Jesus' FOcus on the Family (Proper 27C)

 

Jesus’ Focus on the Family

Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 27 Year C RCL)
9 November 2025—11: 00 a.m. Sung Mass

Mission Church of the Holy Spirit, Sutherlin (Oregon)

Job 19:23-27a; Psalm 17:1-9; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17; Luke 20:27-38

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D., homilist

 

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

take away our hearts of stone

 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

In the culture wars over sexuality and marriage, some people often say that they support the “Biblical view of marriage.”  When I hear that, I often wonder what Bible they have been reading, since so many different forms of marriage are discussed and endorsed in different parts of the Bible: a nuclear family and couple of a man and a woman (Gen. 2:24), polygamy with one man and several wives or broader polygyny including concubines and slaves, whether your own or your wives’ (Genesis; Judges; 1-2 Kings), levirate marriage to produce offspring for a dead brother (Gen. 36:6-10), forced marriage between a rapist and his victim (Deut. 22:28-29), and even simply the act of forcible rape of women in war as “spoils of war” (Numbers 31:1-18; Deut. 21:11-14).     All of these marriage forms discussed and endorsed in parts of the Bible are based on the idea of the woman as the chattel possession of the man.

 

Now I admit that idealizing the family is big business.   Witness over the years the success of “Little House on the Prairies,” “Father Knows Best,” “the Waltons,” and “Leave it to Beaver.”   The Rev. James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family” ministry attracted millions of people struggling for happier, better lives by seeking direction from what Dobson claimed to be the teachings of the Bible. 

 

But the Bible even at its best is not a particularly good place to find idealized families.  You only have to read it to realize how messy and twisted families can be.   If you idealize the patriarchal family, just look at the horror stories in the families of the patriarchs themselves: hatred, deceit, disloyalty, rape, and murder all appear. 

 

Rarely do people who claim to promote the “Biblical teaching on the family” refer to today’s Gospel reading.  But it is key in seeing what Jesus’ actual view of the matter was. 

 

Opponents approach Jesus: Sadducees, conservatives who accept only the Torah as scripture and are wary of later prophetic and wisdom writings and their new-fangled ideas like life after death or angels.  

 

In order to make a point for their conservative denial of life after death, they pose a hypothetical question of property:  seven brothers die in sequence, each marrying the deceased brother’s wife in accordance with an obscure provision in the Torah.  “If there is a resurrection from the dead, to whom does that woman belong?”   For them, wives and children are chattel, are items of property. Women can ‘belong’ to only one man at a time, though men can ‘own’ several wives.  Since this woman clearly can’t belong to all seven, the resurrection is an impossibility, rather like a dirty joke. 

 

Jesus replies: “She belongs to none of them, for in the resurrection no one owns anyone else. All belong to God alone.” 

 

The three great branches of Judaism at this time had completely different takes on the messiness of life and prospects for life after death. 

 

The Dead Sea Scrolls community hated the messiness of life and saw it as something to be defeated.  They believed in a form of the immortality of the soul and thought that those purified through strict obedience to the Torah and the Community’s ascetic rule of life would after death continue to live apart from their bodies and join with the purified living in the great army of the Sons of Light that would defeat the evil world and its Sons of Darkness.  They were this-life denying but future-life affirming. 

 

The Sadducees of today’s reading believed that the Law controlled life’s messiness, but rejected both immortality of the soul and a resurrection of the body.   Thoreau, when asked about the afterlife, famously said, “Please, one life at a time!”   The Sadducees would have agreed.  They were this-life affirming but future-life denying. 

 

The Pharisees too believed that the Law brought order to life’s messiness, but rejected the asceticism of the Essenes and the reluctance of the Sadducees to accept immortality and resurrection.  They were this-life affirming and future-life affirming. 

 

Jesus, close to the Pharisees here, affirms both this world and the world to come.   “Being as the angels in heaven, neither marrying or being given in marriage” is not an expression of ascetic contempt for the body and marriage.  Remember that story about Jesus turning water into wine at that wedding in Cana.  In the words of the Prayer Book, he thus “adorned” marriage as a “manner of life.”   He also showed he was no alcohol-eschewing ascetic.   He loves this world, this life, particularly the bits that give us joy, including love, marriage, family, work, and simple pleasures like wine, beer, and good food. 

 

You see, Jesus accepted—indeed, reveled in!—life in all its messiness, but didn’t lose hope for something better.   

 

Part of the problem is we idealize things and pretend the messy parts don’t exist—another way of not affirming this present life.  In the hallway of our home there’s a gallery of family photographs. On occasion guests comment “What a lovely family!”  I smile politely in return.  That collection of pictures is carefully curated!  Thankful as we are for our family and all the happy memories, we realize the photographs tell only part of a complicated story.   We don’t hang some pictures because they are just too painful: those taken at funerals or during episodes of mental illness of some family member, when a loved one was in prison, during estranged feelings, or after suicides, divorces, tragic accidents and grim degenerative illnesses.   But all this is part of real life.  And accepting and loving life means bearing this brokenness with grace as well.

 

For Jesus, God’s love is revealed in the differences between this life and life in the age to come.  This age is messed up, the age to come, fully in accord with God’s will.  Here, we make exploitative contracts and unfair subordinating relationships, including marriage.  Men take wives as chattel.  But in the age to come, there will be a radical equality:  no exploitation, privilege, or abuse.  Only one subordination will exist, the one that binds each person equally to God: “[They] neither marry nor are given in marriage... because they are like angels and are children of God.” 

 

“In the resurrection all will have God as father”:  this implies that in the resurrection, unjust parent-child relationships will cease along with unjust marriage. 

 

Elsewhere, Jesus says, “call no one your father on earth since you have one father, your one in heaven” (Matt 23:9).  This is not a prohibition of calling a priest “father” or “mother.”  It is not about titles.  It is a hyperbolic saying about real-life fathers. For Jesus families aren’t absolute, and even good fathers are defective when contrasted with the True Father.  

 

In Mark 3, Jesus’ Mother and brothers think Jesus has gone mad, and ask him to abandon his mission and return home.  His reply is biting:  “Who are my mother and my brothers?  Not you, but those who follow God along with me—they are my true family!”  In all of this, Jesus suggests that our earthly relationships—no matter how good and sweet—are dim reflections of the true relationships God created us for. 

 

Some people today, triggered by experience of abusive patriarchy, object to Jesus’ way of referring to God: “father,” abba, or “Papa.”  Jesus clearly is not saying God is a biological male or our parent in any literal sense.  Elsewhere, Jesus uses feminine images for God: a nursing mother, a brooding hen.  All the same, he tells us to pray, “Our father.” 

 

I find it curious that the people who are most quick to urge us to always use peoples’ preferred names, titles, and pronouns at times seem to be the most resistant to using the designation for God that Jesus gives us:  Father.  Granted, its use may be merely an artifact of the patriarchal culture in which the Bible was written.  And granted, its use can be a trigger for some.  But Jesus uses the image again and again, even as he deconstructs oppression, patriarchy, and toxic hierarchy. 

 

Admittedly, expansive and inclusive language in our worship and our God-talk is necessary to break down patriarchy’s abusive oppression.  But we should not let our own triggers and justice agendas become obstacles to hearing what Jesus is teaching us here: that our relationship to God is like the relationship of a child to the best of all possible fathers: intimate, loving, and fully trusting.

 

Jesus’ response to the Sadducees is not that in the afterlife people are celibate or neutered, or that human relationships, including families, cease. His point is that all of life that we know will be changed for the better in the world to come.  Life will then fully embody what we were created for, and not be diminished and twisted by the brokenness we have come to see as normal. 

 

Jesus affirms both this life and the life to come because he believes that life—this messy, boisterous, and glorious life—is redeemable and transformable. This is part and parcel of his faith in the God whom he called abba.  It’s not just what Jesus taught.  It is what his birth, life, death, and resurrection are all about.   Incarnation demands that we see that all human life is redeemable.  

 

 

 

So what part of family life and relationships will endure?  Not the nasty bits, to be sure.  I suspect we will be very, very pleasantly surprised by what God actually has in store.  Whatever it is exactly, we can be sure it will make our sweetest joys here pale by comparison. 

 

The fact is, no family is “normal” or ideal.  We try our best to muddle along, and trust in God’s love and healing power.  On occasion in moments of mutual support and love, of cozy familiarity and even intimacy, we see glimpses of God’s ultimate good intentions for us.  And these glimpses are sweet indeed. 

 

Thanks be to God.

 

 

A Wound that Heals Us (Proper 24C)

 

Marc Chagall, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel 

 

A Wound that Heals Us
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 24 Year C RCL)
19 October 2025--10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Mission Church of the Holy Spirit, Sutherlin (Oregon)

Readings: Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 121; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8

 

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

take away our hearts of stone

and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

When Ronald Reagan was running against incumbent president Jimmie Carter in 1980, only one presidential debate took place.  Reagan perhaps won the debate by use of a single memorable line.  Exasperated when Carter began to relist the deficiencies he saw in Reagan’s position on Medicare and Medicaid, Reagan interrupted, “There you go again!”  The audience burst into laughter.  Reagan had defused the criticism not through any refutation of fact, but just by strategically expressing well that most human of emotions, desperate exasperation.

 

“There you go again!” These words express frustration at someone’s apparent inability to change, whatever the relapse.  We often silently reproach ourselves with them.

 

Today’s Genesis reading tells the story of a man who has a hard time changing his conniving, self-seeking ways.  Even in the womb, he seems to struggle with his twin brother.  When Esau is born first, the feisty younger twin rejects his second-place by grasping Esau’s heel. So his parents name him Jacob, “Heel.”

 

A maneuverer from the start, Jacob plays on Esau’s simplicity and hunger to get him to ignorantly trade away his property inheritance for a dish of lentil stew, that the King James version inelegantly calls “a mess of pottage.” Later, he impersonates Esau by wearing fleece sleeves to imitate his hairy arms to trick his father and steal Esau’s spiritual blessing.

 

Esau, exasperated and resentful, plans simply to murder Jacob as soon as their father dies and take back his rightful inheritance and blessing.  So Jacob, ever wily, leaves town to lie low for a while.   He goes to his uncle Laban’s home far away to wait until things calm down.

 

Jacob clearly is in distress.  During his escape, he has a vision of a ladder into heaven, and for the first time connects briefly with the God of his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac.  He calls the place Bethel, the House of God.  But he remains Jacob, the heel. 

 

Uncle Laban too is a trickster.   When he settles on a bride price for Jacob to marry one of his daughters, he tricks him into paying double—a work contract of fourteen years instead of seven—and taking on the unwanted elder daughter as well.  But Jacob’s hard work and business savvy pay off. When the shared assets grow to a size worth arguing about, tensions develop.  Jacob knows it is time to return to Canaan when, as he says to his wives, “Your father is not treating me a nicely as he used to.”

 

Now comes the problem of divvying up the wealth. Jacob still has tricks up his sleeve, turning the tables by tricking the trickster.  He rigs the process of selecting flocks in his favor, and ends up with the lion’s portion.  So he has to flee his uncle by night too, just as he had to flee his brother.  “There you go again!”  

 

As Jacob returns to Canaan, he is afraid that Esau still will murder him.  So he sends messengers with kind words.  They return and say that Esau is coming to welcome him home—accompanied by 400 armed men!

 

Yikes.  The big hairy man may be dull, but he clearly does not forget a grudge. 

 

Jacob is prudent.  He divides his large caravan into two camps:  if Esau takes the first by violence, at least Jacob might have half his family and goods left.  Then he sends all the huge baggage and livestock train in several small groups ahead, all with the instructions that if Esau challenges them, they are to say they are gifts from Jacob for his dear brother Esau.   Finally, he sends his own immediate family.   But he still is too afraid.  He alone goes back to spend the night on the riverbank.

 

That is when today’s mysterious story occurs.  A stranger accosts Jacob and wrestles with him in the dark until the break of dawn, when the stranger, desperate to end the match, performs some kind of ninja trick on Jacob’s hip.  Jacob can no longer wrestle.  He might as well give up.  But he continues to hold on for dear life.  The stranger says, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”  Jacob replies, “Not until you bless me.” 

 

Jacob has run out of tricks.  He is desperate, unsure that his maneuvers will turn away Esau’s wrath.  He might lose everything in the next few hours.  The struggle in the dark in some ways represents the struggle going on in his heart:  his fears and plots versus the hope for a new day.  All he can do is hold tightly.  “Bless me,” he begs, “Bless me.” 

 

The stranger asks, “What is your name?  Who are you?”  “Jacob,” is the answer, “a heel, a trickster.” 

 

This confession, this avowal of stark truth when all options and plans are gone, marks a real change in Jacob’s life.  The stranger blesses him in reply, “Jacob is not your name, but Yisra’el: ‘It is God who Struggles.’”  “You are a heel no more.  You don’t need to struggle any more, for God is the one who struggles.” 

 

The day comes, and Jacob, forever changed, limps back to cross the river to his family.  His limp will stay with him the rest of his life.  He greets Esau later in the day, and the brothers are reconciled (with Esau in fine Asian style first refusing all the gifts, and then, after his brother’s urging, accepting them.) 

 

Today’s Lectionary includes this story along with other scriptures telling us to persist in seeking God: Jesus’ parable of a corrupt judge cowed into granting an annoying petitioner’s request simply to gain some peace and quiet, 2 Timothy’s counsel to hang in there whether the times are favorable or hard.

 

But the story of Jacob’s wrestle is not just about holding on tight, bulldozing ahead come hell or high water.  The key is in the words of blessing:  you don’t need to be a heel.  You don’t need to struggle.  Because God struggles with us, God struggles for us.  Be still and know that I am God. 

 

How many of us are Jacob here?  Do we say to ourselves: “There you go again! What can I do to get out of this fix? How can I turn back the clock?  How can I keep from the bad same old same old?”

 

When others have hurt us, how many of us are like Esau here?  Do we want to blurt out “There you go again,” and never again have anything to do with them, or worse, want to work them harm?

 

In all of this, God is there, loving us, supporting us, and holding us tightly.  In our desperation, we have to hold tightly onto God, and not let go, even though everything is going wrong and we may get hurt in the struggle. “I won’t let go, not until you bless me. Not until you tell your name, show me who you really are!” 

 

The good news is this:  our failings and the failings of others are ways that God shows his love and grace.  St. Paul knew this when he spoke of the mysterious “thorn” God had placed in his flesh: “but [God] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness’…  for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12: 9-10).

 

Charles Wesley wrote a poem about this story that captures the need for persistence: 

 

Come, O thou Traveler unknown,
whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
and I am left alone with thee.
With thee all night I mean to stay
and wrestle till the break of day.

 

Wilt thou not yet to me reveal
thy new, unutterable name?
Tell me, I still beseech thee, tell,
to know it now resolved I am.
Wrestling, I will not let thee go
till I thy name, thy nature know.

 

My strength is gone, my nature dies,
I sink beneath thy weighty hand,
faint to revive, and fall to rise.
I fall, and yet by faith I stand;
I stand and will not let thee go
till I thy name, thy nature know.

 

Yield to me now—for I am weak,
but confident in self-despair!
Speak to my heart, in blessing speak,
be conquered by insistent prayer.
Speak, or thou never hence shalt move,
and tell me if thy name is Love.

 

‘Tis Love! ‘tis Love that wrestled me!
I hear thy whisper in my heart.
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
pure, universal Love thou art.
To me, to all, thy mercies move—
thy nature and thy name is Love.

 

Such prayer must begin in honesty about who we are.  Jacob must speak his old name before he can be given a new one.  Each and every prayer, each and every eucharist is a revolutionary act, subverting the system of oppression and accusation, including self-accusation. It tells us “heel,” “deceiver,” “fighter,” is not our true name. 

 

This week, find something in yourself that needs forgiving, needs remedying. And in your prayers, pray that God will help you with it, simply help.  And then be patient.   Say you won’t let go until he blesses you.  Be like that persistent annoying woman in the Gospel reading.  And forgive yourself.   

 

Also find something in someone in your life that needs forgiving, needs correcting, something that makes you angry and want to say “there you go again!”  And just forgive them.  If that’s not possible, ask God to help you forgive.  And say you won’t let go until he blesses you in this. 

 

In the name of Christ, 

 

Amen. 

 

What's Expected (Proper 22C)

 

What’s Expected
Seventeenth after Pentecost (Proper 22 Year C RCL)
5 October 2025--9:00 a.m.

Sung Morning Prayer with Liturgy of the Table

Parish Church of St Luke, Grants Pass (Oregon)

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Readings: Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4; Psalm 37:1-10; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10

 

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

take away our hearts of stone

 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

A few years ago, a member of the altar guild at Trinity Ashland approached me before service and said with emotion, “I need more faith!”  “What?” I said.  “I need more faith!” She repeated.  “How so?” I replied.  She answered, “I am totally angry and tired of dealing with the messes, drama, and scary stuff left by squatters when I come to Church in the morning. I know I should love the homeless and be gentle and welcoming.  But when they cause problems, I just can’t muster it.  I need more faith!”  

 

My heart went out to her.  Many of us in parish service have had to deal with “messes, drama, and scary stuff” due to people without shelter overnighting in the Church courtyard.  This good woman had been doing so admirably for months, only occasionally saying something when someone really went outside the boundaries.  But here she was, dealing with a major case of guilt and self-reproach for not “being nice” enough, for not “following Jesus” and forgiving.    All I could say was, “you have faith, and you don’t need to beat up on yourself for other people’s faults. We must keep reminding people of the rules, and if it doesn’t work, we might have to close the campus reluctantly, like all the other houses of worship in town.” 

 

“I need more faith.”  We all run into this, from a variety of quarters:  a feeling of being overwhelmed by demands on our time and emotional energies, and a sense of guilt and self-reproach when we don’t seem to be able to meet the requirements of what is expected of us, of what we expect of ourselves, or even muster a moderate amount of graciousness to help cover our shortfall.     

 

The Gospel reading for today is about this.  Jesus has just told the disciples that they need to forgive people who harm or hurt them even “seven times a day.”   The disciples respond with today’s line:  “Increase our faith!”  They are saying, “Yikes!  Forgive someone who does us wrong over and over again?  I need more faith.” 

 

Jesus answers,  “If you had even just a little tiny bit of faith, say the size of a little seed, then you could do impossible things!”  Elsewhere, it is “you can move mountains just by telling them to move.”  Here it is “you could tell that huge Mulberry tree over there to plant itself in the middle of the ocean and it would thrive there!” 

 

Jesus is being a little sarcastic here.  It sounds like he himself has had a bad day and might be saying to himself, “You need some faith here, Jesus!”  But what he means, stripped of the sarcasm, is clearly, “You already have enough faith.  Just put it into practice.”
 

He gives a parable saying it’s all about expectations:  “Does the household staff get to rest and have dinner just because they’ve worked hard in the field all day? No.  They must first feed the Householder in proper style and only then can they take their meal and rest.  Don’t expect any better.  Do what’s expected of you, and then some, and don’t worry about getting nice thank you’s or attaboy’s or attagirl’s.  You’ve only done what was expected.” 

 

As most of Jesus’ edgier parables, this parable in its original setting may be a criticism of the economy and society of exploitation around him.  But in Luke’s context it means:  “Lower your expectations and you might find that just doing what’s expected of you is enough of a reward.” 

 

What’s expected.  It sounds like a bad joke from that torment that most of us have encountered in our professional lives, the performance evaluation.  Cartoonist Scott Adams in one “Dilbert” strip pictures Dilbert’s officemate Alice seated across from her boss.  He begins, “Alice, your performance this year ‘meets expectations.’ You get a two percent pay increase.” Alice replies, “Meets expectations? I worked eighty hours every week!” The boss replies, “Yeah ... Well, I expected that.”  Alice adds, “I earned three patents this year! The company will make millions!”  The boss: “Really? Wow.   … I mean ... I expected that too.” Alice adds, “I donated bone marrow to our biggest customer! Twice!”  To which the boss replies, “I noted that under ‘attendance problem.’”  Later, Alice is in the cafeteria, clearly sobbing. Dilbert says, “I told you the bone marrow thing would haunt you.” Another officemate opines, “I'm starting to think the time I worked through my lunch hour was for nothing.”

Jesus says, “When you have done all you were ordered, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what was expected!’”  Sounds like Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss from hell.  “Meets expectations?” Really? 

 

When reading the Gospels, we must constantly remind ourselves that the historical Jesus is to us a foreigner who speaks an unintelligible language.  His life and work was sparer and harder than any of us have seen.  They make the hardships of today’s third world look gentle.  His culture and religion are alien, with values and world-views that often seem narrow, inhumane, and even bigoted.  So we must carefully interpret his words or risk getting the wrong point.

In the chapters of Luke we have been reading over the last few weeks, Jesus has told shocking stories about people receiving rewards and recompense.   The loving father of the prodigal son welcomes the disrespectful and dissipated ingrate home.  He runs out to him, embraces him, and throws a big expensive party for him, much to the annoyance of his older brother who has met the expectations of his father and culture.   The householder praises the shrewdness of the dishonest manager, who retires to a gentle life being hosted and funded by those who benefited from his departing from expectations.  The homeless wretch Lazarus, no doubt ridden with messes, drama, and scary stuff, is welcomed to Abraham’s bosom, while the wealthy man who exceeded the expectations of society must suffer in the afterlife.

 

The disciples may well be thinking, “If moral reprobates, crooks, and those who sponge off of others are going to be blessed by God, just think of what good people like us are going to get!” 

 

And then Jesus tells them to forgive, forgive, forgive:  seven times a day for repeat offenders who seem not able to change.  And with the rest of us, they say, “I need more faith.”    Jesus, in clear exasperation says, “You want more faith?  Just a tiny bit of faith would work miracles for you, if you had any.  Let me tell you about some slaves who don’t get any extra praise or reward when they simply do what is expected of them.”

Jesus is giving them a Zen koan:  a saying hard to understand, that draws forth from us a change in perceptions and attitudes.   Like most of his parables, the saying turns everything on its head, and reverses expectations.   The first will be last; the last first.  The leader must be servant of all.

 

He is talking about faith in a loving God, a God of grace, a God like that loving father of two wayward boys.  If you want faith, you have to have faith.  And that means faith in God.  And God destroys our petty expectations by exceeding them. 

 

Jesus grew up reading and quoting from the Book of Sirach, which says, “My child, if you want to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for an ordeal” (Ecclesiasticus 2:1). Ordeal—dealing with the messes, the drama, and the scary stuff—is part of the job description of serving God.  It is part of the job description of being a disciple of Jesus. 

 

But faith in God—faith in the living Jesus’ expectation-overturning Abba—faith even in tiny, tiny amounts makes it better.  It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality.  It’s about whether it’s real trust in that loving God. 

 

When we trust, when we are deeply thankful and grateful, well, we stop keeping score.  Many things that once were intolerably hard become easy.  We seem to know the right thing to say at the right time.  And we no longer have a grudge against God or anyone else.  True faith—even in tiny amounts—is like that. 

 

Thomas Merton wrote, “[Concern about] means and ends... is not the way to build a life of prayer.  In prayer we discover what we already have.  You start where you are, and you deepen what you already have, and you realize that you are already there.  We already have everything, but we don't know it and we don't experience it.  Everything has been given to us in Christ.  All we need is to experience what we already possess.  The trouble is, we aren't taking the time to do so.”

 

May we strengthen our life of prayer, and exert trust and faith in that living, loving God, even just a little faith, because that is all it takes to work miracles.

 

Amen. 

 

Shock Therapy (Proper 18C)

 

Shock Therapy

(Proper 18C)

Homily Delivered 7 September 2025

9:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Parish Church of St Luke, Grants Pass (Oregon)

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 1; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33

God, give us hearts to love and feel,

Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

 

Today’s scriptures aren’t easy.  The first reading says if you follow God’s commands, he’ll bless you and your life will be wonderful.  If you don’t, he’ll curse you and your life will be miserable.   Most of us, I think, know from our lives that bad things often happen to good people, and the wicked often prosper.  Thus the faith of Deuteronomy seems more like a wish than a description of reality.  In the Epistle, Paul sends back a run-away slave, Onesimus (“Mr. Useful”) to his owner, Philemon.  Both are Christians.  Most of us probably wish that Paul had told Philemon “Slavery is bad; set Onesimus free.”  But no—all he can manage is “Take him back, be gentle, he’s a good kid.”  And the Gospel—well, it is one of the hardest of the hard sayings of Jesus:  “Hate your families and your lives.” 

 

On days like today I am glad we Episcopalians read so much of the Bible in our liturgy. And it is hard to believe in Biblical Inerrancy if you actually read the Bible and don’t just quote selected parts of it.  Your faith in Biblical Truth becomes nuanced, and you realize that sometimes the authors are arguing with each other.  You see that the unity and harmony of Holy Scripture lies deep beneath the surface, and not in the shallows of doctrines or morals.  Holding the Bible to be God’s word means being true to what that diverse dialogue revealed, and in continuing the dialogue even today.

 

Luke here shows us a fierce, scary Jesus.  “Whoever comes to me and does not hate [his closest family members and] life itself, is incapable of being my disciple!”  Can this be the same Jesus who said, “Love your enemies?”   Or “Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself?”

 

There are ways of softening Jesus’ message here. But these tend to miss the starkness of language and emotional freight of the saying.

 

The world where Jesus lived had plenty of ideas about whom to love and whom to hate. Deuteronomy teaches, “You shall love the Lord your God will all your might, mind, and strength.”  The Psalms and Proverbs include statements like “I hate all those who cling to worthless idols, the unjust, and the evildoer” and see these as a model.  Leviticus: “Love your neighbor.”  The Dead Seas Scrolls teach, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”  

 

So what is Jesus up to when he turns this on its head and says, “love your enemies” and, “hate your friends and family?” 

 

Context is key. Note how the story starts: “Now huge crowds had started following Jesus around.”  The problem here is an overabundance of popularity and unwelcomed celebrity.   People flocked to Jesus in curiosity, to see whether he might satisfy their hopes. Jesus’s hard saying is to these groupies. 

 

Luke adds, by way of commentary, two parables of Jesus that probably had circulated separately: the tower builder and the king going to war.

 

A similar parable did not make it into the canon: Gospel of Thomas Logion 98 is one of the few I believe may go back to the historical Jesus.  It is the even fiercer parable of the assassin:  “The kingdom … is like a certain man who wanted to kill a powerful man. In his own house he drew his sword and stuck it into the wall in order to find out whether his hand could carry through. Then he slew the powerful man.”

 

All three parables are about focus and commitment, and the need to be realistic about what a task may require.   Two are violent: a king going to war and an assassin preparing to murder a prominent person.   I am a pacifist, and reject wholeheartedly the myth of redemptive violence.  I wish Jesus had not chosen such violent images.  But Jesus’s fierce images here are about a fierce subject—commitment. 

 

Human endeavors, whatever they are, demand commitment.  Sometimes this means that a certain amount of force is required.   

 

When potters begin to throw pots on the wheel, they must first knead or wedge the clay to get it to the proper consistency and uniformity.  Then they must attach it to the wheel.  If it is not first properly affixed and centered, it will go unstable and spin off the wheel, unraveling into a chaotic mess.  To properly affix the clay you must slam it hard, with force, onto the wheel.  Anything less than that risks a failed pot.

 

When you get nibbles on your fishing line, you must firmly, with force, pull the line to set the hook.  Too violent, and you pull the hook out of the fish’s mouth, not firmly enough, it will get loose.  Either way, you lose the fish. 

 

Surfing requires you to really put an all-out effort at paddling when the wave begins to swell beneath you.  You have to give it your all or your board will be too slow, and the wave will pass it by.  To catch a wave, you have to have all-out commitment.  It is like this on a rugby pitch or football field:  you have to give it up, go all-out, leave everything on the field if you are to have any hope of winning, and that from the start.  Hold back, and you will most likely injure yourself. 

 

These parables and sayings should not be taken literally.  Jesus here is not telling us to go to war to be his disciples, to become assassins.  He is not telling us literally to hate our loved ones and despise life. 

 

He is saying that the cost of discipleship is high, far higher than any of the crowds following Jesus out of curiosity seem to have realized.  At the very minimum, it demands attentive openness to the teacher, rather than keeping a little running score on if the teacher measures up. 

 

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, grace is free, but it is not cheap.  It demands an all-out commitment. Faith is an all-life matter, not an expression of consumer desire. Faith cannot run on auto-pilot.

 

Jesus tells parables in order to shock his listeners into a new understanding, a new relationship. The parables, with their unlikely comparisons, twist endings, and overturning of expectations, are a little like Zen koans.  They seek to stun the hearer into a new reality.   They are Jesus’ shock therapy for souls lost in self-delusion.  The parables of the unfunded builder, the king unprepared for war, and the assassin’s training—these are his shock therapy for those who want to pick and choose their religion, who dabble in spirituality, and who are unwilling to go the distance with God.  

 

One Zen master famously said, “If you meet the Buddha walking down the street, kill him!”  Not a particularly gentle image.  The gut-wrenching saying forces us to understand that any Buddha we contain in our understanding or mind is not really the Buddha. So it is with “If you want to follow me, hate those you love.”  It’s precisely because families and our love for them matter so much for us that this saying shocks us to realize how important commitment to the Reign of God is. 

 

Jesus’ hard sayings all share this koan-like character: highly charged language and images, without any effort at softening them or prettifying them, force us to shift gears: “I bring a sword, not peace!  I divide families and loved ones, not unite them!  Cut off your limbs, sever your organs, and put out your eyes if they cause you to sin!  Leave your families without even saying goodbye and let the rotting dead bury themselves! Hate your families!”

 

Lord, have mercy! Sweet Jesus save us from Fierce Jesus!

This week, let us look at how we spend our time, our emotional energy, our money, and ask ourselves, what am I committed to?  Is it service and kindness?  Is it alleviating suffering and reconciling alienation?  Am I committed to Jesus and God’s Reign?  Where do my true desires lie?  What makes my heart sing?  Do my actions reflect these desires? 

 

And then let us pray for the grace to follow fiercely, with utmost devotion, what gentle Jesus, what fierce Jesus, is calling us to.

 

In the name of Christ, Amen.