I’m guessing that most of you have heard of the Iditarod, the annual sled race in Alaska where teams of sled dogs compete to cover the almost 1,000 miles between Anchorage and Nome. It has been run yearly since 1973. Let me tell you the story of the event that inspired the race. It was December of 1924 and the town of Nome was suffering from an outbreak of diphtheria, a respiratory disease which at the time was quite deadly. This bacterial disease caused blockages to build up in the throat and mouth, making it extremely difficult to breath or eat. The good news was, there was an anti-toxin developed in animal hosts that greatly reduced the deadliness of the disease. There was only one problem: Nome was out of it.
At the time, the major Alaskan towns were accessible by train, but smaller towns like Nome didn’t have any connection to the railroads, and in good weather could only be reached by plane or boat. But in the whiteout conditions of the Winter of 1924, the worst in almost two decades, this tiny town was almost completely cut off. Ice prevented boats from getting there and the winter storms grounded the small open cockpit airplanes that could’ve reached them.
Fortunately, there was still one way to reach Nome: sleds driven by men called “mushers” and pulled by teams of dogs. These sled teams were normally tasked with delivering mail to the smaller towns, but in this emergency, they were called upon by the Alaskan government to help transport life-saving diphtheria antitoxin to Nome. Over 5 days, 20 mushers and 150 sled dogs took the shipment between relay points, facing total white-out conditions at times, and braving temperatures of 49 degrees below zero. The fact that they made it to Nome in 5 days is even more impressive, considering that the trail they raced across with the live-saving medication typically took three to four weeks for a dog-sled team to complete.
Leonard Seppala and his lead dog Togo covered 149 kilometers, braving the Tundra and crossing the frozen Northern sound. The final team, mushed by Gunnar Kaasen and his lead dog, Balto, made it to Nome under almost complete white-out. Gunnar said that he couldn’t even see his dogs and relied solely on Balto’s sense of smell to get them there. Some of you may remember the animated movie, Balto, that is based on this story. Thanks to the heroics of these men and their dogs, the 1,400-person town only lost five people to diptheria.
Stories like this truly inspire me. They show the power of a team working together toward a common goal. These dogs thrive in subzero conditions and are able to run for hours on end without stopping. There is something incredible about how they work together in crazy conditions to get to their destination.
Today in our Gospel passage, Jesus gives us a teaching which is extreme at face value. He tells us that unless we love him more than father, mother, or our children, then we are not worthy of Him. One might be tempted to think, “Who does this guy think he is?” And that is actually exactly the point. This type of teaching from Jesus pushed his Apostles back then, and each of us today, to ask that fundamental question: who is this Jesus and what is He inviting us to do? If we just looked at Jesus as a wise earthly teacher, a type of guru, His demands today would make Him both a narcissist and sadist. He wants us to love Him above even our family members and to voluntarily suffer by picking up our cross daily. What kind of life is that? If He was just a human teacher, the answer would be easy: a miserable life that only a crazy person would accept. I love Bishop Robert Barron, he’s one of my favorite teachers. But if he started saying, “You must love me more than all others,” I would probably assume that he had gone off the deep end.
When we realize that Jesus wasn’t just a guru, but God-made-man, the Savior of each and every one of us, His demands start to make a lot more sense. Right after setting that seemingly crazy standard, Jesus says:
“Whoever receives you receives me,
and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet
will receive a prophet’s reward,
and whoever receives a righteous man
because he is a righteous man
will receive a righteous man’s reward.
And whoever gives only a cup of cold water
to one of these little ones to drink
because the little one is a disciple—
amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.”
First, Jesus reminds the Apostles that their mission is to bring Him to people–the Apostles are meant to draw people to Jesus so He can draw them to His Father. Jesus is reminding them that His origin is from Heaven–He has come from the Father and wants all of us, through Him and in the Holy Spirit, to return to the Father. To drive this point home, he mentions three examples of people receiving a reward for receiving another person. He mentions a person receiving a prophet, a righteous man, and a “little one” who is a disciple. What do each of those people have in common? They are all directed toward God–a prophet speaks God’s truth to others, the righteous man is righteous because of God, and the disciple is one who follows God. Each of these people is one who, by his or her relationship to God, draws other people to God. So receiving them means receiving God, which is the ultimate reward!
This is what happened with the woman in Shunem, who graciously received the prophet Elisha. We hear about her in the first reading. She made the world’s first Airbnb for the prophet Elisha on her roof! She received Elisha because he was a prophet, so she was healed of her childlessness. This miracle was a way of the Lord God showing that she had drawn close to Him. In her generosity to the prophet of God, she herself was drawn closer to the Lord God.
The point is this: we are called to receive others rather than possess them. Jesus points to prophets, righteous people, and humble disciples because each of them has his or her heart set on God alone. Their goal is to remain with God now and enjoy Him forever in the life to come. Because of that, they avoid being possessive of others and instead point them to the Goal of their hearts.
So now we can understand better the point of Jesus telling us that He must be first in our hearts. It’s not as though we aren’t supposed to love those closest to us in this life, but that we are called to love them in a way which isn’t possessive. Jesus is reminding us that as God-with-us, He is the One worthy to fully possess each of our hearts. When we allow this to happen, it gives us the ability not to possess, but to receive others in love, so that we might together face the One who is our Goal. If our love of others is overly possessive, it distracts us from our Goal.
Think of the image of those dog teams pulling their sled through crazy conditions. Only by all being focused on the same goal were they able to move forward. If they had focused only on each other, the sled wouldn’t have gone anywhere. It was only by being directed toward that common goal that they worked well together.
This is the love that Jesus points us toward in all of our relationships–a love which doesn’t focus primarily on each other, but which draws us together toward the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This allows all our other relationships to aid us in reaching our destination: the eternal embrace of love for which we all were created and for which Jesus endured the cross. Having our hearts possessed by Jesus allows us to endure the sufferings of this life and to pick up our cross daily as Jesus instructs us, because it connects us to the death defeating love that allowed Him to endure the Cross for our sake. His love helps us to keep going even when things are the most difficult, helping us to do things even more heroic than those dog sled teams years ago.
+ Father, we praise and thank you for the great love of your Son and His indescribable love for us. Jesus, help us not to be afraid to allow your love to possess our hearts fully. Holy Spirit, help us to surrender to the Lord’s love so that we can be people that draw others toward Heaven. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen. +