Today’s gospel is one of the hard ones.
Let’s dispel one difficult word straight away – it will help us not to be distracted by something that’s really irrelevant. Here’s the distraction: what do the translators mean by using the word “hate”?
They mean much the same thing that Alex and Paul mean on the NZ version of “Love It or List It?” when they put that question to the latest hapless couple.
Jesus is just offering a dichotomy: “Which one will you put first and which will you put second?” or “Which one do you love and which one do you hate?”. This was a common rhetorical device in his time and culture, but is not so common now, except perhaps in fashion and cooking, when we’re allowed to say “Ew, I hate that! But I love this!”. You don’t have to believe me and the commentators on this – just take a look at the rest of Jesus’ teaching about honouring one’s parents and the way he cared for his mother at the Cross. So – of course – today’s gospel is not telling us we are to literally hate our families. Can we agree to let that bit go?
I reckon it’s the rest of the teaching attributed to Jesus in this story that’s hard. Luke’s story makes it very clear that the people of God can’t get everything they want. We can’t have everything turn out the way we think it should. Instead, there are unpalatable consequences and difficult costs to our choices as wannabe disciples.
Have you noticed this, in the real world, perchance? That just because something seems really right doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, and that just because we generally mean well doesn’t mean that we won’t have to lie in some pretty uncomfortable beds we’ve made sometimes?
Not to mention that we are also subject to the consequences of decisions taken by other people – not fair – and we are subject to the processes of the universe we live in, which sometimes feel more targeted and malignant than blind.
And that being a Christian doesn’t alter these facts of life?
We absolutely can’t count on getting what we want. Just because we might aspire to some institution or structure being built in a certain way doesn’t mean you or I actually have the resources to bring it into being right now – or even at all. And when we are drawn into a struggle with another person or group, wanting to prevail without having compromise ourselves doesn’t mean we will, even if we deserve to. It may even be that major compromise from us will be necessary to reach a resolution.
Following the Jesus Way may well not bring us the things we think we want, even things like “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven”.
To recall something Hugh shared with us last Sunday, something I have been turning this way and that all week, we need to do our Kingdom work for justice and peace not because it will succeed, although it might, but because it is the right thing to do.
Luke’s Jesus tells us that following the Jesus Way is not all wandering about with a crowd, excited by something that feels completely new or attractively hopeful, like the people seem to have been doing in this gospel story. In fact, as the rest of the gospel makes clear, following the Jesus Way is going to require nights in the cold, rejection by the mainstream, and standing up against the authorities of the day.
Following the Way will confront us with calls to make costly, risky choices. There will be consequences and costs to our choices, in spite of or because of the way they align us with the Kingdom and its values.
We could stop there. I could say: “So, dear friends, Jesus asks us to put him first above everything other wish and desire, and be prepared to sacrifice everything to achieve God’s will in your life.” And if this felt hard, if we were left slightly desperately searching for some grace in this, I might console myself and you with “But don’t worry, there’ll be a pie in the sky when you die” or some similar formula about riches in heaven. It’s not as if that thinking is not in the gospels! But it’s not thinking that ‘works’ for me and I know it doesn’t ‘work’ for some of you.
Still, I reckon searching for grace is a pretty good way to go in the face of hard teachings, and I reckon we can find it in the two first testament texts for today – in the Psalm of the day and in Jeremiah’s words.
Jeremiah’s message, harshly worded though it is, is a message of grace. There’s a distraction to get past there, too. Friends, it doesn’t matter if we can’t accept the theological position of the authors of this Hebrew book, that a nation’s sin results in national disasters and that a community’s repentance results in its political salvation.
Underlying this context-determined padding, I see in Jeremiah a re-statement of a sustained understanding of humanity’s relationship with the divine that pre-dates the Exodus story and the conquest of Canaan. I think this understanding is something deeper and more important and the Hebrew scriptures offer a continuous record that it has persisted over the many centuries and contexts.
Here it is: if our intentions and choices are heading us in completely the wrong direction, if we are missing the mark, and if the writing is on the wall for us and the terrible consequences of our actions are heading for us like an army against which there is no defence, even so, it is not too late. God’s grace is a promise that, from the divine perspective, we can never move so far beyond the pale that we are not still invited to turn ourselves around and choose a different path.
“So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.”
The Psalm carries an essential twin grace for us. This grace is for the situation where our intentions and choices are heading us in the right direction, but the writing is still on the wall for us because our journey will bring us into inevitable conflict with the powers and principalities of a broken world. Or perhaps our resources are simply not enough. Failure can come for us even though we are on the right path.
God’s grace in this kind of perceived failure is that the Psalmist reminds us that there is a bigger story, perhaps even a resurrection story. It’s one that began before we were born, is maintained beyond our comprehension throughout our lives, and will carry us beyond any arrest, any trial, and any crucifixion. This perspective is also baked into the Hebrew scriptures. God’s grace for today’s Psalmist is a promise that, from the divine perspective, what we see before our eyes is never the whole story. The endings we find ourselves looking at, however scary, are never, in fact, the final ending.
So, sure: let’s take Luke’s stern words of Jesus, think carefully and choose wisely. Let’s love what is good and “hate” the next best thing. Let’s try to accept and to bear the costs of living the Kingdom life as we follow the lead of this uncompromising Jesus.
But let’s also be convinced that when we muck things up, we can turn back and start again. We will find Jeremiah’s God there, welcoming us and gently reshaping our clay on the wheel.
And let’s be confident that when we have done the best we can and it doesn’t seem to be enough, there are always, always things going on that are beyond our scope of vision. The Psalmist’s God may be beyond our gaze but the Psalmist’s faith assures us that we can never find ourselves out of God’s gaze.
In other words, while Jesus uses hard words to remind us that there are going to be costs and consequences from following the Jesus Way, and they may be as shattering as bearing a cross, Jeremiah and the Psalmist remind us that even these consequences and costs are open to and subject to grace.
E te whānau, let’s cling to that, and to each other on this path. Thanks be to God.