"One with the Father"

Who would have said that a primary theme in the Gospels includes an opposition between love of mother and father versus love of God? Certainly not the mothers who prepared their children for church this morning — dressed them, herded them into a car, and brought them to church hushing them, bidding them behave themselves .... to hear the priest say, "Who loves mother more than me is not worthy of me." Which Christian of any variety would say that loving mother and father is connected to denying Jesus, even connected to alienation from God the Father .... which is otherwise Hell?

Jesus does not say these words in passing. This is not a mysterious or theologically obscure point. He says this directly and but boldly, even in the form of an ultimatum: "If you do not do this, you shall have that!"

We must admit that this does recur as a primary theme throughout the Gospels: the choice between family loyalties, on one side, and Heavenly ones, on the other. Come to think of it, Jesus articulates the word Father in two forms in His bold declaration: our father on earth and Our Father Which art in Heaven: two Fathers, which plainly are different .... we must say, most different.

Moreover, think of how often the subject of family inheritance crops up in the Scriptures. "Give me my inheritance now!" demands the younger son, whom we will call "prodigal." His older, much more frugal, brother fears losing his own inheritance altogether as he sees the sumptuous feast being thrown for his brother, who has already depleted half the family estate.

Another young man reaches for that highest calling, which is to be a disciple of Jesus, but he fears losing his inheritance (Lu 9:60). "Let the [spiritually] dead bury their dead," Jesus tells Him. But as for you, let every one of your thoughts be "the Kingdom of Heaven."

Still a third young man, overhearing this, also fears losing his inheritance. "At least let me first go home that I may say my goodbyes!" he says. Jesus replies, "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God" (Lu 9:61-62).

Jesus, of course, is citing Elisha, who is plowing a field when Elijah throws the prophet's mantle upon his shoulders (1 Kings 19:19-21). The younger man petitions, "Please let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you," fearing to lose his material inheritance. "What?!" Elijah exclaims! "Turn back after receiving the call and acceptance of God?!" Elisha is chastened. He responds, not with words, but with actions symbolically cutting off his future on the family farm, destroying his plow and using it for fire wood, and then cooking his oxen on the fire — bounty for a great feast which must quickly be offered to all in this age when meat was synonymous with rapid spoilage.

Yet another young man approaches Jesus on the same subject: "O Master, tell my brother to divide his inheritance with me!" (Lu 12:13-14). The Lord replies, "Am I to preside over civil suits and family squabblings?" Jesus then tells the parable which is the last word concerning inheritance: the story of the man who chooses himself to inherit his own estate:

Inheritance. What exactly, Jesus asks, does our inheritance mean to us?

Certainly, in the scale of Gospel life, it is the classic "moment of decision." Small wonder that this subject should recur so frequently in the Holy Gospels. For in practical terms, our choice between material security and following God is the narrow gateway into the Kingdom of Heaven. As Jesus said to the wealthy, young ruler,

We know the rest of the story:

His Beatitude, Jonah Paffhausen went on retreat here recently for ten days. He said many things that stayed with me. One thing stands out in my mind just now:

How true .... in so many Christian lives. The subject today is not an abstraction. It is not a parlor game. One Sister sitting before me this morning burned down her whole world and then went to Haiti deciding she would serve the poor for the rest of her life. (She was not a Rassophor Nun yet but a Registered Nurse.) There was no way back. She had burned those bridges. And she received no assurances from the Franciscan community in Haiti before she came. She would simply take the lowliest place.

Another Sister here decided in elementary school she would give her life to God. That was seventy years ago. Where is the Social Security check? Where is the 401K or pension? There is none, for she has never been paid a salary one day in her life.

I will not tell my own story .... but I will say that I learned a most important lesson of the Christian journey and that is to depend entirely upon God. That is what God wants first .... and last : to depend upon Him, and then live as if we are (and we surely are). This is the relationship with God — to devote ourselves to Him without let, without boundaries, without qualifications, without conditions. I will not tell you the outsized miracles we have experienced since we have been on our own without any means of real support. But they have been just that: outsized. We continue to depend upon God every day. For that is Christian life.

Inheritance is a kind of "wedge issue" in the Gospels. It pretends to a kind of "alternate Heaven" insulating one from the nominal hazards of life, enabling families to "live on" over multiple generations, certainly in the form of homesteads and farms. As our examples demonstrate, inheritance tips the scale away from God's exclusive relationship in favor of a little Heaven with which we surround ourselves.

Most Christians live in this duality: with family ties binding on one side and the One Who had nowhere to lay His head calling us away from these bonds on the other.

Isn't this why the "little poor man" of Assisi, St. Francis, should be so compelling to the Christian imagination? On one side, family name, affluence, worldly security; on the other, the Christian life with its embrace of poverty and privation. Which will you choose?

Surely, this is no side issue. The Lord Jesus boldly issues an ultimatum telling us we cannot have both, Jesus tells us. We cannot serve both God and Mammon (Mt 6:24).

And then there is this:

In summary, He says only a fool "lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God" (Lu 20:21).

For one thousand years, Christians wrestled with this dilemma. And, then, two centuries before St. Francis was born, a quite different theology was proposed, dismissing this central, ancient Christian teaching. Another Italian monk, Br. Anselmo, a Benedictine, proposed that we need not sacrifice at all! We need not inconvenience ourselves! You see, Jesus has already sacrificed for us!

What are we to do with a thousand years of infallible teaching? You understand that the ancient model of Christian atonement — in which we must lay down our lives for our friends; we must be the ransom for many — was very well-known to the ancient world in the form of the Damon and Pythias story. Here were two friends, each laying down his life for the other. The Evangelist Luke mentions that Christians sailed under this banner (Acts 28:11-12). Jesus teaches that no one has greater love than this (Jn 15:13).

No greater love! Here it is! The essence of Christianity: to lay down our lives for our friends. Jesus does not say, "Oh, just relax! I'll do all this for you." He does not say that. That appears nowhere in the Gospels.

How different, then, shocking, was Br. Anselmo's model of sacrifice:

The Gospels themselves insist on this consideration:

And do we not recall hearing Caiaphas say, "It is better that he be crucified than us!" (Jn 11:50). Is this our new Christian hero and example? Caiaphas?!

Yet again we have two fathers placed before us: the Father of Man versus God the Father. For the name of Bar-abbas, whom the crowd chooses to spare from death means "son of the father."

And this is the choice which Br. Anselmo has also made. He plucks us away from the dilemma of laying down our own lives and, instead, pushes Jesus ahead toward the Cross: "Crucify Him!" Are we all on-board with this? That's the choice. Is it not shocking how many people have gladly gone along with this Italian monk's con game?

Let us imagine that Br. Anselmo had never lived. Let us read our Gospel lesson with fresh eyes, as our first millennium forebears read it. Certainly, we would not be surprised at Jesus words this morning, therefore. We would notice that Jesus' declaration is of a piece with His other teachings. We must place ourselves last (the final thing He says in the Gospel lesson this morning). We must give up everything in order to follow Him, as St. Peter said (Mt 19:27). We must pick up our cross putting earthly comforts behind us.

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Is this not, therefore, "civil-war-speak"? Read accounts of the American Civil War. Brother was set against brother, father against son, families pitted against families. As we have reflected on many Sundays, the Son of God was sent into the world, which was in the midst of a civil war: followers of invented Judah-ism / Judaism pitted against adherents to the ancient Hebrew religion .... we might say First Temple Hebrews pitted against Second Temple Jews.

But how does ancient Hebrew religion affect our Christian life today? The answer is as compelling and bold as the Son of God, Who teaches it. It proceeds from the summits of Mount Sinai. It is nothing less than the Kingdom of God, as Jesus tells us again and again and again. It is about our sanctity; our acceptable souls before the Father; the kind of humanity we see shining out from the Son. It is the pure, the good, and the right, which will tolerate no innovations or revisions. It is, in a word, our salvation.

Our world is also embroiled in civil war, a tortured scene in which children are pitted against parents. These divisions tear apart families and their generations. I saw a cartoon this past week — a send-up of the House Un-American Activities Committee from the 1950s. A congressman sits at a microphone demanding to know, "Do you now, or have you ever, held the same views as your grandparents?"

The punchline turns on a truth. Many parents seek to appease their children .... lest they be canceled, lest they be labeled as "toxic" and not be permitted to see their grandchildren! Nonetheless, the responsibility God has imposed on all parents continues to bind upon us:

The stakes have never been higher. For we behold across the entire globe secular humanism pitted against God. Its false teachings are eagerly accepted and imitated the world over. Its intoxicating pictures of idle pleasures, anything-goes "values," and mesmerizing sexual images enthrall billions of people.

Our God implores us. He rouses us from our deadly slumbers. He calls us to worthiness. For He has entrusted us with His precious children.

Today the U.S. celebrates Father's Day. We began our reflection noticing that Jesus mentions two kinds of Fathers. Who, hearing this reflection, did not instantly picture the twelve-year-old Jesus being sought by His earthly father and Mother?

Two Fathers .... "They did not understand the statement which He spoke to them." You see? Jesus' followers have been struggling with this teaching from the beginning .... even His Mother. just as the Most Holy Theotokos said to the angel Gabriel:

Two Fathers. It was a mystery at the Incarnation of God. And it is a mystery today.

We must not so lightly dismiss Joseph, the Most Chaste Spouse, as being a "false father" or a mere "foster father." For He was entrusted with one of the greatest and most holy charges in human history: to be a father to the Son of God. From being false or the anomaly, perhaps we must view St. Joseph as being the exemplar par excellence for all fathers.

I do not exaggerate to say that this same holy trust has been given by Father God to every man who bears that holy title, father. For every child has two fathers: the God and Father of all (Eph 4:6) and the father who must prepare his son or daughter to come safely into the Eternal Father's arms, fulfilling the family resemblance and birthright which is the inheritance of every newborn infant.

Is this not the significance of the saints whom we also honor on this day? Are not the saints one family under the same Father, who have completed the journey that is now set before us? .... a cloud of witnesses we read in our Epistle lesson this morning.

In the end — as we see their lifesize images fanning out all around us in a great cathedral — where realize something profound: this is about family. This is about sacrifice, for that is the essence of family. It is about mothers and father laying down their lives for their children, denying themselves every little thing (at least in most cases the world over). Which father would abandon his own son or daughter? Which father would ever leave a child behind? What sort of man is this?!

Be sure of this: any father who durst deny his own children in that same moment has denied the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord Jesus promises that such a one will be denied before Our Father, Which art in Heaven. It is better, the Lord taught, that he be thrown into sea with a millstone about his neck (Mk 9:42).

Today we celebrate fathers who have lived up to their high calling. The title they bear is linked inextricably to God's Own Name: Father. .... Whom Jesus calls "the Father with Whom we are One as He is One with the Father."

And which holy office on earth wields greater power, therefore, than the ones we cherish as "Father" and "Mother"?

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.