Day 272 - Serious Business

A Sermon given at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy Daisy, TN Sept 8, 2013

OT Reading: Jeremiah 18:1-11

NT Reading: Luke 14:25-33

          “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.” These are strong words. Does Jesus literally mean something so out of character with most of what He says? We know that Jesus never had feelings of hate towards humankind. After all, God is the essence of love  who sent Jesus came to reconcile us to God.  Several times over the last few weeks we have heard the greatest two commandments that Jesus said completely fulfill the law: “Love God with your entire being, and love your neighbor as you love yourself.” There is no hate here only an implied obligation to “do likewise.” The demand of faith is service. It cannot be minimized or understated, and sometimes only the strongest language gets through our inattentive ears.

Let’s think about the situation Jesus in Luke when he makes this statement about hating family. Let’s walk a few miles with him. If we focus on the divine nature of Jesus and forget this humanity we miss the power of the events Luke describes. We miss the meaning of the passage I read to you today.

He has built his team of disciples. Talking about the future, one of his followers makes a glib affirmation,(9:57), “I will follow you wherever you go!”, but Jesus knows the person has no clue. Jesus replies, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” We can never delude ourselves that Jesus is calling these disciples on some noble adventure that ends well. Jesus is a man of flesh and blood who sees his death before him.

He has sent his twelve out on a trial ministry, then seventy more. They were all sent out all with only the clothes on their back and these instructions (Luke10: 1-12 ), “minister to those who receive you and tell the ones who will not receive you that the kingdom of God has come near and on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for them.”

They return with a good report. They have rejoiced with those who listen and understand and grieved for those with deaf ears. Jesus praises God for this good news but knows it means it is time for the cross. Luke says his face is set on Jerusalem (9:51).  The human Jesus must have feared this journey to Jerusalem.

Every day on the journey he witnesses the abject suffering of poor, sick, crippled, spiritually impoverished and despairing crowds; and the conniving and self-indulgence of the religious leaders with their banquets at the expense of the temple treasury ignoring the suffering of these people that they could help instead. He sees the absolute misery of the human condition to whom he has offered reconciliation to God even to those who plot and reject every thing he says.  Surely he recalls Jeremiah’s words of the Lord from last week,

“Jer. 2:9 Therefore once more I accuse you, says the LORD, and I accuse your children’s children. 10 Cross to the coasts of Cyprus and look, send to Kedar and examine with care; see if there has ever been such a thing.  See if there has ever been such a thing!

11 Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? [But] my people have changed their glory for something that does not profit.

12 O heavens, be appalled at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the LORD,

13  for my people have committed two evils: (1) they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and (2) they have dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.

Do you think the human and divine Jesus might be a little angry with these religious leaders sniping at him on the road to Jerusalem? Maybe he is as angry as Jeremiah just described? The prophets said, “They hear but do not understand, and they see but do not perceive.” Jesus is well justified to act out of love to resort to strong, overstated language to get the attention of the disciples.

The form of overstatement that Jesus uses appears often in Scripture. In fact it is a common part of speech of Semitic languages. Proverbs 13:24 reads, “Those who spare the rod hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them.”

How many of us, or our parents have used a variation on this proverb, spare the rod and spoil the child? I’ve known people who were spiritually and emotionally harmed by beatings of a parent based on that interpretation. The writer of the proverb certainly is not advocating hating or physically abusing your own offspring but is overstating the point to bring home the message about discipline. I have also known people who were helped by switching of their legs with a thin taper of a privet hedge to get their attention. The proverb means we need a total commitment to compassionate discipline to teach a child, not hate or abuse.

We find overstatement again in 2 Samuel 19  in the story of Jacob and his two wives Leah and Rachel who bear the fathers of the tribes of Israel. You may recall the story. It is really a biblical Peyton Place. Between Rachel/ Leah and their two maids, they gave Jacob the 12 sons who created the tribes of Israel.

Jacob met Rachel by a well and fell in love with her. Jacob asked her father Laban for her hand, but Laban tricked Jacob into first marrying his eldest daughter Leah and later Rachel, after working on his farm for 14 years. Jacob favored Rachel but the Lord favored Leah and she gave him sons while Rachel was infertile. But poor Leah grieved all the same and after she conceived her third son exclaimed (Gen.29:33),   “Because the LORD has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also…”   

Did Jacob really hate Leah or was Leah just trying to get Jacob’s attention?

Jesus is using this same kind of overstatement when he says unless you hate your mother and father, brothers, sisters and children, even life itself, you cannot be my disciple, and if you do not carry the cross you cannot be my disciple.

Let’s think about hate for a minute. “To hate” a thing means you have to disconnect absolutely your heart from the thing you hate. There can be no room in your heart for the thing, no feeling of compassion that would tempt you towards loyalty to it. We might say hate frees us from any tie that binds us towards the thing we hate. It is a very heartless and dangerous emotion when its intent is to harm someone, our children, but it is a single-mindedness to faith Jesus demands.

Jesus does not hate or expect us to hate people. He came to reconcile us to God, who is the essence of love. Do we find hate in those greatest two commandments?  No, there is no hate in there, only a call for commitment.

I wondered earlier if Jesus was as angry at this human mess about him as the Lord was about the Hebrew’s making their cracked cisterns? I think the answer is angry, hurt, frustrated, sad, impassioned that they hear but do not understand, they see but do not perceive. Sometimes strong language is the only thing to get through.

Last week Jesus talked about where to sit at the wedding feast, and who to invite. Do you remember? He is used the same overstatement, “Don’t invite your friends and relatives to my feast, invite the poor, the hungry, the cripple and lame.”  He is figuratively SCREAMING at the top of his lungs: “Wake up, get ready!”

Unfortunately the lectionary omits the next story of the guest who missed the point probably due to too many glasses of wine. He piped up, “Yes, Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” Only Jesus could find the compassion to teach him with another parable. A person gave a great dinner but all the rich, busy friends declined due to other pressing needs. Angered the host sent his servants out into the streets to invite the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame and still found room for more. He ordered his servants to go out and compel people from the country lanes to come until his house was full.  Then he announced, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.’”

Do you remember when Jesus said, “Follow me” to the fishermen Peter and Andrew standing on the beach doing their work and then James and John (Matt 4:18)? They didn’t stop, roll up their nets and beach the boats, they fell in with Jesus and began this wonderful ministry of the gift of God News.

Jesus is asking us, are you ready to be a disciple or not? Is something holding you back? Are you so tightly bound to your family that when the Lord says follow me, you will say ok, but wait a minute I need to go back and settle my affairs with my family. He asks, “Are you ready to experience mistreatment humbly rather than deny Jesus? Are you ready to pay the price of absolute loyalty for eternal life?  Can you pay for the cost of discipleship?”

We hear some of our pastor friends using passages like this to demand that we hate, denounce and even deny our own flesh and blood as sinners. They say if you cannot stand up and publically condemn them, then leave our fellowship. Personally, I can’t find that kind of hate anywhere in the Gospel. It is a stumbling block in my view. We are all absolutely obligated to search our own hearts with the guidance of the Holy Spirit to understand what we must do when confronted with sin but how can we reconcile ostracizing someone for refusing to condemn their child as a sinner when Jesus acted so oppositely when he came upon some scribes and Pharisees who had caught a woman in the act of adultery. They were about to stone her to death for her sin according to the law. He knelt down scribbling in the sand and looked up at them saying, you who are without sin, cast the first stone. What did he say to the woman after they left? “Neither do I condemn you, go, and sin no more.”(John 8:2-11)

Personal judgment is where it all gets so messy.  Detrick Bonhoffer was a well known German pastor in Nazi Germany. He faced this question of divided loyalty between the state and Christian discipleship. He wrote a book earlier called “The Cost of Discipleship” that struggled with the very ethical dilemma Jesus poses in our lectionary reading: Are we prepared for the cost of discipleship?  Hitler had forced the national Lutheran church to accede to his demand that the state define the proper religious position on matters of state and society for the church. Bonhoffer escaped Germany to teach at a Union Seminary in New York, but decided to return and fight against Hitler’s subversion of the church. He participated in a failed plot to kill Hitler with a bomb that killed a number of other Nazi leaders in 1944. The Nazi’s imprisoned him in a concentration camp and two weeks before the camp was liberated the Nazis hanged Bonhoffer. This was the cost of discipleship Bonhoffer paid. I personally am not convinced Christian discipleship requires violence against another human but I pray with all my energy that I will never face a situation where I must make that choice. But again, we had better know the cost of discipleship when it comes due. This is what Jesus means about gaging the cost or strength of numbers.

I am convinced Jesus does not expect hatred of family as the cost of discipleship. He is saying if you follow me to the cross, do not let anything tie you down and keep you from the way. ADAM is Hebrew for earth or clay. The Lord is talking about us in our Jeremiah reading at the potter’s wheel. Perhaps Jesus is completing Jeremiah’s prophesy this way: “I am the potter and you are the clay.^. I have chosen to make you a solid un-cracked cistern full of living water that depends only upon your faith. The man on the cross is my last piece of broken pottery.  I redeem you disciples and put the responsibility for human clay in your own hands, the congregation of believers who walk in the world as my representative, my presence in the world. Are you ready to pay the cost of discipleship which is to love the world when the world loathes and hates you, views you with suspicion, or just wants to get something for nothing from you?

Human clay only proves salvation is not humanly possible. It comes only by the grace of God.  It is easy to forget we are our own stumbling block, and the promise of eternal life is not a promise for a rose garden here in earth. Faith however it comes to us, causes us to face the world and act to satisfy the cost of discipleship. Discipleship always depends on each of us listening to God through the Holy Spirit for guidance on the choices we make that reflect God’s love for us.

note: Some of the ideas in this sermon on "hate" are stimulated by comments of Brian Stoffregen and Alyce McKenzie, among others.