Gospel reading: Luke 14:25-33
Jesus said, “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.” Sorry, could you repeat that? It sounded like
you said, hate. Surely you mean, love? ‘By this shall everyone
know that you are my disciples: that you love one another.’ What’s all this
about hate?
What, indeed? Well, here’s the context. Jesus is
making his way towards Jerusalem. And everything that Jesus has to say in
relation to Jerusalem is apocalyptic: that his coming announces the end of the
world, at least as everyone has known it. Large crowds are travelling with him,
convinced that he is the Messiah, the one sent by God to lead the people in revolting
against their Roman oppressors, overthrowing the occupying forces, establishing
a new Golden Age not seen since the days of kings David and Solomon.
But that isn’t how Jesus sees it. He knows that it is
too late for that, and, in any case, that isn’t God’s plan. He reads the Scriptures
differently, sees a suffering servant and a faithful remnant that will be
vindicated on the far side of a terrible Day of the Lord.
And so, he turns around to the crowds following him,
and speaks of legacy, of family lines and towering architecture and impressive armies,
all of which end in death.
Thirty-three years after Jesus’ death and resurrection,
the Jews rose in a Great Revolt against the Roman Empire. Rebels in Galilee
were defeated and fell back to Jerusalem, but the urbane southerners did not
welcome the rough northerners with open arms. Next, the Pharisees and the Sadducees
joined forces, but they, too, had a history of falling out. In the Year of our
Lord 70, the Romans laid Jerusalem to siege. According to the Jewish historian
Josephus, the Jews set a fire to hold back the Romans; the Romans countered by
setting a second fire; and a Roman soldier accidentally started a third fire
that, coming together with the first two to form a massive conflagration, destroyed
the Temple and much of the city. Now, Josephus is biased in who gets attributed
with what—he knows which way the wind is blowing and wants to keep in with the
Romans—but it is clear from his record and from archeological evidence that Jerusalem
going up in a hell of fire was a perfect storm of farce and tragedy and apocalypse.
The Day of the Lord.
When the fires burn themselves out, the Romans destroy
whatever remains standing, leaving only three towers built by Herod the Great,
to remind everyone how great Jerusalem had once been. Towers Herod had named in
honour of his brother (Phaseal), his favourite general (Hippicus), and his
favourite wife (Mariamne). Talk about rubbing salt in a wound. Nine hundred
surviving rebels retreat to Herod’s desert fortress at Masada, which the Romans
besiege for months, finally breaking through only to discover that the rebels
had committed mass suicide the night before. In all, the eight-year war resulted
in the death of over ten-thousand Roman soldiers, around fifty-thousand Jewish combatants,
and, according to Josephus, over a million non-combatants. Truly, hell on
earth, the end of the world.
Jesus says, if you try to secure the enduring future
of your family, you will fail. If you try to secure your place in history,
through impressive buildings and strength in numbers, you will fail. Those who
seek to save their life will lose it. And those who want to follow Jesus to Jerusalem
(and Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth) will also die. Not in the rather
serene sense that we all die one day, but in the urgent sense that there are
forces at work in the world that are hell-bent on destruction. Mammon, the god
of money; and the nationalist gods of empire-building. Gods that devour and
devour, and are never satisfied, never sated, never consume enough.
Today, there are millions of people in this nation who
just don’t know how they are going to survive this winter, who can see their
businesses going under like watching a car crash in slow motion and not being
able to do anything to stop it. You may be one of them. And churches, trying to
figure out, how are we going to be able to be there for our wider communities
when we, ourselves, can barely keep going? And Jesus says, to follow me will
cost you everything, and even then, it will not save you, because we are going
to our death, trusting that the end of the world as we have known it is not the
End.
If the gods of money and nationalism are going to
destroy you, and following Jesus isn’t going to shield you from the onslaught,
then why follow Jesus? Well, just as the crowds had the wrong idea, so, often,
do we. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is at work to reconcile all creation
in and through Jesus, the vindicated ever-Living one whom God has appointed to judge
the empires and their gods. It is a long story, a big picture, a holding
together of justice and mercy—of righting wrongs and healing wounds.
The way of God’s glory passes through suffering,
through surrendering our lives—not because God desires that we should suffer,
but because surrendering our claim to every other (and ultimately empty) promise
of glory loosens the grip of the false gods, one life at a time. Even Death
cannot hold us in its grip.
Maybe you are not ready to surrender yet. Perhaps you
are hedging your bets, counting on your own resources, on being able to outrun
the demons. I assure you that you cannot, and implore you to choose Jesus, and
do not delay.
Maybe you already know the peace he brings, the simple
trust in God’s grace, sufficient unto the day. The sure hope that nothing,
past, present, or future, can separate you from God’s love, embodied in Jesus. May
he bring to completion what he has begun in you. What you have left in his hands—family,
buildings, nations—may you receive back tenfold.
Come, let us follow Jesus, and not turn back. Let us
be his disciples.
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