesimus not as his possession, but as his “beloved brother”, taking him back
as a sibling, not a slave. He’s calling for a radical rethinking of the
relationships in this, typical, slave-owning, household . The early Christian
communities were called to be places of equality and freedom, where there was
supposed to be neither Greek nor Jew, male and female, slave and free. In a
society where everyone in a household was “owned” in some sense by the paterfamilias,
the head of the household – they even had the right to kill them - that was a radical
idea. People weren’t to be treated as possessions, simply there to meet a need
or fit into a predetermined slot in the household.
Christians struggled with it then, and they still struggle
with it now. We still feel we are entitled to tell others what they can and
can’t do, and get upset if they won’t conform. Paul challenges us, like
Philemon, to think again.
When Jesus tells us to give up our possessions – whether things
or people - it’s not just a spot of de-cluttering he has in mind; it’s the
attitude of possessiveness he wants us to lose.
He knows that it’s only when we stop looking at things - or people - as
possessions, that we can start seeing them as the gifts they really are,
gifts to celebrate and give thanks for, not security blankets to cling
anxiously to for fear of being left with nothing.
And when we can see that, we might also see that God is all
we really need to possess and be possessed by. In the end, it doesn’t matter
what is “ours” so long as we are his.
Amen
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