Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Jesus and his disciples are travelling followed by a
great crowd. What are the motivations of the people in the crowd? Are they
convinced by Jesus’s preaching and want to be his disciples? Are they fascinated
by Jesus’s signs and they want to see (or eat) more? Are they there because
everyone else is?
Jesus turns around on the crowd and addresses them
about the cost of discipleship. Is Jesus trying to thin the crowd behind him?
He is definitely trying to make his audience consider what they need to commit
to to be his disciples. As German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in the
time of ascending fascism, cheap grace will not take you far on the road to
discipleship.
Jesus uses images of how we belong to our closest
relatives to convey his view of the cost of discipleship. And he turns those
relationships upside down. Our biological family or family of origin is not his
focus for building up the Kingdom of God.
It is useful to
consider that throughout the gospel Jesus’s family values are at odds with
traditional family values. Clearly, Jesus sees the community of the believers
as the primary locus of belonging for his disciples.
Jesus uses harsh language in conveying that message.
He uses the verb hate; misein in the original Greek text of the gospel.
It is useful to note that misein does not denote the emotional baggage
that hate carries in our own English language. Misein connotes
the attitudes and modes of action involved. Misein could be ignoring,
neglecting or overlooking the object of the hate. This still pretty nasty stuff
no matter who it is directed to.
So could it be that Jesus is using a time-honored
rhetorical device in Hebrew scripture here? It is called hyperbole. Hyperbole
is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. As a
figure of speech, it is usually not meant to be taken literally.
One indication that hyperbole is involved is that drawing
on the same Jesus tradition as Luke, the evangelist Matthew seems to have
interpreted the starker language of “hate” to refer to primary
allegiance.
In Matthew (10:37) we read: “Whoever loves father
or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter
more than me is not worthy of me.” For Matthew, this saying indicates that
our primary allegiance must be to Jesus rather than to family. Hate is not
required in Matthew’s view of Jesus’s teaching.
Also, if you take Jesus’s teaching throughout the gospels, his literally advising for literal hate as a course of action does not seem to make sense. This is the same Jesus who asked us to love our neighbor as ourselves, even to love our enemies.
Still, Jesus’s language is powerfully emphasizing that
discipleship involves a high cost (up to and including our own survival). If
discipleship is on our mind, we can’t be tepid or tentative about it. We need
to be all in or not bother with the adventure at all.
We need to be willing to take up our cross and carry
it. Is this cross language another example of hyperbolic language or should we
really consider losing our lives for following Jesus?
If you consider what happened to the apostles after
Jesus’s death, the odds are that our lives are on the line; all but one apostle
died as a martyr. But it could also be that we need to lose the life we wanted
or the life we were used to in order to follow Jesus. Maybe the life we need to
loose is the life of our false self. Maybe on the way of no-self, losing our
physical life might be involved in that transformation.
Next, Jesus gives us a couple of parables to
illustrate what’s involved in counting the cost of discipleship. One involves
counting the cost of building a tower. He’s probably referring to watchtowers
that were common in vineyards to prevent marauding and pilfering of the vineyard’s
produce. The other involves kings about to go to war with their armies. The morale
regarding discipleship seems clear: don’t consider it if you cannot afford the
full cost of it.
And finally, Jesus adds one more thing, or a heap of
things, to give up: our possessions, all of them. And this might not be
hyperbolic, this time. This last exhortation illustrates again what Jesus is
pointing at in my opinion. He wants us to let go of our many attachments in
order to be fully free to follow him.
There are many attachments this refers to: attachment
to our family, our in-group, our nation; attachments to our way of life and all
its paraphernalia; attachments to what we believe gives us safety and security,
including attachment to whatever money, power and influence we have.
All considered, Jesus is putting up the bar to becoming his disciple very high. Can we imagine ourselves letting go of our several attachments in order to let us be what Jesus is desiring us to be.
Beloved Lord, thank you for making us count the cost
of loving you as a disciple. Give us courage to detach from what derails us
from following you first and foremost.
Amen.
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