A New Way of Being

Philemon 1-21

Luke 14:25-33

There was a bit of weird news last week from the U.S Open. A player, after winning his match, went over to greet his fans. In the midst of signing autographs, he gave a hat to a young boy in the stands, it’s on video. But immediately, a man standing next to the boy snatched the hat out of the boy’s hand and quickly tucked it in his bag. The boy can be seen asking the man to give it back, but the man turned away, ignoring him. The tennis player had moved on and apparently didn’t see any of that.

The man who stole the hat was identified as the owner of a Polish paving firm. So the headline became “CEO steals hat from child.” It was not a good look.

It was all over the internet, TV news, and newspapers. 

The first I heard of it was an online news site that shared a statement which supposedly came from the CEO after the event. The statement said, “Yes, I took it. Yes, I did it quickly. But as I’ve always said, life is first come, first served… If you were faster, you would have it…”

My jaw dropped when I read it. This takes jerkiness to a whole new level, I thought.

The statement was shared on a couple of internet sites and the comment sections blew up with people pouring their contempt out on this man.  

But here is the interesting thing: We were all ready to believe it, even though we know there is a lot of untrue stuff out there, and this website looked kind of shady. We were ready to believe this man would say something so outrageous, because the statement reflects a way of living in the world which we have seen before. 

We know, whether or not this CEO actually said these words, this is an attitude which is not uncommon: get whatever you can by whatever means necessary and call it survival of the fittest. Give yourself a pat on the back for being a winner.

This kind of thing, which we hear every day, makes it pretty hard for us to accept the things we hear Jesus say. It just doesn’t seem possible that both ways of being can co-exist.

Here we are in this moment in the gospel where Jesus has hordes of people following him around. He is a first century rock star. And instead of handing out autographed tunics and throwing his sandal to the crowd, he turns to them with this:

“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

We hear these words and we honestly don’t know what to do with them. How to reconcile hate for father and mother with the commandment to honor your father and mother? How to reconcile “carry the cross” with “my yoke is easy, my burden light?” How to reconcile “none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions” with “ask and it will be given to you?”

Someone asked me the other day, “where do you draw the line on this stuff?” and the only answer I have is that Jesus wasn’t really big on drawing lines. He tended more toward painting pictures.

That is to say, Jesus really did say what he meant to say. But he also intended for these things to always remain an open question for us. He wasn’t drawing lines in the sand; he was showing us a whole new way of being in the world.

And he fully realized that the things he was suggesting seemed unthinkable to his listeners. They still do. 

It is unthinkable to hate your family. It is unthinkable to give up all your possessions. It is unthinkable to willingly surrender to the cross. Nonetheless, Jesus asks us to think about these things. All for the sake of discipleship.

Jesus turns and says these things to the huge crowd of people who are following him like a bunch of groupies. He says whatever it is you think you are doing, whatever fantasies you might have about this whole venture, you need to carefully consider this decision. He is not trying to hide anything in the fine print. He wants us to go into it eyes wide open. Jesus hopes we will say yes to following him, even knowing the cost.

And all he is really asking is this: if you are going to be my disciple I will demand that you care for others in the same way I do. And whatever it is that binds you up and prevents you from caring, be ready to let go of it.

Because, honestly, from a faith perspective, it is unthinkable to allow these ties to prevent you from loving others. If you are so beholden to family that you are unable to build relationships with others, that is a problem. If you are so beholden to your stuff that it defines who you are, that is a problem.

The gospel message is a message about letting go of things that keep us bound. The passage from Paul’s letter to Philemon shines a strong light on it as well. 

In this short letter, Paul writes to his friend Philemon encouraging him to free Onesimus, a man he holds as a slave. Paul is extraordinarily artful in his approach, because he needs to be. You see, for Philemon, the idea of letting his slave go free was unthinkable.

Think about that for a moment.

If we think about this whole question, we will see that what may seem unthinkable in any particular place or time, can change. Perhaps we can open our eyes to see that the way of being we are accustomed to seeing in the world is only one option – perhaps a very sad option at that.

The CEO who stole a hat from a boy certainly fit the framework for a certain way of being in the world – a way that leads to worldly riches, no question. But, this is not the only way, is it?

A couple of days after I read the news about his statement, I saw other news articles that put the matter in a somewhat different perspective. He made a public statement expressing his regret for acting the way he did at the tennis match. He took full responsibility for his hurtful actions. He also claimed he never said those words about “first come, first served.” And he returned the hat to the boy.

And so in these words and actions he displays a different way of being in the world – accepting responsibility for the harm he did, trying to make amends. And about the vile first statement that he may or may not have said, I will take his word on that.

Jesus urges his would-be disciples to look at their possessions and their commitments from a different perspective. Don’t let the things you have define who you are. Let these things go and let Christ be your identity.