Putting God First

There are some tough words in today’s Scriptures – tough, challenging and in the case of the Gospel, very hard to understand (never mind live by) without reflection and interpretation. So here goes: at the heart of our readings today is one concept, the idea that our relationship with God is more important than any of our other relationships.

Let’s start with the Old Testament reading. The entire book of Deuteronomy is billed as Moses’ “farewell address” to the people of Israel as they were encamped on the east side of the Jordan River (in the modern-day nation of Jordan) preparing to invade the Promised Land (what is now the nation of Israel and the West Bank).

Moses had led the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt (by God’s power and under God’s direction) and continued to lead them during 40 years (“biblicalese” for a long time) of wandering in the wilderness between Egypt and the Promised Land – “the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” The people spent that long in the wilderness because they had refused to believe that God would lead them to success in settling the land and they had refused previously to invade it, so God sentenced them to continued exile until the “unbelieving generation” had died out.

During that generation, the Israelites made the transition from being a disorganized band of escaped slaves to being a people with established laws, norms and leadership, a people which was ready to become a nation. Moses was about to die – he would see the Promised Land only from afar and would be buried east of the Jordan. His stern advice to the people could be summarized as: “Remember who brought you to the dance.”

After years of long-term camping out, subsisting on God’s manna from heaven and water from scathed oases, the Israelites would cross over the Jordan River into a country which, compared to the Sinai peninsula or the East bank of the Jordan, offered almost unimaginable riches. They could become farmers, not nomads, and build or take over cities, not live in tents. They could have an army and, ultimately, a King, not just be vagrants who lived at the margins of society, and they would do all these things.

But economic prosperity coupled with military and political success would bring many temptations as well. The Israelites would be tempted to follow the local, pagan gods of the people already dwelling in the land instead of the Lord. The Israelites would be tempted to put their faith in their new economic status itself, or in their army, or in their political leaders, or in themselves as a nation, and say, “We did all this.” Yielding to such temptations, Moses said, would be disastrous. Many of them did yield to one or more or all of these temptations, and the results were disastrous.

The same temptations tempt us here in this country today – and all people of biblical faith (and others) around the world. Yes, it’s good to be patriotic, as the Israelites were, it’s good to work hard for one’s own prosperity and that of the nation, but if we put those good things ahead of our relationship with God, the results will be disastrous. Love God first and foremost and obey God first and foremost and let secondary loves flourish where they are meant to flourish – in the shade of what must be the mightiest tree in each of our gardens, our love for God.

Social and economic status and relationships are trumped by our relationships with God: this point is made again in today’s Epistle, the entire Letter of Paul to Philemon. Apparently, Paul is writing to a prosperous Christian named Philemon on behalf of a man named Onesimus, who seems to be a runaway slave owned by Philemon! (This is the usual assumption by interpreters, although it’s not 100% clear.) Apparently also, Philemon was either converted to Christianity by Paul or in some other way “owes Paul his own self”, as Paul declares.

Now, in reading this we should remember that Paul expected the End of the World and the return of Christ in glory to happen in his own lifetime, so he didn’t embark on a program of long-term social reform (like abolishing slavery), as some Christians did in the 19^th Century (and which needs to be done again today). He did, however, clearly see peoples’ social and economic status as of secondary importance – radical idea then, and now as well. As he wrote the Galatians, “In Christ there is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Those were, and are, radical words in a world (whether 1^st Century or 21^st Century) which tries to set up relationships of domination and submission based on ethnicity, economics, and/or gender. To say “Our relationship as fellow Christians makes us equal members of one community” was and is a radical idea.

It is also an idea which Paul tried to get his converts to adopt voluntarily themselves, not just as people following his orders. He wanted to convert their hearts and their wills as the proper approach, and also the one which would yield results if he was not present to give orders. So...Paul takes the audacious step (for the slave, certainly, as well as for the principle) of sending Onesimus back to his owner, Philemon, apparently with this letter in which Philemon is asked by Paul to welcome Onesimus as a beloved brother in Christ not as a slave. Our relationships with God are far more important than our social and economic relationships with each other, and therefore also our relationships with each other through our relationships with God transcend and transform our other relationships. If we’re Christians, in short, we don’t treat people in accordance with the minimal norms of the secular culture, or of the law; like the makers of Hebrew National Franks, “We answer to a higher authority.”

We don’t know Philemon’s response. But what would you have done if you had been Philemon? Philemon would have had to ignore the laws that affected runaway slaves, ignore great social pressure from his peers, endanger his ability to ever own other slaves and say goodbye to a chunk of his financial net worth to give his runaway slave his freedom.

The Gospel is the toughest Scripture of all today, but Jesus follows the same principle: our relationship with God trumps all our other relationships – even those with our nearest and dearest – parents, children, spouses.

The harshness of Jesus’ words can be explained as typical rabbinic hyperbole used to make a point: of course Jesus doesn’t literally want us to “hate” our family members or our own lives. He does want us to put God first, and to know this requires self-sacrifice on our part.

The reality is, if we do that, our love for others doesn’t shrink – it grows! And it grows because even peoples’ love for family members and spouses is designed to be secondary and can flourish most when it is – and can become warped when it is isn’t.

The best exposition I’ve every encountered of this is in a work of fiction by C.S.Lewis called The Great Divorce. This book is not about the dissolution of a marriage but about the great divide between Heaven and Hell. In Lewis’ imaginative fantasy, heaven is populated by those who love God, and Hell is filled with those whose number one love was themselves or some other love apart from and sometimes in opposition to love for God. In this fantasy there is also a sort of “mezzanine level” to which those who have gone to Hell may travel and meet with people who have gone to Heaven and consider loving God so that they, too, may leave Hell and experience bliss.

The most pertinent such meeting for reflecting on today’s Gospel is one between a mother and a son. This mother “loved” her son, oh yes, but in a way that eclipsed all other loves and therefore became warped. She wanted to be with him – to control him, really – and was furious with God because her son had gone to heaven! Two memorable remarks of hers are, “I don’t believe in a God who would separate a son from his mother” and – directed to her son – “If you really loved me” (ominous words, those) “You’d come and live with me in Hell.”

Now do Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel make sense? Because the son in this story loved God first, his other loves – like the one for his mother – had become stronger and purer, even to the point that he was willing to temporarily leave eternal bliss in an effort to convert his mother from her manipulative, megalomaniacal ways so that she might join him in heaven. That takes real love; plenty of people would have given an awful lot never to have to hear such speeches as that mother’s again.

Being a disciple takes discipline; it’s easy to fall into treating secondary loves like family, tribe, possessions, status or nation as our number one focus. The culture – not just here but around the world – pulls us in those directions. But if we strive to put our love of God first we will find our other loves grow, not weaken, whereas if we put another love first it can become warped itself and imperil other loves.

Therefore, as Moses said, “Let us choose life.”

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church