A Difficult Message....
The Revd Deacon Polly M. Bowen
Sometimes you read Scripture, and you see something you’d never seen before. This happened to me a couple of weeks ago when the Sunday Gospel lesson was from Luke 14. Jesus said, 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. Why not? I thought. This makes no sense. Jesus spent his whole ministry telling us to love one another, and now he tells us to hate those closest to us?
We read Luke’s Gospel in English. He wrote it in Greek. And we’re already two steps away from the Aramaic that Jesus spoke. I don’t know any Aramaic, but I looked up the Greek word. It does indeed translate “hate.” But it could also be translated “disregard” or “be indifferent.” I don’t know why the translators chose to use the stronger word, but I suspect that it has something to do with a tradition that Jesus used strong language here.
Scholars have several ways of testing which of the words attributed to Jesus were actually said by him. (The red letters in your bible are not a reliable guide.) One of the tests is called the criterion of dissimilarity. This means that if the saying is so different from the sort of thing they would have expected Jesus to say, that it’s a little embarrassing to his followers, it just may be the real thing – because nobody would have made it up. So Jesus probably did say something like “You have to hate your family.” And people remembered.
But why would he say that? I think the key is in the verse just before: large crowds were following him. I think Jesus suspected that the people who were following him were more curious than committed. I think he knew that they thought they were on the cutting edge of an exciting new movement, and they expected to be swept along by it without any effort of their own. So he told a couple of parables about people starting new ventures – people who have to count the cost to make sure they have the “right stuff” to follow through, and then he followed with the zinger about hating your family. I suppose he could have said to them, “I want you to disengage yourselves from your present life-style. I don’t want you to be possessed by your possessions.” He could have said that. But I don’t think he did. I think he used the stronger language to get their attention.
Jesus is gentle and compassionate, but he isn’t soft. The way of Jesus is the way of the cross. It involves commitments, responsibilities, consequences. Sometimes it takes strong language to make people aware of that.
In the first century, people had to go to school for three years before they could call themselves Christians. Now we just say, “come on in,” and we hope people will pick up some on-the-job training.
When you were baptized, people made some promises for you. We make promises every time we baptize a new Christian, and we greet that new Christian by inviting him or her to proclaim with us the Lord’s resurrection and to share with us in his eternal priesthood.
Did you know that you are a priest? Not a priest like Fr. Dan, but together we are a priestly people, because we stand before God on behalf of the world. And we are a prophetic people, because we stand before the world on behalf of God.
Do you know how to be prophetic? By telling the good news of Jesus Christ. That’s our job as Christians, and it’s a job for which most of us are woefully unprepared.
We become prepared by reading the Book. Go to the Scriptures first. But just reading isn’t enough. The scriptures must be studied; they must be “inwardly digested” (as the collect for Proper 28 says,) so that they become a part of us. They must be read and compared with the Tradition – what have others thought about it. I once went to a conference at which one of the speakers was a conservative Jewish Rabbi. He told us that in the Jewish tradition, the commentaries – the things people have written about the scriptures – are more important than the words of scripture itself. Here is where people have struggled with scripture, pondering and examining it in the light of reason, arguing about it and comparing ideas with one another in community. God gave us brains and he expects us to use them. And he made us social beings and he expects us to work together.
If you are not participating in some sort of ongoing Bible study, you are not living out your Christian commitment to the fullest. I know that we’re all busy people, and it’s easy to say, “Well, I really do want to do something about that, but right now I’m just too busy.” I understand that – I say it myself sometimes. But learning is a full-time responsibility. Learning is forever. Let me remind you of one thing:
If the Devil can’t make you be bad, he’ll make you be too busy!
So I ask you to pray about your life, your baptismal promises and your responsibility as a Christian. I have a vision of a Church where all of us understand that the lay people are the primary ministers. I have a vision of a people who come together not to follow the Church of the Lord, but to follow the Lord of the Church. I have a vision of a People who love and respect and live out their baptismal promises.
I see the beginnings of that vision in this parish, and I pray continually for its increase.
