The True King

sermon preached at Church of the Ascension, Silver Spring, MD

by Josh Hosler, Seminarian

Last Sunday after Pentecost (Christ the King)/ Proper 29, Year C/ November 24, 2013

Most of this movie is flashbacks.
(image from Wikipedia)

A lot of movies contain a flashback scene—an interruption of the expected flow of time in order to take us back to something that happened earlier. Often a flashback is meant to fill us in about things that we, the viewers, didn’t know before: the childhood trauma that made the bad guy act this way, or the grand sacrifice that the now-deceased husband made for his wife’s sake, or the fatal moment in which the butler “dunnit.” Sometimes the flashback comes near the beginning of the movie, to set the stage for the developing plot. Or right at the end, to provide that one missing piece that unravels the mystery. There’s even the kind of movie in which nearly everything that occurs is a flashback that points back to the end moment, which we also saw at the beginning.

Today’s gospel reading is a flashback. Or maybe it’s a flash-forward. At any rate, it doesn’t seem like it belongs here. Jesus on the cross? In late November? But Good Friday was months ago—it’s months away. Why on earth are we talking about this now? Just last week, Jesus was talking about the impending doom of the temple in Jerusalem. Why did we skip over the Last Supper, the arrest, Peter’s betrayal, the trial before Pontius Pilate? We don’t even hear about Jesus’ death and resurrection—just this isolated moment on the cross and his exchange with the bandits hanging on either side of him.

What a strange time warp we find ourselves in. But this flashback does have a purpose. And that purpose has everything to do with the collect we prayed at the beginning of the service: “Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”

Christus Rex from St. Thomas
Episcopal Church, Medina, WA

In my home church near Seattle, a giant cross hangs over the altar. Hanging on that cross is Jesus—but not the broken-bodied, nearly naked Jesus we typically see on a crucifix. This Jesus is dressed in royal robes, with a crown on his head. It’s the kind of cross called a Christus Rex—Christ the King. This is the week when we assert that Christ is our king. And this is another example of the kind of churchy language that we can all too easily become accustomed to. What does it mean to proclaim Christ as our king, especially in a country that has bowed to no king for well over 200 years?

For it is actually a very political statement. If anyone out there gets twitchy when politics get preached from the pulpit, you might want to cover your ears when I say this: all of Christianity is political. That’s because it has everything to do with who we follow as our true leader, even as we vote for, or suffer through, or protest against lesser political leaders. It has everything to do with the way those in power treat those without power. Just look at the Prophet Jeremiah, who tells us today that God is sick of bad political leadership. His government isn’t shutting down or defaulting on its loans, but it is mistreating its most vulnerable subjects. A shepherd who scatters the sheep and drives them away needs to be fired immediately. God promises to do just that, and then to gather the flock back together from the many lands of the earth. God also promises to appoint new leadership, shepherds who will take good care of the sheep. Furthermore, God’s work will be so thorough that, when all is said and done, not a single sheep will be missing.

Nero
(image from Wikipedia)

In the letter to the Colossians, we hear that Christ is the “firstborn of all creation,” and that the entire universe was created through him. That’s quite a claim to make of a first-century Palestinian Jew who only spent 30 years on this earth! But it is a statement of political opposition. It’s the same language the Roman Empire used as propaganda to force the submission of the many diverse ethnic and religious groups over which it ruled. The early Christians boldly re-appropriated the language of kingship to proclaim that Jesus of Nazareth, recently executed criminal, was in fact alive again and was actively reigning in their lives in the place of Rome. And so the language is still political for us today: whatever other authorities and powers may lay claim to our allegiance, Jesus Christ is the one who holds the prior and absolute claim on us. He is the Good Shepherd, the new leadership God has appointed to gather the sheep together.

What does all this mean for our day-to-day life? In the 21^st century, what does it mean to follow God more closely than we do our elected officials? Just the thought of that makes me a little uncomfortable. I like separation of church and state, and I can’t stand the thought of some group of Americans coming to power while claiming to speak in God’s voice. So it must not mean that we work toward a theocracy. But it also can’t mean just living our private lives, doing our private devotions, and not talking about religion at cocktail parties. Religion that does not take the prophets seriously is ineffective, neutered religion. Author Jim Wallis once said, “God is personal, but never private.”

(image from Relevant magazine)

We can and must live our faith out loud and with conviction while also building meaningful

relationships with those who disagree with us. We can and must look out for the most vulnerable, doing the best we can to work within the world’s corrupt systems and eventually to transform them. This is work we can do with Christians of all stripes, with non-Christians, and with those who follow no god at all. The work of following Jesus is sacrificial work, even when it takes forms that might seem at first to require less of us. We said it all through our stewardship season: “We will not offer to God offerings that cost us nothing.” Christ doesn’t reign from a throne, but from a cross. Christ showed that he was king of all in the very process of losing everything in death. Not only his life, but also his death and resurrection are our blueprint for Christian living.

Each week at the Eucharist, we offer to God our “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.” Even to come to church costs time and energy and effort and attention—and if this has been a challenge for you, well done! We’re glad you’re here. As this challenge becomes less challenging and becomes a part of the fabric of our lives, our faith deepens, and we make deeper sacrifices. To follow Jesus costs us our pride, the pride that whispers, “Don’t get too close to people; you know better than they do anyway.” To follow Jesus costs us our fear, the fear that whispers, “Keep all the possessions you can; you might need them later.” To follow Jesus costs us our need to be right, to be in control, to cling to power and to make ourselves the rulers of our own private universes.

Now, these sacrifices will do nothing to save us from the power of death. That was Christ’s work, and it is already finished. But over time, this sacrificial work will change our very nature, transforming us into good shepherds ourselves. Through our baptism, we, too, are called to join the ranks of God’s new leadership, all the while serving the one Good Shepherd, Jesus, as he gathers the sheep to him. As we become more like Jesus, we can participate more fully in the Kingdom of God. Does this level of sacrifice sound like a giant burden? Perhaps. But it is also our greatest hope. In giving ourselves to others and to the world, we can learn to “endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks.” No matter what other kingdom may lay claim to us, we have been “transferred into the kingdom” of God through Christ.

And when it seems like the end is near … when it all seems pointless … when entire worlds of meaning come crashing down around our heads, our King Jesus shows us that it is not the end. The earliest Christians also had to trust in Jesus to save and guide them as they, too, sought to transform the world. No matter how scattered we have become, no matter how many hills separate us from the shepherd, we are gradually being gathered back together. We’re in a flashback, remember? And in that flashback, Jesus is reigning victorious from the cross, dying in agony while simultaneously forgiving his enemies and promising the convicted bandit in his company that truly he will be in paradise this very day. Christ’s suffering is the way he becomes our king. Will our suffering hold any less meaning? Christ reigns victorious from the cross. This is the last word, and even as we pull it from the middle of the book, it is the last story.

Next week, the new Christian year begins. Next week we will go back to the beginning, the beginning of a new church year, a beginning that is also an ending. In the weeks to come we will hear of the King who is to come—a completely unexpected, revolutionary kind of king—a king who shows us how to live, how to die, and how to be a part of the resurrection to come. Amen.

Justice Is Coming

sermon preached at Church of the Ascension, Silver Spring, MD

by Josh Hosler, Seminarian

The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost/ Proper 24, Year C/ October 20, 2013

My favorite coffee mug reads, “God grant me patience … and I want it right now!”

We live in an age of Now. The food can never be fast enough, or the traffic, or the wi-fi. As the speed limit increases, so do we increase our speed. And it’s not enough to do one thing anymore—oh, no—we have to multitask—even though we know this is less effective than doing one thing at a time with patience. Love Jesus? Honk. Want to meet Jesus? Text while driving!

Yet no amount of speed in our lives can speed up justice. Justice is one of those things that comes only when it comes. Even in the limited sense of court justice, if we’re doing it right, it can take a long time, much longer than we want it to. We just have to have faith that justice will eventually come. This is also true of Justice in the bigger sense. In my Ethics class I learned the standard Roman Catholic definition of justice, which became a class mantra as we studied: Justice means that everybody has at least enough resources to participate meaningfully in society. So, then, food, shelter, and even the ability to vote are components of justice. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Of course, notions of justice in human society can’t begin to account for situations in which we feel that God has been unjust. Divine justice is another matter. Ask Job how just it was that he lost all his family and all his property to seemingly “natural” disasters. There are plenty of situations in our lives that feel unjust despite the fact that no human institution can fix them.

The widow in Jesus’ parable today, though, seems to have believed that a certain judge could help fix her situation. So she waited for justice. But she didn’t wait passively … she waited actively, doing everything in her power to speed justice along, and never giving up.

Jesus was great at knocking people out of their comfort zone. Those of us who are most familiar with scripture can get too used to it: we forget how odd some of Jesus’ parables really are. The people who were upset at Jesus’ stories often had good reason to be! In today’s parable, Jesus likens God the Father to a no-good, lousy, scoundrel of a judge. Author Robert Farrar Capon comments, “Never having been to a theological seminary, [Jesus] was blessedly free of the professional theologian’s fear of using bad people as an illustration of the goodness of God.”

I still have the storybook of this parable that I had as a child, and now it belongs to my daughter. Like many children’s Bible stories, it elaborated on this all-too-brief story a great deal, the goal being to pad a mere eight verses into a thirty-two-page, illustrated, rhyming paperback. In this version of The Unjust Judge, the widow, whose name is Dinah, owns a valuable field. But because she is an easily exploited widow, her neighbor shows up with his sons and takes it from her. There is nothing she can do to stop them. So she goes to the judge to plead her case. Clearly she is an innocent victim.

Meanwhile the judge, whose name is Asher, is portrayed as boorish, lazy, and disrespectful of the weak and vulnerable. To him, this widow is nothing but an annoyance. Well, Jesus says as much in the actual story about the judge: he “neither feared God nor had respect for people.” Even the judge knows it: “I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone.” Clearly we are not to trust this man’s ability to judge. So page after page goes by in which the widow goes to court and cries, “Justice! Justice!” Then she goes home and prays. She accosts the judge on his lunch break and shouts, “Justice! Justice!” And she goes home and prays. Finally, she stands outside the judge’s bedroom window in the middle of the night hollering at the top of her lungs, “Justice! Justice!” And the judge, exhausted and fed up, screams, “All right already!” And she gets her field back. The poor widow has won back her property through her unflagging determination and chutzpah, and her winning smile tells us that you can always beat the bad guy if you just hang in there long enough and never sink to his level.

This is a fine expansion of a tiny parable, but hold on a minute. Where does the story—and I mean the story as it has been handed down to us in the Bible—where does the story say the widow was in the right? Look at the story for a minute: we never find out a single detail about the court case. The widow keeps asking for “justice,” but what’s her definition of justice? For all we know, she may be the guilty party in this undefined lawsuit. Let’s admit that we’ve all known people who insisted all their lives that they were being wronged, while we silently muttered to ourselves, “Well, maybe things would go better for you if you weren’t the way you are …”

But the judge is too lazy to do the work of actually finding out what the deal is. And Jesus, by not saying one specific word about her case, shows us that he doesn’t care about that either. We want the widow to be in the right, because we have been conditioned to believe that the poor are always the victims. But we just don’t know. We only know that she is a widow, which means that the societal deck is stacked against her. She has no hope of winning the lawsuit, whether she deserves it or not.

And I think that’s the entire point. Jesus is quick to compare God to the unjust judge, the judge who doesn’t even bother to find out whether the woman has a viable case. Why? Is God lazy, too? Well, no—presumably God knows how innocent or guilty every one of us is, whether we’re fictional widows or real ones, noble heroes or sorry losers. But none of that matters, because God has forgiven us. God showers grace on us whether we deserve it or not! If God had passed the Bar, God might know better. If God were a just judge, we would get what we deserve. And we all know what a disaster that would be.

So the Good News is that, by human reckoning anyway, God is a terrible judge! And this just underscores Luke’s explanation of this parable, that it is about our need “to pray always and not to lose heart.” God’s love enfolds the deserving and the undeserving, the powerful and the weak, the saints and the sinners, the judges and the widows. This is reason enough not to lose heart, and our gratitude at this revelation is reason enough to pray always. God knows our troubles. God hears us cry out day and night for justice, for peace, for mere relief from whatever is assailing us.

But how soon will our help come? How long, O Lord? When pain and suffering are constant companions, what good does it do us to hear, “Just keep praying?” Or to hear, “Any time now, help will come?” The implication can all too easily become, “If only you were praying harder! Kick it up a notch,” or, “If only you were praying the right way, help would come.” God is not a vending machine into which we can drop prayer quarters. God knows what’s best for us, even when we’re hurting. And although we want help now, Jesus insists that God will not delay long.

That doesn’t feel good enough, does it? When you’re waiting in the emergency room for the pain meds to come, being told to wait longer is not good enough. Why doesn’t God just make it happen? And so we try to be patient, we try to endure, and we suffer—in life there is, indeed, much suffering. Our patience flags, and we begin to lose faith. It is no wonder that Jesus asks, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Yet at the time Jesus tells the story, the Son of Man has come, and he is right here among us. Has he found faith on earth? Well, he has found a ragtag group of disciples, and he will trust them to carry on after his death. Maybe that’s the “soon” Jesus refers to—his own impending death, the door through which he and all of us must go. Jesus knew his time was coming, and he wondered aloud, “Is it enough? Will this tiny group understand what I have done here, what I am going to do? Are they faithful enough to see the miracle that will soon save them and everybody and bring justice to the earth?”

To be fair to the disciples, that miracle was very hard to see. It didn’t come all at once to the earth like they were expecting, in a blaze of glory and trumpets and war horses and chariots. It didn’t come in thunder and lightning and wind and fire. It sneaked in through the back door. It was barely perceptible—easy to deny, even. Those who were closest to Jesus saw it first and understood it best. Others needed convincing. And then it began to spread, like a match to newspaper and newspaper to kindling. Before long it was touching hundreds and thousands at once. And still it spreads, the fire of the Holy Spirit, and the arc of the moral universe is still bending toward justice. And the Holy Spirit cannot be contained by any guardians of purity or gatekeepers of religion. No fence can be placed around it. It cannot be seized from the poor like a field, for it belongs to the poor and will never be taken from them. Justice is coming, it hums, and justice is here. Open your eyes to it. The earth and the heavens are yours, even in suffering, even in pain. God’s gifts are all around, and Jesus is alive, even to this day, and the Spirit cannot be tamed.

Yet at the same time, we wait. When justice is delayed, we work and we wait, like that poor widow. Thanks be to God that God is an unjust judge, and that Jesus shows us his face. May God grant us patience, if not right now, then very, very soon. And God, who calls all times soon, will meet us in our pain and will bear us ever onward toward justice. Amen.

Those Rich People

sermon preached at Church of the Ascension, Silver Spring, MD
by Josh Hosler, Seminarian
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost/ Proper 21, Year C/ September 29, 2013

“Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches … they shall now be the first to go into exile.”

“Those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.”

“The rich man … died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented …”

Oh, thank God! A set of readings that’s not about us! God sure isn’t happy with those rich people! I’m so happy I’m not rich, and we’re not rich, so these readings can’t really be for our ears. No, we can enjoy them. In fact, we can just sit back and watch the smiting begin. Who’s with me?

Michael Douglas in Wall Street

Because the readings aren’t about us, right? They’re about those rich people. You know—Wall Street types. Stock brokers, corporate raiders, the one percent, right? The people who rig the political system to keep from having to pay any taxes. The people who pull the strings behind the scenes and are really the ones in control. Oh, we hate them, don’t we? And the Bible slams on them all over the place, too! The rich people … not us … no, this can’t be about us … can it?

British comedian Eddie Izzard once did a routine about Robin Hood. Robin Hood is riding through the countryside and comes upon a very well-dressed horseman.

“Give us cash! I steal from the rich and give to the poor! Give us cash!”

“No, I’m not gonna give you cash.”

“Go on, I steal from the rich. Are you rich?”

"No, I’m … comfortable.”

“That’s no good, I can’t steal from the fairly well off and give to the moderately impoverished! That’s not gonna swing, is it?”

Hmmm. Maybe there are grey areas. Could it be that our society isn’t cloven distinctly into “the rich” and “the rest of us”? You know, I noticed something at the height of the Occupy movement. In all our talk about being the 99%, few of us noticed that we’re only the 99% if we look solely at the United States. When we compare ourselves to the rest of the world … well … things suddenly don’t look so good for us, do they? No, indeed, we become the rich—even those of us who struggle to pay more than one mortgage, and those of us who won’t be able to send our children to college after all, and those of us who must keep adding more debt to the credit card. We’re still the rich, even if we don’t feel like it.

Now, we’re not lying on beds of ivory (which sounds profoundly uncomfortable to me),  but compared to most people on earth, we are feasting sumptuously every single day. I have not gone a single day in my life without enough to eat, and I bet that’s true for most of us here today. So what’s the minimum standard? How worried should we be?

Well, I think the writer of the first letter to Timothy gives us a pretty solid baseline: “If we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.” It seems to me that once we have something more than the means of bare survival, we receive two things: we receive enough material wealth that we could share some and not die; and we receive an urge not to share, just in case our luck runs out. Let’s say we are a little better off—a home of our own, perhaps, after scrimping and saving for a down payment. Maybe there are kids to feed, and perhaps a job is going sour. What will I do if something goes wrong? No, it’s not time to share yet.

Now, as time goes by, let’s say material success becomes a reality. Just maintaining the level of comfort we’re used to costs quite a bit of money, and we’re never quite certain that the money will keep coming. And next thing you know, we’re the rich man, feasting sumptuously every day, and walking right past the starving beggar. We’ll give eventually, we say. We’ll help our suffering neighbors once we have enough to feel secure.

I’m not saying all this to make you feel guilty; after all, I’m implicated just as much as anyone else. I’m a seminarian, which means I’m relying on financial aid and a lot of generous people to enjoy the luxury of three years of study. I don’t feel financially secure, and I know there’s no guarantee of financial security after I am ordained and graduate. Jobs for clergy are scarce in the places I could imagine my family living. But by our broader definition, I’m still among the rich. So let’s stop for a minute and look more closely at the readings, because there is indeed hope there.

Amos—the prophet Amos, 8th century B.C.E.—does not rail against all rich people, but against those

from http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/
jsource/History/Kingdoms1.html

who “are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph”—that is, of the Jews’ ancient ancestor. Amos is shocked at the level of decadence in the two Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judah. He’s also aware that the Assyrians are getting ready to sweep into Samaria, where they will march the elite of Jewish society into exile. Of course the rich will be the first to go, and then the Assyrians will be able to subjugate the poor and uneducated people who remain. The rich and educated of Israel have made themselves vulnerable by their carelessness, as they have the means to make a just society but don’t act on it. Those who don’t care about the poor systematically undermine the nation’s stability.

Now let’s look at this letter to Timothy. This is, of course, where we get the aphorism, “Money is the root of all evil.” But that’s not a direct quote; the writer does not find sin in those who are rich, but in those who want to be rich. Their driving force is to make more and more money, so that they can relax and not worry about anything or anybody else. It is the love of money that is the problem. Those who, through whatever hard work or fortuitous circumstances, find themselves able to make money are charged to use it to help others, not merely to help themselves. So in the first letter to Timothy, you don’t even have to be rich to be in the wrong about money. This passage isn’t about having; it’s about the ability to let go. This is what it means to be “rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.” This is how we “take hold of the life that really is life,” as opposed to the life that really is a living death.

Sawai Chinnawong, "Lazarus and Dives"
from http://www.omsc.org/art-at-omsc/sawai/lazarus-and-dives-slide.htm

And this brings us to the rich man in Jesus’ parable. In this gripping story, Jesus gives us much of the imagery we still attribute to the afterlife: a heaven above, a burning fire of hell beneath, and a giant chasm between them. Doubtless Dante drew on these images and expanded on them when he created Inferno and The Divine Comedy. We should remember that this is a parable, not a divine description of a metaphysical reality. It’s a story, sort of an ancient equivalent of the old “A man dies and meets St. Peter at the gate” story. Except, in this case, St. Peter is actually listening to the story! Huh.

Jesus seems to be illustrating continuity between our lives now and our lives on the other side of death. From Hades, where he is being tormented, the rich man instructs Abraham first to send Lazarus to him with just a drop of water, and barring that possibility, then as a messenger to warn his family of their potential fate … as if poor Lazarus were still some poor lackey he could order around. But it is too late. This man’s entitled soul has never practiced the art of generosity. What if he had noticed Lazarus at the gate? What if he had started giving early on, before he became a self-made man, when he didn’t have two dimes to scrape together, but when he could have given one of his two nickels away? How might things have gone differently? Would he ever have become so rich? And if not, what would have been wrong with that?

Many of Jesus’ later parables, especially, urge us not to wait to change our lives. We don’t like to imagine a time, on either side of the grave, after which it will be too late to change. But if we assume a continuity of existence, then we can’t assume that death means we will suddenly become infinitely wise or abundantly giving. At what point will change just become too difficult for us to bear? Must it take death to spark change in our lives? And is this moment, right now, too soon to begin really living?

And so we come back to us. If we have any wealth beyond that which we need, we have the privilege of deciding what to do with it. Being responsible with money means knowing how to spend and knowing how to save, of course, but it also means knowing how to share—and that sharing is an indispensable piece. None of our wealth really belongs to us; everything in our lives is a gift from God, and the gift of material resources is particular to our earthly lives. Whether or not we use it, we will lose it. So God says, “Use it!” Because to whatever degree we do not share with those in need, we are implicated in their suffering. We cannot live our lives separately from them because we are not a planet full of isolated individuals. We were made to love each other.

That’s Good News. And that’s why the psalmist is able to proclaim, “Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help! Whose hope is in the Lord their God … who gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger.” May we also be instruments of justice for the oppressed, and may we always share what we have with those who are in need. Amen.

What Will This Cost Me?

sermon preached at Church of the Ascension, Silver Spring, MD

by Josh Hosler, Seminarian

The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost/ Proper 18, Year C/ September 8, 2013

A few weekends ago, Christy and Sarah and I took a short trip to Charlottesville, Virginia. We took in the lively nightlife on Friday evening, found a little hostel to stay in that night, and on Saturday morning, we headed to Monticello to explore Thomas Jefferson’s home. If you haven’t been there before, do make a point of it—it’s an amazing place. Jefferson was indeed a genius. He was always thinking and learning, and he was always finding ways to make the necessary doings of his life more efficient so that he could set aside more time to think and to learn.

I was impressed with the way Monticello is presented to tourists, and I was especially impressed by certain features that must be very new indeed. Doubtless most of us are familiar with the firmly established theory, now well supported by DNA evidence, that Jefferson fathered one or more children by one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. Not only does the presentation of Monticello not gloss over this fact, but it positively celebrates our knowledge of it. Panoramic displays talk about Jefferson’s slaves, name them, and inform us of each one’s household or farm responsibilities. Every opportunity is taken to explore the tension within the man who authored a world-famous document promoting individual freedom, who spoke out time and time again against the evils of slavery, but who, throughout his life, owned hundreds of slaves. Yes, Jefferson was a genius. But do we have to admit this contradiction as a glaring a blind spot? Or must we entertain the possibility that while he proclaimed brave new ideas, Jefferson was, in more personal and very real ways, something of a coward? Was he, perhaps, somewhat like us?

Sam Neill and Carmen Ejogo
in "Sally Hemings: An American Scandal"
photo by Charles Haid
Source: www.allmovie.com

Certainly, had he set his slaves free, Jefferson would have had to give up most of the luxurious aspects of his life that gave him the leisure to think and to learn as much as he did. No doubt his thinking and learning were a great gift to the world, and I think he knew it himself. Perhaps he counted the cost and decided that it was better to keep several hundred people enslaved than to deny the world any part of his genius. But that doesn’t paint him in a very favorable light, does it? And here’s another wrinkle: In his will, Jefferson only set a handful of his slaves free. The rest were sold and scattered upon his death, and even the journalists of his day noted Jefferson’s hypocrisy on this matter.

The African American graveyard at Monticello

Surrounded by a series of parking lots at Monticello, we found a small patch of land. An information board there tells us that only a few years ago, the remains of some of Jefferson’s slaves were discovered there. It is now a featured part of Monticello called the African American graveyard. But it is out of the way, easy to miss, and it bears no gravestones or names, for we do not know them. When I explained to my 8-year-old daughter Sarah that this unremarkable piece of land was actually a graveyard, she was shocked and silent for a moment. Then she exclaimed, “It’s just not fair!”

Thomas Jefferson was an Episcopalian. But while he honored and respected Jesus, he did not believe that Jesus was in any way the Son of God, and he did not hold to any understanding of the Trinity. In The Jefferson Bible, his edited version of the gospels that kept the wisdom of Jesus while throwing out his miracles and anything else Jefferson deemed superstitious, only half of today’s passage appears: the second half. It seems that Jefferson pondered today’s gospel passage and decided not to take up Jesus’ cross and follow, but merely to count the cost of his massive building projects, many of which went unfinished at his death. Through his words and ideals, Jefferson was an architect of freedom for many, but he did not free those closest to him, the ones whose emancipation would have come at dear personal cost to him.

The Jefferson Bible, with cutouts, at the Smithsonian
(from www.smithsonianmag.com)

All of us Christians must ponder this matter. How much will Christianity cost me, really? I mean, if I really give it my all? What will it cost me? Can I hedge my bets? How much certainty do I have of keeping the things that are most important to me at this point in time? And if I were asked to give up something very important, would I have the courage to do so, if even a man as great as Thomas Jefferson did not?

For Jesus does urge us to take up our cross and follow him. What might that look like for us? The cross was an instrument of torture and death. Imagine Jesus saying, “Whoever does not get into my electric chair with me cannot be my disciple.” Now, that doesn’t mean seeking out a violent death, but still, why would anyone be crazy enough to commit to something like this? Jesus demands that his disciples give up all their possessions. That’s not necessarily the same thing as parting with them. But it does mean letting go of any guarantee that we will keep them—because we’re going to die anyway, and then they won’t be ours anymore. What are we holding on to? What are those things through which, were we to let go of them, others might be emancipated? And in setting others free, might we be made free ourselves?

But that’s not all we find in this difficult and raw gospel passage: Jesus also tells us to hate our families! I want to pause for a moment to explore Jesus’ use of the word hate. When I read this passage, the first place I went was my Greek Bible, hoping against hope that “hate” was a poor translation, and that I’d find a milder definition. But I was disappointed: the word is miseo, from which we get words like misogyny—the hatred of women. Or misanthropy, the hatred of humankind. Hate is a strong word, we may remember our parents telling us. And I think that’s why Jesus used it—with an internal smirk, and with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek. Like, “They’ll remember this one!”

So no, contrary to a literal reading of this text, I don’t believe Jesus was asking us to hate our family members, or to hate life itself. But at the same time, I’m not going to explain the word away as if Jesus hadn’t used it. Rather, you might imagine Jesus saying that God is so loving that any love we experience in this life is little better than hate. Following Jesus takes so much commitment—he tells the huge, trend-minded crowd—that we may as well forget about everything else entirely. If we want the Great Pearl that is God’s Kingdom, we’d better be ready to let go of everything, because nothing else even comes close, and nothing is so important that we should let it get in the way.

But that part isn’t in Jefferson’s Bible. And as his Bible only contained gospel passages and nothing from the epistles, I really wonder what Thomas Jefferson thought about Philemon, the recipient of a letter from Paul. Philemon owned a slave named Onesimus. That was a very common name for slaves in the Roman Empire, because “Onesimus” means “useful.” Paul uses a play on words here, turning on their heads our ideas of slavery and freedom, of usefulness and uselessness.

We don’t know exactly what happened to prompt this letter. But we might imagine that Onesimus, in an opportune moment, has managed to escape from his master and wonders what to do next. He becomes the consequences that might await him if he returns home. After all, if a runaway slave is caught and returned to his master, the master has the legal right to beat or kill him. But Onesimus knows how to find Paul, who is currently under house arrest. So he goes to Paul and pleads for his help.

Saint Paul Writing His Epistles,
probably by Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632)
Source: Wikipedia

At some point, Onesimus has been baptized. He is a Christian, and Paul uses this simple fact as the core of his appeal. Paul returns Onesimus to his master with a letter addressed to the church there, in which Paul explains that Philemon has a moral choice to make. We can see the options. Philemon can choose to free his slave, at great monetary loss to himself, or he can choose to keep living in the inconsistency of owning a person who is supposed to be his equal, his brother, his very flesh and blood in Christ. If Philemon has other options, I don’t know what they might be. But while we can imagine these two options, Paul never lays them out. He doesn’t even assume that there are only two: the way of life, or the way of death. Instead, he says, “I am confident that you will do the right thing and even more, because I know what a big heart you have.” And then in the conclusion of the letter, Paul says, “By the way, prepare a guest room for me, because I’ll probably be released soon, and I plan to come visit.” What situation will Paul find when he arrives? What will Philemon have done?

Presumably, since this letter became part of the Bible, Onesimus did make it back to his master. Maybe he showed up just in time for Sunday service, and he had this letter from the community’s spiritual leader read aloud, as was the custom. Clearly, Philemon did not just tear up the letter in anger. It became treasured, and it continued to be read in worship in the surrounding communities … and we read it today. I think this letter changed Philemon’s life, and Onesimus’s life, and then the lives of a great many other people. And this is largely because Paul did not tell Philemon what to do. He reminded him of the vows he had made at his baptism, and then he trusted him to be true to those vows with his entire life—with his money, with his possessions, and in his human relationships.

Jesus asks us to do the same: to count the cost before deciding what commitments we will make, and then to make those commitments boldly. He asks us not to take any of the wonderful gifts of life for granted, but to use them and to enjoy them in the service of others, living fully and joyfully. Will there be a cost? Absolutely. But the more we commit our lives to Christ, the more willing we will be to pay any price to free others. Amen.