5th September 2010 Twenty - third Sunday of the Year - C
The point of Jesus’ message today is to WIDEN our vision of FAMILY… not to reject it, or abandon it…..
I think there is one thing we need to take literally about Jesus’ teaching and one thing we should only take metaphorically…. We should not take literally Jesus’ teaching that we should ‘hate our families and our lives”…. (quite the opposite.. we must love and cherish and keep our commitments to our parents and family………)…. But we should take literally the teaching that Jesus widens our family to include but also go wider than our blood relations…… For, we are truly brothers and sisters with all who follow Jesus and act on his word…….. (to be taken absolutely seriously)..
At first glance, the readings for this weekend seem a terrible mismatch for the (coinciding) secular celebration of Father’s Day. The Gospel today even says the rather jarring words: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” What in the world does this mean?
Why would Jesus counsel his followers to "hate" their families? In this passage Jesus uses an exaggeration that is typical of the language and way of speaking of his time, (the Jewish culture two thousand years ago…. That is, a strong point is made by extreme exaggeration. Jesus is trying to make a point about discipleship. Hate in the context of this bible passage is better described as put in second priority…. It really means to give less preference to. The examples Jesus uses in this reading have to do with calculating the cost of discipleship and spelling out what that cost will be. And the key to following Christ is renunciation of all that comes between the disciple and a total commitment to the Lord: possessions, family, even one's life. Not that these things have no value, but their worth must be seen in the perspective of what's ultimately important – discipleship of Christ…..
Also, we DO know that Jesus had a deep respect and love for his family, both his earthly family and his Heavenly Father. So, faithfulness to Christ and love and respect for our family ought not be any kind of contradiction. If there is a choice being made between following God and remaining a part of our loving family, then something must have gone horribly awry with our families. What Jesus is asking here is that “You've got to be in this ‘discipleship thing’ 100 percent! Half measures will never do. That is today's gospel response to the idea of the ‘good-enough Christian’: one who basically colours inside the moral lines and meets the minimum requirements of church membership. Good-enough isn't good enough. Being the Body of Christ makes us sharers in the life of Jesus!
And Jesus was never known to do things halfway…. The “satisfied Christian” is courting with disaster.
There may very well be a bit of “hating” going on, though, but not by followers of Jesus… Rather.. some people may hate and persecute disciples of Jesus because they are including others in the family fold than they think should be there… // unintended conflict and costs will be incurred in following Jesus because people are included in Jesus’ plan that others think should be left out……..
The plain truth is: Our goal is not merely to avoid being a bad person…… Being a disciple of Jesus is the goal, and that's a lot harder. ..Discipleship is an expensive proposition. It costs everything you have and everything you are. . (Jesus expects us to give all we have in energy and time). Why is the price so high? Because the stakes are just as high.
Jesus isn't asking us to throw our stuff away. He's begging us not to throw our lives away. (Rather, he is asking us to put them our lives, our energy and our resources into the service of his plan for building up the Kingdom of God and its different and transforming values).
The second reading adds a new perspective to all this…. St Paul… a true and inspiring disciple of Christ… speaks about a fellow Christian.. a runaway slave … who has now become like a son to him because he is a fellow disciple in Christ….. Paul writes to another disciple and begs him to accept his runaway slave but not as a slave anymore but as a brother….. this is consistent with Jesus’ gospel….. there is a considerable change to our lives and our relationships when we become a true disciple of Christ…. Things change quite dramatically… old values and old ways of doing things.. END…… and old advantages and arrangements are changed forever… the owner of that slave has paid a big price… he has lost his slave.. who is now a free person… because in Christ there is no distinction between slave and free.. we are all free…
Jesus knows that following him will lead to tensions and pain…. Not because he wants us to reject family but because his message INCLUDES more people into the family than others (under the old system) can cope with…. IN jesus kingdom… water is thicker than blood….. (the water of baptism that is…. Is more important in our relationships than the important relationship of blood relations…. And this turns the whole system on its head…..
So, it is worth spending some time in reflection …….. asking ourselves….. “what am I building in my life…”….. what am I willing to spend?” and “What am I willing to lose?”
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REFERENCES:
FR. PAUL W. KELLY
(Italicised Quotes from Alice Camille and Fr Dominic Grassi).
SHARING THE WORD THROUGH THE LITURGICAL YEAR. GUSTAVO GUTIERREZ.
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