This week’s gospel lesson has been one of the most difficult—for me—to understand, because of one word…hate. I have deliberately avoided preaching on this passage before, even avoiding looking it up to see what others have said about it.
That was a mistake. I have thoroughly appreciated reading what others thought and discussing with other pastors what they saw, and I appreciate what they have explained to me. I hope to share what I have learned and understood for my own heart. Maybe you will discover something for yourself.
If you tried to find the same situation and verse in other gospels, you would only find Matthew chose to speak about it—and he wrote in a different slant. Matthew said (in 10:37-38)—
“Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
I see these words as a bit gentler than Luke’s version…I have always HATED the word ‘hate.’ (I know that sounds awkward, and it is in my own head).
So why did Luke choose the word ‘hate’ for his gospel version of this statement? My wife asked me the same question, and I gave her my own explanation before I even looked it up. I told her that I thought there must have been a difficulty in translating some Hebrew or Greek word, so they chose ‘hate’ as a next-nearest meaning, without really delving into the work of translation further.
I was almost correct. Almost.
According to Barclay, in those days of ancient Judea and Jerusalem, the terms ‘hate’ and ‘love’ were examples of Eastern culture and language ‘literalness’—they were used to mean that no love could compare to the love that a true disciple should feel for the master…Jesus. When used in this way, we can begin to see what is meant and why those words were used.
My professor of Luke from Seminary, Dr. Robert Tannehill, explained in one of his many books that these two terms refer “less to emotions than to behavior that either honored or dishonored someone else.” His thought and translation, which included societal understandings of that time, were suggestive of the idea that to disgrace the family by acting inappropriately was to “hate” them. We sometimes speak to our children about ‘not embarrassing the family’ when they act up in public, but this went MUCH further. ANYTHING which a person would do that caused the family to lose respect in the community or even in their own eyes was showing hatred. The closest disciples could be said to have ‘hated’ their families in that they left them to shift for themselves as they followed the Master.
Little is made of this idea, but most of the disciples were married with families, yet they ‘left their nets’ and their professions and their LIVELIHOODS and “followed” Jesus. No mention is ever made of them sending back any monies for the well-being of those families, so we could wonder if those families were left to borrow and beg from other family members for their existence.
This is a very disturbing thought. But let’s go beyond that idea and go on to another—what would be a justifiable reason for such behavior, and for the comments that Jesus made to those listeners in this lesson.
They must hate “Even life itself”—in verse 26 we see a hint of what was to come for many of the twelve disciples. They did eventually forfeit their lives for the cause. We know that some were stoned, some were put on a cross like Jesus, some died horrible deaths…but some did not. The issue became the “being willing” to die that was important. Perhaps Peter was especially remorseful at his failure in Jerusalem because this particular passage was in his mind. Maybe this passage filtered and colored his later responses until he became the patriarch of the church that became the Roman Catholic Church and he the first pope.
But even this is a digression, a change of subject. The true question is—what is a disciple? Barclay gave some good examples of this when he wrote that “it is possible to be a follower of Jesus without being a disciple; to be a camp follower without being a soldier of the king; to be a hanger-on in some great work without pulling one’s own weight.” He went on to say that once, when a great scholar was asked about a certain young man, and the statement was made, “he claims to have been one of your students,” the scholar answered, “He may have attended some of my lectures but he was NOT one of my students.”
I have had those in my classes like that… no matter what you tried, they did not become involved in the learning (and growing) process that was possible in a class.
And the following section in today’s Gospel lesson, asking about how persons first would determine the cost of a project before starting it, is also very important. Even though Luke did not directly say it, the disciples must have determined the cost of their following Jesus and decided that the cost was worth the effort…and the loss of family, so important to much of the world at that time.
I was forced to remember a similar episode in my own life, and I hope you will bear with me as I share. My father was a great one for doing special projects. He came up with the idea of enlarging and improving a barn that was in our back yard, on the Elk River, so as to build an apartment which could be rented out. The enlarged wall was laid, with cinderblock carefully laid down, and a floor of concrete poured. And then the money ran out.
Dad had not planned the costs too well. He decided that he would have to wait until the following spring to get more money saved to finish the project. It could also have partly been that my mother objected strenuously to the whole idea.
And the project never was finished—the acrimony and disagreements between my parents, surely over more than this episode but this helped spur the problems, led to contact with lawyers and eventual divorce. Over my teen years I saw the poison ivy weeds grow to cover most of this foundation, and eventually the walls crumbled. It was a silent witness to the dissolution of a marriage, a family relationship, and a family itself.
If we want to follow an idea, the cost must be weighed against what it will do in a positive manner. Maybe we cannot do such a project—whether it is building a watchtower, or building an apartment out of a barn…or building a life as a disciple of Christ. And Christ did not expect EVERYONE to be a disciple such as the twelve…he just wanted everyone to know the costs to come. After all, he was already on his final journey…to Jerusalem and the cross. He suggested as much in his words, words that only came fully to be understood much later.
It would be nice to be a disciple at Jesus’ feet…but the cost is high.
Still, we CAN do what Christ commanded in our relations with others, with those around us. And THAT is what I interpret as the true cost of discipleship for me…to do what I can.
And continue to pray for more strength to do more.
