Homily for the Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

Some of the harshest words in all of Scripture are found in today’s Gospel.
“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even their own life, they cannot be my disciple.”

As you might imagine, these words have been the subject of considerable debate and interpretation. It would seem that Jesus could not possibly want us to take this admonition literally, as hating anyone would violate the fundamental message of love that He preaches.

So, many people have tried to temper the word hate, suggesting that “hate” doesn’t really mean hate, but rather means to “love less.” Jesus is trying to say that nothing, not even family, can be allowed to conflict with the disciples’ commitment to Him.

Okay, this sounds like it’s basically correct: Jesus is calling for us to prioritize our following of Him over everything else – makes sense. But why would Jesus go so far as to use the word hate? There must be something else going on here?

Others have suggested that Jesus is speaking about people who give up everything, including a family, to follow Him. And so this saying has been used – I would say misused – as a literal prescription for the way religious, who forgo having spouses and children, would relate to their families. Religious used to be kept from seeing their families and sometimes even kept from returning home for weddings or funerals. But I doubt they ever hated their families!

And in the text itself there’s yet another problem with such an interpretation. Jesus says, “if anyone comes to me” – so this clearly can’t be meant for a specialized path of discipleship. The admonition is clearly addressed to every follower of Christ, all of whom must be prepared for total commitment to Christ. So this explanation also fails to satisfy.

Finally, another interpretation reminds us that early Christians were often hated for becoming followers of Jesus. In this context, the admonition means that a disciple might have to be willing to choose Jesus over their family, and endure their family’s hatred of them for becoming a Christian.

Certainly, this happened quite often in the early Church, and from time to time it happens still today. But doesn’t Jesus make clear that we are to love our enemies? So even if someone had to face being disowned by family because they chose discipleship, they would still be called to love their family, wouldn’t they?

So, in the end, none of these interpretations seem to satisfy – none of them really face head on the fact that Jesus specifically uses the word “hate,” and softening the message just doesn’t work . . . but putting it in context does!!

I think the interpretive key to understanding this reading is found in the very last line of today’s reading. After giving several allegories, Jesus summarizes His point by saying, “anyone who does not renounce all their possessions cannot be my disciple.”

Now this is a theme we are probably accustomed to. Like the Apostles in their fishing boats, or the rich young man, the call to discipleship challenges us to drop everything, to sell our many possessions, and follow Jesus immediately. The radical demands of the Gospel require us to put Jesus and His cross at the center of our lives – putting in a secondary position even “family values and the security of possessions.”

Like the builder and the king in Jesus’ allegories, we need to assess the situation and understand the consequences of our actions and the requirements of our decision before we begin. Discipleship requires something of us: it requires that we renounce all our “possessions” and pick up the cross.

I think it’s fair to say that we are programmed in our culture to believe that our happiness is based on our possessing certain things. The quest for the “American dream” and our advertising culture contribute to our belief that if we have enough money, a big enough house, a perfect family, the respect of coworkers – then we will be happy, when we HAVE these things.

And so our lives become a constant quest to attain and possess. But the dirty little secret is that even after we have, even when we possess, we still aren’t happy. So then what does make us happy?

Most of us would instinctively answer: love. And of course we’re right – precisely because love means forgetting our ego – not worrying about ourselves but thinking of someone else. Love is a giving away, a letting go – of control, of the need for things, of the need to possess. It’s to stop trying to obtain and possess, and to give away. That’s what makes us happy.

Now that certainly sounds right in terms of Jesus’ constant message to us, right? But we still have to connect this understanding of what it means to “renounce possessions” with the admonition we hear earlier in the reading to “hate” our families?

Well, if we think about it for a moment, aren’t we often guilty of making our parents, our spouses, or our children into our possessions! Don’t we turn them into things, by our need to possess and control them in order to make us happy? We can sometimes make the people closest to us little more than extensions of our own egos – mere players in the drama of our self-centeredness. We sometimes think and act as if others are only around to make us happy.

So here’s where “hate” enters in . . . In as much as we have made our spouse, or our children, or any other person into a possession – we need to hate that idol that we have created. There is really no room for compromise on this point; and so hate is not too strong a word.

In as much as we have made our friends and loved ones into THINGS, we need to give them away. And of course, in setting them free is truly loving them! And in that kind of love is our happiness and joy as well.

I think there is some evidence in our second reading for this interpretation I’m suggesting. The Church gives us a section of St. Paul’s Letter to Philemon, to be paired with this Gospel from St. Luke. Paul is writing to Philemon about Onesimus, a slave who escaped Philemon’s household, was converted by Paul, and who served St. Paul when he was imprisoned.

Paul now sends Onesimus back to Philemon saying, “you may have him back forever, no longer as a slave but as more than a slave – as a brother.” Paul had repeatedly taught that in Christ there was no longer slave or free person, but only children of God. Now he asks Philemon to prove the faith he has professed, by treating Onesimus as the brother he has become, rather than the possession he once was.

Philemon must hate Onesimus as a slave or a possession. He must quit his own desire to possess and control, and must set Onesiums free because the disciple of Christ lives and loves selflessly.

Today’s Gospel makes it clear: when Jesus invites us into discipleship, He wants us to first recognize and count the cost of discipleship. Following Him requires us to lose ourselves, to carry our own cross, to give ourselves away and yes, to hate those “things” that we have convinced ourselves we must obtain and control in order to arrive at happiness – even if those “things” are the people we’re striving to love most.

May Christ who “has sent the Holy Spirit from on high” give us the wisdom to count these costs of discipleship and the courage to pick up our cross daily, and follow after Him.