I'm not a big fan of interpretations of Luke that water down its
radicalism. I was saved because one boring night, I read
Luke and took verses like these. Here, finally, I
met a Jesus whom I had never met in sermons or Sunday schools, a Jesus I
could no longer ignore. Fortunately I was unaware of the widespread
homiletical tradition of qualifying and explaining away passages that
threaten the suburban social status quo, so I was left with the
alternatives Jesus meant his audiences to face: Take it or leave it.
Either take me seriously, or go away. Either enter the kingdom, or
don't. Just don't waste my time.
What texts am I talking about?
Well, for starters, Luke 14.26: "If any one comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even himself, he cannot be my disciple". Recently, I heard a preacher insist that "hate" here (Greek, miseo) is really just "lesser love".
Or Luke 1.68-71: "Blessed by the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all who hate us".
Here, hatred stands for centuries of threats against God's people on all sides. Israel is not about to get wiped out by the "smaller love" of Rome.
But the texts that are most on my mind this morning come from Luke 6. "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man" (v. 22). "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you" (vv. 27-28). Here hatred is expressed as exclusion and revulsion, not inferior love. When disciples lose their social standing because of their association with Jesus, they are blessed. Kindness expresses love, and cursing and abuse express hatred. Nothing to do with greater or lesser love.
"You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends, and some of you they will put to death; you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But not a hair of your head will perish" (Luke 21.17). Here hatred takes the form of persecution by family. (Ironically, those martyred are not harmed.)
The Christian hatred of family that Luke's Jesus commands is radical allegiance to Jesus that forsakes all other loyalties and bears all social and personal costs. It does this because competing loyalties -- and culturally strong family loyalties more than most -- distract and disempower the would-be disciple.
In our culture this is easy to misunderstand. In the ancient world, as in many cultures today, a person depends on family to survive. The most powerless are widows and orphans. It is far more important to be a family member than to be a citizen. (Note that in parts of America the opposite is true: People can get along all by themselves, but not without the government. Hmmm ....)
In our culture family connotes romantic love, sentimentality, and the like -- emotional goods. In ancient cultures, family was a precious material and political asset. Jesus is calling on people to forsake their social security if they are to be his disciple. The kingdom of God is not additive or multiplicative in its power; it does not supplement or complement our other assets. It stands only on its own.
Moreover, since family love comes with strings attached, its asset is sure to become a liability. Jesus prophesies that his disciples will be handed over and persecuted by the very family that once protected their own. Muslims who convert to Christianity in Arab countries find this out all too often. Families pressure their members to look after the family's interests. Widows and orphans, strangers and the poor are other people's problems. To prefer strangers to family is to break social taboos that keep society functioning -- and that maintain its structural oppression.
For Jesus to inaugurate a new order of self-sacrificial love for all God's beloved children, Jesus and his disciples will have to confront a world of principalities and powers whose little fiefdoms it threatens. Those principalities scale all the way up to America and the UN, and all the way down to my family at the dinner table.
The context of the passage makes all this clear:
This is not an argument for the clerical celibacy or monasticism of some, for Jesus claims that no one can be his disciple unless he or she renounces every loyalty. Besides, in his community, we are not isolated from each other, but pressed together around a table that brings us together in profound commitment. The Church is not a bunch of hermits; together we are one bride.
What does this text say about culture wars between "pro-family" conservatives and "pro-social" liberals? It proclaims a third way -- not splitting the differences, but offering a radical "pro-church" (or better, "pro-kingdom") alternative which alone offers salvation for a world torn apart by party politics. (No wonder everyone abandoned Jesus by the end.)
My family is precious to me, but I am not to rely on or obey it so as to compromise my reliance and obedience on the kingdom. Nor am I called to show lesser love for my wife or our family. I am called to show Christlike love for them -- enormous love rooted not in our familial claims on each other but only in Christ's claims on all of us; love that never makes our dinner table an alternative to the communion table, not even a little, but only points the former toward the latter.
Likewise, my country is precious to me, but I refuse to let my temporal dependence on it overshadow my dependence on God. I may not love it with anything less than the love of Christ. And Christ in his love did not become a Zealot to fight alongside his fellow Jews, but became sin and a curse to liberate all peoples, including his fellow Jews, from bondage to enemies and 'friends' alike.
Anything less just wastes his time.
And anything less wastes mine.
So preachers who try to make these passages more palatable by watering down the radicalism of following Jesus really don't do us any favors. And I suspect that's what Luke was getting at all along.
What texts am I talking about?
Well, for starters, Luke 14.26: "If any one comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even himself, he cannot be my disciple". Recently, I heard a preacher insist that "hate" here (Greek, miseo) is really just "lesser love".
Or Luke 1.68-71: "Blessed by the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all who hate us".
Here, hatred stands for centuries of threats against God's people on all sides. Israel is not about to get wiped out by the "smaller love" of Rome.
But the texts that are most on my mind this morning come from Luke 6. "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man" (v. 22). "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you" (vv. 27-28). Here hatred is expressed as exclusion and revulsion, not inferior love. When disciples lose their social standing because of their association with Jesus, they are blessed. Kindness expresses love, and cursing and abuse express hatred. Nothing to do with greater or lesser love.
"You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and kinsmen and friends, and some of you they will put to death; you will be hated by all for my name's sake. But not a hair of your head will perish" (Luke 21.17). Here hatred takes the form of persecution by family. (Ironically, those martyred are not harmed.)
The Christian hatred of family that Luke's Jesus commands is radical allegiance to Jesus that forsakes all other loyalties and bears all social and personal costs. It does this because competing loyalties -- and culturally strong family loyalties more than most -- distract and disempower the would-be disciple.
In our culture this is easy to misunderstand. In the ancient world, as in many cultures today, a person depends on family to survive. The most powerless are widows and orphans. It is far more important to be a family member than to be a citizen. (Note that in parts of America the opposite is true: People can get along all by themselves, but not without the government. Hmmm ....)
In our culture family connotes romantic love, sentimentality, and the like -- emotional goods. In ancient cultures, family was a precious material and political asset. Jesus is calling on people to forsake their social security if they are to be his disciple. The kingdom of God is not additive or multiplicative in its power; it does not supplement or complement our other assets. It stands only on its own.
Moreover, since family love comes with strings attached, its asset is sure to become a liability. Jesus prophesies that his disciples will be handed over and persecuted by the very family that once protected their own. Muslims who convert to Christianity in Arab countries find this out all too often. Families pressure their members to look after the family's interests. Widows and orphans, strangers and the poor are other people's problems. To prefer strangers to family is to break social taboos that keep society functioning -- and that maintain its structural oppression.
For Jesus to inaugurate a new order of self-sacrificial love for all God's beloved children, Jesus and his disciples will have to confront a world of principalities and powers whose little fiefdoms it threatens. Those principalities scale all the way up to America and the UN, and all the way down to my family at the dinner table.
The context of the passage makes all this clear:
Now great multitudes accompanied him; and he turned and said to them, "If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even himself, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he [or she] has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, 'This man began to build, and was not able to finish.' Or what king, going to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an embassy and asks terms of peace. So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be his disciple. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is fit neither for the land nor for the dunghill; people throw it away. The one who has ears to hear, let him hear.What imprisons sinners is love: Not the love by which Jesus endured the cross for the sake of his God and his flock, but lesser loves of family, flag, and fortune. Far from strengthening us, these get in the way. They sap our strength to follow him bearing our own crosses. They turn our grand projects of fidelity into half-built monuments to failure. They are inferior troops for the battle. Only by renouncing these encumbrances, as David renounced Saul's armor, do we affirm and participate in Calvary's victory and find the deepest community of all.
This is not an argument for the clerical celibacy or monasticism of some, for Jesus claims that no one can be his disciple unless he or she renounces every loyalty. Besides, in his community, we are not isolated from each other, but pressed together around a table that brings us together in profound commitment. The Church is not a bunch of hermits; together we are one bride.
What does this text say about culture wars between "pro-family" conservatives and "pro-social" liberals? It proclaims a third way -- not splitting the differences, but offering a radical "pro-church" (or better, "pro-kingdom") alternative which alone offers salvation for a world torn apart by party politics. (No wonder everyone abandoned Jesus by the end.)
My family is precious to me, but I am not to rely on or obey it so as to compromise my reliance and obedience on the kingdom. Nor am I called to show lesser love for my wife or our family. I am called to show Christlike love for them -- enormous love rooted not in our familial claims on each other but only in Christ's claims on all of us; love that never makes our dinner table an alternative to the communion table, not even a little, but only points the former toward the latter.
Likewise, my country is precious to me, but I refuse to let my temporal dependence on it overshadow my dependence on God. I may not love it with anything less than the love of Christ. And Christ in his love did not become a Zealot to fight alongside his fellow Jews, but became sin and a curse to liberate all peoples, including his fellow Jews, from bondage to enemies and 'friends' alike.
Anything less just wastes his time.
And anything less wastes mine.
So preachers who try to make these passages more palatable by watering down the radicalism of following Jesus really don't do us any favors. And I suspect that's what Luke was getting at all along.