Brief synopsis of the readings: I swear I’m not doing this on purpose, but once again our first reading comes from the book of Wisdom, a book that Catholics accept but Jews and Protestants don’t. It consists of a discussion of how we cannot imagine what God intends. “[T]he deliberations of mortals are timid, and unsure are our plans For the corruptible body burdens the soul.” The writer then admits that nobody knows God’s counsel “except you had given wisdom and sent your holy spirit from on high?” Our Gospel continues in Luke. Jesus, addressing the crowds, speaks in stern words. “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sister, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” Jesus then speaks to them about someone who wishes to construct a tower: he should first figure out how much it will cost to make sure he can afford it. Because if he doesn’t he runs the risk of beginning a building project that will stop halfway for lack of funds, and he will be ridiculed. In the same way, a king will not go into battle without knowing he has enough troops, but will instead negotiate for a peaceful end. Jesus finishes with this line: “In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

We all know that the word “Gospel” means “Good News” but there are times when it’s hard to believe that what we’ve just read is good. Sometimes good news is good because it makes us feel good. But sometimes good news is good because it calls us to a direction that differs from what we think, or what is easy.

Our first reading appears to run in the face of what we’ve imagined ourselves as reasonable people. I remember well, as a philosophy student at Boston College, taking a course in Logic. It was taught by a Jesuit priest who told us that faith can be approached by reason, and human reason at that. We constructed syllogisms, argued from premises to conclusions, and convinced ourselves that we could make anyone agree with us if they could only follow our reasoning. We were ready to be turned onto a world that only needed our brilliant logic to understand that we were right.

And that would have been fine if it had worked. I took this course in the fall of 1980. My Jesuit professor now looks down on us from Heaven and while I still respect him I can’t help but chuckle. His logic was good, even excellent, but in no way did it even approach God. Our best attempt to find universal truth through our ability to understand all of creation causes God more amusement than pride.

And with apologies to the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, not everything good comes from Greece. I admire our philosophical ancestors, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Without knowing about God and Jesus they recognized the existence of a reality beyond our sight. But while we should respect their genius we also need to recognize what the author of Wisdom tells us: our ability to reason begins the conversation. It does not end it.

As those who believe in God we need to recognize that our logic, no matter how clever, does not hold a candle to God’s wisdom. Understand that it does not mean we should abandon logic and follow blindly what others tell us. It means we should place logic where it belongs: it is part of our understanding of what governs our lives. It’s far from the whole.

And what I learned from studying both theology and philosophy is this: As faithful disciples of Jesus Christ we should push our reason and intellect as far as we can, and take seriously what truths have been revealed to us. I’m reminded of St. Anselm (1033-1109): For I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe-that unless I believe I shall not understand.

For much of our history we’ve looked askance at those who used logic at the expense of faith, and there’s reason for that. We all know people who loudly proclaim themselves atheists because they have explored the logic of faith and found it wanting. But I also think there is a danger is going too far the other way. Those who choose the faith they’ve been taught with no examination can be led in bad and even dangerous directions.

Many of us find ourselves listening to family members, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc. who tell us that the gates of Hell welcome otherwise good people who accept evolution, birth control, or modern medecine. They tell us it doesn’t matter whether we feed the hungry or welcome the stranger. We are left with the choice of blindly believing what defies simple logic or paying with our souls.

I think that’s the starting point of today’s Gospel. Jesus’ community was much more “tribal” than ours. In other words, the people you knew as children are likely still in your life as adults; your children know their children and your peers in old age have known you forever. There was no need for Facebook back then.

And a Jew of that time didn’t spend much time thinking about belief. What you were told as a child still held up in old age. You don’t work on the Sabbath, you don’t eat pork, and you await the Messiah.

But Jesus knew he was going to mess that up. While he was an observant Jew, he proclaimed a message that made no sense to most people: I am the Messiah. As he gathered disciples and travelled around it’s nearly impossible to know what they thought. But I think it’s entirely possible that many of them thought everyone in Israel would have the same response to Jesus and follow him. It made perfect, logical sense: we’ve been waiting all our lives for the Messiah. Now, in the middle of Roman occupation, here he is. What could be easier?

Well, we all know it was a difficult message. Jesus wasn’t proclaiming himself something logical. He wasn’t just the Messiah, he was something much, much more: he was the Redeemer. He knew that his existence went far beyond human logic and not everyone was going to be on board. When Jesus told his disciples that they had to hate their “father, mother, wife, children, brother, sisters, yes and his own life” he isn’t thinking of it in our modern understanding of being estranged. We all know families where one member (or several) no longer maintain contact and nobody knows how to contact them. This isn’t that.

Instead Jesus is foreshadowing a time where acceptance of him will cause families to disagree in a way that rarely happened before. And more than a disagreement, it will shake friendships and families to their core. Once Jesus appeared, there was no going back.

But does this mean in a conflict you should love God and hate your neighbor? Again, I don’t think so. But I do think it means that you should choose to follow God over following your neighbor.

I spoke earlier about how well meaning loved ones can insist we believe in things that simply aren’t true. But it can get worse. What if your cousin demanded that you join his cult? What if he told you that your salvation hung in the balance? What if this cult was anti Semitic or White Supremacist? What do you do?

I think these readings tell us to recognize that God is greater than our best logic, but it also doesn’t call us to blindly follow, no matter how much we love our cousin. We shouldn’t hate our cousin, but we should hate what he advocates. And if it means we can no longer have a relationship with someone we love, well, that’s the price we have to pay.

Because in the end, we love God above all.