Aug 31, 2022 4 min read Luke 14

Hate Your Mother?

This week's lectionary passage – Luke 14:25-33 – is an odd and difficult saying of Jesus. He doesn't seem to care about family values.

Photo by Sandy Millar / Unsplash

This week's lectionary passage – Luke 14:25-33 – is an odd and difficult saying of Jesus. He doesn't seem to care about family values.

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.

We may take some solace in the fact that Matthew's version of this saying is mellower – he doesn't talk about hating your family (Matthew 10:37). Nevertheless, we need some reflections on the word, hate, to understand the Lukan version.

Dr. Carolyn Sharp's commentary is helpful here:

In Jewish traditions, “hate” is used regularly of the animosity between actual enemies, to be sure. But it is also used in binary wisdom aphorisms employing “love” and “hate” as paradigmatic responses of discernment: the wicked are said to hate discipline, justice, and knowledge, while the righteous hate wickedness, falsehood, and gossip (for example, Psalms 45:7; 50:17; 97:10; 119:163; Proverbs 1:29; Sirach 19:6). Preachers should help their congregations understand that Luke 14:26 is not advocating intense hostility toward kin and life, but, rather, is promoting the steadfast refusal to allow something less valuable to displace something more valuable.

Season of Creation

"The Season of Creation is the time of year when the world’s 2.2 billion Christians are invited to pray and care for creation. It runs annually from September 1 through October 4. The Season of Creation is a liturgical season of prayer and action that unites the global Christian family around one shared purpose - celebrate prayer services and engage in a variety of actions to care for creation."

For more information, visit the website of the World Communion of Reformed Churches and here.

Advent's Theological Themes

It is never too early to begin to plan for Advent. I am including an excerpt below from my book, Unto Us A Child is Born: Isaiah, Advent, and Our Jewish Neighbors published by Eerdmans in 2020. More selections are to come in the weeks ahead.

Advent proclaims two theological themes: the coming of Christ as a child and the future coming of Christ at the end of time. A first coming and a second coming. Incarnation and eschatology. These two foci do not naturally cohere.

Joy and penitence.

Alternatively, as our hymns resound, “Joy to the World! The Lord is Come” and “Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending.” We are pulled in different emotional directions. No wonder we are so confused about Advent celebrations!

Moreover, no wonder the pressure of Christmas—both as the next liturgical season in the Christian year and as American culture’s obsession during December—leads us to emphasize more the joyful elements of Advent than the penitent. In our self-help society, it seems more natural to focus on the jubilant aspects of Advent and leave behind the tension of joy and penitence. We have, of course, a genuinely penitent season in our observance of Lent, so why not save the remorse for then? No matter how much we intuitively or intentionally emphasize one theme over another, our hymns and Scripture readings, our choral pieces and liturgies, are attuned to the tension present within the season.

Historically, how did these two different themes end up in this one liturgical season? Advent was one of the last major liturgical seasons to develop in the church year (following Easter, Christmas, and Lent). Liturgical scholars note that, before the introduction of the season of Advent, the time at the end of the liturgical (and secular) year was generally concerned with last things. To focus on such eschatological matters was appropriate for this end-of-year, unofficial liturgical season within the church. As the liturgical year drew to a close, the church turned its attention to end-of-time matters before beginning the year again with Christmas. This eschatological vision with its accompanying discussion of the second coming of Christ provided a penitential element to this time of the year.

The Scripture readings and theological themes remain in our current lectionary to this day. Why? Why did penitence and eschatology continue to grasp the theological imagination of Advent as it developed into a liturgical season? One suggestion is that the theme of penitence was incorporated into Advent as a way for the Church to prepare for Christmas. Just as the church prepared for Easter with a season of Lent, the church began to prepare for Christmas with a multi-week time of reflection. Yet, this season could not sustain a wholly penitent nature because of the need to begin the turn toward the theological themes of Christmas. Penitence—a theme of the end of the liturgical year—then combined with the theme of Christmas joy.