Proper 18C
September 8, 2019

O God of Love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

So how about those readings? We have a vision of God as a vengeful potter, angry and manipulative, devising punishing plans; a story of a runaway slave being sent back to his owner; and an admonition about being fit to follow Jesus only if one hates family and life itself and is willing to give up all one’s possessions. That’s the line that strikes fear in Episcopal congregations everywhere.

Part of me hears our Gospel reading and thinks, “great, we are all off the hook – let’s end church early today and go out and enjoy this beautiful morning because none of us can be Jesus’ disciples!” And then I remember the late Archibald Epps, one time dean of students at Harvard College and stalwart member of Christ Church in Cambridge, shaking his finger at me and scolding me in front of about a hundred people for “making fun of Holy Scripture” (that really happened). And so I always remember that it is an enormous honor to stand in this pulpit and I’d better do my best to live up to it, but I really do think that there’s plenty to laugh about in Holy Scripture. But is there anything to laugh about today?

One of my virtual translation companions for Greek is a Presbyterian pastor named Mark Davis who writes a blog on Gospel translations called “leftbehindandlovingit.” This is what he says as an introduction to his translation of this Gospel passage for today: “The scandal of this text is its extreme language, which seems contrary to … biblical injunctions to love and to honor one’s spouse or one’s parents. More importantly, the words ‘hate your family/[life]…’ seem to mitigate against the whole grain of the gospel and to justify extremism in many conceivably ugly forms. The challenge … is to let this text speak with all of its extremities, yet to hear it within the flow and purpose of the gospel itself.”[1]

That advice sent me back to re-read the beginning of this Gospel because it’s the only one of the four Gospels in which there is a writer’s introduction that actually states the purpose of the written project of the two volume set of Luke and Acts of the Apostles. It begins: “Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the fulfilling happenings among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, I too decided, after researching everything carefully from the beginning, to write an orderly account for you, most excellently strong lover of God, so that you may realize the reliability concerning the word with which you have been instructed.” The two books are expansive and radically inclusive in their theology, and they’re written with a strong message about building beloved (and beloving) communities for people who haven’t known how to do that, namely non-Jews or Gentiles. The books are quite Greek, not leaning on or referring explicitly to Hebrew scriptures, not using familiar Hebrew words like rabbi, and not knowing much about the terrain and culture of the territory of ancient Palestine. 

So the flow and purpose of Luke’s gospel is to retell the reliable Good News of the steadfast love of God for all people for all time in all places, made manifest in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The theme of economic justice as an essential ingredient of beloving communities is everywhere in Luke and Acts from the Magnificat to the assertion that, in the earliest communities of Jesus followers, “no one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had,” to the conclusion that Paul had lived in Rome two whole years at this own expense and welcomed all who came to him.” So that’s a reminder of the big picture. The context of our passage today is that it is in the middle of the journey narrative of the Gospel of Luke. These are stories about wherever the crowds were on their spiritual journey! Now let’s go back to the extreme language.

You might remember that in Greek, the verb that gets translated hate means hate. One could substitute the word “detest,” but that really doesn’t get us away from the shocking idea that true apprentices or followers of Jesus are haters of father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters – haters of even their own lives. Yikes. The only way this can make sense to me is to understand it as hyperbole. (There’s a good Greek word.) Hyperbole, as you know, is a literary device that is an intentional exaggeration for emphasis or humor – so outrageous that it is understood that it is not to be taken literally, and that it is pointing to a deeper truth. If I say that my suitcase (or baggage) weighs a ton, none of you would think that it literally weighs 2,000 pounds, but you would know that it is truly too heavy for me. However, we’ve gotten so dead serious in church that we rarely feel free to laugh about proclamations of Jesus, who I think was really quite funny. Many of us have a hard time thinking that the word hate could be used in a light way. Maybe imagine this. You might laugh if I told you that my family drives me bananas (unless you were my sister). Most of you would not jump to the conclusion that I have become a bunch of tropical fruits, but you might feel sympathetic about the truth of my need for comfort or relief. So let’s hold that word “hate” lightly for a moment and move on to see if there is anything else funny here.

Carrying a cross doesn’t seem like a laughing matter. Carrying the burden of the possibility of capital punishment for the love of God must have been no joke, and yet, in light of the astonishing experiences of Jesus’ resurrection (which are stories already well-known to the audience of the Gospel of Luke), the joke was on the Roman government that thought it could shut Jesus up or stop the spread of his revolutionary message by crucifying him. The Jesus movement got bigger and stronger than ever after his execution. So perhaps there was something funny about that – you know, in a macabre sort of way. Think: “They buried us but they didn’t know we were seeds.

It’s funny to me that the first example of the risk of being unfit for discipleship is being unable to complete a tower because the builder hasn’t properly estimated the price of materials needed. What will happen? All who see it will poke fun at the builder like he’s a fool. So embarrassing, yes, but who hasn’t started something they couldn’t finish? And as deadly serious as war is, surely the only reason to seek peace is not that the other side’s army is twice the size of your own. Finally, for this passage anyway, the possessions – or belongings part. This may be a funny story for some people, but not for most of us.

The interesting thing I found in translating this passage for myself is that the part where Jesus is saying who can not be his disciple or follower or apprentice, is that it’s really who will not be able to – as in have the energy or the power to or the drive to. It’s not that Jesus is kicking people off the team or even trying to thin the crowd. It’s more like a bicycle team coach saying, unless you get in shape, you are not going to be able to get up those mountains. It’s going to take everything you’ve got and you’re going to have to say goodbye to every ounce of excess freight. So if you’re ready to give it everything you’ve got – if you’ve got nothing left to lose, then come along, join the team, and we’ll see what’s what! 

Where does that leave us? Well, to the extent that any of us has joined the crowd of folks following Jesus thinking that nothing will be demanded of us, we probably have miscalculated. More will be demanded than we think we can afford. To the extent that any of us want to be a part of this beloved community only on his or her own terms, we have probably misunderstood the meaning of community or communion or common. To the extent that any of us is just here to get something or only here to give something, we are probably missing something big. To the extent that any of us thinks we can go deeper into the heart of Love without having to jettison possessions or possessiveness, we are probably mistaken – that is, we are probably more taken with possessions than taken with Love. And yet remember what the Apostle Paul says to the beloved community in Corinth? Don’t worry because Love (a.k.a. God) is patient and kind….it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love welcomes us just the way we are and love will not let us stay that way!

So if you have ever behaved in a less than purely loving way toward your father or mother or spouse or children or brothers or sisters, yes, even life itself; if you have ever voluntarily shouldered a heavy load to help out someone else; if you have ever foolishly started something you could not finish, or made peace just because you realized you couldn’t win a battle; if you have ever let go of your grip on money or things for the sake of Love, you have come to the right place! Welcome to this ship of fools! Sociologist and theologian, Brene Brown writes: “True belonging is not passive…it’s not fitting in or pretending or selling out because it’s safer. It’s a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are.”[2] Paradoxically, Jesus sacrificed everything except who and Whose he was. The thing about practicing life in Christian community is that it is more than a little foolish to live as if Love is really more powerful than weapons, worship more awesome than warships, that love is much more secure than money, and much stronger than death. It is foolish to imagine that it’s Love Who begs your freedom and makes your cup overflow. But you know what? It’s true!