16 Pentecost,
Cp18, September 8, 2013
Deuteronomy
30:15-20 Psalm 1
Philemon 1-20 Luke
14:25-33
Lectionary Link
What if I had the following
requirements for joining St. John's parish?
Hate your father, hate your mother, hate your wife, hate your children,
hate your brother, hate your sister, hate your life, actively seek death on a
cross and sell all your possessions.
You might say, "No thanks, that's an impossible and undesirable
standard for me. I think that I'll try
St. Swithin's down the road instead. I think they have different family values
there."
These words are troublesome for us to understand. People who are very literal about biblical
meanings twist their interpretations into pretzels to make sense of these
sayings and atheists too like to remind us how we Christians have these
"crazy" words of Jesus.
You pay me the big bucks to tell you exactly what these words of Jesus
mean but I'm going to punt. I must
confess that I do not know exactly what these words mean. What I can do is present a range of meanings
for these words. On the surface these words seem harsh and inconsistent with
valuing one's life, honoring one's parents and family as prescribed in the Ten
Commandments. They are also contradictory
with other words of Jesus elsewhere, like how is it we're supposed to love our
enemies and those who hate us but we're supposed to hate our family and our own
lives? Surely something is lost in the
translation.
How about if I were to present you with a range of possible meanings and
in doing so we cannot treat this Gospel writing like a scientific logical
syllogism but we might understand the mood that this literary saying is trying
to invoke for our spiritual lives.
In Zen Buddhism, a disciple learns spiritual enlightenment by having the
logical mind baffled so that hidden meanings can be understood. A roshi or master will give the disciple a
riddle to ponder. These riddles are
called koans. Probably the most often
quoted koan is this: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" We might learn to read the Gospel sayings of
Jesus as words which baffle the logical mind in order for us to pierce another
level of enlightenment.
In trying to achieve a range of meanings, a first meaning might be an ironic
reading of these harsh words.
"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? Whoever does not carry the
cross and follow me cannot be my disciple?" By reading these words of Jesus with
different intonation, the exact opposite meaning is implied. It could be that when oral tradition was
written down, the intonation patterns of the preachers were lost. If we use an ironic reading of these words,
the meaning becomes clear: "If you
think that being my disciple is bad for your family and your life, then you
really misunderstand me." This
ironic reading has some merit in the context because it comes after excuses
that people were giving for not following Christ. Some of the excuses had to do with family
obligations, so the ironic reading of these words have a fairly crisp
meaning. Don't make your family an
excuse for not following Jesus.
The meaning of the words of Jesus are qualified by the conditions and the
spirituality within the early Christian communities. To bear one's cross and to die to oneself was
a spiritual method found in the writings of St. Paul. St. Paul wrote that "he had been
crucified with Christ but he continued to live so there was an old self which died and a
new self that had been born." The
word for life in the Gospel reading is "pseuche" or soul life. Dying to one's soul life is not physical
death but it means dying to one's former versions of self, family and
possessions. Pauline spirituality was
based upon the continual process of dying to oneself and taking on new
life. Words like dying and hate are
extreme words which are used, not to imply physical violence or the social
shunning of one's family; they are extreme words to denote the profound attitude
shifts which was taking place in the process of spiritual transformation.
These words were probably very sensitive to the quite eclectic
membership of the early churches.
Following Jesus and joining the Christian family meant significant
change and possible opposition especially if the other members of one's family
of birth were still loyal to the cult of the Emperor and the gods of the Roman
Empire, or if they were still members of synagogues which had excommunicated
the followers of Christ or even if they were members of the continuing
community of John the Baptist. It is
important to remember that the Gospels were written in a time when the members
of the church came from families that were often in religious conflict and so
persons who wanted to follow Christ did have some very serious loyalty issues, a
loyalty dilemma that one does not want to face.
It seems like a very unfair decision: follow Christ and lose my
family. Such undesirable dilemmas do
occur in the history of faith communities and such dilemmas were the formation
conditions of the early Christian communities.
Another condition within the early churches was one of chief beliefs of
various members. Many of the leaders of
the early Christian church like St. Paul came from the apocalyptic fatalism of
certain strains of Judaism of the time.
Many Jews believed that the long suffering of their people and the occupation
of their country required from their understanding of Hebrew Scriptures and
other writings, a coming of a Messiah who would intervene and bring justice to
the earth. Jesus of Nazareth in his
first coming was not a military king; so many persons within the Christian
community believed that Jesus would come back quite soon after his resurrection
and he would return as a Davidic Messiah.
If you believed that Jesus was coming back tomorrow, why get married,
why raise a family, why get involved in the family business, why own property
and possessions? Such believers tended
to be world hating and world denying since they believed that the world as they
knew it would soon end. St. Paul himself
believed this; he even suggested that it was better for people to be unmarried
as he was so that they could be in Spartan condition for dealing with the end
times by getting the Gospel to as many people as possible.
The early church also had a very radical sociology. The early church had a radical notion of
Christian family. In the community of
St. Paul, they believed that in Christ there was no Jew, no Greek, no Gentile,
no male, no female, no slave, no free but a new creation. Jewish society and Roman society had very
strict definitions of family and social caste, so can we understand how radical
that this new Christian equality was?
Everyone was equal in Christ even though they had different roles in
society. The letter to Philemon was a
letter that St. Paul wrote to the slave owner of Onesimus. Onesimus had run away from the home of
Philemon; he had become of follower of Christ and a disciple of St. Paul. So Paul wrote Philemon a letter to receive
Onesimus back into his household without punishment. He was to receive Onesimus back as a brother
in Christ, even though he was a slave who was owned by Philemon. So within the early church, the equality of
Christian baptism made the spiritual family more important than one's flesh and
blood birth. The Gospel of John writer
wrote: To those who believed in Jesus,
he gave power to be sons of God, not born of the will of man or the will of the
flesh but of God.
Can we appreciate the extreme poetry of this radical notion of Christian
family? If we understand the radical notion of
Christian family, then the harshness of the words of the oracle of Christ
within the early churches can be understood in the context in which they were
first delivered.
These words of the oracle of Christ have troubled literal readers at
different times in the history of the church.
One could actually say that the monastic movement was born from these
radical words of Jesus. People who went
to the monastery hated their personal ambitions, their family relations and
personal possessions as they followed the counsels of perfection: poverty,
chastity and obedience. The reason that
the church has a tradition of celibacy for clergy and religious is in part
because of these harsh words of Jesus.
The monastic life is founded on the communalism that is found in the
record of the early church of people having all things in common.
So what about us today? We hope
and pray that our family relationships don't conflict with our devotion to
Christ. We accept today that the end of
the world did not happen during the time of St. Paul and so we do not live in
the same way in which some of the early Christians did. We don't feel like we have to be communal in
our lifestyle.
Just as the early Christians had to find a way to be obedient to Christ
within their own circumstances, you and I need to find the very best way to be
loyal to Christ given the specific circumstances of our own lives. We cannot use the situations of the time of
the early churches as prohibitions to suggest that our life situations should
be the same as it was then. Faith in
Christ means that we need to find meaningful and engaging ways to follow Christ
today with good and true hearts in the unique situations of our own lives.
Today, I wish you every good blessing as you seek to give Christ a
special place in your life. I hope your
family supports you in your devotion to Christ.
And I hope that our devotion to Christ will be winsome toward the people
whom we want to know God’s love. Amen.
