Sitting with the Sacred

“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple . . . . In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.

Luke 14: 26, 33

The message of Luke 14:26 sounds like one to which I’m inclined to respond, “Jesus, I don’t think you’re the one to follow after all. Hating someone, anyone, especially my parents seems like too much to ask of me and a bad idea. It doesn’t bring about good. And besides, it seems to break one of the Ten Commandments. As for Luke 14:33, I like my stuff a lot. Most of it, I’m never going to hate, so it would be disingenuous for me to pretend otherwise.”

Fortunately, to paraphrase my pastor, in using the word “hate,” Jesus is using dramatic, extreme language to get the attention of his audience and to make a point. In an effort to relate to this communication choice, I can’t help but think of a little kid saying after spending eight hours at an amusement park, “This is the best day ever!” When that person looks back on the trip as an adult, will he or she really recall that they as the best one ever? Maybe not. But the kid is making a point about the overwhelming enthusiasm he or she feels about the experiences of the day. Viewed in light of this analogy, Jesus’ point isn’t that we should hate anyone. It’s about how overwhelmingly he loves God and wants us to experience the same love. I think loving God means having an overwhelming love for doing good. It means, the pastor said, that we shouldn’t “let our possessions possess us.”

Accordingly, rather than thinking in terms of hating everything that isn’t God, I find it not necessarily easier but more attractive to think of the verses above in terms of not letting anything but God possesses me.

I find my phone useful, and I really like to play games on it, but I definitely don’t want to think of my phone possessing me, nor do I want to think of my parents or any other person owning me. I don’t want to own anyone either. I say, “This is my friend,” or “This is my sister. This is my niece.” to clarify how someone is connected to me, but I would be alarmed at someone treating another person in like an object he or she possesses. It would be wrong of me to try to control every move of someone I care about. To do so would be abuse.

To abuse anyone or anything won’t help me grow into the person God means me me to be. Instead, abusing anyone or anything will disfigure God’s image in me. It will draw me away from union with God because my energies will be devoted to hanging on as tightly as I can to the person or thing I’m abusing. My first and last thoughts each day may be about that person or thing. I won’t be free because of the tight grip that person or thing has on me, and I may not be able to appreciate and that person or thing as the gift that he, she, or it is. Instead, more than anything else that might matter to me I may fear losing what I abuse. I may want more and more of or from him, her, or it. The pursuit of him, her, or it may push aside whatever else matters to me. The pursuit will mean that I’m never at rest in God.

This isn’t the life God wants for me—or you. God created us to be free, even when it comes to our relationship with the Divine. It’s up to us to invite God into our lives, to ask God to fill us. God doesn’t take us by force.

Lord, help us recognize your presence and to invite you into our choices, so we can love as you love—in freedom and without the possessiveness that comes from fear. Amen

Work cited

The Bible. The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.