Rev. Bosco Peters reports: Father’s Day in New Zealand and Australia 2010 is Sunday, September 5. The gospel reading read by most Christians this Sunday is Luke 14:25-33
Jesus said …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….
Good luck with that, preachers.
Well, our preacher did an OK job with it, going back to the importance of the Jewish family in Jesus’ time, possibly the way the family played the role of God in the Jewish man or woman of that time.
What nags me more is what is in my life more central to me than God?
Strangely, what I would have like the preacher to talk about were the last two lines of today’s gospel: anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”
Why is it so hard in the Developed World to hear a preacher talk of economic justice, of simplifying one’s life so that others may simply live?
In Developing Countries, I hear it done all the time…
I used two examples this morning, seminarians who despite the protests of their parents and friends persevered in their calling as well as catechumens and candidates in the RCIA who experienced the same type of prejudice but persevered nonetheless. The question really is who comes first in our lives, God or others or even our material possessions or gaining them? It is easy for many people to “worship” their spouse, their relationships, their money, their goods, their looks to the neglect of God, true worship and living lives based on justice and charitable stewardship. I think Jesus is using the term “hate” as we might use it in the following sentence: “I would hate to love my mother or father or whatever else, more than God!”
The problem with this passage is that it seems to encourage interpretations which set up a competition between God and others, as if God is one more person to love, just bigger and more demanding–as if God and neighbour are competing for a limited amount of our love. This is incompatible with our theology of marriage (for a start).
Ideally the seminarians and the catechumens mentioned above did not reach the conclusion that they loved their families less than God (“winner!”, “losers!”), but that they continued to love them–perhaps even love them “more” than before–in a more complicated situation, perhaps more painfully (i.e., taking up their cross).
Of course, our families, our neighbours, all those we are called to love as ourselves, and to lay down our lives for, are on a completely different level to our material possessions.
It was successfully navigated in Sydney, with the observation that it was either or both of typical Semitic exaggeration to make a point or a difficulty in Biblical Hebrew, which lacks a less extreme way of expressing preference, i.e. to put God first while still honouring parents etc. Would any Hebrew scholars care to comment? PS – spare a prayer for fathers (and everyone else) in Christchurch, NZ whose Father’s Day began with a 7.1 earthquake. There was a lot of damage but miraculously no lives were lost – the difference in building standards providing another example of the gap between the developed and developing worlds.
Our pastor took another tack, and said that the word translated as ‘hate’ did not have the emotional connotation that we now associate with that word in English. Instead, to the people of that time and place, it meant what we mean when we use the word ‘detachment’; from people and possessions, preferring Jesus to them, but not – as we currently define ‘hate’ – actively wishing evil or destruction upon them.
The following are where Luke uses the same Greek word for hatred.
…salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us- (1:71) Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man (6:22) Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, (6:27 “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, (16:13) But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.’ (19:14) All men will hate you because of me. (21:17 NIV)
This Gospel world was dominated by family relationships not the nation states and corporations that rule our lives. The family was a business; its extended connections a person’s only safety net. People outside of the family and its network were hated, considered “enemies”, not to be trusted. The society was structured around family patterns of positive and negative relationships.
In this social world taking up any positive relationship (e.g. becoming a disciple of Jesus) automatically put you into negative relationships with anyone who had a negative relationship to that person. Becoming a member of the “Brethren” altered your social relationships. Loving people whom your blood family did not love, would threaten your relationship to your family.
The family was the most powerful institution; more like the Mafia. Love your enemies challenged its basis.
by
Please leave a reply.