Hey, you!

September 04, 2022

When he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” 

Of course you’ll know the story about Ukraine. The war is now on its 192^nd day – at least, if you ignore the invasion of Crimea in 2014, and the ongoing war in the Donbas region since that time. But the ‘big’ invasion of Ukraine that began this past February, is now 192 days old.

Now, I’m no scholar of eastern Europe  or military expert, but in those tense days in February as the Russian troops built up on the Ukranian border, I was not alone in thinking that if Putin was going to invade, it would all be over in about 48 hours, and that the Russian flag would be flying over Kiev in a matter of a few days.

The result, of course, has been very different. Russia has had many military setbacks over the last six months, and if Putin’s aim had ever been total control of Ukranian territory, he has come nowhere near to achieving it.

Now we are told that President Putin is a pious Christian, and a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church – and it is certainly true that his military aims have been strongly and uncritically championed by Patriarch Kiril of Moscow, in a manner that has sickened most of the watching Christian world. Luckily for him, the Orthodox churches of the east follow a totally different cycle of readings for Sunday worship, and so – if the President did attend the divine liturgy this morning – he will have been spared having to to listen to Jesus saying, “...what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able...to oppose the one who comes against him...”

Or, to put it more simply: “Hey, you! Work out what you’re doing...”

And some of you, at least, will know the story of 65 East Huron. I’m not thinking, at this precise moment, about the current issues that have arisen around the decision of the diocesan trustees to sell this site. But those of you with longer memories will know that almost twenty years ago, there was another plan to sell the office building and plaza to a developer.

The circumstances were different, as was the trustees’ attitude to co-operating with the cathedral, and in fact a deal was actually signed with a developer. If things had played out differently, there’d be a skyscraper next door that was to have included a Canyon Ranch spa.

The world economy, of course, had a different idea, for the contract was signed, as I understand it, just before the financial crash of 2007, and eventually the developer had to withdraw from the deal, forfeiting, I believe, a substantial deposit that had already been paid.

Not only am I not a military strategist, I’m also not an economist. But I think I remember fairly divided opinions between those who said the crash was unexpected and impossible to predict, and others who said they’d seen it coming. The developers, I guess, were in the first camp, and probably would have winced at hearing those other words of Jesus: Which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?

Or, in other words: “Hey, you. Do you know how to complete a project?”

And do you know the story from the prison cell? We’re not completely sure where the prison cell was. It might have been on the western shore of the Mediterranean in Caesarea Maritima, but it is also possible that it was in the heart of Rome. But that’s not the important question. The important question isn’t where the prison was, but who it was that was locked up there. And the answer to the question is none other than Paul, from whom we heard in our first reading.

And the story from this particular prison cell – at its heart – it’s not a story about whose army is bigger, and it’s not a story about how to build a tower – it’s a story about love. It’s a story that, at it’s heart, is a story about how to love your neighbor. A story about what it means to appeal to someone ‘on the basis of love’.

Now the particular drama that motivates Paul to set pen to paper concerns a young runaway slave, whom he has befriended. A young man whose life is in very grave danger, for he has been caught by the authorities, and – as was the system in the Roman empire – he’s been thrown in jail, prior to being sent back to his owner for punishment.

Now it’s a myth to think that all Roman slaves were treated harshly and abused. There were many instances of benevolent Roman citizens nurturing their slaves and helping them obtain their freedom. But nevertheless, the system was a rigid and hard system, and enslaved people had no rights, and were regarded as chattels more than they were viewed as people.

And thus it was it wasn’t just within the rights of the owner to execute a slave for running away – the system pretty much depended on that being the outcome. Without such an unyielding and ultimate penalty, the whole system might have collapsed, which would have caused major upheaval in the empire.

And so young Onesimus is in trouble. Young, useful Onesimus needs nobody to tell him that he is, in all probability, about to be sent home – to his death. And that’s what would have happened, almost certainly, were it not for two extraordinary pieces of good news.

The first piece of good news for Onesimus is the fact that his master, Philemon, has taken the extraordinary, rather dangerous, and very counter-cultural step of becoming a Christian. As Christianity started to spread and be noticed, it was treated with grave suspicion, and converts were in danger of social and legal exclusion and persecution – for Christian behavior demonstrated unexpected and different priorities to other citizens, and that often leads to trouble. And perhaps that, itself, gave Onesimus some hope, for he may have realized that these followers of ‘the Way’ were happy not to follow the normal conventions of society 

But the far more significant piece of Good News is that Onesimus has lived up to his name – which means ‘useful’ – there’s a bit of a pun going on here in the original Greek – and he has become extremely useful to another, more senior figure he has encountered in prison. A commanding and charismatic figure, who not only is also a Christian, but – so it turns out by an astonishing coincidence – is the Christian who helped convert Philemon. For Onesimus has had the uniquely wonderful fortune to find himself sharing a cell with none other than the apostle Paul, at some point on the long journey as a captive that we believe culminated in his eventual martyrdom in Rome.

Now, as he admits in a number of passages in his many letters, Paul is a sinful and fallen human, just like everyone else. And we cannot read or hear Paul’s words without being acutely aware both of the size and force of his ego, and his own self-interest in the fate of Onesimus. The young man has, very genuinely, become useful to Paul, and he doesn’t want to give up his increasing reliance on him.

And with rhetoric that is presumptuous and cheeky, despite claiming that he won’t ‘command you to do the right thing’, and that he will ‘say nothing about your owing me even your own self’, it is abundantly clear that Paul is, near enough, saying to Philemon, “Hey, you. I want your slave – free him and hand him over to me.”

But for all that, Paul can also see the bigger picture. The author of First Corinthians 13 – that most famous paean of praise to Love – he also understands that if the people who are the Body of Christ are truly called to Love thy neighbor, then it’s not just him saying, “Hey, you!” He knows that Jesus, too, would want to reach out to Philemon, and tell him that if he is going to finish the task he has been given properly, he needs to spare the life of Onesimus, and allow him to live out a life of Christian mission and ministry, under the tutelage of Paul the Apostle.

And so it is that Paul encourages Philemon to complete the story of Onesimus – to finish the story of Onesimus properly. For that is the call of Christ, as we begin to see in that curious gospel reading which sounds at first glance to so very straight-forward, that is the call of Christ – that in the greatest of work which any of us are called to do, we must make sure it is properly... and perfectly finished.

Unless, like me, you are very devoted to the delightful and profound monologues of Garrison Keillor set in his mythical hometown of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, you won’t, I think, know the story of ‘old man Lundberg’ - – a curmudgeonly old man whose lawn Keillor tells his listeners he used to mow for fifty cents many decades ago as a young teen.

And if he didn’t mow the lawn just right, the old man would shout out in a voice that, to a teenager, sounded angry, “Hey, you...” – or if schoolkids tried to take a short cut across his front yard, again, that firm and clear voice would ring out, “Hey, you!”

Using fiction to tell serious truth, Keillor uses this monologue to talk about the history of racism and ostracization that had divided Minnesotan communities a century ago, causing tensions between the German catholic settlers and the Norwegian Lutherans. Tensions, which for this only just fictional ‘news’ from Lake Wobegon, we are told was what had caused ‘old man Lundberg’ to be so terse. But, says the mature Keillor, speaking with the insights that come with growing up and discovering the pain of the world, “He wasn’t angry – just very definite.”

As the monologue reaches its gentle, understated climax, Keillor recounts that eventually the old man dies, at which point, so he tells us:

It came as a surprise when he left instructions that on his gravestone it was to be written Karl Landwehr [his original German last name] – Karl Landwehr 1901-77.... Love thy neighbor.

Fr Emo wasn’t surprised by that. He thought it was like Karl to put a commandment on his gravestone.

It is a commandment. It’s not a request; it’s not a suggestion; it’s not a proposal that we think about. What it is is God saying, “Hey - you – pay attention. Look around you. See some other people? Good. That’s why you’re here. It’s not just to improve the landscape”

But none of these stories, whether they are set in fictional Lake Wobegon, ancient Rome or modern-day Kiev, none of these stories make any sense unless and until we remind ourselves of the story that is the over-arching story of them all. The story that took palce one Friday afternoon on a hill just outside a city wall. The story of when God Incarnate used his very last word for the ultimate “Hey, you!” moment.

And for us to understand fully what happened on that day to end all days, which, in a demonstration of colossal understatement we call Good, we need to look beyond Luke’s narrative to his fellow evangelist John, who gives us a more succinct understanding of what it means to finish one’s work.

For, in John’s uniquely insightful account of the Passion, when Jesus knows that ‘all was now finished’, and after one last gesture to fulfil the Scripture, he utters his final word ‘it is finished’. Except that it isn’t really what he says.

In English, that phrase too easily sounds abject and broken. When you hear those words read on Good Friday in the US or in Britain, all too often it sounds like a bleak acknowledgement that his life is finished – and quite possibly his ‘work’ is finished as well – finished in just the wrong way, as a calamitous failure.

But when we look at what John actually wrote in the original Greek, we find just the same word with which Luke is playing in our gospel reading today – a word that speaks of completeness and perfection. A word which, if we must translate as finish, we should use in the sense of a master craftsman giving a beautiful table top a lovely ‘finish’ to make it perfect.

But, having listened to Garrison Keillor’s account of the death of ‘old man Lundberg’ and the clarity of his epitaph, perhaps we really need to understand that final word from the cross as being Jesus saying, one last time, “Hey, you!”

“Hey, you. This is what perfection actually means. This is the real ending. This is the clue to what it really means to love your neighbor.”

The old man wasn’t angry. He didn’t hate. He was just very definite. And that’s what Jesus is being when, in this curiously jumbled bit of editing at Luke’s hands, we find him talking about the need to hate one’s family, one’s possessions, even one’s own life. God is not a god of hate, and God in Christ is not telling us to hate or to be angry. Jesus is just having one of those ‘Hey, you!” moments to try and make sure that we understand that nothing, but nothing, can be so important as loving our neighbor and loving God.

That nothing can be important than carrying the cross, and showing the world how Christians are called to love all of God’s children, and that therefore nothing must get in the way of finishing this task completely and properly.

Young Frances Havergal, an English woman of rather pronounced evangelical outlook knew this well. She had quite a poetic streak, and in her most famous verse, implored God take her life, her moments, her days, her hands, her heart, her voice, her intellect, and her will. When you sing those words in a few minutes time, I hope that you and I will hear Jesus speaking through her, saying that clear and firm, “Hey, you!”, and that we will have the grace to really mean it as we sing, “Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for thee.” Amen.