Anyone who does not hate their family cannot be my disciple. Anyone who will not carry their cross cannot be my disciple. Anyone who does not part with all their possessions cannot be my disciple.
This is the triple warning we hear from Jesus in Luke 14:25-33 as a crowd of enthusiasts swells around him. And blessed are those who are troubled by this warning! Blessed are those who do not rush to sanitize the difficult teachings of Jesus. Listening to Jesus will not always be a walk in the park. It was never meant to be. He demands a lot from us, more than we’d like to have demanded of us, if we’re honest. We believe in “family values,” but here is Jesus telling us to hate our family! Hate, in the Bible, is not an emotional disdain and ill will, but a turning away from something. But is that any better? Even if we can find a way around Jesus telling us to hate our families, he’s still telling us to see family relationships as something expendable compared to following him. And he’s calling on us to carry the cross, the ultimate loss of the self, the ego, as well as the relinquishment of all our possessions (yes, all). While I’m not telling anyone to sell their house, it is worth noting that the Jerusalem church we meet in the early chapters of Acts took this teaching from Jesus as seriously as possible (Acts 2:42-47, 4:32-37). They gave up on the very concept of private property and abandoned themselves completely to Christ and the Christ-centered community. Without a willingness for these things, Jesus says here in Luke 14, discipleship is plainly out of the question.
We feel that impulse to sand off the rough edges of this teaching so that Jesus isn’t really asking us to give up all our possessions, or to treat our family as something that can be shed at a moment’s notice. But here’s the short of it: everything but Jesus must lose its beauty, its allure and power over us. If we’re going to really be followers of Jesus, we have to fall out of love with everything else. Everything.
Jesus offers two quick parables: you start building a tower but don’t have the resources to finish; or, a king goes to battle but is outmatched and must surrender. Neither parable has a happy ending. Both end with the pessimistic realization that the journey is too difficult to complete. He seems pretty convinced that the crowds of people are in over their heads. We love stories about underdogs and unexpected achievements. We’d like to believe that the person building the tower finds some creative solutions and finishes it after all; or that the smaller army has the superior strategy and determination to overcome the bigger army. But that’s not the story Jesus is telling. It’s not the story we’re a part of. We want to believe that Jesus wouldn’t talk to us the way he talks to the Pharisees and the posers. We want to believe that there’s no way we could come as far down the road with Jesus as we have only to find out that we’re in over our heads.
Jesus is calling us to do the most difficult thing imaginable – be his disciples. Don’t get me wrong; this discipleship is exciting, joyful, adventurous, a blessing beyond all blessings. But it is the most difficult thing a human being can set out to do. If we don’t want to believe that, we’re lying to ourselves. In the presence of Jesus is the most joyful, most trying, most exhilarating, most exhausting, most life-giving, most heart-breaking journey we will ever experience. And before we take another step, we would be wise to ask ourselves – what are not ready to fall out of love with yet?
0 Comments