Robert Barron - Are You Ready for Serious Discipleship?
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Peace be with you, friends, for this 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time. We’re reading from the 14th chapter of Luke, and this is very serious spiritual business. We’re talking-if you want to put it this way-very high-octane spirituality. Remember the story of the rich young man? This young kid, full of good spiritual enthusiasm, comes to Jesus and asks, «What must I do to attain eternal life?» Jesus first speaks of the commandments, and the young man says, with confidence (and I believe him), «I’ve kept all these from my youth.»
Then Jesus, looking at him with love, says, «Well, are you willing to sell all you’ve got, give to the poor, and follow me?» The young man went away sad because he was living the spiritual life at a decent level, but he wasn’t ready for the serious stuff. Think of a kid showing promise in football; the coach recognizes he plays the basics well, but then he wants to draw him into the really serious playing of the game-the physical demands and strategic thinking -everything required to play at a high level. Or a young kid who’s good at the basics of piano; he can even master high-level pop songs and a little Gershwin, and then the teacher says, «Okay, now maybe you’re ready for Chopin, for Beethoven,» and so on. There’s something similar in the spiritual order.
The trouble is, a lot of us sinners are kind of satisfied with low-level spirituality. What I mean is, we’re like the rich young man: «Hey, you know, I’m a decent person, and I’m not killing people, and I’m not stealing, and I’m not committing adultery, and I don’t lie too often, and, you know, I’m following the commandments; I go to Mass pretty regularly.» Well, great! Nothing wrong with that, because the commandments are the basic level, if you want. It’s the rudiments of the spiritual life. But when the Church gives this challenge — born of Jesus, of course-this challenge to live it really seriously, to move into the upper levels of the spiritual life, most of us balk. We’re not ready for that. It’s a little too much.
With that in mind, look at this extraordinary reading. Let me say, just at the outset, resist the temptation to domesticate this, or think it away, or claim it’s always just symbolic talk. Listen to Jesus: «Now, if anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.» Now, put yourself in the place of the crowd hearing this from Jesus. They recognize him. Sure, he’s a rabbi; he’s a spiritual teacher. He’s a miracle worker, and they’re very intrigued by him. But then he lays out-using Bonhoeffer’s terms here-the cost of discipleship. «Anyone comes to me and wants to be my disciple without hating father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.»
Now, look, I know I’ve heard 100 sermons on this and have read the relevant texts that stress that in Jesus' Aramaic, this language of hate and love was not so much an either-or; it was a sense of prioritization. Okay, there’s truth enough to that. But see, I don’t want us to soften this language too much. This is meant to be a kind of shock therapy. You’re taking discipleship seriously? Well, here’s what it entails.
Now let me try to parse this out for you. I think there’s a more positive and a more negative way we could assess this. First of all, do we sinners have the tendency to make very good things the ultimate good? I mean, father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters-good things. Well, of course! In the society of Jesus' time, the Jewish society of the first century-very family-centric culture. Are these good relationships? Of course they are! However, they’re not the supreme good. The summum bonum? Only God is the supreme good. What’s the first commandment? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength. Who comes first?
See, and this is where everybody gets challenged. Who comes first? It can’t be my mother. It can’t be my father. It can’t be my brothers or sisters. And it can’t even be my own life that comes first. God must come first. So what if God makes a demand that’s at odds with what my father and mother want? God is the supreme good. If God makes a demand in my life that means I’m alienated from my brothers and sisters, well, okay. Precedent: God makes a demand that requires that I surrender my life.
Now, all the martyrs, all the great martyrs, faced exactly that decision. What do you decide? Oh, I hope I never come to that. Yeah, I know, I know we all do. But if you did, what would you decide? Unless you hate your mother and father-see, interpret that as unless you are able to put your mother and father second to the demand of God, you can’t be my disciple. Unless you put your love for your brother and sister second to your love for God, you cannot be my disciple. Now think of it with a parent: unless you can put your love for your child second to your love for God.
Now, revisit that awful story in the book of Genesis when God says to Abraham, «You know Isaac, your beloved, your son Isaac, the son of the promise-you know, Isaac, whom you love-I want you to sacrifice him to me.» Is God being cruel? No. It’s the same lesson. It’s the same spiritual exercise, if you want. Do you love me more than you love even your beloved child? Unless that’s the case, you’re not ready to be my follower. You see what I mean, everybody, when I say this is high-octane stuff? This is for the very spiritually serious.
Now, I said there were two levels. That’s the more positive one. But now move it to that second, more negative level and keep in mind what I mentioned to you last Sunday about pride. So, the first thing is: can I put God above even these highest goods? But can I also recognize the ways that pride has perverted and twisted all of these relationships out of self-regard? I mean, can I start using my mother and father for my own benefit? Can I manipulate them as part of my, you know, scheme of life? Or think of parents that live vicariously and in a manipulative way through their children. Brothers and sisters, do I involve them in my own kind of prideful, egotistic games?
Can you see how everybody, in the measure that we do all that, we should hate these relationships? See, I’m not saying in themselves they’re bad. I’m saying in the measure that they’ve been twisted by pride, they become spiritually toxic. I should hate them. I should repudiate them. See, very often in the spiritual order, people are enthusiastic about following the Lord, but they’re not willing to let go of the twisted, weird parts of their life. They’re not willing to let go of the prideful way that I manipulated and abused people around me. I don’t want to let go of that.
Again, I’m using a dumb example, but it always helps me. If you’re learning the proper golf swing, well, we all, as bad golfers, have this bad swing in place. We’re doing it the wrong way. Everything about our swing is off. You have to hate that swing, right? You have to hate it. You have to repudiate it. You can’t make compromises with it, like, «Well, I’ll try to fit a little bit of that into my…» No, no. That’s a bad swing. It’s been serving you very poorly all these years, and you’ve got to go through the painful transition to a whole new way of striking the ball. Compromising, playing games, «I’ll do a little bit of this, a little bit of that,» is not going to work. You see how you have to hate the ways that your relationships and your style have crippled you spiritually? If you’re not, you’re not ready for the Lord Jesus. You’re not ready for real discipleship.
This is, you know, in the Old Testament terminology, Israel hankering for the flesh pots of Egypt, right? Oh, if only we were back in Egypt, even though we were slaves there! But oh, if only we were back, we had enough to eat. And come on, you’re not ready for the Promised Land. And if that’s the way you’re thinking, oh, let me go back to these old manipulative habits and these old prideful ways that I related to people around me. No, no, you have to hate, you have to hate all of that if you’re willing to follow the Lord Jesus.
Now look how he sums this up: «Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.» I know, I know. Look, I’m a sinner; you’re sinners. And so this is a really hard talk. They knew about crosses-carrying the cross, what the cross meant. And we hold it up in front of us all the time: the cross of Jesus. What does it mean? It means I’m stripped of wealth, I’m stripped of pleasure, I’m stripped of power, I’m stripped of honor, of all these things that my prideful self wants. I’m stripped of all these things, listen, that I have tended to make into absolute goods, right?
Hey, what’s my life all about? And you know you need a really good spiritual director or confessor who will help you with this. And I don’t mean someone who’s going to tickle your ears and tell you what you want to hear. I mean someone who’s really good and really clear. He will say, «What is your life really about?» Oh, it’s about serving God. Really? I want an honest answer. I want a searching moral inventory of your life. What’s it about? What do you get out of bed every morning to accomplish?
Now, if we sinners are honest, we’ll probably say some version of wealth or power or pleasure or honor or self-protection -you know, the old prideful self. Unless you’re willing to take up your cross, and your cross means being stripped of all of that-those aren’t your ultimate goods. And all those weird twisted ways that the prideful self has used those things and manipulated others through them, all of that you have to hate if you want to follow the Lord Jesus.
Um, hard stuff. Uh-huh, a cost of discipleship. You bet. You know, my generation got a lot of the kind of easy-peasy spirituality. You know, God is love and just, you know, try to be kind and be a good person. Well, yeah, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being a good person. I’m all in favor of being a good person, but that’s the rudiments, everybody. That’s the basis of the spiritual life, the serious stuff, the high-octane stuff.
Look at this: Luke chapter 14. Unless you hate all these things, unless you can put them in a lower place, unless you can affirm God as the supreme good in your life, you’re not ready to follow the Lord. And so, you know, don’t domesticate this. As I say, let the deep, deep challenge of these words seep all the way down into your soul. I’m speaking to myself, into my soul, right? If we’re serious about being disciples of the Lord Jesus, and God bless you.