Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost; 4 September 2022; Proper 18C (RCL); Jeremiah 18:1-11; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33.
Oof! I wonder if the designers of the lectionary assigned this reading from Luke’s Gospel on a Sunday they knew would usually fall on Labor Day weekend, when crowds would be slim. Whoever does not hate father and mother, wife and children . . . cannot be my disciple — not a message that will go down smoothly, especially when contrasted to what we think of as the new commandment to love.
Commentators try to wriggle out of the starkness of the word “hate”, but I don’t see any way to avoid it. Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus sets about establishing a new kinship among his disciples: “Who are my mother and brothers and sisters? Those who do the will of my Father are mother and brother and sister to me.” He also tells us that households will be divided, but this saying is just so much more stark than these others. And this short collection of sayings ends with, “None of you can become my disciples if you do not give up all your possessions.”
We have evidence that at least one branch of the early Jesus movements consisted of wandering Christian prophets, out on the road two-by-two. The Didache gives instructions to a settled community on the hospitality due to these prophets. One can imagine such a tradition as a setting for this collection of sayings. Setting out on the road was not likely to go down well with family. Jesus even tells one would-be disciple who wants to stay at home until his father dies, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead.” The choice is stark.
We would like to think that most of the people in our pews came to the church with their parents, and so would never have to face the kind of choice Jesus is laying before his disciples. But it is not beyond imagining that for many of us, we have reached a point in our lives where some call to a new way of life carried with it the risk of not being understood by family. Maybe we were lucky, and family supported us in our choice without fully understanding the direction we took, but there are those not so fortunate. They may certainly have had to turn their backs on family and friends to live a new life.
For any of us at such a juncture in life, Jesus’ advice to count the cost makes sense, even if the cost does not end up being as high as it might be. We Americans, of course, live in a culture that glorifies the individual, and would typically commend us for such choices. There are certainly other, more family-oriented cultures than ours (which typically locate a person within an extended family structure well beyond the nuclear family). The cost for following a new direction might be much higher in such a circumstance than it is in ours.
If we are lucky enough to have been supported by family in our life-choices, we can thank God that we have never had to face such costly decisions.