Are You Ready for Serious Discipleship? - Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you, friends, for this 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time. We're reading from the 14th chapter of Luke, and this is very serious spiritual business. We're talking, if you want to put it this way, very high-octane spirituality. Remember the story of the rich young man, this young kid full of, you know, good spiritual enthusiasm comes to Jesus, and, you know, what must I do to attain eternal life? And Jesus first speaks of the commandments, and the young guy says, you know, with confidence, and I believe him, I've kept all these from my youth. And then Jesus says, looking at him with love, mind you, well, are you willing to sell all you've got and give to the poor and follow me? And the young kid went away sad because he was living the spiritual life at a decent level, but he wasn't ready for the serious stuff. Think of a kid that's showing promise in football and the coach recognizes he plays the basics well.

0:58 and then he wants to draw him into the really serious playing of the game, the physical demands and then the strategic thinking and all that that's required to play the game at a really high level. Or a young kid that's good at the basics of piano and he can even master high-level pop songs and a little Gershwin and the teacher goes, okay, now maybe you're ready for Chopin, for Beethoven and so on. Well, there's something similar in the spiritual order. And the trouble is, a lot of us sinners, we're kind of satisfied with low-level spirituality. What I mean is, we're like the rich young man. Hey, you know, I'm a decent person, and I'm not killing people, and I'm not stealing, and I'm not committing adultery, and I don't lie too often. I'm following the commandments. I go to Mass, you know, pretty regularly. Well, great, you know, great, nothing wrong with that, because the commandments are the basic level, if you want.

1:55 It's the rudiments of the spiritual life. But when the church gives this challenge, it's born of Jesus, of course, this challenge to live it really seriously, to move into the upper levels of the spiritual life, most of us balk, not ready for that. It's a little too much. Well, with that in mind, look at this extraordinary reading. And let me say just at the outset, Resist the temptation to domesticate this, or think it away, or it's always just symbolic talk. Listen to Jesus now. If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Okay, now, put yourself in this place, the crowd hearing this from Jesus.

2:55 They recognize him. Sure, he's a rabbi, he's a spiritual teacher, he's a miracle worker, and they're very intrigued by him. But then he lays out, to use Bonhoeffer's terms here, the cost of discipleship. anyone comes to me and wants to be my disciple without heeding father and mother wife and children brothers and sisters even his own life he cannot be my disciple now look i know i've heard 100 sermons on this and have read the relevant text that will stress that in jesus aramaic this language of like hate and love was not so much of either or it was a sense of prioritization okay There's truth enough to that. But see, I don't want us to soften this language too much. This is meant to be a kind of shock therapy.

3:50 You're taking discipleship seriously? Well, here's what it entails. Now, let me try to parse this out for you. I think there's a more positive and a more negative way maybe we could assess this. First of all, do we sinners have the tendency to make of very good things the ultimate good? No, I mean, father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, good things? Well, of course. And the society of Jesus' time, the Jewish society of the first century, very family-centric culture. Are these good relationships? Of course they are. Of course they are.

4:34 However, they're not the supreme good. The sumum bonum. Only God is the supreme good. What's the first commandment? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength. who comes first see and this is where everybody it gets challenging who comes first it can't be my mother it can't be my father it can't be my brothers or sisters and it can't even be my own life that comes first god must come first so what if god's making a demand that's at odds with what my father and mother want. God is a supreme good. God makes a demand in my life that means I'm alienated from my brothers and sisters. Well, okay. Precedent. God makes a demand that requires that I surrender my life. Now, all the martyrs, all the great martyrs faced exactly that decision.

5:48 what do you decide oh i hope i never come to that yeah i know i know we all do but if you did what would you decide unless you hate your mother and father see interpret that as unless you are able to put your mother and father second to the demand of god you can't be my disciple unless you put your love for your brother and sister second to your love for God, you cannot be my disciple. Now, think about a parent. Unless you can put your love for your child second to your love for God, now revisit that awful story in the book of Genesis when God says to Abraham, you know Isaac, your beloved, your son, Isaac, the son of the promise, you know Isaac.

6:45 whom you love. I want you to sacrifice him to me. Is it God being cruel? No, it's the same lesson. It's the same spiritual exercise, if you want. Do you love me more than you love even your beloved child? Unless that's the case, you're not ready to be my follower. You see what I mean, everybody, when I say this is high-octane stuff. This is for the very spiritually serious. Now, I said there were two levels. That's a more positive-y one. But now move it to that second, more negative level. And keep in mind what I mentioned to you last Sunday about pride. So first thing is, can I put God above even these highest goods? But can I also recognize the ways that pride has perverted and twisted all of these relationships?

7:44 Out of self-regard, I mean, can I start using my mother and father for my own benefit? Can I manipulate them as part of my, you know, scheme of life? Or think of parents that live vicariously and in a manipulative way through their children. My brothers and sisters, do I involve them in my own kind of prideful, egotistic games?

8:10 Can you see how everybody, in the measure that we do all that, we should hate these relationships. I'm not saying in themselves they're bad. I'm saying in the measure that they've been twisted by pride, they become spiritually toxic. I should hate them. I should repudiate them. See, very often in the spiritual order, people are enthusiastic about following the Lord, but they're not willing to let go of the twisted, weird parts of their life. They're not willing to let go of the prideful way that I manipulated and abused people around me. I don't want to let go of that. again, I'm using a dumb example, but it always helps me. If you're learning the proper golf swing, well, all of us bad golfers have this bad swing in place. We're doing it the wrong way.

9:11 Everything about our swing is off. You have to hate that swing, right? You have to hate it. You have to repudiate it. You can't make compromises with it. Like, well, I'll try to fit a little bit of that into my, no, no, that's a bad swing. It's been serving you very poorly all these years, and you've got to go through the painful transition to a whole new way of striking the ball. Compromising, playing games, I'll do a little bit of this, a little bit of that, it's not going to work. You see how you have to hate the ways that your relationships and your style has crippled you spiritually. If you're not, you're not ready for the Lord Jesus. You're not ready for real discipleship. This is, you know, in the Old Testament terminology, Israel hankering for the flesh pots of Egypt, right?

10:06 Oh, if only we were back in Egypt, even though we were slaves in Egypt, but oh, if only we were back there, we had enough to eat. Come on, you're not ready for the promised land if that's the way you're thinking. You know, oh, let me go back to these old manipulative habits and these old prideful ways that I related to people around me. No, no, you have to hate. You have to hate all of that if you're willing to follow the Lord Jesus. Now, look how he sums this up. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. I know I know look I'm a sinner you're sinners and so this is a really hard talk they they knew about crosses carrying the cross what the cross meant and we hold it up in front of us all the time the cross of Jesus what does it mean it means I'm I'm stripped of of wealth I'm stripped of pleasure I'm stripped of of power I'm stripped of honor, of all these things that my prideful self wants. I'm stripped of all these things, listen, that I have tended to make into absolute goods, right? Hey, what's my life all about?

11:31 And you know, you need a really good spiritual director or confessor that will help you with this. And I don't mean someone that's going to tickle your ears and tell you what you want to here. I mean someone that's really good and really clear. He will say, what is your life really about? Oh, it's about serving God. Really? I want an honest answer. I want a searching moral inventory of your life. What's it about? What do you get out of bed every morning in order to accomplish? Now, if we sinners are honest, we'll probably say some version of wealth or power or pleasure or honor or self-protection, you know, the old prideful self. unless you're willing to take up your cross, and your cross means being stripped of all of that, those aren't your ultimate goods.

12:28 And all those weird, twisted ways that the prideful self has used those things and manipulated others through them, all of that you have to hate if you want to follow the Lord Jesus. um hard stuff uh-huh a cost of discipleship you bet you know my generation got a lot of the kind of easy peasy spirituality you know god is love and just you know try to be kind and be a good person and well yeah i mean nothing wrong being a good person i'm all in favor of being a good person but that's the that's the rudiments everybody that's the basis of the spiritual life. Serious stuff, the high-octane stuff, look at this, Luke chapter 14. Unless you hate all these things, unless you can put them in a lower place, unless you can affirm God as the supreme good in your life, you're not ready to follow the Lord. And so, you know, don't Don't domesticate this, as I say.

13:38 Let the deep, deep challenge of these words seep all the way down into your soul. I'm speaking to myself, into my soul, right? If we're serious about being disciples of the Lord Jesus.