Hate and

Love

Luke 14:25-

33

Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them,

 "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.

Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?  Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'

Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand?  If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace.

So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

What Does The Passage

Say?• What is the setting?• Who are the

characters?• What happened

before and after?• What is the genre?

What Does The Passage

Mean?

Anxiety

• Classical world: Anxiety of fate and death. Christus Victor.

• Medieval to Modern World: Anxiety of guilt and shame. Where can I find a gracious God?

• Modern-Postmodern: Anxiety of meaninglessness. What are humans for?

Transformation not Information

The point of Jesus teaching is often not to tell you new stuff, but to transform you and your thinking (=metanoia)

What are some examples of this?

Natural LawFollowing Aquinas, the basis of western ethical systems is based on something like: you must pursue the good, pursue a harmonious society, preserve yourself in being

ParadoxA paradox is a seeming contradiction which is not really contradictory at all if looked at from another angle or through a larger frame which demands a change on the side of the observer.

Richard Rohr

Poles of Paradox• Can you think of

examples of Jesus directly contradicting this passage?

• Can you think of similar passages or events?

• Is this passage Good News?

Why Kierkegaard?Because he lasers in on the distinction between ethics and spirituality.

He would have had no idea of the sort of gap between ethics and “spirituality” which the 20th Century

Kierkegaard’s Three Modes

One way into this (not the only one)• Aesthetic (concerned

sense impressions)• Ethical (concerned

with fulfilling societal norms)

• Religious (myself and God)

The AestheticThe aim is to maximise life’s pleasures -Bach or strippers it doesn’t matter which. The thing is to escape boredom.

Eventually this wears thin, so turns to…

The EthicalHere one fulfils one’s role in society – good parent, good citizen, good employee, good church-goer. The Aesthetic is subjugated to the ethical

The spiritual self is not nurtured, so this turns to…

Question

• What do you think “the ethical mode” means?• Give me an example from the media of

someone living the ethical life

The ReligiousHow do I live an authentic life? How do I deal with my anxiety in the face of death and meaninglessness?

There is a gap between the ethical and the religious

Hate… your own life?Perhaps the purpose of the “hate” language is to sharpen the distinction between what’s merely ethical and what is “religious”

The Gap

One limitation of the ethical is that, if you try seriously to be good, you will soon discover that you are not able to be entirely good. Do you really love your neighbour as yourself?

Theologians call this gap “sin”

Failure

I pay my taxes, do my job well, am a good person. Why on earth does all this shit happen to me?

I come to the end of my own resources

MeaninglessnessIs all there is to life fulfilling ethical obligations – just a long series of work meetings, child raising and jury duty until we finally die? What is ultimately the point?

The Limitations of the Ethical

Do any of those limitations speak to you?

Sidebar: IndividualismCan you be a disciple all by yourself?Kierkegaard has a very individualistic view – but we would probably want to affirm a much more communal picture of it now. Jesus appeared to want people to form communities

The Nub• Jesus is describing a gap, even a conflict,

between what is ethically desirable and what following him demands.

• The strong language is to emphasize this• It doesn’t necessarily mean exactly what it

sounds like (though it might in some circs)

IdentityI think it comes down to this: who am I – and, in the final analysis, whose am I? Where do I derive my identity from?

Am I primarily a pleasure seeker? Or a good citizen? Or does my identity lie somehow both outside myself and inside my soul?

PossessionsIt is only when I find my identity in Christ, “submit my will to a higher power”, that I can give up all my possessions because the are not mine, but belong to Jesus, and I’m using them for the Mission.

Living within this reality without anxiety is grace.

The Return of EthicsBecause to be Jesus is to be like Jesus, and Jesus exemplifies self-sacrificing love, for Christians the religious ultimately embraces the ethical and (I think) the aesthetic.

(Kierkegaard might not agree. I leave this as an exercise for the reader)

Blessing

The Lord bless us and watch over us;The Lord make his face shine upon us and be gracious to us;the Lord look kindly on us and give us peace.Amen

BibliographyMigliore, Daniel L Faith Seeking Understanding, Wm Eerdmans Publishing Co, Michigan, 2nd Ed 2004