Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity

Philemon 1-21; Luke 14.25-33

Our readings today say something about the cost of being a disciple of Christ. And to put it very simply and right at the beginning, that cost is 'love'. We hear it put in positive terms in Paul's letter to Philemon and in what you might call negative terms in the reading from St. Luke's gospel. One approach to the subject, that of St. Paul is what you might call a soft approach, that in the words of Jesus in the gospel, a hard approach. Either way, the result is the same, the cost of being a disciple of Christ is 'love'. And love actually costs us everything.

This letter of Paul to Philemon, Paul's and Timothy's dear friend and co-worker is written with an attitude of love. In the letter Paul thanks God for Philemon because he hears of their own love and faith and the work they are doing from their church which gathers in Philemon's house. He says that he has received joy and encouragement from their love because their hearts have been refreshed through Philemon's ministry to them.

Then Paul pulls rank a bit. He says that he could command Philemon to do his duty. There was much of St. Paul that wasn't converted on the road to Damascus I think. But he says he prefers to appeal to Philemon out of love. Its the iron hand in the velvet glove touch. Paul is playing good cop, bad cop all at the same time. He does it further on when he says that 'I'm asking you to do this favour for me, and I won't mention that you owe me the weight of yourself'. But you can see that the whole of the letter has that touch of love running through it. It sounds as though Onesimus might have had a set-to with Philemon in the past, that there is a bit of bad blood between them. But Paul says to Philemon that he must regard Onesimus now as a beloved brother and receive him back as such, and if there is anything owing from Onesimus to Philemon that he, Paul will accept responsibility. There's love going on here, from Paul and learning about love in Philemon and Onesimus.

Skip to the gospel this morning. Jesus talks in different terms. He says unless you hate just about everybody, especially those closest to you , you don't need to bother being His disciple. It's not about hate, Jesus is pushing the point that God comes first in our affections. Why? Because it's in our relationship with God that we learn what love is. Because God is love and those who live in love, live in God, and God lives in them, says St. John in his first letter. And there is a cost in loving God and therefore in loving others and the cost is the cross. And the cross is the complete giving up of one's self, the complete giving up, of the putting to death of one's own self interest. There is nothing of the self in true love. Loving another is a one way process, from you to the other and asking nothing in return. It's an emptying out of the self towards the other, just as God emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, and took on human form, as we read in the Bible.

And Jesus says to us that we should make sure we understand what the cost will be before we begin. And then there is another disjointed shift at the end of the reading where Jesus says none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. Some, just a few, the monastics amongst us take that literally. The rest of us have to struggle with the torment of possessions and mainly our own self possession as we come back to the beginning again and recall that to love God and our neighbour means the complete forgetting of our self, which is a sort of death which is very painful indeed when we take it seriously.

But curiously and only can it be so in God's providence, that death is also the way to life, joy and peace. When we pay the price of putting to death our own self for love of God and neighbour, then we get back a life far more full, far more of love. Which is why we call Christ's death a victory and why we say that Christ trampled down death by death. He showed the way. He made it possible. By His death, actual and real, he did away with the effects of death and showed us the way to life.

Love is the hardest, costliest thing for any of us, but it's the one thing in life and in death that gives the greatest return.