There are a few sayings in the Gospel known as the “difficult words of Jesus” and we certainly encounter some of them today in the first verses of our passage. Jesus says to the crowd: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brother and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple“. Those words are difficult to hear because they certainly go against all our instincts, to hate our family, that is the people we are pre-programmed to love, and to take up our cross, actively seeking suffering and death when we are pre-programmed to avoid them at all costs. More deeply, those words don’t just contradict our natural instincts, they also contradict everything we believe about God. They certainly seem to contradict our first reading taken from Deuteronomy where we are reminded that we need to obey the commandments God has given us, among them to honor our parents, to be faithful to our spouses, and by living a righteous life, we are asked to choose life over death for the sake of our children and children’s children.
So how are we to understand what’s going on in this passage of the Gospel?
Well, before we give all our attention to those two verses (26 and 27), maybe it would help to have a closer look at verse 25. It reads: “Now large crowds were traveling with him”: We are reminded that Jesus is headed to Jerusalem, and for Luke as well as for all of us readers who are aware of the end of the story, we know that this where Jesus will be condemned to death. According to Luke, Jesus was also aware of his fate, having tried to warn the disciples several times about what was going to happen to him – and this to no avail. So we can guess that once again, Jesus is trying to warn those who follow him. I read a great commentary this week that says that at the time, people who followed Jesus to Jerusalem where certainly thinking that they were joining some kind of triumphant march, because they believed that Jesus was going to take over! We have gotten so used to the story that it’s hard for us to realize what was actually going on in people’s minds then, but I think that this commentary is close to the truth: Jesus’s popularity increased with each miracle and healing, people started to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. the anointed, the new King that for them would defeat the Roman Empire. So these words Jesus says today could mean that actually his followers needed to be aware that it was not victory but suffering and death they were going to encounter, and in those conditions it would certainly mean picking up their cross and turning their backs on all those who loved them. To me, this is in the sense that we could understand best Jesus’s words to “hate one’s family”, “even one’s life” and ” carry our cross”. The people had to make a personal decision to follow Jesus, and it could look like rejection, and even hate, of their own (people) and of their own life.
I wonder actually if it isn’t how Jesus felt about himself, feeling like he was renouncing his life, hating his family for breaking his mother’s heart and bringing shame on his relatives by dying the death of a brigand. At the time of his death, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jesus was thinking more about the suffering of his own, rather than thinking about his own suffering. And yet, he had to go to Jerusalem even if all those events were going to affect greatly his close ones. He had to bring his testimony to the Temple and to manifest the glory of God in his death and resurrection for the sake of his bigger family, the family of God’s children.
And so as we contemplate this, it seems to me that those words he spoke to the crowds were more words of encouragement than words of condemnation, especially knowing that Luke wrote his Gospel for the first generations of Christians who were persecuted.
Certainly, martyrs brought suffering and shame to their unconverted family. If you want to convince you of that, you just have to read the heart breaking story of the martyr of Perpetua when her father tries to talk her out of confessing her faith so she can live on as their beloved daughter and mother of a young child. It certainly must have looked as if Perpetua hated her family for accepting her death. And yet, we know now that without the testimony of the martyrs, the Christian message would have been lost for all of us, and we also know that it does not really make sense to live on when you have denied what was the deepest truth within you.
For us who does not die as martyrs anymore, at least in this part of the world, that is certainly what we can hear today: Following Jesus isn’t going to bring us success, prosperity and approbation, yet Jesus does not tell us to renounce our loved ones, our life and carry our crosses to dishearten us, like it’s something impossible to do because it goes gain all our instincts. Rather we could hear this passage as a message of encouragement. We don’t need to be our best, bright selves to be disciples. All we have to do is to carry our cross, no one is too wounded or too broken to follow Christ. Following Jesus means to become like Jesus, it is in our infirmities that we will meet him, even if the rest of the world, or just our close ones, are against us.
Paul certainly knew something about that, him who confesses in our reading today to be “an old man, and now also a prisoner of Jesus-Christ” (That is, a prisoner for the sake of Christ). At the time he wrote those lines, Paul was certainly not the bright, self assured young man he once was, traveling relentlessly first to arrest Christians and later on, after his own conversion, to convert Gentiles and Jews. I wonder what his family thought of him, but unless they became Christians (and we have no evidence of that), they certainly were very ashamed of what he had become. Yes, it must must have looked like he hated them, picking a cross that wasn’t his to bear (he could have remained a respected rabbi in Jerusalem), and yet when we read Paul we cannot doubt how close he was to Christ – especially in this letter where, far from all theological debate, he focuses on practicing Christian love. We see that Paul, instead of worrying him about himself in his terrible circumstances, becomes friend, and, according to his own words, even a “father” to a young slave whose Master, Philemon, considered useless. It’s hard to imagine being lower on the social scale than being a “useless slave” and yet we see how Paul strives to help the young man get his freedom, first spiritually by converting him to Christ, but also concretely, by advocating for him to his Master – Paul asks Philemon to consider Onesimus not as a slave anymore but as a “beloved brother”.
To me, there are two teachings we can take out of this reading. The first is that Paul manifests concretely the love of Christ that is bigger than the instinctive love we have for our own and our family, it extends in words and actions to the lowest and most despised ones. It breaks down insurmountable obstacles, like the obstacle between slave and Master. This love is not a love born out of pity, it is an awareness that we are all God’s children and member of a same family. It is also a love that does not consider people as possessions, rather it seeks freedom for the loved ones. In this, it is a perfect example of the love Jesus showed us.
The second teaching is that in spite of all his sufferings, Paul, can still manifest and receive love, a tender and life-giving love. As he carries his own cross, being closer to his own passion than he never was, Paul forgets about himself for the sake of another. Renouncing his own talents and success, he may never have been closer to Jesus’s heart and he may never have been closer to look like Jesus. This should be for us a great encouragement, as we may struggle with many obstacles and challenges on the way. The way does not have to be easy, or perfect or glorious, the way Jesus taught us is the way of the cross, it is the way of love, the way that is always there to be found, the only way we are supposed to take.