13 Pentecost, Cp18, September 8, 2019
Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Psalm 1
Philemon 1-20 Luke 14:25-33
How does this poor preacher deal with the totally hospitable words of Jesus one week and the next week have to preach on the seeming starkly hostile words of Jesus?
Lord, have mercy upon me! Now I have to go through excruciating verbal contortions to tell everyone that these words don't really means what they seem to mean. And certainly, I often would censor these words in my family service because I did not want children to hear them.
One of the subtle ways to overturn the literal meaning of these words is through the intonation and inflexion of one's voice when one reads them. You may have noticed the "strange" way that I read the Gospel. When one writes, one cannot impart the meaning that comes through the intonations we know when we speak. If the words of Jesus started as an oral tradition and not a written tradition, one could understand that some meaning is lost when spoken words are rendered in written words. In written words the actual context can be lost or not known. But with an ironic reading, an entirely different meaning is rendered.
Imagine a question to Jesus: "Jesus, do I have to leave and hate my family if they don't agree with me following you?" Jesus: "You must hate your family and take up your cross to follow me? Tell me what you really think about me. If you think following me is really bad for your family then perhaps you shouldn't follow me." Do you see how an ironic reading of the words of Jesus impart a completely different meeting?
How else might we appropriate these stark words of Jesus?
First, remember that every word in the Bible is not always immediately applicable to everyone at all times. Most of the words of the Bible are not immediately applicable to us most of the time. But because we call the Bible the word of God, we make the exaggerated assumption that they are all applicable to us all of the time. If one's father, brother, sister or child were a follower of Jesus and did not prevent one from being a disciple, why would one have any reason to hate them at all? Remember we practice the reading of all of the words of the Bible, even if they are not immediately applicable to us. That is very important to remember in our reading of the Bible.
Second, in a textual tradition words can become abbreviated presentation and not literal meaning. So what if the abbreviated presentation were paraphrased in this way: "If you want to be my disciple you must hate the attempts of your family to prevent you from following me. In fact, you must hate your old world views which prevent you from following new insights for the betterment of your life." The abbreviated presentation of the words seem much harsher than the expanded contextual fullness of meaning.
Next, why would the early Gospel writers perhaps understand the words of Jesus in a different way?
Well, the Jesus Movement was a new paradigm for people of faith. As a new paradigm of faith, it caused a sociological revolution among many families.
If you were a Gentile follower of Jesus, you had to leave your family who were devoted to the gods and goddesses and their Temple complexes. If you were a Jewish follower of Jesus as Messiah who began to openly worship and fellowship with Gentiles who did not keep the Jewish ritual purity rules, you had to leave your synagogue family who would have been deeply disappointed in you for leaving these esteemed and sacred traditions. People were used to declaring curses or anathemas on those who left their communities as "traitors."
The Gospel words of Jesus, reveal that the truth of religion in families is the truth of many big family fights.
Growing up in the 1950's, our country was very religiously divided between Protestants and Catholics. If a Catholic converted to a Protestant community, there was hell to pay in the family. If one had a mom of Italian heritage, one might be deprived of her best pasta meal. If a Protestant converted to Catholicism, one's family would pray about one's soul being bound for hell.
In the 1960's things began to loosen up. People began to be nomadic; they moved all over. They began to fall in love with people not in their faith communities, and faith communities had to be more hospitable, and thankfully we have seen more religious tolerance begin to prevail. But it wasn't always case.
How many families hired professional de-programmers to kidnap their children who had gone to live in a Hare Krishna Temple or a hippie Children of God sect? What happens to an Amish person who leaves the community or misbehaves? They are shunned.
All religions which are supposed to friendly and hospitable but because such passionate commitment is enjoined, it means when loyalties are changed, feelings can be hurt and deep passionate recrimination can result.
The Jesus Movement resulted in a religious sociological revolution and families and old values were challenged and upset.
In the communities led by Paul, it was proclaimed that in Christ there was neither male nor female, Greek nor Jew, slave of free.
In Paul's letter to Philemon, Paul was reminding Philemon that even though by Roman law he was the owner of the slave Onesimus and that under that law he could punish this runaway slave, since Philemon and Onesimus were a part of this new community of equality in Christ, Philemon was to treat Onesimus as his brother. Paul, going against all Roman law of punishment for runaways slaves, said that Philemon was to receive Onesimus back into his household as a brother in Christ. Philemon had to hate his old self, he had to take up his cross, he had to follow Christ in order to honor what it meant to be in the community of Jesus Christ.
The oracle of the Risen Christ as it came to the early churches used the phrase of taking up one's cross as a catch phrase for the mystical experience of dying in identity with Christ on the cross to one own selfish self in order to be raised to express a new self. The words of Jesus for "life" in our Gospel is the word "psuche" or "soul life" or "one's ego life." One has to continually hate or die to one's soul life so that one can continually renew one's mind in the new insights we have in our mystical experience with Christ. This is the very literal meaning of the Greek word for repentance; a metanoia, a renewal of one's mind.
The last thing that I would like to bring to language regarding the Gospel reading is the punchline which governs the entire Gospel unity. The punchline is to plan and be prepared always for the future. Did you think that following Jesus would not mean any changes in your life? A person who builds a tower has to plan to build the tower, to purchase material, have a good plan enough money to complete the project. If a king is going to war, he has to know the strength of the opposition to decide whether diplomacy is to be preferred to actual battle. If wise probability planning is needed in our natural lives; it is also needed in our spiritual lives. We have to plan for the changes which come because we obey God.
The Jesus Movement caused a sociological revolution in the decades after Jesus. The Gospel writers were telling their communities in the name and words of the Risen Christ, "Get use to change. Your loyalty to Christ may bring opposition from people with whom you once lodged."
So change in the renewal of our mind requires hating and dying to our former states of our soul life; and it means hating the forces of resistance which would hinder us in making significant creative advance in our lives.
What is the Gospel? It means creative advance in our lives. And if we are going to make creative advance in our lives we are going to have to "hate" or die to the states of our former soul lives which are the repetitive patterns that have locked us into bad thinking and behaviors.
Let us not be afraid of the exaggerated words of the Risen Christ from the record of the early church. Let us always be ready to be renewed in our minds when the insights for creative advance come to us from the Risen Christ. Amen.
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