Note: I am publishing this a week early as I will be on holiday the week of Pentecost 5.
You know
who my very first celebrity crush was on? Diana Rigg. When I was a kid, I
thought she was the prettiest thing on two legs. Today she’s Dame Diana, one of England’s most
honored actresses and one of the stars of the TV series Game of Thrones. Although I will always remember this celebrated
talent as Mrs. Peel in the 1960’s TV show The
Avengers and as James Bond’s bride in On
Her Majesty’s Secret Service, my favorite Diana Rigg performance was in a
1975 television movie called In this House of Brede.
The movie was based on a 1969 novel by
Rumor Godden. It begins with an early middle-aged Rigg entering an English pub and ordering a huge glass of wine. She sits at a table and smokes
an entire pack of cigarettes. Then we see her leaving the pub and entering the
gates of a convent. Her character has had one last taste of worldly vice, but
is now leaving it all behind for the sake of the Kingdom. It’s a very moving
story.
Renunciation. That’s kind of what both the
Hebrew Scripture and Gospel stories in the Revised Common Lectionary for
Pentecost 6 Year C are about. When we decide we’re really going to get serious
about a life in the Christian faith, there are some things we’re just going to
have to give up. I was an actor—and a very unsuccessful one, I might add—before
finally realizing that God had other plans for me. I didn’t have too hard a
time letting my memberships in the various theatrical unions lapse when I
entered the seminary, but, just before I accepted the call to my parish, I was
cleaning out some junk in my basement and found my old make-up box. I hadn’t
touched the paints and tools inside it for years, and, by the time I discovered
it, it was probably just a big hotel for germs. Nevertheless, it felt like
amputating a limb to toss it in the trash. But I did. I had become a different
guy from the one who used that box, the guy who loved nothing better than to
smear goo on his face and pretend he was someone else.
Jesus is pretty darn severe in the appointed
Gospel lesson (Luke 9:51-62). He warns a would-be follower that discipleship
will mean renouncing the comforts of home (v.58). He doesn’t even give another
potential disciple a chance to go to his dad’s funeral (v.60). If we’re serious
about our journey, we have to recognize discipleship—changing our lives to draw
nearer to God’s plan for us—is going to mean jettisoning a few things. It will
start with dealing with addictions. No porn or gambling or drug and alcohol
abuse. It will mean letting go of some previous ideas about our own identity.
It might mean parting ways with some people and toxic relationships in our
lives. It’s most certainly going to mean re-prioritizing the way we look at our
time and our financial resources.
In the Hebrew scripture lesson for this
Sunday (1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21) Elisha gets tapped to be the apprentice prophet
to the Jewish people and the successor to Elijah. He kisses his parents
good-bye, and then gives away all of his wealth. He’s in a nomadic society
which values livestock as currency, so he kills all his oxen, barbecues them by
setting fire to the equipment used to drive them, and gives away all of the
meat. I imagine this story might have inspired Saint Francis of Assisi when he
gave his father back all of his clothing and walked naked into the wilderness
to live a life of faithfulness to God alone.
Now I grant that it’s still pretty hard
for most of us to renounce the world when we still have to live in it. We’re
not all going to sell all we have and give the money to the poor to follow
Jesus. But I would hope we look at these lessons as a caution against the idols
of this world. We will be freer and happier people when we learn to unbind
ourselves from things which draw us away from God.
A detail I particularly like in this
Gospel story is how Jesus has no time for the disciples’ societal prejudice
against the Samaritans (52-54). The Zebedee brothers are all set to have God
avenge a slight they feel they’ve received from their long-time rivals. Jesus,
however, doesn’t have time for this. He’s set his face to Jerusalem, and
figures that obedience to God demands that you just have to let some stuff go. I
wish we all could get behind that.
It’s not just our own stuff we have to
give the heave to, either. Collectively, the Church will have to put some
things behind her, too. Maybe we have to give up the idea of full-time
professional clergy (Ouch!), or giant buildings which cost so much to maintain.
Liturgies and musical styles are always evolving with the times in an effort to
reach new demographics. It might be swell to look back at the good ol’ days,
but that won’t get us where we need to go.
God’s peace be with you, my friends. Keep
looking forward.
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