A Reflection for the Twenty-third Sunday in Odd Time
“If anyone involves me without hating his father and mother, wife and youngsters, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he can’t be my disciple.” (Lk 14:26)
Sometimes my response to Jesus is, “Whoa! What are you talking about?”
That sums up my initial response to the readings this Sunday. Did he forget the commandment about honoring our fathers and our moms? And now I’m imagined to hate them?
Sorry, I can’t do it. I like my father. Ever since I can remember, my father talked to me about God. He helped me imagine God was at all times present and that I could seek advice from God anytime. And I like my mother. So often, she comforted me in hard times. She signed me up for religious education classes and brought me to church week after week after I was a child.
“Come on, Lord. Hate them? They’re the rationale I like you!”
Through the years, I’ve read commentaries and heard homilies that boil these verses right down to “Don’t love your loved ones or life greater than you like God.” But that take leaves me unsatisfied. “Hate” is a robust word.
My life can only have one center. And I simply cannot stand for anything or anyone apart from God to occupy it.
I think Jesus is saying that we must love him in a way that’s radically different from the best way that we love anyone or the rest. It’s not that we love all these people, and our Triune God is our favourite—as if we’re talking about flavors of ice cream.
I feel of it this fashion: We’re born right into a community. Even in our mother’s womb, we’re in relationship together with her. Another way, we’re also in relationship with our father, and are a part of the human family. Yet we were in relationship with God even before we were conceived. Because the Lord tells Jeremiah, “Before I formed you within the womb, I knew you.”
How long has our everlasting God known and loved us? How long will the Lord who was, who’s and who’s to come back know us?
It gets a bit tricky for those of us who exist in space and time to speak about. Words fall short. But I think Jesus is saying our love for God have to be “prior” or “first,” yet not in such a way that what I like “second” is anywhere close.
Further, Jesus is addressing our ever-present temptation to show human beings into gods. Higher to hate my father or mother or brother or sister or children or wife than allow them to come back before God in my heart. Likewise, higher to hate my deacon or priest or bishop or pope than allow them to come back before God. My love for any human being—including myself—cannot come before my love for God.
I cannot make idols of my relatives or my religious leaders. If I’m to completely love others as God is asking me to do, that love must flow from placing Jesus at the middle of my life. In any case, my life can only have one center. And I simply cannot stand for anything or anyone apart from God to occupy it.
