Fall in Love with Christ

Homily for Sunday, September 7, 2025
The Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Luke 14:25-33

Except for at Symphony Hall, I don’t usually go to concerts.  But…Ashley had been a childhood friend of John Hopkins, the bass guitarist for the Zac Brown Band, so in 2015 when the Zac Brown Band came to Fenway, off we went.  Now, the Zac Brown Band was good, but IMO the one who stole the show was Stephen Tyler, whom Zac Brown had invited to sing a few numbers and who in his late 60’s still “had it.”  Tyler may have been the most compelling performer I’ve ever seen.  Not just his singing, not just his movements, but just who he was on stage, his “stage presence,” electrified the crowd.  As he sang the old Aerosmith hits “Sweet Emotion” and then “Walk This Way,” the crowd went wild – wild! – shouting, singing, screaming, shrieking.  I’ve never seen anything like it.

I’ve never seen anything like until…. shortly after his election, in early June, I looked on the Vatican’s website and found videos of the Pope’s weekly “General Audience” in St. Peter’s Square.  On these videos are thousands –  and I mean thousands – who pack the Square to see the Pope.  Their reaction to him as he is driven slowly through the crowd was not dissimilar to the Fenway crowd’s reaction to Stephen Tyler; “frenzied” would not be too strong a word.  Their cheers and shouts are thunderous, and they press upon the barricades to draw close.  The Pope waves, he banters, he signs Bibles.  If you have a white zucchetto – the little white cap that the Pope wears – and if you manage to pass it to him, he’ll put it briefly on his head and hand it back. If you have a baby, you can pass her forward through the crowd to be blessed.  If you have a White Sox hat and pass it to him, he’ll sign it!   Sometimes the Pope Mobile pauses in place, causing the crowd near him – as with Stephen Tyler– to go wild (wild!) as the Pope chats and shakes hands and blesses.  

Watching these videos of the Pope, I could not help but think of Jesus and the crowds who followed him.  Those crowds, often numbering in the thousands, were like “sheep without a shepherd,” the Gospels tell us, (Mk 6:34; Mt 9:36).  Of these crowds Luke writes that they actively looked for Jesus (e.g., 4:42), gathered around Jesus (e.g., 6:17-49), pressed in upon him (e.g., 5:3), were amazed(11:14) and filled with awe (5:26) at him, and sometimes they even tried to prevent Jesus from leaving them (4:42).

These crowds are present in today’s Gospel:  “Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus,” Luke writes.  But in today’s Gospel – roughly half-way through the ten chapters that in Luke tell of Jesus’ journey up to Jerusalem – [in today’s Gospel] Jesus for the first time tells the crowds that following him is not always going to be an experience of profound teaching, amazing signs and the blessing of small children.  Today for the first time Jesus tells the crowds that following him will have a cost:

Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciples… [and] None of you can be my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

Those of us who are familiar with the German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer will know of his book, The Cost of Discipleship, in which Bonhoeffer contrasts “cheap grace” with “costly grace” and emphasizes the commitment that is necessary to follow Jesus as his disciple.  And I want to get back to Bonhoeffer, but first, a word about “hating” “father and mother, wife and children… and even life itself.”

Jesus does not mean that literally we are to hate others, for taken as a whole the Gospels’ message is a message of love.  In this morning’s passage Jesus speaks in what we might call “Hebrew hyperbole” after the manner of how the Hebrew scriptures often contrast “love” and “hate.”  For example, the Psalmist writes – “O God…you love righteousness and hate iniquity” (45:7); or, “As for lies, I hate and abhor them, but your law do I love” (119:163);or again, “The Lord loves those who hate evil” (97:10).  In this morning’s Gospel when Jesus says,“Whoever comes to me and does not hate” family members and, “even life itself, ”he is exaggerating for effect, driving home his message that following him is not always going to be easy and that discipleship has a cost.

Back to Bonhoeffer and The Cost of Discipleship…  While I agree in principle with Bonhoeffer that faithful Christian discipleship means that we live a changed life and that grace ought not be “cheap,” I differ with his approach.   I can say what I’m about to say because I grew up in a German Lutheran community:   Bonhoeffer’s approach is so “German Lutheran;” that is, he speaks of hard work, difficulty and cost.  I don’t know about you, but I find the “hard work” approach to discipleship off-putting. Rather, what might help me to be a faithful disciple – to carry my cross, to give up all my possessions, to “hate” so that I might love Jesus above all – [what might help me to be a faithful disciple] is not so much to “do” but to “let.”  

In a recent message to seminarians (June 24, 2025), Pope Leo encouraged them, not to work more, but above all to allow themselves to love more.  “The heart,” said the Pope, “is the ‘motor’ of your entire journey.”  “Just as Christ loved with the heart of a human, we are called to love with the heart of Christ.”  Seminaries should above all “be a school of the affections,” he said, where seminarians learn to “return to the heart.”  He encouraged them to open themselves “to the voices of nature and of art, poetry, literature and music,” and to better take care of their hearts by “letting the Holy Spirit ‘anoint’ their humanity” and to make of their lives a gift of love.  “My dear seminarians,” he concluded, “I hope this meeting of ours may help every one of you to deepen your personal dialogue with the Lord,” that you might “increasingly… assimilate the sentiments of Christ, the sentiments of His Heart… that beats with love for you and for all humanity.”

The crowds that are thunderous in their reception of the Pope, the crowds that looked for, gathered around and pressed in upon Jesus… These crowds speak to the fact that all hearts– all human hearts – are drawn to Jesus. If we would truly be Jesus’ disciple – taking up our cross, giving up our possessions, “hating” so that we might love Jesus above all – I wonder if we might not work more but allow ourselves to love more, to “let the Spirit ‘anoint’ our humanity,” to make our lives a gift of love?

I will leave us wit ha famous quote about love from Fr. Joe Whelan, a Jesuit formerly at Georgetown University.

Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with seizes your imagination, will affect everything.  It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.  Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.