Based on Luke 14. 25-33. Jesus says many hard things, many things we find difficult, which challenge us. But hearing Jesus calling us to hate people, it’s not a word we expect to hear on his lips. Moreso his calling of us to hate those who are meant to be our closest loved ones, the ones dearest to us. What’s going on? Do you remember the 70’s track ‘how deep is your love’ by the Bee Gees? I won’t sing it. But that’s the question at the heart of today’s gospel reading, how deep is your love? Does your love for Jesus outstrip all other loves? Is it deeper than all others? Jesus is talking about the cost of being a disciple. He’s once more surrounded by the crowds, and whenever he’s surrounded by crowds it’s people who haven’t yet decided whether they want in yet, those who are still on the fence or are just here for the miracles or the atmosphere. And Jesus’ message for these people isn’t ‘hey come on down, following me is easy, just add me to your weekly list of activities’, no. Instead his call to them, these people who aren’t sure, is to make sure they’re certain about it before following him. To truly count the cost of being his disciple. He informs them right up front of the costs, of hating family and friends, of bearing the cross. He reminds them of the ridiculousness of starting something without the ability to finish, building a tower, setting out for war. Are you ready to start, he calls, be certain before you do. How deep is your love? So, to that uncomfortable verse about hating those who are meant to be nearest and dearest. Jesus calls us to hate our loved ones, our parents, our children, our spouse. Hate. That’s a strong word. And it’s a deliberately strong word. Jesus is using hyperbole here, he doesn’t actually want us to hate people, it’s a rhetorical device, Jesus always calls us to love one another. But nevertheless our love for him should be deeper, so much deeper that by comparison our love for family and friends could be called hate. Imagine a scale of hate to love, (for you reading this now, you may want to imagine your own church, a cathedral you've visited, or perhaps a football pitch or some other great distance you can visualise easily) deepest hate is the back wall of the church, deepest love is the wall behind the altar. Normally, looking at that scale we’d probably put our closest friends and family somewhere around the altar, and, because Jesus calls us to, we’d aim to have our love for Jesus somewhere against the wall behind it. What Jesus calls us to do is reassess the scale. We’re to take that scale and compress it down so that deepest hate is still the back wall, but, because we’ve expanded our range, our love for those closest family and friends is somewhere around the back pew. And our love for Jesus is still called to be at the wall behind the altar. Can you see how on such a scale, for an onlooker, our deep love for family and friends could be called hate. He’s not calling us to lower our love for these people, he’s saying that these people are your starting point of deepest loves, your love for him must be far, far beyond. That’s a hard teaching. Even with the realisation that it’s hyperbole, it’s a hard teaching. Because what it means at it’s core is that Jesus is our primary love, our primary allegiance, and that therefore all those other loves sit under that love. Which is fine when everything lines up nicely, when our family are Christians, when they are also following Jesus as a disciple. But it’s harder when they’re not, and it’s harder again when the two crash up against one another, when the two actively oppose one another. Faced with the choice between Jesus and family, if push came to shove, which way would you go? Family ties are important, yet our discipleship is more important even than that. That’s a hard teaching. And it’s not that this just clashes with our modern sensibilities, Jesus is speaking to the crowds at a time when family ties were even more important than they are now. When duties to family, the role of family was even more important, even more at the heart of the social order. His words weren’t fine then and are difficult now, if anything they were more counter cultural then than they are now, and yet that’s still his call. That if you don’t love him over and above all others, if your love for him isn’t deeper than your love for those closest loved ones, it’s not deep enough. And then he takes it even further. ‘Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple’. That’s not a saying about the challenges of every day life as it has come to mean in our day ‘we all have our crosses to bear’, he’s talking about death. The sight of people dragging a heavy beam of wood through the streets on their way to their execution would be a familiar sight. The blood running down, the exhaustion, the rough beam digging into their shoulder. To carry the cross meant death, and a brutal death at that. Jesus’ call is to death, that our love for him runs deeper than our love for life itself. The martyrs down the centuries witness to this way of life. But so do other saints who left wealth and comfort, who fled arranged weddings and stepped down from thrones, all because their love for Jesus ran deeper than those things. The 20th Century German Martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer summarised Jesus call as ‘When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die’. That’s what discipleship looks like, death. Death to all that would hold us back, death to all other allegiances, death to ourselves. So why would anyone follow Jesus? If the cost is so great, if it looks like death, why should we do it, why would we ever pay the price? Because in Jesus we find that death becomes new life, because in Jesus we find sacrifice rewarded, because in Jesus loss becomes gain. For all his talk of allegiance to him beyond all others, Jesus doesn’t call us to follow him solo, he calls us into fellowship, he calls us into a new family. For those who have come to him with their families those families are reshaped into the life of the family of the church. For those who have had to leave family behind, whose families don’t understand or disown them for their love for Jesus, he brings them into this new family to find love and support and care. For those whose families are already broken, who have never had a good relationship with parents or siblings, as they come to Jesus he brings them into this new family of spiritual parents and siblings. Jesus’ call to himself above family and friends may be costly, but heeding that call we find he breaks open those relationships that all may be family together, no longer isolated groups and individuals but one family, loving, challenging, supporting and encouraging one another. And whilst his call may look like death, brutal, painful death. We find in it the way of life. For Jesus doesn’t come to lift us up out of the pit of sin and brokenness, instead he bears us down deeper through death and out the other side. And in doing so we discover that much of what this world says life is about doesn’t actually bring life at all. Wealth, status, entertainment, pleasure. We may be alive, but we haven’t been living. Instead we are called to bring his life into our world, called to deeper relationships with one another, called to live as citizens of his Kingdom seeking justice, caring for our world, caring for those in need. Seeking not to make names for ourselves, but living quietly, peaceably, witnessing to Jesus. Holding lightly to this world, and tightly to the one to come. Living for Jesus, and seeing death as gain. So how deep is your love? Will you risk it all for Jesus’ sake? Is he worth everything? Jesus call us to make an informed decision about following him, and that’s a loving act. It’s his love for us, his care and mercy and compassion for us that means he asks us to consider the cost. For if we build a tower without the resources to finish, well, we’ve just spent all our resources and have nothing left and nothing to show for it, we’re in a worse state than before. If we declare war and don’t have the resources to fight it, well we’ll be conquered and lose our land and people and even life. These aren’t neutral images, they still cost, they just never reach the goal, don’t deliver what we had hoped. Will we risk everything to follow Jesus, to finish the race, to complete the tower, to win the war, can we face the cost? Think about that for a moment, weigh up in your mind everything you value, your family and friends, your home, your job, your money, your hobbies, everything. Is your love for Jesus deeper than those things? Would you risk it all for his sake? For those who say yes Jesus calls us to do just that, to risk it all in following him, to discover in it a better life, life in its fulness, life as God intended it for us. For those who aren’t so sure, Jesus doesn’t send them away, he doesn’t drive them from him, instead continue to follow, continue to listen, continue to discover this Jesus day by day. And in doing so you will, slowly or suddenly, discover the Jesus who is worth it all. For whether our love for him is shallow or deep, fleeting or enduring, his love for us far surpasses it all. His love for us is far deeper than any ocean, wider than our universe. His great tidal waves of love crashing upon the shores of our lives, longing to bathe us in its tide. As we seek to love him beyond all others, may we know his love for us, the greatness of it, so that all else is counted loss by comparison, that our love may grow deeper still. Amen.
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AuthorAn Anglican Curate in my 20's I was raised in an Anglican Church, went to a Youth Club run by an Evangelical Church, attended a Baptist Church while at Uni and was a member of a New Monastic Community after graduating. As such my faith has been influenced by these experiences and traditions into what I hope is a more rounded viewpoint. Archives
September 2022
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