One Choice

Pentecost 13, Proper 18

Fr. Tim Nunez

May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen

I’d like to take you down a culinary path this morning. Think about beans, specifically red kidney beans. If you eat them, when and how do you eat them? Many of us might first think of chili. Others a cold bean salad. Then there are refried beans, commonly served with Mexican food. In New Orleans, red beans and rice are the traditional meal on Mondays.

In our culture, we tend to think of beans as an ingredient in a recipe or a side dish. But for much of the world, beans are the main dish. They are inexpensive and nutritious. They are the primary source of protein and high in dietary fiber, as well as rich in essential minerals like iron and folate.

I never thought about that until my first mission trip to El Hogar, a school for the poorest of the poor in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. We stayed in a volunteer house on campus and ate what they brought us each meal. We ate what the kids ate. At breakfast, they brought us a pan of refried beans and a pan of tortillas. At lunch, they brought us a pan of refried beans and tortillas. At dinner, they brought us refried beans and tortillas.

Some mornings they brought us scrambled eggs as well. One evening we had chicken and rice. But every meal included beans and tortillas and most were only refried beans and tortillas.

El Hogar is a boarding school for orphans and other desperately poor children. When I say desperately poor, I mean mom lived in a box under a bridge, or in a shack with no electricity or running water, cooking on an open fire. Some of the kids came from a native Honduran reservation and had never eaten anything other than beans and tortillas, and had never seen electricity, until they came to that school. (Some of them had to walk 6 hours to get to a road to meet the school’s van.)

You may be wondering by now, does Fr. Tim know beans about today’s Gospel? Stay with me!

Working with those kids and their teachers, we saw that just as beans are central to their diet, their faith is central to their lives. Being desperately poor in a country with almost no social safety net, they leaned on God every day. They had been at risk, all of the time hunger, shelter - all the basics. And they were exposed to every sin of this world. They knew Jesus. They loved Jesus. And they relied on Jesus for everything.

In today’s Gospel, why are these large crowds following Jesus? Some undoubtedly are hoping for healing, others are anxious to see signs of God’s might through his miracles. Some are likely very interested in his teaching. Those reasons are all good as far as they go. But Jesus says very clearly that they do not go nearly far enough.

He uses strong language. Whoever does not hate, hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even life itself cannot be his disciple. Whoever does not hate life itself cannot be his disciple. Obviously, he’s using hyperbole to make a point. “Hate” here means put as secondary.

Count the cost of what you are building. Recognize that you are in a battle against sin and death that you cannot win. Taking up your cross means shouldering the sacrifices the life of following Jesus demands.

This echoes the absolute language in our Old Testament passage: God sets before us life and prosperity or death and adversity.  There isn’t any half way with God. Either he is your first love, your ultimate authority, your first priority, or he’s not.

Many, most, of us don’t have to rely on God like they do in Honduras and other poverty-stricken parts of the world. Most of us don’t miss meals or lack basic needs, but our budgets feel ever-tighter. And we’re busy, so it’s easy to focus on work and family. We’re good people, and isn’t that what God wants?

Yes, but he wants more. Yes, we should look at the faith of our brothers and sisters in Honduras and be reminded how much we need him. But then we are like those crowds. He demands more.

Is Holy Communion a religious observance or your encounter with Jesus to empower you for true life? Is Jesus a side dish in your life?

This isn’t so much about, “Try harder, do better.” Why does Jesus, the Prince of Peace, the Lord of Love, draw this firm line? Because he loves you. Because he loves you, he wants the very best for you. The very best is himself, and if you’re keeping Jesus as a side dish, if he’s not at the heart of your life, the ultimate vision and direction of your life, you are not receiving all that he has for you.

So we’ve got these beans. If you want to take one or two or three, please do, to remind you to put and keep the Lord first in your life. Look, this is hard for all of us, but it’s absolutely clear. We are working on this together, we are working on this individually.

AMEN