In the light of Jesus\u2019 demand in today\u2019s gospel, I cannot be His disciple because I love my mum; you know, she\u2019s the only mum I have! On the other hand, I could have qualified for that sort of discipleship when I was an angry teenager; I hated my father, and I believed I had good reasons for that. But it all changed one evening when I forgave him, and after that my hatred was gradually replaced by compassion for him. So I hopelessly squandered that chance, and it was gone for good\u2026 As an only child I cannot hate my siblings; having neither wife nor children, I cannot hate them either. My only chance is to hate my own life; but actually I quite like it. So, I don\u2019t stand a chance, do I? Well, perhaps I do. And perhaps you do too.<\/p>\n
Why did Jesus make such an extreme demand? It\u2019s alarmingly similar to the demands of dangerous sects, personality cults or extremist ideologies we hear about in the news every now and again. In fact, Jesus made a point of going well over the top in order to force his audience to listen to him. They must have held their breath out of astonishment and sheer outrage. In a society where the family was a foundational part of life, Jesus\u2019 call to hate close relatives must have stopped them in their tracks. Yet such a reaction was intended merely as a prelude to the message that Jesus wanted to convey. And this message has absolutely nothing to do with hatred of anyone \u2013 and especially not of the family.<\/p>\n
The key phrase in today\u2019s gospel is \u2018to be my [Jesus\u2019] disciple.\u2019<\/i> It occurs three times in the passage, each time in a negative way, and each time with regard to a different aspect of life: initially, the loosening of ties to one\u2019s closest relatives; followed by carrying one’s own cross; and ultimately by giving up all one\u2019s possessions. This phrase \u2018cannot be my disciple\u2019<\/i> assumes that discipleship of Jesus is not achievable by the person who fails to meet those criteria. Surely, if we were to take these extreme criteria literally, then every last one of us would be excluded from Jesus\u2019 company. But \u2013 as I said earlier \u2013 Jesus uses deliberate overkill in his oratory as a device to rouse his audience from their intellectual drowsiness.<\/p>\n
In an episode in the life of St Francis of Assisi, I\u2019ve found an interesting illustration to today\u2019s gospel. Francis was the son of a successful and wealthy silk merchant. For years, Francis enjoyed the lifestyle typical of a wealthy young man \u2013 to his father\u2019s contentment – until his attitude gradually changed. To cut a long story short, Francis turned to a life of piety and poverty, and that enraged his father. When threats and beatings didn\u2019t change Francis\u2019 mind, his father dragged him to the court of the bishop of Assisi. In the course of the legal proceedings, Francis denounced his father and renounced his inheritance; he even took off the clothes he\u2019d received from his father and returned them to him then and there. So, Francis did exactly what today\u2019s gospel required: he \u2018hated\u2019 his father, he renounced the concept of holding possessions, and in taking up the life of a beggar we could say that he carried his own cross. He did all that, not simply for the sake of fulfilling those criteria, but in order to acquire the internal freedom necessary to allow him to follow the call he\u2019d recognised as his destiny.<\/p>\n
The demands made by Jesus in today\u2019s gospel are a call to internal freedom for each and every one of us. It\u2019s a freedom that is essential to enable us to live a life full of love. Being unhealthily bonded to other people, or blinded by wealth and its pursuit, or being overly self-centred on seeking little comforts for oneself – these can be the shackles stopping us from finding and fulfilling our own calls in life.<\/p>\n
I really admire my Mum. She\u2019s not getting any younger, yet she\u2019s always been an extremely strong supporter of me, serving God and His people in a distant land a thousand miles away. She\u2019s so good that she didn\u2019t want to worry me with news that she\u2019d been admitted to hospital a couple of weeks ago. Though, when she was having problems with her smartphone, she let me know straight away! You know, there are limits to self-sacrifice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the light of Jesus\u2019 demand in today\u2019s gospel, I cannot be His disciple because I love my mum; you know, she\u2019s the only mum I have! On the other hand, I could have qualified for that sort of discipleship when I was an angry teenager; I hated my father, and I believed I had good reasons for that. But it all changed one evening when I forgave him, and after that my hatred was gradually replaced by compassion for him. So I hopelessly squandered that chance, and it was gone for good\u2026 As an only child I cannot hate my siblings; having neither wife nor children, I cannot hate them either. My only chance is to hate my own life; but actually I quite like it. So, I don\u2019t stand a chance, do I? Well, perhaps I do. And perhaps you do too. Why did Jesus make such an extreme demand? It\u2019s alarmingly similar to the demands of dangerous sects, personality cults or extremist ideologies we hear about in the news every now and again. In fact, Jesus made a point of going well over the top in order to force his audience to listen to him. They must have held their breath out of astonishment and sheer outrage. In a society where the family was a foundational part of life, Jesus\u2019 call to hate close relatives must have stopped them in their tracks. Yet such a reaction was intended merely as a prelude to the message that Jesus wanted to convey. And this message has absolutely nothing to do with hatred of anyone \u2013 and especially not of the family. The key phrase in today\u2019s gospel is \u2018to be my [Jesus\u2019] disciple.\u2019 It occurs three times in the passage, each time in a negative way, and each time with regard to a different aspect of life: initially, the loosening of ties to one\u2019s closest relatives; followed by carrying one’s own cross; and ultimately by giving up all one\u2019s possessions. This phrase \u2018cannot be my disciple\u2019 assumes that discipleship of Jesus is not achievable by the person who fails to meet those criteria. Surely, if we were to take these extreme criteria literally, then every last one of us would be excluded from Jesus\u2019 company. But \u2013 as I said earlier \u2013 Jesus uses deliberate overkill in his oratory as a device to rouse his audience from their intellectual drowsiness. In an episode in the life of St Francis of Assisi, I\u2019ve found an interesting illustration to today\u2019s gospel. Francis was the son of a successful and wealthy silk merchant. For years, Francis enjoyed the lifestyle typical of a wealthy young man \u2013 to his father\u2019s contentment – until his attitude gradually changed. To cut a long story short, Francis turned to a life of piety and poverty, and that enraged his father. When threats and beatings didn\u2019t change Francis\u2019 mind, his father dragged him to the court of the bishop of Assisi. In the course of the legal proceedings, Francis denounced his father and renounced his inheritance; he even took off the clothes he\u2019d received from his father and returned them to him then and there. So, Francis did exactly what today\u2019s gospel required: he \u2018hated\u2019 his father, he renounced the concept of holding possessions, and in taking up the life of a beggar we could say that he carried his own cross. He did all that, not simply for the sake of fulfilling those criteria, but in order to acquire the internal freedom necessary to allow him to follow the call he\u2019d recognised as his destiny. The demands made by Jesus in today\u2019s gospel are a call to internal freedom for each and every one of us. It\u2019s a freedom that is essential to enable us to live a life full of love. Being unhealthily bonded to other people, or blinded by wealth and its pursuit, or being overly self-centred on seeking little comforts for oneself – these can be the shackles stopping us from finding and fulfilling our own calls in life. I really admire my Mum. She\u2019s not getting any younger, yet she\u2019s always been an extremely strong supporter of me, serving God and His people in a distant land a thousand miles away. She\u2019s so good that she didn\u2019t want to worry me with news that she\u2019d been admitted to hospital a couple of weeks ago. Though, when she was having problems with her smartphone, she let me know straight away! You know, there are limits to self-sacrifice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7072,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sermon","category-year-c"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tad.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}