What Binds You?
- davidwperk
- Jun 9
- 7 min read
Devotional Reflection, Monday, June 9, 2025
The Week of Pentecost
The Rev. David W. Perkins, Th.D.
Key phrase for reflection in today’s Gospel reading:
26‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. 27Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
(You will find the full text of todays Gospel reading at the end of this reflection.)
Daily Office Lectionary readings (BCP, 968)
AM Psalm 25; PM Psalm 9, 15
Deuteronomy 4:9-14; 2 Corinthians 1:1-11; Luke 14:25-35
Today we celebrate the Feast of Columba (See below.)
David’s Reflections
Sue Monk Kidd, in her work The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, relates a ritual she and several others shared. They each bound their wrists together with twine and asked the question, “What is it that binds you?” Then, they separated to reflect on that question, reassembled and broke the twine, thus freeing their wrists and symbolizing the breaking of the bonds that held them.+
Today’s Gospel confronts us with that “wrist-binding question,” What binds you? Jesus’ words feel harsh and evoke anxiety and fear. True enough, “hate” here refers not to an emotional rage but to a deliberate choice to exercise a radial preference. Love and hate here speak of radical commitment that relegated everything other than the subject of commitment (Jesus in this case) to a place of lesser loyalty.
Can I relegate my children to a place of lesser loyalty than my primary loyalty, which is my relationship with God? (Since my divorce in 1992, my children, Ben and Katie have been my family. Now they, their spouses and their three children are my family.) Are these two antithetic? Or, is my loyalty to my children actually contained with the larger embracing circle of my loyalty to God?
When wrestling with the commitment to leave Atlanta and serve as start-up priest for what was to become All Souls in Richmond, Virginia, the sense grew that these two loyalties conflicted. I had never lived that far from my children (550 miles). And, except for the first three years immediately after the divorce, I had been quite near them or they had lived with me. The decision to separate from my spouse, Nancy, proved excruciating and the distance plagued them and me for those first three years. They both encouraged me to go to Richmond, which helped immensely.
My commitment to them did lie within the circle of that all-encompassing commitment to God and to Christ’s mission in the world. I was not choosing against them; rather, I was acting in a way that freed both them and me. Had I violated my sense of God’s call to remain near them, I would have become twine that bound their wrists, an example of a kind of enmeshed attachment that they might well find themselves emulating with others. And, our relationships would have suffered from such a breach of integrity.
Commitments do shift and change. In 1995, being committed to my children involved resigning an associate professorship at a college in New Orleans and taking a high school teaching job to be with them after the divorce had distanced us geographically. That decision involved gut-wrenching wrestling with attachments, just as did the decision to move away from them seven years later.
We are safe in Jesus’ love to put our commitment to God in the center of our circle of loyalties and to move all other commitments toward the circumference of that circle. Jesus’ love will never fail us; our needs for connection and community will be met. Ben, Katie, and I seem to have grown closer in the intervening years. We treasure our times together and stay in close touch by email and phone. And, they both have breathing room relationally. And, now that both are married and parenting, their primary relational loyalties have shifted from me to their spouses and children.
And, a few years ago, I had the opportunity to reverse geography by leaving my Georgia home and buying a home fourteen miles from Katie and six hours closer to Ben. Retirement has set me free to live where family needs dictate.
Recently, God graced me with a significant relationship, one that promises to endure. With children in their 40’s and grandchildren finishing high school and in middle school, this new relationship becomes part of that same dance of Christ at the center and all else dancing in harmony at the periphery. We both serve Episcopal churches while maintaining a long-distance relationship. What might sound complex on the surface actually has unfolded into a grace-filled space for us all.
Commitment to Christ requires a radical intentionality. Just why ARE we here, and just why DO we live each day? What binds us that constricts our breathing space and our freedom to go anywhere, say anything, or do anything to serve Christ’s mission of love and service in the world? Will we measure the costs and maintain the commitments?
Will we keep Christ at the center of that circle and allow the web to extend out from that commitment to all others within the circle, allowing the center to determine the whole? We would then be living in genuine peace, at one with God, at one with our primary relationships, and at one with our own being. We would then be entrusting ourselves to God more fully, knowing that God cares about us and our relationships.
Or, will our circle of commitment be de-centered by relationships with others, with things, with dreams, or with compulsions and addictions? That circle would be chaotic and amorphous. Such salt no longer seasons or arrests decay, according to our Gospel (verses 34-35 below). Such a circle would be devoid of wholeness and peace.
What binds you? Lift those bindings up to God and seek divine wisdom and strengthening of your will to live into greater freedom and deeper trust.
+Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), p. 164.
Collect of the Day, Pentecost Sunday
Almighty God, on this day you opened the way of eternal life to every race and nation by the promised gift of your Holy Spirit: Shed abroad this gift throughout the world by the preaching of the Gospel, that it may reach to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Today we celebrate the Feast of Columba, abbot of Iona and missionary (died 9 June 597 CE).
Collect of the Feast of Columba
O God, who by the preaching of your servant Columba caused the light of the Gospel to shine in Scotland: Grant, we pray, that, remembering his life and labors, we may follow the example of his zeal and patience; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
A Collect for the Renewal of Life
O God, the King eternal, whose light divides the day from the night and turns the shadow of death into the morning: Drive far from us all wrong desires, incline our hearts to keep your law, and guide our feet into the way of peace; that, having done your will with cheerfulness while it was day, we may, when night comes, rejoice to give you thanks; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, 99)
Of the Holy Angels
Everlasting God, you have ordained and constituted in a wonderful order the ministries of angels and mortals: Mercifully grant that, as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your. appointment they may help and defend us here on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP, 251)
A Prayer for Light
Almighty God, we give you thanks for surrounding us, as daylight fades, with the brightness of the vesper light; and we implore you of your great mercy that, as you enfold us with the radiance of this light, so you would shine into our hearts the brightness of your Holy Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, 110)
A Collect for Mission
O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you; bring the nations into your fold; pour out your Spirit upon all flesh; and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, 100)
Daily Office Gospel, Luke 14:25-35
25 Now large crowds were travelling with him; and he turned and said to them, 26‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. 27Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 28For 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? 29Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, 30saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” 31Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. 33So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.
34 ‘Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?* 35It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure heap; they throw it away. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’
Daily Prayer Offices in The Book of Common Prayer
Morning Prayer, Rite 2, page 75, Book of Common Prayer
Noonday Prayer, p. 103, Book of Common Prayer
Order of Worship for Evening (Vespers), p. 109, Book of Common Prayer
Evening Prayer, Rite 2, page 115, Book of Common Prayer
Compline (Night Prayer), Page 127, Book of Common Prayer
Daily Devotionals, page 136, Book of Common Prayer
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