Wisdom 9: 13-18b (RM) or Deuteronomy 30: 15-20 (RCL); Psalm 90 or 1; Philemon: 9-10, 12-17 (RM) or Philemon: 1-21 (RCL); Luke 14: 25-33

Really, you’d think it would have been all too much for them.

Look at what Jesus is shown to be saying in this week’s Gospel: Whoever comes to me and does not hate their father or mother is not worthy to be my disciple? Whoever does not carry a cross is not worthy of me? None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions?! It’s quite amazing that the crowds did not disperse then and there, much as the crowd that had gathered to stone to death the woman trapped in adultery slinked away at Jesus’ words.

Oh, wait. Yes they did abandon Jesus. But much later — not before he had made his entry into Jerusalem, welcomed by a cheering crowd, who a few days later turned on him shouting “Crucify him!”

There’s a certain continuity between Luke’s account in last week’s Gospel and this, but also a few discontinuities and a few easily-misunderstood aspects of what Jesus is saying. As always, we need to prod ourselves to remember that Luke was writing several generations after the lifetime of the historical Jesus, and what he writes is coloured by the often dire situation of his own Christian community.

First, although Luke jumps ahead to a different setting – from a banquet to a travelling mob – the way he writes sounds like Jesus is addressing the same audience: elite males who carry immense family responsibility in their culture and who have much to lose financially and in terms of property, to say nothing of prestige, if they even started to follow Jesus’ demands. You can tell by the fact that his list of “whom to hate” includes wife but not husband. (We do know that at least one married woman, Joanna the wife of Chuza, travelled with him, as did other women of means who supported his itinerant ministry.)

Another point of course is the startlingly harsh word “hate.” This does not sound like the Jesus who called on his followers to love their neighbour. In fact he commands them to love both God and neighbour. This seems to be a language glitch translated literally into English without the cultural nuancing. While we associate hate with a vicious, violent emotion, Scripture scholars generally believe that this meant simply “rejection” at worst, or “loving less than” at best. In other words, it’s a matter of choosing one’s priorities, and electing to commit oneself to a radical, potentially dangerous way of life, rather than staying comfortably at home. Dianne Bergant calls the word translated as hate a “Semitic idiom that refers to first loyalty, which implies that in choosing one thing one thereby excludes everything else.”

Point is, you can’t have it both ways. This can be tough for those of us who live in fairly safe comfortable circumstances today, because we’re accustomed to having a range of choices at our disposal. This can even seem like an entitlement: “Netflix or Hulu? Pizza or lasagna? Show me the menu. I want both!”

We’ve looped back to that familiar expression, the cost of discipleship. The challenges Jesus put forth, to love as God loves, with the same freedom, mercy and generosity, with a wholehearted commitment to live this way, is naturally going to put Christians at odds with their prevailing culture, to say nothing of many of their family and friends. Luke’s first-century Christian community was just finding that out. Their faith commitment did not merely set up temporary inconveniences or passing family altercations, it could cost them their lives.

Today Christians are highly unlikely to be literally carrying a cross, or be burnt at the stake (a great relief for those of us who toil at church reform.) Bergant suggests that choosing the cross today means to “travel the high road: to forgive offenses committed against us; to live simply so others can simply live; to take responsibility for the moral character of society.”

There. That sounds more familiar. But not necessarily easier.

© Susan K. Roll