Disengage in order to Engage (Detach in order to Attach)
Homily for TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY C
By Rev. Fr.Solomon P. Zaku
Readings: Wisdom 9:13-18b, Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14 and 17; Philemon 9b-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33
The Gospel of today tells us, ‘Great multitudes accompanied Jesus, and he turned and said to them, “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple”’.
For us Nigerian Christians, today Jesus challenges us –“If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple”’.
This is the true test for a follower and for a leader too –for the leader because if he is not of substance, of the greatest importance, he will not give this standard or condition. One of the reasons for this hard condition is not unconnected with the flitting and flirting minds of men. Even in religious terms, man does not care to make many gods fit into his need for variety as the spice of life.
Jesus, by this statement, wants to steady our minds to be in one place. He wants us to avoid ‘religious prostitution’ which man’s heart prefers to incline toward for example:
Exodus 20:5 reads, “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate me.”
2 Corinthians 11:2, says, “For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin”
In Matthew 6:24 Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
As we decide to follow Jesus, as we everyday commit ourselves to Jesus, he keeps reminding and encouraging us that the purity of our following him can be maintained when we –
Disengage or detach ourselves from other gods: Unless we disengage or detach ourselves from anything that competes for attention with God in our lives, we will not be authentic followers of Christ. God is God and cannot be equated with anything else. He is our Creator and he desires that nothing takes us away from him, not even our own very selves. He says, “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
What god do I worship in my life? Drug or intoxicating substance, fornication, adultery, malice, wickedness, jealousy or anger etc. can be a god in my life. Unless and until I detach myself from them, I am not qualified to be a follower of Jesus.
We are called to a life of detachment. This is because the life of detachment brings with it real freedom, light-heartedness and ease. We are told, and this is true, the one who travels light, travels fast.
Renounce earth and embrace Christ: I like the Dictionary definition of the verb ‘renounce’. It means ‘to give up, resign, surrender, to cast off, repudiate or reject, to decline further association with someone or something, to disown, to abandon, to forsake, discontinue an action, habit, intention, etc. sometimes by open declaration.’
In our following of Christ, if we want to have a smooth journey of discipleship, we must renounce our friendship or association with our earthly and materialistic life and cling to Christ. For Jesus tells us, ‘cut off from me you will do nothing. And he says, we cannot serve two masters at a time. And “So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple”
We are not only called to detach from these earthly things but renounce earthly things such as hatred, jealousy, greed and sin.
I believe that ‘renouncement’ of his allegiance to the woman spirit or the terms of the ‘covenant’ became the source of his liberation.
To be honest, I am still in shock that a Christian can do this kind of a thing!
So, today, Jesus calls us to renounce our anger, our hatred, our wickedness, our jealousy, our pride, our greed or selfishness and any satanic influence that distracts our attention from him.
This is the call St. Paul sounds to us in the Second Reading when wrote a letter to Philemon to forgive Onesimus, the runaway slave. St. Paul met Onesinmus in prison after he (Onesimus might have been arrested for another crime, apart from the one he did against his master Philemon and ran away). Onesimus was converted by St Paul while in prison and he became truly repentant. After his release, St. Paul sent him back to his master and asked the master to forgive him.
We are all in one way or the other Onesimus. We have sinned against God and one another in one way or the other. We need to repent as well as we need to renounce the evil of un-forgiveness. Un-forgiveness is evil and so, we must renounce it if not it will keep hurting and haunting us for life. It will deprive us of the joy and freedom of following Christ.
Sit down and count the cost of being disciple of Jesus: Jesus says to us, “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sir down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?”
As we struggle to follow Jesus, planning is very important. Why must we plan?
This is because; to plan is to take account of ourselves and our environment: it is a call to be attentive, to go inward and see that we have a task to perform for Jesus because he owns us. This task is discernable through reflection, through listening to ourselves and to the word of God. In this we find the reason why God created us and the task to do while we are on earth.
Planning enables us to discern and discover our goals on earth: God created us for a purpose. We cannot know this purpose if we go through the world without sitting down and taking cognizance of ourselves. We must sit down and the cost of being itself and our existence.
It enables us to avoid the shame associated with failure: the joy of a project lies not in starting but in finishing. Jesus wants us to begin a ‘project’ of following him and finishing successfully to the end.
This planning will enable us to succeed in life: this is the importance of our education. One of the problems of Africa and Nigeria is the lack of planning. We have to plan ahead and execute what has been planned. In our individual lives, without planning, we cannot succeed. We have to plan the day, the week, the month and the year. Plan your resources and money and plan your life.
Most importantly, plan to reject sin and Satan and follow Jesus Christ.
Carry your Cross: “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple”.
Carrying of the cross is submitting to God as Jesus submitted to God’s will. It is accepting life as it comes and letting our lives be guided in by the life of Jesus Christ, the one who carried his cross to the end.
It is accepting our condition in the Christian sense and letting God take charge of our lives. It is accepting our sickness, sorrow and joy and health as coming from God and doing everything possible to put Christ in all our affairs.
Our crosses we are called to carry can be categorised into:
Human or Existential Cross –this is the cross of being and living in this world. It is our daily struggles against the forces of life every day. Little wonder, Jesus tells to that we should carry our crosses daily and follow him. This is the cross we must carry from birth to death. for example, we wake up, go to work or find food. You face rejection, hatred, wickedness, persecution, aloneness, loneliness, and other pain in life, etc.
Christian Cross – this is submitting to the dictates and teachings of Jesus Christ to the exclusion of all other realities. You have chosen to be Christian and so, you are supposed to follow what Jesus asks you to do.
For example, left to a typical black man or the African, he has no qualms in marrying or having many women. Polygamy appeals to him, and just as in everything in life, variety is the spice of life, so also variety of women can spice up his life. But Jesus orders us to practice monogamy and not polygamy. A true Christian is one who accepts and practices monogamy and not polygamy.
Vocational Cross – this is a cross of leaving one’s life for Christ through in a very serious manner of commitment or Christian maturity. In this cross, one decides, willingly and freely, what form of life one wants to live for the sake of Christ. For example, I am a priest. I have t struggle and live this form life for the sake of Jesus, not for myself selfish interest or for the sake of my friends or parents. For you, you are married. You bear children and train them. You are a responsible parent, a small Church or first church to your family. You are single and you live a holy, blameless life. You are projecting Christ and serving God in this form of life. You happily accept this state of life for the sake of Christ
Leadership Cross – this is a cross of being a leader or the condition of being leader in our own capacity. We are all called to lead like Christ led us by sacrificing himself to death. This is a cross of leadership that demands sacrifice for the sake of the followers. It is leadership after the heart of Jesus Christ who came not to be served but to serve and even to give his life as a ransom.
All Christian leaders are called to exemplify this form of leadership in our lives because himself has demonstrated it in his life. Are we ready to die for our followers? Are we ready to be with our followers in every situation, especially in difficult situation? If we cannot do this, then, we are not fit to be leaders.
As Christians, we cannot detach or renounce our sins and this earth and be engaged to Jesus unless we allow Jesus come into mind. Unless we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, we cannot do anything on our own. Jesus tells us, apart from me, you can do nothing (John 15:5).
In order to carry our crosses on this earth with relative ease, Jesus calls us to come and eat his Body and drink his Blood at the Eucharist. He is the Real Food that satisfies the hunger of our souls and bodies. He is the real Drink that quenches our spiritual and existential thirst. Come and receive Jesus, the food that gives life eternal. May the lord grant us the grace to carry our cross through Christ our Lord. Amen.
By Rev. Fr.Solomon P. Zaku
Readings: Wisdom 9:13-18b, Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14 and 17; Philemon 9b-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33
The Gospel of today tells us, ‘Great multitudes accompanied Jesus, and he turned and said to them, “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple”’.
For us Nigerian Christians, today Jesus challenges us –“If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple”’.
This is the true test for a follower and for a leader too –for the leader because if he is not of substance, of the greatest importance, he will not give this standard or condition. One of the reasons for this hard condition is not unconnected with the flitting and flirting minds of men. Even in religious terms, man does not care to make many gods fit into his need for variety as the spice of life.
Jesus, by this statement, wants to steady our minds to be in one place. He wants us to avoid ‘religious prostitution’ which man’s heart prefers to incline toward for example:
Exodus 20:5 reads, “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate me.”
2 Corinthians 11:2, says, “For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin”
In Matthew 6:24 Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
As we decide to follow Jesus, as we everyday commit ourselves to Jesus, he keeps reminding and encouraging us that the purity of our following him can be maintained when we –
Disengage or detach ourselves from other gods: Unless we disengage or detach ourselves from anything that competes for attention with God in our lives, we will not be authentic followers of Christ. God is God and cannot be equated with anything else. He is our Creator and he desires that nothing takes us away from him, not even our own very selves. He says, “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
What god do I worship in my life? Drug or intoxicating substance, fornication, adultery, malice, wickedness, jealousy or anger etc. can be a god in my life. Unless and until I detach myself from them, I am not qualified to be a follower of Jesus.
We are called to a life of detachment. This is because the life of detachment brings with it real freedom, light-heartedness and ease. We are told, and this is true, the one who travels light, travels fast.
Renounce earth and embrace Christ: I like the Dictionary definition of the verb ‘renounce’. It means ‘to give up, resign, surrender, to cast off, repudiate or reject, to decline further association with someone or something, to disown, to abandon, to forsake, discontinue an action, habit, intention, etc. sometimes by open declaration.’
In our following of Christ, if we want to have a smooth journey of discipleship, we must renounce our friendship or association with our earthly and materialistic life and cling to Christ. For Jesus tells us, ‘cut off from me you will do nothing. And he says, we cannot serve two masters at a time. And “So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple”
We are not only called to detach from these earthly things but renounce earthly things such as hatred, jealousy, greed and sin.
I believe that ‘renouncement’ of his allegiance to the woman spirit or the terms of the ‘covenant’ became the source of his liberation.
To be honest, I am still in shock that a Christian can do this kind of a thing!
So, today, Jesus calls us to renounce our anger, our hatred, our wickedness, our jealousy, our pride, our greed or selfishness and any satanic influence that distracts our attention from him.
This is the call St. Paul sounds to us in the Second Reading when wrote a letter to Philemon to forgive Onesimus, the runaway slave. St. Paul met Onesinmus in prison after he (Onesimus might have been arrested for another crime, apart from the one he did against his master Philemon and ran away). Onesimus was converted by St Paul while in prison and he became truly repentant. After his release, St. Paul sent him back to his master and asked the master to forgive him.
We are all in one way or the other Onesimus. We have sinned against God and one another in one way or the other. We need to repent as well as we need to renounce the evil of un-forgiveness. Un-forgiveness is evil and so, we must renounce it if not it will keep hurting and haunting us for life. It will deprive us of the joy and freedom of following Christ.
Sit down and count the cost of being disciple of Jesus: Jesus says to us, “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sir down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?”
As we struggle to follow Jesus, planning is very important. Why must we plan?
This is because; to plan is to take account of ourselves and our environment: it is a call to be attentive, to go inward and see that we have a task to perform for Jesus because he owns us. This task is discernable through reflection, through listening to ourselves and to the word of God. In this we find the reason why God created us and the task to do while we are on earth.
Planning enables us to discern and discover our goals on earth: God created us for a purpose. We cannot know this purpose if we go through the world without sitting down and taking cognizance of ourselves. We must sit down and the cost of being itself and our existence.
It enables us to avoid the shame associated with failure: the joy of a project lies not in starting but in finishing. Jesus wants us to begin a ‘project’ of following him and finishing successfully to the end.
This planning will enable us to succeed in life: this is the importance of our education. One of the problems of Africa and Nigeria is the lack of planning. We have to plan ahead and execute what has been planned. In our individual lives, without planning, we cannot succeed. We have to plan the day, the week, the month and the year. Plan your resources and money and plan your life.
Most importantly, plan to reject sin and Satan and follow Jesus Christ.
Carry your Cross: “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple”.
Carrying of the cross is submitting to God as Jesus submitted to God’s will. It is accepting life as it comes and letting our lives be guided in by the life of Jesus Christ, the one who carried his cross to the end.
It is accepting our condition in the Christian sense and letting God take charge of our lives. It is accepting our sickness, sorrow and joy and health as coming from God and doing everything possible to put Christ in all our affairs.
Our crosses we are called to carry can be categorised into:
Human or Existential Cross –this is the cross of being and living in this world. It is our daily struggles against the forces of life every day. Little wonder, Jesus tells to that we should carry our crosses daily and follow him. This is the cross we must carry from birth to death. for example, we wake up, go to work or find food. You face rejection, hatred, wickedness, persecution, aloneness, loneliness, and other pain in life, etc.
Christian Cross – this is submitting to the dictates and teachings of Jesus Christ to the exclusion of all other realities. You have chosen to be Christian and so, you are supposed to follow what Jesus asks you to do.
For example, left to a typical black man or the African, he has no qualms in marrying or having many women. Polygamy appeals to him, and just as in everything in life, variety is the spice of life, so also variety of women can spice up his life. But Jesus orders us to practice monogamy and not polygamy. A true Christian is one who accepts and practices monogamy and not polygamy.
Vocational Cross – this is a cross of leaving one’s life for Christ through in a very serious manner of commitment or Christian maturity. In this cross, one decides, willingly and freely, what form of life one wants to live for the sake of Christ. For example, I am a priest. I have t struggle and live this form life for the sake of Jesus, not for myself selfish interest or for the sake of my friends or parents. For you, you are married. You bear children and train them. You are a responsible parent, a small Church or first church to your family. You are single and you live a holy, blameless life. You are projecting Christ and serving God in this form of life. You happily accept this state of life for the sake of Christ
Leadership Cross – this is a cross of being a leader or the condition of being leader in our own capacity. We are all called to lead like Christ led us by sacrificing himself to death. This is a cross of leadership that demands sacrifice for the sake of the followers. It is leadership after the heart of Jesus Christ who came not to be served but to serve and even to give his life as a ransom.
All Christian leaders are called to exemplify this form of leadership in our lives because himself has demonstrated it in his life. Are we ready to die for our followers? Are we ready to be with our followers in every situation, especially in difficult situation? If we cannot do this, then, we are not fit to be leaders.
As Christians, we cannot detach or renounce our sins and this earth and be engaged to Jesus unless we allow Jesus come into mind. Unless we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, we cannot do anything on our own. Jesus tells us, apart from me, you can do nothing (John 15:5).
In order to carry our crosses on this earth with relative ease, Jesus calls us to come and eat his Body and drink his Blood at the Eucharist. He is the Real Food that satisfies the hunger of our souls and bodies. He is the real Drink that quenches our spiritual and existential thirst. Come and receive Jesus, the food that gives life eternal. May the lord grant us the grace to carry our cross through Christ our Lord. Amen.
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