Burdens: Intolerable and Otherwise

Lectionary Reflections for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (C)

By Mark Harris

Readings for Pentecost 14, Proper 18, Year C, Sept. 5, 2004

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Psalm 1

Philemon 1-20

Luke 14:25-33

It is difficult to separate out the wonderfully hopeful possibilities in Moses' statement, “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life . . .” (Deuteronomy 30:19b) from the realities of the concrete struggles of the people of Israel, then or now, to occupy and possess lands not their own and already inhabited. Choosing life gets too mixed in this text with the promise and security of forming a state based on a community in right relationship to God. And in these contentious times, “choosing life” too easily becomes an invitation to new theocratic dreams.

Now many centuries removed from the immediate context of this text, three key themes – life, Torah, and promised homeland as a reward – are in some minds still closely linked, and similarly linked are death, other Gods, and the punishment of being without a homeland. Having not done very adequate, and certainly very little independent, inquiry concerning the first occupation of the land of Canaan, it is no wonder that Christians are in a quandary as to how to understand or justify the occupation and possession of already inhabited lands by the modern state of Israel. Nor are we well equipped to confront our own co-religionists, or followers of other faiths, who would use the language, tactics, and often the instruments of war in the spread of their version of a state based on God-given principles.

Whatever the previous arguments by religions and states for divine support of wars of conquest or security, the continuing justification by this or that religious group for such wars, battles, incursions and occupations now constitute an intolerable burden to the whole human family. To these burdens must also be added the very real burden of the failure of violence to produce security in the first place.  

Is an established and secure homeland so central to the blessed life? We know that blessing and life and God are also found by the wanderer. Abraham and Sarah, Moses in his wandering years, the prophets by the rivers of Babylon, Jesus (who had no home to call his own) all knew this: The Promised Land is not only, or perhaps even finally, “out there.” It is within the heart and within a people. Its location is not to be found on a map of the physical world. It is the wanderer who must travel light, forsaking the trappings of the secure life, who is free to find the promise land at every turn in the road, at every moment of the journey.

Christians (at least in their better moments) do not believe that a physical homeland is promised for them or anyone by any current covenant with God. The abundance of life promised by Jesus is not counted in the amassing of material possessions or a national homeland in a particular location. Nor is the surety we need to be found in the many efforts to achieve security within our own nation.

In these days when “homeland security” is the watchword, it is difficult to preach a gospel in which security is not only not central, but in fact irrelevant. Yet Jesus is telling us precisely to drop all pretense of finding security in its normal haunts. . . We are to live in the presence of God in Jesus Christ with no security save the love of God itself.

In these days when “homeland security” is the watchword, it is difficult to preach a gospel in which security is not only not central, but in fact irrelevant. Yet Jesus is telling us precisely to drop all pretense of finding security in its normal haunts. We know we are not called to live in this or that actual physical environment as God's chosen people or as God's chosen nation. We are to live in the presence of God in Jesus Christ with no security save the love of God itself. That seems to be at least something of what is meant by Jesus when he says, “whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” Yet it seems unpatriotic to suggest that “forsaking all else” might mean attending to other matters beside security. It is not the first time that Christians have been considered disloyal for pointing out the limits of empire.

Unlike the unbearable burden of wars of conquest justified by religious authority, whose weight is measured in the gravity of human deaths and wasted lives, the burden of ‘forsaking' or renouncing everything is experienced only in our failing in our vows to such renunciation. The form of that vow is the charge given by Jesus – to take up our cross and follow him. Jesus suggests that such a burden is light, such a yoke is easy.

The burden of security is intolerable, the remembrance of the terrible things we do to achieve that security is grievous to us. When we seek total surety there is indeed no health in us. By comparison our failing to actually forsake all other things is a light thing, for no matter that we cannot cast off all our cares, the fact that we let go of some and that we continue to work towards a condition in which we travel light is already a lifting of burdens.

Both complete security and complete freedom from attachments seem beyond our grasp, but the price for trying to achieve the first is death, and the gift given in trying to achieve the second is a lighter and lighter burden and finally the gift of life in all its fullness.

No matter that we are none of us much good at casting off all fear and care for security, each day is an opportunity to practice our reliance on God's love alone and to mirror that in our lives. Practice, practice, practice!  

Choose life! And perhaps Life, in Jesus Christ, will choose us.

The Rev. Canon Mark Harris is author of The Challenge of Change: The Anglican Communion in the Post Modern Era , and a member of the Episcopal Church Publishing Company's ( The Witness magazine) board of directors. He lives in Lewes, Del., and may be reached by email at poetmark@worldnet.att.net .