Reflection on the Costs of Discipleship, Luke 14:25-33

We don't expect Jesus to endorse hatred, so what's going on when he seems to do just that?

I remember being a young Mormon missionary in the Netherlands. I was shy, only 19 years old, and learning a new language in a foreign country, and our primary task was to go door to door and try to persuade folks that we had something valuable to offer them. Our rhetorical approach to sharing the gospel with Dutch folks in the early 1980s was much different than Jesus’s approach. Our rhetoric feels sugar-coated—we might call it “saccharine”—compared to Jesus’s bleak warnings about the travails of following him.

Typically, when a Christian hopes to persuade someone else to explore their faith, when a Christian hopes to sell their belief to someone else, they paint a rosy picture, right? They begin perhaps with the promise of salvation: join us and be saved, enjoy the blessings of God’s grace and eternal life. Most Christians I know promote that whole being saved thing as though it were the main reason anyone would want to be Christian. Or they might use Christian fellowship and a sense of belonging and being part of a greater community: join us and you’ll have new friends, new activities, new events to be part of, and say goodbye to isolation and feelings of loneliness. That also feels reasonably promising as an approach to me.

Jesus, however, says, “If you wish to follow me you must first hate your family and hate life itself. In addition, you must also carry the cross, and, of course, you must forfeit all your possessions; otherwise, you cannot follow me.” Does this sound promising to you, or attractive, enticing perhaps?

Jesus may have been a prophet of God, but it’s obvious he never ran a marketing department or a branding campaign. He’s not making his path seem particularly warm nor welcoming. If all you had to go on was Jesus’s pitch, here, then you might politely decline his offer. “No thanks, Jesus. I’m good over here with my kids and my grandkids and my few nice things. You go on ahead, and I’ll be cheering for you from back here, following from a distance.”

So, what is going on with Jesus and this encouragement of hatred? Well, much to my delight, context will be critical to understanding this text. We need to remember the context and to recall that Jesus’s approach here is rhetorical, meaning that his tone here is every bit as important as his content, and possibly even more important.

Elsewhere in Luke, rather annoyingly, Jesus teaches that we are to love even those who hate us, and we are also to pray for them, presumably for their wellbeing and for their good. I don’t believe Jesus hit his head somewhere along the road to Jerusalem and now he suddenly prefers hatred to love. Again, this is rhetoric. “Hate” is a strong word that elicits strong responses. We should all know by now, given current situations in our own world, that if you want people to hear you, then say terrible or provocative things that will get you noticed. So let’s go a little deeper.

All the gospel writers helpfully employ transitional phraseology to steer us where they want us to go. This will prove most helpful the better you read, for you will take note of these directions and follow them where they take you as reader.

Here are examples of transitional phrases Luke uses to tell Jesus’s story. They matter, and they exist to help us discern changes in setting and context. So, in the previous chapter, Luke tells us, for example, that “Jesus went through one town and village after another, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem.” This introduces some general teachings. Then Luke writes, “At that very hour some Pharisees came” and warned Jesus. This information feels personal and pointed, “Be careful,” the Pharisees tell Jesus, Herod may be after you. This all constitutes a new scene and a departure from the previous scene—the story keeps moving, keeps going.

The next transition begins, “On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath…” This is how last Sunday’s lectionary passage begins. Luke informs us readers that Jesus dines with Pharisees on the sabbath. Whatever follows, therefore, we should expect will have something to do with two important themes: views of the Pharisees and views on the sabbath. We anticipate how Jesus will see and do things differently. He does not see the sabbath the way others might.

Even after Luke establishes the setting for this exchange, he further delineates the context by informing us readers that “when he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable.” Jesus doesn’t tell parables for no particular reason. No, he’s purposeful. He is, perhaps foremost, a teacher, after all. And this parable, you can be sure, given how Luke set things up, will have to do with Pharisees dining together on the sabbath and how they decide amongst themselves who will sit where and what the repercussions of such actions will be. The teaching moment changes from talk of the sabbath to talk of honor and shame.

In Luke’s next transition—and we are in the same chapter as today’s passage now, chapter 14—he writes, “One of the dinner guests, on hearing this [about being ‘repaid at the resurrection of the righteous’], said to him, ‘Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!’ Then Jesus said to him…” And this is where Luke introduces us to Jesus’s parable of the Great Banquet.

Immediately following this parable, which we are all familiar with, Luke then provides us with a new transitional phrase for a new teaching in a new setting. Writes Luke, “Now large crowds were traveling with him, and he turned and said to them…” What follows comprises today’s gospel lesson about hating family and life and carrying the cross and coughing up all your possessions. Does it matter then that these difficult words Jesus addresses to large crowds that were traveling with him? Would it be different if these were Pharisees at a dinner? Or would it be different still if Jesus were with his disciples in a place apart where he spoke to them alone, privately? Of course, each setting, each different context, signals changes in Jesus’s approach and his intentions.

I’m contending that whom Jesus speaks to specifically and how he speaks to them makes a difference. The gospel writers, including Luke, use these transitional phrases very well, and yet they remain barebones. They give us basic directions, like stage directions in a play, but don’t tell us a whole lot more, sadly. We’re left in the end with the need to reconstruct a bit, and even to speculate, responsibly—hopefully.

As a writer myself, I can see Luke crafting a scene in which Jesus travels with large crowds, and large crowds, by their nature, tend to bring people together who may be very different, some of whom, in fact, may get a bit boisterous or rowdy or may even dabble in provocations. I can see Jesus moving along over long days, listening to the boasts perhaps of people he barely knows, and perhaps some of these folks make bold claims indeed, even though they have only been following Jesus since the start of the most recent week. It’s easy to imagine Jesus listening to them, folks talking about things they don’t know and don’t understand, “turning and saying to them, ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and life itself, cannot be my disciple.” That ought to get your attention.

Truly, Jesus does not say anything here he does not say consistently virtually everywhere else. However, he does, it’s true, use different language. As he does on occasion, Jesus employs hyperbole or overstatement. It’s rhetoric, again, language meant to grab attention, language deployed to get people to listen and to hear. In all the gospels, Jesus gets depicted as using hyperbole: recall, for example, the idea that if your eye offends you then pluck it out. Any takers? Anyone believe that Jesus truly intends that some of us pluck out our eyes? Do you likewise believe that Jesus really advocates hating your children or your spouse? It’s rhetoric, and it’s important to know this. Real problems attend efforts to read all scripture literally. Nothing here is designed to be read literally; it’s meant to provoke thought. Still, we get Christians every year shooting up a synagogue or mosque or something because they believe erroneously that somehow God wants them to do violence in God’s name. Now, that is preposterous!

Half of my sources this past week emphasized how in Hebrew the verb “to hate” can be used flexibly. For example, it can mean “hate” as we understand it. And it can also be used to emphasize difference. Genesis says of Jacob that he hated Leah, his first wife. You may recall that Jacob worked arduously and faithfully for Laban, hoping to be given Laban’s fair daughter, Rachel. Instead, Laban gives Jacob his older daughter, Leah. He can have Rachel as well but only after he completes another long term of service. In Hebrew then, the idea isn’t that Jacob actually hates his wife Leah. It is, rather, that he loves her less than he loves his other wife, Leah’s sister, Rachel. “To hate” can be used in this way—and is used in this way—in the OT.

The point, as I’m sure all of you can discern, remains no different from the point Jesus always makes. The kingdom of God seeks to exercise or realize God’s will for humanity in this world. Not everyone will be willing to strive for the building of God’s kingdom, not everyone will be fit for the kingdom, primarily because their priorities and values will not align with God’s vision for humankind. To follow Jesus as Jesus understands it means to make a lasting commitment, even as many different influences may make following Jesus arduous and demanding and even troubling. Some people may leave you for your commitment. You could experience pain and hardship for your commitment. And you will be asked to give of yourself, and to give generally, and generously, as part of your commitment.

I feel like Jesus is making clear to this large crowd of vocal fellow travelers, who may not know clearly what the gospel demands, that the kingdom he proclaims will not appeal to everyone. Know what you’re getting into before you start, make sure you can finish what you begin. It may be better for you, Jesus seems to say, not to follow me, for following me only places more demands upon a person. For me, this passage simply reads like an amplification or development of the idea that you cannot serve two masters. If you try to serve two different masters, says Jesus, you will end up loving the one and hating the other—another example of where and how Jesus uses the harsh language of hatred to good effect.

Indeed, there’s really nothing new here beyond more provocative rhetoric. In spite of this rhetorical flourish and its use of the verb “to hate,” we understand that Jesus promotes a kingdom built upon the foundations of God’s love and mercy. Jesus’s teachings don’t ebb and flow, they consistently urge us to love God with all our everything and then to love each other because of our love of God. It genuinely is that simple and straightforward. Amen.