"There is no religious figure anywhere in the religions or philosophies of the world, none, who is stranger and more demanding, more relentless and more unnerving than Jesus."His challenge this Sunday is to accept that Jesus is God, and to respond to Jesus' invitation to love him above everything and everyone. Further, Jesus' call is for us to be conformed to him, which means being Christ in our own environment, with the result that we bring the good news of God's personal love to all those with whom we share our lives.
Join in trying to grasp the import for each of us of the uniqueness of Jesus and his "marvellous" demands as Bishop Barron wonders at just how strange and stupendous Jesus is. From the beginning:
There is no religious figure anywhere in the religions or philosophies of the world, none, who is stranger and more demanding, more relentless and more unnerving than Jesus.
I’ll say that again. There is no guru, teacher, founder, nobody, who’s as strange and relentless as Jesus. And therefore the religion attached to Jesus is the strangest of them all.
Now, I’m going to put exhibit A to you today, and it’s from our Gospel, Matthew chapter 10.
Jesus says to his Apostles, listen, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”
Okay, let me get this straight. So the most intense loves that we have—the love of a child for parents, the love for your mother, your father, or turn it around, the love of a parent for a child, maybe that’s even more intense.
The connection that a father will feel for a daughter or son. The mother’s intensity of love for her children, having both a kind of internal quality and an external obligation.
I mean, a parent would say, “Well, this is the most important obligation of my life… I’ll give my life to protect that child.”
Think of a little kid and their love for their parents, the intensity of that connection. Think of the external obligation in that sense, going from child to parent.
When the parent gets old and infirm and needy, and the children feel legitimately this extraordinary obligation to care for their parents.
Jesus is on purpose here summoning the most powerful affect that we have in us.
But then listen to it: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter . . . is not worthy of me.”
Now, I submit to you, everybody, the Buddha would not say this. He wouldn’t. I mean, the Buddha has teachings for us, and he’d say, “Here’s the eightfold path, and I followed it and found happiness and you can too.”
Muhammad wouldn’t say this. He’d say, “I received this revelation from the angel, and I wrote it down. It’s the Quran.”
Moses wouldn’t say this. Confucius wouldn’t say this. Aristotle wouldn’t say it. Plato wouldn’t say it. I don’t know anybody in the philosophical or religious tradition who would say such a strange thing.
But Jesus says it: Your love for me personally has to go beyond the most intense loves of your life.
“I’d happily die for this child.” Yeah, but you need to love me more than that.
Now you see the point I’m making, and why I speak of the strangeness of Christianity.
This is every bit as high a Christology [study of the nature of Jesus as the Christ] as the prologue to John: “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God.. . . The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
We say, yeah, John’s telling us that Jesus is God. Well, Jesus is saying the same thing here, just using a somewhat different rhetorical style and symbol system.
I mean, who is the one who should be loved beyond the most intense loves you possibly have? Well, God, only God.
“Oh, Jesus, he’s a very interesting teacher. Boy, I find him a fascinating moral exemplar.” Well, that’s completely out of step with this.
You might imagine a teacher saying, “Unless you love the God that I speak of . . . , unless you love the teaching that I offer . . . .”
But he wouldn’t say this unless he himself in person were the highest good.
Let me say that again. He wouldn’t say this unless he himself in person were the very highest good.
That’s what’s at stake in Christianity. That’s what’s at stake. You can’t be neutral about this, which is precisely why the same Jesus says “the one who’s not with me is against me. Either you gather with me or you scatter.”
You have to make a decision about Jesus. That’s what he’s telling us here. This is the ethical correlate to the claim that Jesus is divine.
Okay, so you’re saying, “All right, that’s a lot to deal with. That’s a lot to take in.”
Well, he doesn’t let up. Listen as he goes on: “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.”
Okay, so you’re telling me I have to love you, Lord, more than I love my own children, more than I love my own parents.
Mm-hm. That’s what I mean. That’s exactly what I mean.
And now you’re saying, unless you take up your cross every day and follow me, you’re not worthy of me.
Mm-hm. I want you to see something. Obviously, we now associate the cross, taking up the cross, with suffering, accepting the pain of life and doing so with equanimity and blitheness of spirit.
Yeah, but that’s not what he’s saying here. Like hey, when bad things happen, offer it up to God and accept it in a patient spirit.
That’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying, unless you “take up your cross.” Take up your cross. In other words, seek it out on your own. You do it. Don’t just accept it given to you from the outside. You take up the cross.
What does he mean now? Well, just as Jesus took up his cross so that he might bear the sins of the world and thereby take them away, just as he suffered the death that we were owed, just as he bore our burdens, so we are actively to bear the burdens of others.
Again, I get it [that it’s a hard saying].
Suffering happens to all of us willy-nilly, and yes indeed, we should always accept it in an attitude of patience and accepting God’s will, etc., but that’s not what he’s talking about.
He means: You who follow me, you who love me more than you love your own children, you need every day to bear other people’s burdens and to do so actively. Seek out opportunities to bear the burden of somebody else.
What if you were to begin your day that way?
Instead of saying, “Okay, how am I going to make more money today or become more popular today or become more successful today?” Instead of asking those questions, ask, “Where is someone right now who’s carrying a burden around, and what can I do to lighten it? Whose cross can I pick up the way Simon of Cyrene helped Jesus carry his cross?”
Hey, do you love me more than your own children? Yeah, I do, Lord. I’m trying to anyway. I’m trying to.
Okay, okay. Here’s the test: Are you willing every day to do this? Because if you don’t, you’re actually not worthy of me.
I’m saying it on purpose that way just to show how dramatic this is, how dramatic this is. The marvelous demand that Jesus places upon us to do what he did, to bear the burdens of others.
Now, listen to how this is summed up: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
That’s the law of spiritual physics. What does it mean to ‘find your life’?
It means I’m going to get it. I’m going to grab it, make it my own. I’m going to fill up my emptiness with all these goods of the world. I’m going to find my life.
Think of how many voices you know around you who say, I made my way; I made my fortune; I established my career.
Yeah, okay, okay, okay. That’s called having your life, finding your life.
What’s going to happen? You’ll lose that. It’ll be frittered away.
But the one who “loses his life for my sake”—what’s that mean? That means the person who willingly bears the burdens of others out of love. He’ll find his life. He’ll find his life.
That’s a formula, everybody.
Love Jesus more than you love your own parents, children, and life, and then do what Jesus did, bear people’s burdens, and you’ll actually find your life.
There it is, Matthew chapter 10. You want the whole spiritual life in all of its relentless demand and liberating power? There’s where you’ll find it.
Unless you love me more than your mother, your father, your son, your daughter, your very life, you’re not worthy of me.
As far as I’m concerned, everything else in Christianity is a footnote to that.
Take time to go to listen again to the sermon on YouTube in order to thrive on the journey through life that God set before us when he became human.
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