Gotta Hate Your Momma!

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, walking in his ways, and observing his commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

Luke 14:25-33

Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, “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. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

Let’s see… blessings and curses… life and death… slavery… hating mom, dad, the spouse and kids.  Got it!  Note to self:  Take this Sunday off in three years… Okay… that’s on the calendar now…. SO what do we do with this?  What do you do with the parts of the Bible that are like this?  I once preached at a Jewish Congregation in Maine and the Torah portion was from Deuteronomy.  It wasn’t the one we read today…. today’s is a cake walk in comparison!  That one covered… and these are just a few of the highlights mind you… how to marry someone you’ve captured in a war… turns out it’s quite a process.  How to deal with your two wives and the kids… carefully.  How to get the town folk to stone to death your rebellious kid… three chapters in the Talmud on that one.  What to do with executed bodies… don’t leave them out AND how to handle poo while you're serving in the army… it’s complicated.  So what do you do with stuff like that?  What do you do with the parts of Scripture that include stoning your kids to death, curses, slavery, and have Jesus telling us to hate our mom and dad?  What do we do when Scripture brings us stuff like THIS?

One popular option I hear people say is “I follow the New Testament God and not the Old Testament God.”  Well, first… that doesn't help with the "hate mom and dad" thing.  That IS in the New Testament.  Second, doing that is called Marcionism and that’s a heresy, so I’m going to say don't do that.  Another thing people do is the old “stick your fingers in your ears and say LALALALALALA really loud” trick and just ignore these parts.  But that didn’t work when I was five so I'm sure it’s not going to cut it fifty years later either.  The other thing we could do with this sort of stuff is to actually look at it... look at the context, the history, and culture of the time, the literary style… in other words, don’t try to go around it or run away from it… instead, dive deeply, right into the heart of it!

So, when you dive deeply into hating mom, dad, the spouse and the kids, what do you see?  The first thing I see is that Jesus is NOT talking about SALVATION.  This isn’t about where we go when we push up daisies or pull the pin.  This is about DISCIPLESHIP.  It’s about how we walk through THIS life.  And what does Jesus say is required to be a disciple in this passage?  Everything.  All that you have.  Yup, 100% perfect, unwavering discipleship requires that you follow in Jesus’ footsteps so perfectly that there is none of you left.  None left for mom, dad, the spouse or the kids.  So with that in mind, how are you doing with your discipleship?  Not quite there yet?  Yeah, me neither, but what people always seem to miss is that we are not expected to be there yet!  This is discipleship we’re talking about.  This is us trying to walk through life the Jesus way.  This is living our lives doing the things Jesus did in his life… living day in and day out with love, compassion, sacrifice and generosity.  Discipleship is, by definition, always a work in progress for us from our very first breath to our very last.  Discipleship is not a destination.  

What Jesus told this crowd, with “hate your family” level drama, is that Discipleship is something you will ALWAYS be working TOWARD and never something you will ever manage to complete and THAT’S the real gift buried under the drama in this lesson.  We’ll never be perfect at discipleship any more than we will ever perfectly forget our entire family.  That’s how it’s supposed to be!  But now, in this lesson and in Jesus' life, we have the tremendous gift of a particular DIRECTION for us to walk in our lives.  No more wondering how to walk through life.  Now we know!

That’s also what God was trying to do in the first lesson.  God had just presented humanity with the Manufacturer’s Manuel for Being Human.  It’s like the one for your car that’s in your glovebox.  You know, the one that you only get out to remember how to change the clock?  Yeah that one.  Well, God gave us a “How to Function Best as a Human” manual and told the people that if they followed it and walked in God’s ways, THAT way leads to life.  BUT, God says, if you DON’T follow that manual, then things won’t go as well.  This isn’t a threat by God any more than your car’s instruction manual telling you to change the oil is a threat from Nissan!  God just knows how we work best because God made us!  Nissan knows best how their cars work because they made them.  Change the oil, get the scheduled maintenance and your car will “live long in the land”.  Ignore the scheduled maintenance and your car “shall seize up in the land that you are crossing.”

The last thing I’ll tell you about how to handle the hard, strange, and downright terrible things we find in Scripture is don’t lose sight of the entire Word of God forest studying the minute details of one particular tree!  Keep in mind that it’s Jesus who is the Word of God and to read Scripture as intended, we need to read it through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus… we need to read it through Love.  If it’s not about love, it’s not about God, as Bp. Curry says and I’ve found over the years that if you’re having trouble seeing Love in a particular passage on the surface, the way to find it is to dive into it’s deep end.  It’s in there.  Guaranteed.  Amen.