Father Timothy MarcoeToday, I’d like to start off by polling all of you with the following question: Is it easy to be a follower of Jesus? Yes or no? Think about it for a second. OK. How many of you say, “Yes, it is easy being a disciple of Christ,” raise your hands. OK. And how many of you say, “No, it’s not easy following Jesus.” Very interesting. I had no idea what everyone was going to say, but very interesting!
It’s also interesting to note that some of the Scriptures this week, like from the Old Testament Book of Wisdom, highlight that God’s ways are often not the ways of human beings because God’s wisdom is so different than man’s wisdom. And it’s true – just take a look at our Gospel today from St. Luke. Here Jesus is speaking to a great crowd of people travelling with Him. Now, sometimes we get the image that only the 12 Disciples followed Jesus in the course of His three years of public ministry. But in reality, crowds of different sizes would follow Him for different lengths of time. Apparently, as we heard in this chapter, a large crowd was travelling with Him. And, indeed, Jesus invited anyone who wanted to be His disciple to come follow Him – it was that easy. So for those of you who said, “Yes, it’s easy to be a follower of Christ,” pat yourselves on the back.
Wait a second, not so fast. But what did Jesus say to the great multitude following Him? Things like: If anyone comes to me without hating his family and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple; if anyone does not carry his own cross, he cannot be my disciple; if anyone does not renounce all his possessions, he cannot be my disciple. Hmm, maybe it’s not so easy being a disciple of Jesus after all. Imagine you being part of the crowd following Jesus, when He essentially says, “If you want to really come any further along with me, you have to do these things first.” Do you think the crowd may have gotten a little smaller? God’s ways are often not our ways – and sometimes they don’t make much sense either!
Just briefly, though, I’d like to try to humbly explain what Jesus likely intended when He said we are to hate our father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and even our own life if we really want to be His disciples. You may know that the New Testament was originally written in Greek. And so, the Greek word here, “miseo,” literally translates as “to hate.” We get our word “misanthropic” – a hatred of mankind – from this word. However, “miseo” additionally means: “to regard with less affection, to love less, to esteem less.” And that’s what Jesus appears to really be getting at here. If we love or esteem our family or even ourselves more than we do God – how can we really profess to be disciples of His Son? If we love anything more than God, we are essentially making idols of those people, things, or ideas because we are loving the creature more than we’re loving the Creator.
And so, yes, on paper, it’s easy to be a follower of Christ – just give up everything that gets in the way of your relationship with Him. In reality, though, it’s another story, and, if we’re honest, we find it is difficult to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ. After all, He does tell us that the road is in fact narrow. To make this real, I remember one of the hardest things I had to do in my life up to that point was end a friendship with someone I really cared about – my best friend. Although there were many good qualities to this person, there were also things he said and did that just dragged me down. After years of trying to rationalize things, I just had to admit to myself: “Who do I esteem more, God or this friend?” It wasn’t easy at all, but I can say that God really blessed me for it in time, because I took seriously Jesus’ call to give up that which stands in the way of me being His disciple.
How about caring more about your own comfort in life, or being so attached to possessions of one variety or another – do they get in your way of taking the next step of being a closer disciple of Christ? Or maybe it’s something else. The point is – and this was what Jesus was getting at in talking to the large crowd – it’s not easy to follow Him. Look at His life: His love for the Father and for each one of us cost Him so dearly that it led to the sacrifice of the cross. As His disciples, then, we might ask ourselves the question: Who or what is an obstacle to me knowing, loving, and serving God as I ought to? In some way it’s probably something different for each one of us. But, if we really are to follow after Jesus, we have to be willing to give Him all that we are.
And so, as He gives us Himself completely to us in the Eucharist we are to receive, let us ask Him for the strength to lay down our lives more fully for Him in love. God bless you.
(Father Marcoe is the pastor of St. Francis Xavier Parish in Gettysburg.)
By Father Timothy D. Marcoe, Special to The Witness
