September 6, 2022
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) on September 4, 2022 at the Paulist Center in Boston, MA. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Wisdom 9:13-18b; Psalm 90; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; and Luke 14:25-33.
All of today’s readings offer variations on a single theme: we shouldn’t let distractions lead us away from Christian discipleship. Our first reading tells us that God’s wisdom is beyond our comprehension. In the gospel, we hear a hard truth: we cannot be Jesus’ disciples unless we set aside other priorities.
Most of us are probably less familiar with our second reading. This is the only weekend in our three-year lectionary cycle when we hear from Paul’s Letter to Philemon. So, here’s some background information. Philemon is a wealthy man living in the city of Colossae. Paul is in prison (presumably in Rome), and the messenger delivering Paul’s letter to Philemon is a man named Onesimus. The awkward thing is that Onesimus was a slave who belonged to Philemon but ran away. By Roman law, Philemon has the right to punish Onesimus. Paul and the early Christians are in no position to challenge Roman law or Roman norms. How can Paul persuade Philemon not to punish Onesimus?
None of us here are actively treating people as if they were enslaved, but we all participate in a global economy that makes it hard to determine whether the goods and services we purchase adversely impact laborers and natural resources. As Christian disciples, we recognize that we all suffer when one part of the body suffers… but how do we fight back against a system that tries to keep us ignorant of how workers and the environment are suffering?
For the times when we’ve failed to stay true to the gospel in complicated situations, we ask God for forgiveness.
What distracts us from following Jesus? Jesus is not calling us to love him by hating our family members. Scripture scholars say two things about this troubling passage. First, Jesus uses the word “hate” as an attention-grabbing exaggeration. Second, Jesus’ main point is for us to stop other things from getting in the way of our discipleship. “You cannot be my disciple,” says Jesus, “if you do not take up your cross. You cannot be my disciple if other things distract you from following me.”
What else distracts us? What do we prioritize over the gospel? I think this Labor Day weekend – with all the conflicting things it stands for – gives us a lot of different avenues for exploring our priorities and our distractions.
Labor Day itself is a federal holiday that celebrates the accomplishments of the labor movement. But here in the northeast, it’s also the last weekend before the academic year. Many people spend this weekend searching for the best bargains on new clothes and school supplies. Does bargain hunting distract us from our gospel call not to contribute to the exploitation of laborers around the world? Believe it or not, Catholic Social Teaching originated with Pope Leo XIII supporting labor unions all the way back in 1891 And yet, in recent decades, it seems as if capital is extracting more and more concessions from labor. Do we have a gospel obligation to spend our money in ways that makes the world more equitable?
The first weekend of September also kicks off the annual 5-week Season of Creation, which calls us to consider how we can reverse our abuse of the world’s natural resources. But this weekend is also the end of summer vacation, when many of us traveled to places to view the beauty of creation while distracting ourselves from how much fossil fuel we used to get there. Do we have a gospel obligation to reduce our carbon footprint? And it’s more complicated than that: the world’s most powerful corporations and governments have tricked us into obsessing over our own carbon footprints so much to distract us from challenging them to do their own hard work essential to saving the planet. Do we have a gospel obligation to challenge the 20 most powerful governments and the 100 most powerful international corporations?
Labor Day kicks off the election season. There are going to be debates this fall about ethics and the limits of law. Think of Philemon, the wealthy man to whom Paul is writing in the second reading. His slave Onesimus has run away, but now he’s returned with a letter from Paul. Rather than focusing on Philemon’s right as a Roman citizen to punish Onesimus, Paul speaks of the love that Christians are supposed to have for one another. He calls Onesimus “my own heart,” “a brother, beloved especially to me.” Then Paul challenges Philemon – knowing full well that the other Christians in Colossae will be gathered around Philemon when this letter is proclaimed aloud to him – to welcome Onesimus as he would welcome Paul. As we debate politics this fall, will we focus on gospel ethics, or will we distract ourselves by arguing about what’s technically allowed by the law?
The international economy and many international laws deliberately distract us from realizing how preserving our own lifestyles exploits marginalized people and the world’s natural resources. Even if we can’t each go completely “cold turkey” on using air conditioning, fossil fuels, and home delivery, we all have to do better – much better – on building a just, equitable, and sustainable world. We are running out of time to fix the most dire problems facing our world, whether or not we can see the consequences of our action or of our inaction.
As the Book of Wisdom observes, many concerns “weigh down the mind.” Surely, many of the concerns we have in our day-to-day lives are distractions from discipleship… but the opposite is also true: God is often present in the ongoing distractions of life. Are we too distracted by unimportant things that we can’t make time for the distractions that could lead to a richer, fuller, holier life for ourselves and for our whole world? What is the proper balance between making individual personal sacrifices and exercising our prophetic role in forcing society to change?
There’s one other celebration this first weekend of September that can help us focus on gospel values. Monday is 25th anniversary of the death of St. Teresa of Kolkata. She recognized that the world was full of situations beyond her control, and that she did not have the skills and insights to fix all the problems. Nevertheless, she exhibited the wisdom of today’s first reading and psalm: she took refuge in the LORD, she captured people’s imaginations, and she had the fire to care for the poor and marginalized people forgotten by the rest of the world.
When she was asked how she accomplished so much good, Mother Teresa replied, “My secret is very simple: I pray.” The reporter then asked, “What do you say when you pray?” She responded: “I don’t talk. I listen.” “And what does God say?” asked the reporter. Mother Teresa explained: “Oh, God listens, too.”
Maybe, when it seems too hard to give up our possessions and renounce our privileges, when it seems too hard to take up our crosses and re-order our prioritizes, when it seems too hard to understand economic complexities and protest government policies, maybe we need to stop and listen to God. And then, maybe, through the grace of God, it won’t seem so difficult.
Preview photo credit: Fibonacci Blue via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)