The Lord said to Israel, Behold I set before you this day life and death, blessing and curse: therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.

                                                                                    Deuteronomy 30:19

 Jesus said, If a man does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and sisters and brothers, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple.

                                                                                    Luke 14: 26-27

             I wish I had easier texts to greet you with on your return from what I hope has been a restful and enjoyable summer.  The fall is full of such busy-ness and anxiety that we could all use some immediate comfort and encouragement, and we might not find it immediately in hearing Moses on the way of life and the way of death, followed by Jesus’ exhortation that we should hate father, mother, children, sister and brother on the way to following him.  But I think if we will be a little patient, we will discover a good deal of both comfort and encouragement at the bottom of these words.

Let me say at the outset,  I do not think Jesus means that we should despise our natural families and detest ourselves as the foundation of discipleship.  If that were true, then the average fourteen-year-old after a long family vacation would be well on the way to sainthood.   (A note to Parents: the next time you are confronted with words like, “You never let me do anything. I hate my life, and I hate you,” followed by the stamping of feet and the slamming of doors, I do not expect you to turn to each other and say, “Honey I think she’s just on her way to a closer walk with Jesus.”)  So, if this kind of hate is not what Jesus means, then what is he getting at in this very difficult saying?

Let me begin by admitting what many of you already know: that I am a reluctant disciple of Jesus.  If I could figure out a better way, or really any way at all, to run my own life, if I could successfully occupy the center of my own universe, then I would give Jesus a respectful nod of the head, thank him for bringing me this far, and trade in the sometimes hard and stony road of following him for a more comfortable and parallel route.  I say “parallel” because I would still like to remain affiliated with him, in some way, to think of myself as a Christian, to say the Lord’s Prayer a few times a year, and think fondly of his teachings, or at least the more digestible ones, to become, in short, a moderately religious person.

 And I think, that should be good enough, shouldn’t it?  I mean, millions of people, many of them Episcopalians, seem to go through their lives in exactly this way, and seem no less happy, no more wicked, than countless others.  They aren’t atheists; they’re willing to give God his due (up to a point), but nor are they fanatics, or the like.  I know plenty of clergy, even bishops, who seem able to run their parishes and dioceses perfectly well without dragging Jesus into everything.  It’s simply a matter of moderation, isn’t it, and that ought to be a good thing, surely. 

So why is it that I find, whenever I go a few steps down that other road, when I try to take the exit that leads to the gentler, parallel way, I find that within a few hours I am succumbing to the worst in myself, that I become prideful, sad, impatient, thin-skinned, chewing over old humiliations, blaming others for the stones in my way, all of which I generally handle by withdrawing  a bit from the world, from the relationships into which God has called me, so that there is less likelihood that people will notice.  That is the downside of moderate religion, you see; if we are to persist in the illusion that we can control our own lives, that we are adequate stewards of our own souls, then we must find a way to avoid facing the severity of our own sin, and since our sin is more glaringly revealed the closer we come to others, we apply “moderation” as a guiding principle in our relationships.  In regard to others, we are sociable, but rarely are we deeply affectionate; engaged for a time, but not committed; kind enough, but not loving in the way Jesus describes love, not sacrificial, not self-denying.  We know (somewhere in our unconscious) that if we were to begin to attempt such things out of the well of our own natural resources, we would find ourselves exhausted in short order.    So we make sure we don’t get there.  Our human interactions are constantly a matter of negotiating a safe distance with one another without appearing to do so, just as we think we have managed to do with God.  Moderate religion feels to us like a reasonable thing, but Jesus knows, it is in the end simply a failure to love. 

            Now, I know thus far this sermon isn’t very uplifting, but it will be shortly, I promise, and with that in mind I want you to bear with me as we go a just bit further into the darkness on our way to the light.  Because it turns out that this supposedly comfortable and parallel way that I think I want, isn’t actually a choice at all.  It is merely the default position of being human. The psychoanalyst James Mitchell has said that, even though human beings seem to be biologically wired for love, we are paradoxically, at the same time, reluctant to love for the simple reason that we are afraid of loss.  The supposedly safer road of moderate religion turns out to be in service to this fear; it is nothing more than the way of self-enthronement with a particular, culturally defined, religious veneer, whose purpose is to keep us from the terrifying experience of dying to self on our way to the awakening of love.  It is the same road walked by those who have no religion at all, frankly, besides themselves.  From the point of view of Jesus, it is just the other road, i.e. not his, not related, not parallel.  When we who have been made by God to love God and serve God attempt to push God to the side and become the governors of our own souls, even if we think we are asking his help (albeit in moderation) what we find is that our sin has no moderation in it at all; it is not amenable to reason, even to self-discipline, like a horse with a bit between its teeth, it will drive us, not the other way around; we may be in the saddle, but we are not in control. 

So, if we want another way, we must choose it.  When Moses exhorts Israel to choose life, that you and your descendants may live, he is implying that not choosing life, not following God, is simply going with the default position which, sooner or later, will kill us, will destroy our souls. Yes, it turns out that loving God and loving one another the way He loves us is exactly that important. And Jesus builds on this stark declaration in Deuteronomy, by his astonishing demand that we hate mother and father and sister and brother, and even our own lives as a prerequisite to following him.   In other words, Jesus might say, give up on the moderate approach: do not settle for the default position of negotiated relationships, for something less than a world of love, because you were born for love, made for love, and with anything less than love you will die. Do not settle for moderate distance between yourself and your husband, your wife, your children, your friends; do not be lulled into a moderate acceptance of yourself and others.  When we stand at the threshold of following Jesus, we have come to the place where we must begin to hate our own habit of loving incompletely, where it seems not only inadequate, but desperate, even deadly, the place at which we discover that the only way into the life we were made for is to pick up our cross and follow him, that is, confront our fear of love, admit the enormity of our failings, and let ourselves be drawn by Christ’s own love, his mercy for us, his power for us, his strength in us, beyond the dying that comes with this kind of self-knowledge and surrender, into life in a new world. 

This world is filled with a bold and joyous fellowship.  (This is where the uplifting part begins!)  It includes our natural families, now reordered through a supernatural love for one another, and then takes us even further.  Jesus promises that, on the other side of the decision to follow him, we will have more brothers and sisters than we could possibly imagine, more grace-filled and affectionate relationships than we have ever dreamed of, many from the unlikeliest sources.  Take our third reading this morning, from Saint Paul’s letter to Philemon, as an example.  Philemon was a Christian brought to the Lord by the preaching of Paul.  Onesimus was Philemon’s slave; one day, he ran away, and came to Paul for counsel.  Paul sent him back to his master with this letter, asking (demanding, really) that Philemon receive Onesimus back into his household as a free man, a fully equal brother in the Lord.  Imagine the fear and trembling with which Onesimus might have gone back to his master’s house, if he had thought he was armed only with a piece of paper.  But Onesimus surely knew that he was armed with the love of Christ, that Philemon would joyfully do what Paul said because they both were followers of Jesus, both redeemed by his blood, and because as part of this they would meet new brothers and sisters every day, whose love would change their lives; as Christ’s love had changed Paul, and Paul’s love had changed Onesimus, now Onesimus would see how his love would change the life of Philemon, once his master, and now his brother in Christ.

When you encounter this love it is not easily forgotten.  This summer, Betsy, Evan and I spent eight days on mission in Uganda as guests of Pilgrim, a Christian NGO dedicated to renewing and rebuilding the eastern Teso region devastated by war and poverty.  Pilgrim was founded and is run by Ugandans, and Anthony Esenu, the Managing Director and his wife Betty drove us all over the country visiting the sites where Pilgrim is doing its astonishing and wonderful work.  I preached in a slum in Kampala, a school for former child-soldiers in Soroti, and a refugee camp in a tiny place called Usuk.  The camp was actually the first of these experiences.  We had been in Uganda only a couple of days, but as we drove there, I was already feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of Africa, the extent of the poverty, the lack of infrastructure, the need everywhere.  I wasn’t sure what this camp was going to be like, or what on earth I might have to say that could be of any use to these people.  I could hear myself begging Jesus to let me take the more comfortable road.  I felt myself pulling back inside.  I asked Anthony and Betty a whole host of technical questions to disguise my anxiety.  But underneath, I was thinking, maybe I won’t have to preach after all; maybe this will be one of those moderately cool-blooded fact-finding visits like you see on CNN, visiting Americans walking slowly through refugee camp accompanied by crisply analytical officers of local NGO holding clipboards and ticking off statistics of quarts of milk served, tons of rice delivered and so on.  As I was almost convinced that this might be possible, we turned a corner into the village, and drove right into the middle of a crowd of women and men, who swarmed around our car bursting with joy: chanting, singing, dancing, welcoming us into their life.  So much for the moderate approach, I thought to myself as my family and I got out of the car.  I have to admit that at that moment, I felt afraid and anxious.  And just at that point, one of the elders of the village, a tall man named Patrick, came forward, smiling from ear to ear, and embraced me warmly.  He spoke my name.  He said, “We knew you were coming.  Anthony and Betty had sais you were coming.  Welcome.  Welcome.  You are very welcome.”  Then he took me by the hand, and led me into the place of assembly. And suddenly, I wasn’t afraid anymore.  I was filled with the love of Christ, because I knew that Patrick knew that I was Anthony’s brother.  And because I was Anthony’s brother in the Lord, I was Patrick’s brother.  He knew that as well, perhaps even better, than he knew his own family.  From that moment on there was no fear, only joy.  I was completely at home. I preached on the parable of the sower.  I introduced the puppets Wolfie and Esmerelda to a hundred and fifty children with simultaneous translation into Ateso.  But most of all, family I never knew I had, I met that day.  And love I had always wanted, I received once again. 

Though I found this far away, I believe this love begins at home.  In the book of Jeremiah, God promises that he will take away our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh.  What better place to begin than here?  You don’t have to go across the world.  As a matter of fact, before you do, you might see what God has in store for you in the person sitting next to you.  If family ministry means anything it means that we come together as the family of God to share the riches of Christ’s love and the take it with us into the world, it becomes the basis for all our mission, whether in Boston or to the ends of the earth, and it begins with the person kneeling next to you at the rail this morning, the person you will meet at coffee hour, the mother or father, the son or daughter, the brother or sister you never knew you had until today. In Jesus’ name.  Amen.