Jer. 18:1-18 Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17
Philemon 1-20 Luke 14:25-33
Among the crowd of concert goers, a woman once approached the pianist Van Cliburn, and gushed, Mr. Cliburn, "I'd do anything to play like you play." Supposedly Van Cliburn responded, "No lady, you wouldn't, especially practice."
Among the throngs of people who admired and followed Jesus around because he was the latest prophetic phenom on the scene apparently Jesus could hear them wishing out loud, "Jesus, I'd do anything to be like you." And Jesus offered some rather harsh reality checks to these groupies who perhaps were treating him like the latest fad.
Remember the Gospel were written about life before the Risen Christ and the experience of an empowering Holy Spirit. In this age people could aspire for great things only to be disillusioned to find that they could not live up to their aspirations.
Even among his special followers, Peter thought that he could follow Jesus through anything, and he even bragged about being able to do so. But Peter denied Jesus when the going got tough. Peter, before the experiences of the afterlife of Jesus and the experience of the Holy Spirit wanted to love Jesus but could not do it.
The words of Jesus in the Gospel about hating one's own family seem extreme unless we appreciate the hyperbole of comparison in the literary context. Most people seem to think that they love their family members even though the situations of actual family life often prove to be rocky and uneven in how even family members struggle to live together well.
And if struggling family love is difficult, so difficult that there are often harshness of words and actions which seem to be more expressive of discord and hate; just imagine the kind of love needed to leave the comforts of family and follow an itinerate prophet who lives off the land and has none of the consistent comforts of a stable home life.
To love Jesus to be able to follow him, would make family relations seem like hatred in contrast.
The hyperbolic words of Jesus are reminder to people not to be too proud about their ability to follow Jesus. And each of us might ponder the following: If what St. Francis of Assisi did is definitive of what loving Jesus and following him means, then how are you and I doing? In comparison, our love for Jesus might seem so trivial as to be a mockery, a hatred of sorts.
I would invite us to consider some insights from these shocking words of Jesus. First, they confront us from following Jesus as simply the latest fad. To follow Jesus as a mere religious fad is easy to do with the crowd. For many, the religion of Jesus and the many evangelists who speak and perform in his name is like a circus act. It is mere entertainment. How many of the great religious crowds gather for the sheer entertainment of it all for the crowds? How much of religion is "mob religion?"
The many disciplines of discipleship involves the consistent and repeated practice of goodness, and very hard love, very hard justice. It involves the self denial of service. It involves the perpetual checking of the ego at the door. It involves sacrifice. In the formation period of the early communities of the Jesus Movement, the love of Jesus often brought conflicting loyalties to previous family and friends.
Let us understand the rather stark words of Jesus about "hating one's family," as a reality check to a crowd of people who were being challenged about wanting religious entertainment contrasted with devotion to one who could bring about a significant change of values in their lives.
Let us also understand the programmatic and teaching impact of the Gospel writing written for people many decades after Jesus.
One can divide the lives of disciples into their lives before their encounter with the Risen Christ, and their lives after a mystical encounter with the Risen Christ. One could not be a mere religious spectator of holy people, holy writings and holy places, after an encounter with the Risen Christ.
St. Paul confessed that his life had been changed from a life of hating Jesus and his followers to a life of loving the Risen Christ and giving life for the service of the churches. The result for Paul is that he knew Jesus to be the one who created a new and alternate family of God. In this new family, Paul called Timothy and Philemon his brothers, Apphia, his sister, even as he called the runaway slave Onesimus, his son because Paul had become his spiritual father. The following of Jesus Christ became an alternate lifestyle from the lifestyle of merely being in and having a natural family.
You and I can know a conversion to this new family of Christ and it can present quite a contrast to the kind of experience that we have in our natural families. The love of God in Christ requires that we love profoundly beyond our local family ties as we accept our admission into a greater family, the one that is known when we discover the image of God upon our lives and the lives of all people.
The Psalmist wrote about the wonderful experience of being fully known by God. In lovely poetry the Psalmist wrote about the encounter with God within his very being at the place where the image of God within him became apparent.
Today, let the shocking words of Jesus be a reality check to us about making our faith lives into but being spectators of religious entertainment. Let us open ourselves to image of God rising to be known in us as an encounter with the Risen Christ through the power of Holy Spirit. And let this experience initiate us continually in loving values of the family of God in Christ. Amen.
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