Mass readings for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Wisdom 9.13-18 Psalm 90.3-6, 12-14 & 17 Philemon 9b-10, 12-17 Luke 14.25-33
Jesus is very blunt about the nature of the sacrifice involved in our becoming his disciples. In this instance, he says we have to, apparently, give up our families. Indeed, he says we have to “hate” them: mother, father, if we’ve children, them too. Wow. How demanding of him. How jealous he must be of anyone getting attention aside from him.
But I think we know that’s not what he is saying.
First, we are aware of Jesus’ use of exaggeration to make a point. It’s over the top to get us to pay attention, and get us thinking.
Second, we know that Christians, from the earliest days of the Church, have been members of the Church as families. St. Paul writes about how whole households were believers – parents, grandparents and children, all still living as family, but now in the faith.
So, Jesus isn’t telling us to get rid of our families, to alienate ourselves from them. What he wants from us is a new relationship with them, one that is mediated by Christ. That is, Jesus is asking of us put God first, and then in light of that commitment, understand our relationships to parents, siblings, children. And we have encountered this idea before: we need to give away all that we have; but then, it will be returned to us, returned to us changed. And that change really happens in us, as we look upon everything, our possessions, our relationships, ourselves, in the light of Christ, and then ask, “how best do I serve God in Christ through the use of my possessions, how I relate to others, how I spend my life?”
So, this hatred of family is but one example of these necessary changes; and to fully appreciate what he’s saying we need to remember what family meant to people in ancient Judea, in the Galilee, in just about all ancient societies. Family was everything.
There were no social services in the ancient world. There was no welfare state. Government was very limited in its capacity to do things – national defence and international relations being its principal business. A king maintained an army, and through diplomacy worked to keep the nation out of unnecessary conflicts, and through his ambassadors negotiated with other kingdoms, empires, cities, on issues of trade to ensure the prosperity of his kingdom. Another duty was to maintain the courts, which in large part served as a means of resolving conflicts between family groups, among the clans and tribes. Their business was more about mediation than criminal proceedings. Government was about simply keeping the peace domestically and internationally, so that the people had a chance to prosper. Everything else fell to the family; most immediately, parents and siblings and children, but also the extended family, what we still often refer to as a clan.
It’s been some time since we, as western people, have needed this extended network of kin, of blood ties to others for our basic security, to help us when we’re sick, or out of work, bankrupt, or being threatened by others and their families and clan. I remember an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali discussing the world she came from as a Somalian. She had come from Somali as a young woman, was educated in Europe, and now is a respected and celebrated commentator on current affairs. She explained that one of the major obstacles to people from places like Somalia integrating into Western society lies in the deeply ingrained principal loyalty to family. And it’s not merely a sentimental thing. In Somalia, a person without family dies. Remember, it’s only in our affluent modern western civilization that we have such extensive government that so many of our needs are met by it, needs that were once provided by the extended family. One of the reasons westerners fail so much in their attempts to mediate conflicts in places like Syria or Afghanistan lies in ignorance of the centrality of family, clan and tribe in those societies. So, trying to work within such cultures as we would in a western democracy where individuals are motivated by ideology, opinions on government spending priorities, foreign policy, etc. is futile. In that world, the only thing one can trust is one’s own family, and with that comes suspicion of other families, clans and tribes. For Canadians of a third or fourth generation, all that lies in our past.
So, we might speculate that were Jesus speaking into this cultural moment in the Western world, his concern wouldn’t have been our attachment to family, but rather to the state, to government, to all its departments and agencies.
Would it be too much to say that we as Christians must hate the provincial and federal and municipal levels of government? Well, yes and no. As with the example of family, we are to relate to our government differently, to frame our perceptions according to Christ, and so, not look to government as the source of our security, to see in it our saviour. And, rather than be dependent upon it, regard it instead as a further means by which we might serve God. Some of you might recall the famous words of US President John F. Kennedy who said, “ask not what your country can do for you, but what can you do for your country.”
In light of the growing fiscal crisis, the massive indebtedness of our governments, and so their diminishing capacity to do all that we want them to do, this will mean a reemergence of traditional institutions to supply our needs. Family would be one, but it has been so diminished in our society that I fear that for most, that won’t be there for them.
One of the ironies of the early Church’s growth is that it was seen most dramatically in the cities of the Roman Empire; and was much more modest in the small towns and villages of the countryside that would have been similar to where the faith came from, where Jesus was most active. Indeed, we know that the greatest hostility to Jesus was found in the city of Jerusalem.
Christianity’s great appeal was in the creation of a community, or indeed, a family in Christ for people who, because of life in a city, saw their family connections stretched or broken, neglected or abused because of how different city life is from the more organic life of the countryside.
So, when we reflect on our current situation, of understanding that as government will be withdrawing from our lives, and that we don’t have the extended family as a support so as to take its place, we need to create a new family out of our community of faith. As Jesus further tells us, it’s now time to sit down and see if we, like a king, can put together an army? Like a man building a tower, have we the bricks and mortar, and the builders to get it done? There is a spiritual war to be fought; there is something that needs to be built. Do we have what we need to succeed? I believe we do. And what we have is the makings, not so much of an army, or a construction crew, but of a family of faith, a clan of believers that can provide the bricklayers and the soldiers, and all else we might need.
It’s no coincidence that Christians from the beginning referred to each other as brothers and sisters – that underlines the new relationship we are to have to each other. We’re more than co-religionists here. We’re different from family in the genealogical sense, but we’re called into a relationship through Jesus Christ that makes us a spiritual family that carries with it obligations to each other—obligations we hope are honoured joyfully, gladly because in and through these relationships we find God, and grow in his love and enjoy his peace in ourselves. We don’t want to be trapped in lives of dependence, but rather to be freed to a life of contribution to our common well-being, with all of us relying on God.
Amen.