Luke 14:25-33
[There was a baptism in this Sunday service]
But Jesus is not saying that we must reject our family or live as homeless and virtually naked beggars.
What he says here needs to be balanced by what he says elsewhere. So, for instance, he upholds the fifth commandment ‘to honour your mother and father’, and elsewhere the bible teaches us that we should work to earn so that we can support ourselves, our family and those dependent on us, and be able to give. And Jesus clearly enjoyed the hospitality of people like Lazarus, Martha and Mary who opened their home to him.
There are those who say that when Jesus uses the word ‘hate’, he is using an Aramaic expression meaning that we should love those things less than we love him. Augustine writes, “to hate one’s life is to love it less than God, not to be unwilling to live, but to be willing to die for the sake of life eternal.”
But I wonder whether Jesus is saying a bit more.
He uses the word ‘hate’, because we should actually hate it when our family, our possessions, and the drive to protect our status, possessions and this life become our idols, become what we live for, when they claim first place in our lives.
We should hate it because they are wonderful gifts if received as a gift, but a terrible tyrant if they become our god.
I remember many years ago when I was a vicar in Holloway. A single mum of a 5-year-old boy said to me, ‘I could never become a Christian because I could never put Jesus before my son’. She moved away for a time and then returned and, to my surprise, told me that she had become a Christian. She said, ‘I have put Jesus first and it has transformed my relationship with my son. Before he was the centre of my life, it was all about him, and I was exhausted and, to be honest, a terrible mum. But now I am just as exhausted, and just as terrible a mum, but I can cope with it. I am able to look at him not as the centre of my life, the reason I am living, but to look on him as the most wonderful gift given me by God, to love him and care for him and then let him go – and to do that for God. Indeed I probably love him more now than I did before’.
I guess you could say that in becoming a follower of Jesus, she had discovered perspective and balance.
Or let me put this another way. Maybe there are some here who do hate their parents, in a destructive way. They hate them for what happened, or for forcing them to become what they did not want to be, for the demands and expectations they placed on them, for the fact that they were disappointed in them. And because family identity is so significant, They have lived either in active rebellion against them, or in deep resentment to them. But Jesus tells us, ‘They are not your God. If you follow me, they do not define you. Yes, you need to honour them and care for them – but you do that out of obedience to me and not because of their expectation of you.’
And the thing about those things: family and the identity it gives us – either by taking it on or rebelling against it, and possessions, is that they are never going to be enough to give us deep satisfaction.
We need to learn to die to them before we can really enjoy them, before we can discover the beginning of the real life, eternal life that God offers.
And so in baptism, this beginning of a new life with Jesus, there is talk of death. The death of the old.
As we say the words later in this service, take notice:
‘To follow Christ means dying to sin and rising to new life with him’.
‘Now send your Spirit, that those who are washed in this water may die with Christ and rise with him’.
What happens, and it is more obvious when a person is baptised by full immersion, is that in our baptism, as we go under the water, we die to ourselves, our old life lived for the things of this world – including our family status, the expectations of the world, all our possessions, our old life.
And we rise up out of the water, or washed clean by the water, as new people: alive to God’s identity for us as a daughter or son of God, the recognition that everything we have is gift to be enjoyed and used for him, and to a new life of obedience and love and trust in him – a life that goes on beyond the grave.
By having your daughter baptised, by saying that she will be a follower of Jesus, you are giving her the most remarkable gift.
You are giving her the gift to be a beloved daughter of God, so that she is free from the expectations of the world on her, even your own expectations; and so that, through the power of the Holy Spirit at work in her life she can become the woman who God has called her to be.
You have given her a family and an identity, but today you are giving her another identity – that will be far more significant than even your family identity (which is already pretty awesome!), and that will claim her ultimate allegiance.
And you have and, no doubt will, give her many things, but today you are giving her the gift of being free from the control of possessions, free to be content with whatever she has, free to trust God, free to give.
And through you God has given her the gift of physical life, and you are asking God to give her the gift of ultimate life, authentic life. A life that is centred on Jesus the Son of God; that is driven and inspired and transformed by God’s Holy Spirit; and a life that not even death can destroy.
Of course, she is a baby, and she will need you to walk with her on this way. And there will come a time when, as with all of us who were baptised as infants, she will need to choose to receive that for herself.
Jesus tells the story of the person who began a project without having enough resources to complete it.
He tells of the person who began a military campaign without calculating if they had enough forces to go through with it.
The point is that we can only complete this project, this campaign, this journey of being a disciple, follower of Jesus by giving up everything we have.
That is what happens at baptism. We give up everything; we die to everything. And it is what happens when we echo our baptism, maybe each morning or night in our prayers, or at communion, when we turn to the Lord Jesus.
We give up everything we have to him – our family, our possessions, our life. And we receive from him the new identity, the Holy Spirit and eternal life.
[There was a baptism in this Sunday service]
Well, having heard that reading, you must wonder what on earth you are about to do in having your daughter baptised
It seems that Jesus is saying that if she is to be a follower of him, she will need to hate you, give up all her possessions, hate her own life and end up being crucified (or the modern equivalent)!
It is very stark. He certainly makes us sit up and take notice.
It seems that Jesus is saying that if she is to be a follower of him, she will need to hate you, give up all her possessions, hate her own life and end up being crucified (or the modern equivalent)!
It is very stark. He certainly makes us sit up and take notice.
But Jesus is not saying that we must reject our family or live as homeless and virtually naked beggars.
What he says here needs to be balanced by what he says elsewhere. So, for instance, he upholds the fifth commandment ‘to honour your mother and father’, and elsewhere the bible teaches us that we should work to earn so that we can support ourselves, our family and those dependent on us, and be able to give. And Jesus clearly enjoyed the hospitality of people like Lazarus, Martha and Mary who opened their home to him.
There are those who say that when Jesus uses the word ‘hate’, he is using an Aramaic expression meaning that we should love those things less than we love him. Augustine writes, “to hate one’s life is to love it less than God, not to be unwilling to live, but to be willing to die for the sake of life eternal.”
But I wonder whether Jesus is saying a bit more.
He uses the word ‘hate’, because we should actually hate it when our family, our possessions, and the drive to protect our status, possessions and this life become our idols, become what we live for, when they claim first place in our lives.
We should hate it because they are wonderful gifts if received as a gift, but a terrible tyrant if they become our god.
I remember many years ago when I was a vicar in Holloway. A single mum of a 5-year-old boy said to me, ‘I could never become a Christian because I could never put Jesus before my son’. She moved away for a time and then returned and, to my surprise, told me that she had become a Christian. She said, ‘I have put Jesus first and it has transformed my relationship with my son. Before he was the centre of my life, it was all about him, and I was exhausted and, to be honest, a terrible mum. But now I am just as exhausted, and just as terrible a mum, but I can cope with it. I am able to look at him not as the centre of my life, the reason I am living, but to look on him as the most wonderful gift given me by God, to love him and care for him and then let him go – and to do that for God. Indeed I probably love him more now than I did before’.
I guess you could say that in becoming a follower of Jesus, she had discovered perspective and balance.
Or let me put this another way. Maybe there are some here who do hate their parents, in a destructive way. They hate them for what happened, or for forcing them to become what they did not want to be, for the demands and expectations they placed on them, for the fact that they were disappointed in them. And because family identity is so significant, They have lived either in active rebellion against them, or in deep resentment to them. But Jesus tells us, ‘They are not your God. If you follow me, they do not define you. Yes, you need to honour them and care for them – but you do that out of obedience to me and not because of their expectation of you.’
And the thing about those things: family and the identity it gives us – either by taking it on or rebelling against it, and possessions, is that they are never going to be enough to give us deep satisfaction.
We need to learn to die to them before we can really enjoy them, before we can discover the beginning of the real life, eternal life that God offers.
And so in baptism, this beginning of a new life with Jesus, there is talk of death. The death of the old.
As we say the words later in this service, take notice:
‘To follow Christ means dying to sin and rising to new life with him’.
‘Now send your Spirit, that those who are washed in this water may die with Christ and rise with him’.
What happens, and it is more obvious when a person is baptised by full immersion, is that in our baptism, as we go under the water, we die to ourselves, our old life lived for the things of this world – including our family status, the expectations of the world, all our possessions, our old life.
And we rise up out of the water, or washed clean by the water, as new people: alive to God’s identity for us as a daughter or son of God, the recognition that everything we have is gift to be enjoyed and used for him, and to a new life of obedience and love and trust in him – a life that goes on beyond the grave.
By having your daughter baptised, by saying that she will be a follower of Jesus, you are giving her the most remarkable gift.
You are giving her the gift to be a beloved daughter of God, so that she is free from the expectations of the world on her, even your own expectations; and so that, through the power of the Holy Spirit at work in her life she can become the woman who God has called her to be.
You have given her a family and an identity, but today you are giving her another identity – that will be far more significant than even your family identity (which is already pretty awesome!), and that will claim her ultimate allegiance.
And you have and, no doubt will, give her many things, but today you are giving her the gift of being free from the control of possessions, free to be content with whatever she has, free to trust God, free to give.
And through you God has given her the gift of physical life, and you are asking God to give her the gift of ultimate life, authentic life. A life that is centred on Jesus the Son of God; that is driven and inspired and transformed by God’s Holy Spirit; and a life that not even death can destroy.
Of course, she is a baby, and she will need you to walk with her on this way. And there will come a time when, as with all of us who were baptised as infants, she will need to choose to receive that for herself.
Jesus tells the story of the person who began a project without having enough resources to complete it.
He tells of the person who began a military campaign without calculating if they had enough forces to go through with it.
The point is that we can only complete this project, this campaign, this journey of being a disciple, follower of Jesus by giving up everything we have.
That is what happens at baptism. We give up everything; we die to everything. And it is what happens when we echo our baptism, maybe each morning or night in our prayers, or at communion, when we turn to the Lord Jesus.
We give up everything we have to him – our family, our possessions, our life. And we receive from him the new identity, the Holy Spirit and eternal life.
Comments
Post a Comment