- Jeremiah 18:1-11 and Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 •
- Deuteronomy 30:15-20 and Psalm 1 •
- Philemon 1:1-1:21 •
- Luke 14:25-33
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| Jesus Carrying the Cross (1967) Salvador Dali |
“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” This line from the Gospel for Sunday has traditionally been
included in the ‘hard sayings’ of Jesus – sayings that, on the surface at any
rate, seem impossible to accept. Who
could commend, still less require, that we hate our parents? To understand the message, though, we have to
allow for a level of exaggeration characteristic of the time and place in which
Jesus spoke. It is not the emotion of hatred that is being commended, but a
willingness to give even the deepest attachments of family life second place to
Christian discipleship.
For many people, however, this is still a step too far, and
smacks uncomfortably of religious fanaticism. Indeed, if we take at face value,
only the life of monk, nun or hermit could accord with this requirement.
There is no getting round the fact that we confront a real
choice here, and a difficult one. Yet ordinary lives can still be ones of
faithful discipleship. The key lies in the way we order our priorities.
Happily, we are very rarely confronted with a straightforward clash between the
claims of Christ and family life, but at much more mundane levels, it is easy
to put Christ in second place. When we accept God on our terms rather than on
His, we effectively relinquish our discipleship.
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| The Slave Market (1880) Gustave Boulanger |
To be a Christian is to believe that putting God before
everything else does not mean we have to abandon the people and things we love
so much. Rather we accept their radical imperfection, and look for their
transformation within the life of God. This week’s Epistle illustrates the
point. Paul’s touching letter to the owner of the runaway slave boy Onesimus expresses
the faith that even such a problematic relationship as slavery can be
transformed – 'Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while' Paul writes, so that you
might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a
slave, a beloved brother --especially to me but how much more to you, both in the
flesh and in the Lord'.
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