Jesus is on his way to
Jerusalem. At this point, he is very
aware of what his journey is going to lead to.
He knows he is going to Jerusalem for an inevitable confrontation. He knows it is a confrontation he is bound to
lose. He knows that means he will most
likely lose his life.
But he also knows that this is the
way. Does he understand it? I don't know.
I suspect all that he has to go on as he journeys to Jerusalem is trust that
somehow God will make this good, if not before his death, then after it. This hope is what drives him.
And with this knowledge, these
thoughts, weighing heavier and heavier on his mind, the crowds grow
larger. People continue to be attracted
to his message. They want to be near him
because being near him they experience being near God.
And Jesus grows troubled by them and
impatient with them. He knows that they
do not know what he knows, don't understand at all what he is headed for, and don't
have a clue what continuing to follow him means.
This tension finally breaks.
Whoever comes to me and does not
hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even
life itself, cannot be my disciple.
Well, that's certainly one way to
get their attention. In his frustration,
Jesus makes his point in what seems to our ears to be a most extreme, even
unacceptable, way. It wouldn't have
sounded any better to the ears that were listening then, either.
His point in saying this harsh thing
is made clear in the two parable-like illustrations he gives after saying it.
Which of you, intending to build a
tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether or not he
has enough to complete it?
Don't do this—don't follow
me—without counting the cost, he is saying.
You are not following me to Jerusalem for more free lunches and healing
sessions. What waits me there is not a
crown but a cross and you will learn things about the way of God with this
world that you would rather not know.
Following me is a choice, he is
saying, a choice to risk your life.
Don't lose sight of that, and what it costs to make it.
But hating, we ask? Does the choice involve hating? Does the one who taught us to love our
neighbors as ourselves also want us to hate our families and our very lives?
Yes and no.
"Hate" here is not
emotional hate, just like the "love" we are called to have for one
another is not "emotional" love.
Hate here is more like detachment, complete non-dependence, or the
willingness to do without.
The love we are called to have for
God and for one another is shown in action, the action of service, often
sacrificial service. The love we are
called to have for God and for one another involves choices that we make each
and every day, and sometimes those choices are very risky.
In that sense the love we are called
to have for God and for one another involves first what Jesus means here by
"hate." To make the choice to
love God and or to love our neighbor we must first be detached from any sense
of obligation or possessiveness we have in this life.
Paul’s letter to Philemon is a
perfect example of what Jesus means.
Paul is writing to his friend Philemon
about a man named Onesimus. Onesimus was
a slave belonging to Philemon. He had
apparently left—we can assume without permission—to go and be with Paul, who is
in prison.
Paul is sending Onesimus back to
Philemon, but presents Philemon with a choice he must make, a choice Paul feels
is a fundamental consequence of the fact that both Philemon and Onesimus are
Christians.
That fact changes things, Paul
says. Onesimus is no longer primarily
your slave, he says, nor are you primarily his master. You are now primarily brothers in Christ,
equal before God.
Here Paul is putting in action, a
principle he lays down in several other of his letters. We know it best from the third chapter of the
letter to the Galatians.
As many of you as were baptized into
Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there
is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ. (Galatians 3:27-28)
For Philemon, a consequence of his
being a Christian, his following Jesus, is that he can no longer think of
Onesimus as a possession or as an inferior.
This is an example of what Jesus meant when he said, "You must hate
your own life." It is like saying,
"You must hate your own life in order to be free enough truly to love
it.”
Answering the call to follow Jesus always means traveling with him on the
road to Jerusalem, the place where we will have to let go of life in order to
be free enough truly to live it.
Letting go of life means letting go
of any attempt on our part to control it; it is, essentially, to admit we have
no control over it. Letting go of life
means trusting God to give us what we need rather than struggling on our own to
take it. Letting go of life means
letting go of everything we think we know about other people, especially those
we have been taught to mistrust, or have been taught we have some kind of
superiority or authority over.
I presided at the marriage of a
lovely young couple yesterday. When I
asked if the freely entered into this lifelong covenant, I did not ask,
“Lindsay, will you hate Zachary enough truly to love him?” If I had asked the question that way there
would have been gasps and protests and suggestions that I was out of my mind.
And yet, do we not ask of a married
couple that as a part of their vows, they will give up their control over
life? What do you think we mean when we
say “…for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and health…until
we are parted by death”? Why is the word
“death” in our marriage vows and not the word “life?” Why? Because
underlying these vows are Jesus’ words that following him means giving up all
of our claims on life, choosing to walk with him toward death, and, therefore,
receiving life as a sheer gift.
That is what Paul was asking of his
friend Philemon. It is what Jesus asks
of us. Give up all your claims on
control of your life and you will be free enough to receive it back as the
sheer gift that it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment