Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Photo by Dan Parlante on Unsplash

Grace and peace to you all from God the Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

This morning our Gospel tells us that Jesus is setting out and I want you to imagine with me how the scene is described by Luke this morning. Luke says, “Now large crowds were traveling with him.” So, imagine Jesus walking slowly because he is surrounded by crowds. All clamoring to speak to him, to have him pray for them, to perhaps just merely touch the hem of his robe. I imagine a scene that looks like those videos I’ve seen of when the Beatle’s first came to the United States!

And then Jesus says, “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.”

Now imagine the look on the faces of the people. I imagine confusion about that statement, surprise and maybe even a few people who walk away rolling their eyes thinking, “I knew this celebrity preacher was a quack.”

The Family Unit in ancient times was every individual’s means for survival. The wages from the working members, the food from the farming members, the housekeeping of the stay-at-home members all came together to ensure the family as a whole subsisted. For most societies at this time, the family was the economic model.

And Jesus is saying, “hate” those people.

This stings and probably got the attention of the crowds and… it seems to have offended most of them…  In the very next chapter of the Gospel, the first verse is, “now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to him to listen to him.” The crowds who formerly surrounded Jesus seem to have dwindled down to the just least favorable types from society – maybe the ones who can relate to hating their family because they were kicked out because of their low or embarrassing position in society.

Most scholars believe that Luke is having Jesus use hyperbole in the Gospel.[1] In other words, Luke has Jesus exaggerating to get the attention of the reader. To place into stark contrast the cost and decisions that are needed when following the way of Jesus Christ.

As I was studying the text and was reading about the use hyperbole in the New Testament, one scholar I read asked if we should take Jesus’s words seriously this week, but not literally?[2] 

What if being serious about Jesus’s words doesn’t mean we literally harbor ill feelings and cast aside members of our family, rather in light of being Christian disciples, we consider more deeply who we are as people in relationship, how we are in relationship with our families, and who do we consider to be a part of our families.

Being serious about Jesus’s words doesn’t mean we literally give away everything we own and become a beggar on the street, but it does mean that we will reconsider how we think about our money and our possessions in light of being disciples of Jesus Christ.

Because Jesus is asking us to measure these central things through our Christian discipleship practices.[3]

A life of discipleship to our Lord Jesus then gets us thinking hard about who we are in the world, how we love people, and what we possess and why. Discipleship of Jesus asks us to regularly do a reconsideration of our relationships and the ways we move through society, and discipleship of Jesus asks us to regularly recalculate our possessions, what we need and what we can share  as a  reminder that every part of a Christian’s life is a sign that points toward God’s desired reality for all of Creation.[4] 

In other words: Jesus becomes the sorting principle, a lens through which we see all things and all people.

(Get glasses out)

In the spirit of hyperbole, I have these silly glasses to illustrate the “Jesus lens” we have as disciples.

So, when you view your family through a “Jesus lens” you will certainly still see your beloved mother, son, or daughter. But, you will also see all people like you see your beloved mother, son or daughter. All of humanity becomes beloved – everyone – becomes beloved. Your understanding of who is in your family expands.

When you view your money and possessions through a Jesus lens, you see something that you can use help to actualize a ministry of God’s care, love and compassion in the world. Possessions and money become tools that not only help you survive and thrive in the world but will be used to help others survive and thrive too.

When you view your movements and participation in society at work or in your social lives through a Jesus lens, you see how the social, professional and work circles in which you move can indeed create compassionate systems of care in our workplaces, towns, and neighborhoods.

Wearing a “Jesus lens” is the work of being a disciple. And guess what, you may look like a weirdo doing it… just look at me right now! Actually, you will feel like a weirdo when your actions in the world and passions for the world align with how you see through your Jesus lens.

Because the world doesn’t teach us to operate this way. It’s exactly why the crowds abandoned Jesus by the end of the chapter – well, except for the ones who already experienced the world not working for them.

This is the cost of discipleship that Jesus speaks of. We’re going to look weird being Christian. Being Christian is not popular.  

Because, it’s more normal to circle the wagons around our trusted families when people who are not like us come near. In other words, we create enemies and have enemies created for us. It’s also normal to hold onto our possessions, including money and things, until they have a sufficient return on their value. But, when we see the world with our Jesus lens, we love our enemies and invite them into relationship. And we earn our keep and are smart stewards of the possessions we have, but we also put our possessions and resources to work for the good of the world rather than clinging to them.  

This is not the way to be well liked. Loving our enemies and welcoming the stranger and using our possessions and money in ways that won’t recoup the investment sounds hard and it’s not great long-term planning. It’s not popular to do these things. Just look at our politics in this country and I don’t only mean our current politics. It’s been very popular for a long time to actively persecute the stranger, to hate enemies, to take food away from the hungry because they can’t pay, and to end programs that work to support the poorest in our society. This has been a chronic problem.

I do have hope that the popularity of these attitudes is diminishing right now because we are in a moment where we can see more clearly than ever the very real impact these attitudes have on our neighbors.  

In Jesus’s use of exaggeration today, I think he is asking us to think hard about what we have whether that’s time, talent, money, relationships or all of the above – to consider how all of what we have is implicated into our discipleship of Jesus. Our whole life is being demanded and when we see everyone and everything through our Jesus lenses, we’ll be weirdos because we won’t follow many of the dominant cultural ways of our world anymore.

Jesus came to destroy those dominant cultural ways, which are largely unjust ways of living. He came to be the grace-filled gift from God who brings the dawn of the New Creation where the abundance of God’s world is recognized and so not stored up but shared widely - and where there are no more enemies but rather big wide families who welcome people in.

It’s hard to consciously act weird. It’s why God blessed us with church communities where we can be weird together, where the Holy Spirit empowers us to keep being weird until it’s no longer weird at all to dedicate our whole selves and all that we have to blessing and serving each other as beloved neighbors. Let’s get weird – the world needs us.

Amen.

[1] Idea from E. Trey Clark writing on Working Preacher: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-23-3/commentary-on-luke-1425-33-6

[2] Idea from Ronald P. Byars in an essay in Feasting on the Word, Year C.

[3] Ibid.

[4] This idea comes from listening to a conversation between Rev. Karoline Lewis and Dr. Skinner on a podcast called Sermon Brainwave sponsored by Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN.