Does Jesus Really Want Us to Hate? Luke 14:25-33 15 Pentecost - September 9, 2007

No, He Invites Something Much Harder Indeed! 

A story is told of a pastor who had a parking spot reserved in front on the church office.  It was labeled “Pastor.” However, other people kept parking there.  So more labels were added – like “Reserved for Pastor.”  But people kept parking there, so another sign was added: “Thou shalt not park here!”  But even that didn’t work.  So they finally put up a sign that read:  “If you park here, you have to give Sunday’s sermon.”  That did it. 

Today’s text from Luke 14 is one of those readings you hope falls on a Sunday you’re on vacation.  But here it is, and it is Rally Day – a day we’d like to be extra user-friendly and inviting.  Instead, the Gospel challenges us with what is called one of Jesus’ hard sayings. 

I like what is said about these verses in a book called The Five Gospels:

The severity of this saying can only be understood in the context of the primacy of filial relationships. Individuals had no real existence apart from their ties to blood relatives. If one did not belong to a family, one had no real social existence [like widows and orphans – without a family tie, you were nothing]. Jesus is confronting the structures that governed his society at their core. (p. 353)

What’s key here is hearing this Gospel the way it was intended.  Jesus often spoke in hyperbole, exaggeration.  The early century was accustomed to story; to embellishments; to surprise.  The stronger the message, the more extravagant the image or story to get the people’s attention!

The organized system of family, or clan or tribe – whatever established your social grouping – was given highest importance! Your place within society was inherited.  No matter how hard you tried, if you were from a particular family or clan, you wore that family label whether to your advantage or not.   It didn’t matter if you had different abilities, aspirations, or attractions, if you were born into a class or grouping that was your lot and your future.  You were even expected to marry within the same.   

This still happens today sometimes.  Some stay within the groupings they are born in.  But the larger issue being confronted by Jesus has to do with identity.  Jesus recognized that our true identity and worth comes from God and not from our social standing.  This was a radical thought.

Jesus’ vision about this was nurtured from his earliest days.  Even as a child he delighted in studying the scriptures that pointed to God.  As he savored the scriptures, the Spirit of the living God came upon him – just as it had come upon him at his baptism.  And he lived his life in response to the movements and urgings of this Spirit.  The Spirit assured him that God was with him in the midst of life; and not only with him, but with every person and creature created by God. 

Jesus saw worth in everyone.  He valued little children, crippled people, the poor, the blind, the lame, the rich and the rulers, the women and the men.  As a Spirit imbued person he did not see people according to limiting categories – categories that valued some and discarded others.  

This was the sort of vision Jesus brought to his ministry – so when the crowds gathered around him in their fixed social groupings of the wealthy over here and the poor over there; the women denied value, the lepers forced to live alone outside the city, the children pushed away; the lame and blind shamed as guilty or they wouldn’t have been that way, Jesus startled the people towards a new possibility.  And startle them he did. 

Hear again today’s reading, “Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus and he turned and said to them:  “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.”  Well, on first hearing, who in their right mind would want to be his disciple? 

Not me.  I love my husband and I don’t feel a bit guilty about it – or about loving my children or my brother or sister and I didn’t hate my parents either.  So, it seems I’ve failed the test of discipleship.  Except, that Jesus’ language was Aramaic, not English and he wasn’t meaning the emotion we mean by “hate”.  He was speaking instead against being attached in ways that say our identity and value is determined by anything other than God.

Jesus isn’t asking us to not love each other.  All we have to do to know that is to look at how he lived his life.  He treated his mother with great tenderness even when he was dying – calling his friend John to care for her as he would care for his own mother.  We see how he wept at the death of his friend Lazarus.  We see how he allowed children to come to him even when others discouraged their coming.  He surprised people there too, saying: “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them.”

In his book with a startling title: Hating Mothers as the Way to Peace, Stanley Hauerwas works with this difficult passage from Luke 14.  Hauerwas talks about how Christians don’t like to think of ourselves as violent people.  In fact, he suggests, we think of ourselves as rather peace loving.  And we probably usually are, except when the welfare of our loved ones comes into question.  Then it is not uncommon that both male and female among us become like mother bears.  Mess with our loved ones, and watch out! 

In that sense, Hauerwas says, our loves – our special attachments – are what cause us to become violent.  And here it is that Jesus suggests another way.  What Hauerwas sees Jesus doing in today’s Gospel is creating a way of living in which our loved ones and humanly established loyalties don’t become our excuse; permission to become violent. 

Jesus didn’t become violent when he saw his mother grieving.  He didn’t lash out at his accusers to protect her from grief.  Instead, he expanded the family.  In the world Jesus came to introduce us to, love is never an excuse for violence. 

In our world, if two children are at risk in a given situation – and one of them is our child – we can pretty much guess which child most people will rush to protect.  Most Americans grieve more over American causalities of war than over the innocent children of other lands.  But both equally break the heart of God.  Jesus says in the reign of God all children are our children. 

All mothers are our mothers.  All the challenged people are as beloved as the able-bodied.  All the poor are as precious as the rich.  But rather than bringing the house down with delight over this news, Jesus was crucified.  Messing with the system is risky! 

My new favorite Walter Brueggemann book is called The Bible Makes Sense.  It says that the Bible’s central invitation is to embrace newness – newnesses we have quit hoping for out of doubt that God can really bring about such amazing newness this side of heaven.  Jesus’ words today in Luke 14 challenge us to start hoping again.  They startle us to see the possibility of a new paradigm where true community is possible, though living it might, as it was for Jesus, be risky business.  

It is so ingrained in us to feel if we can just care for our own we’ve cared enough.  Sometimes it seems that’s all the energy and love we have, until we see someone else reaching out where society says they don’t need to – and it inspires us to the bone.

I’ve seen wonderful examples of this expansive love in this community of God’s people – love based on compassion and valuing of the other even across time-honored barriers. 

• I see it in the numbers of families bringing in foster children. 

• I see it in the people who no longer have young children of their own, but who continue to engage with the other children in our midst – as if they are their own.  

• I see it in our home-bound being served by Eucharistic Ministers. 

• I was reminded of this expansive community yesterday as people, including Jewish friend, gathered to celebrate Ione’s life. 

• I saw it yesterday as well at the carwash raising funds for a man in Nepal who needs surgery. 

• I see it in how one couple adopted as family a woman whose husband and children have all preceded her in death.

• I see God’s new vision of community in our companionship with the people of Rwanda and their children whose education we are sponsoring. 

God covenants with us that we might be true community for God and for each other – surely in the age to come, but also now, by God’s grace and God’s lead.  If we let God lead and learn from Jesus to follow the urgings of the Spirit, such community begins even now.  And Jesus means now! 

Amen.

+Pastor Peg Schultz-Akerson, to the glory of God
Faith Lutheran Church, Chico, California