Of Bedtimes and Discipleship
Commentary
Our youngest children are twin nine-year-old girls. They are cheerful, talkative, and full of energy. They have adventurous spirits, and they are game for almost anything I might suggest that we do on a given day. There’s really just one thing that gets a negative response and resistance. They don’t want to go to bed at night.
If I told them we were going to spend the afternoon raking leaves, they’d be excited about it. If I said we would spend the morning shoveling snow, they’d get suited up and hurry outside. If I said our outing for the day was to go to a home improvement store and spend hours shopping for nails, they’d think it was the best day ever. They really are game for just about anything. But when I say, “It’s time for bed,” their faces fall and they begin to whine, “No! Do we have to?”
I wonder how many times I have said to them, “Don’t you understand that this is a good thing? That rest is a blessing? That sleep is a pleasure?” But this is a good thing that these little girls don’t recognize.
This is, it seems to me, one of the many residual effects of the fall. The serpent promised Adam and Eve that, if they partook of the forbidden fruit, they would know good and evil. Unsurprisingly, however, his guarantee was not to be trusted. For we don’t always know good. Sometimes good is right under our noses, and we don’t realize it — or at least don’t recognize how good it is.
Isaiah lamented a severe case of this problem in his day. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,” he preached; “who substitute darkness of light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isaiah 5:20 CSB). This is a truly crippling condition, to be sure. It’s a shame when a person doesn’t recognize good, but it’s tragic when the person actually thinks good is bad. Jesus encountered this sort of response several times in his ministry (see, for example, Matthew 12:22-24; Mark 5:14-17; Luke 7:33-35, 15:1-2; John 9:24).
I mention the phenomenon because you and I may be preaching uphill this week. Just as I try to persuade my little girls that bedtime is a good thing, we may be in the position of trying to convince our parishioners that our selected readings are good things. For they will hear some elements in Jeremiah, in Philemon, and in Luke that may feel off-putting to them. They probably won’t whine out loud like my children; yet, still, something within them may object: “No! Do we have to?”
Jeremiah 18:1-11, Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
Every parent and teacher has discovered along the way the value of a good object lesson. And researchers tell us that a person is multiplied times more likely to remember something that they experience than something they are simply told. Accordingly, 2,600 years ago, the Lord taught Jeremiah a memorable lesson.
The assignment was simple enough: Jeremiah was to go to the place where he could see a potter doing his work. And what Jeremiah witnessed there was noteworthy for its ordinariness. That is to say, nothing happened that day in the potter’s house that probably didn’t happen every day in the potter’s house. The thing that the potter set out to make went wrong, and so he made it into something else, instead.
It was a simple, unspectacular transaction. There was no fanfare. And there was certainly no resistance. Each of the two players in the scene — the potter and the clay — did their job precisely as one would expect.
The simple scene turned profound, however, when the Lord turned pottery into parable.
What if the relationship between the potter and the clay bears resemblance to the relationship between God and his people? What if he is the one with the plan, the skill, and the prerogative to make of nations whatever he chooses? The potter becomes a memorable metaphor for the sovereignty of God.
We human beings are not natural fans of sovereignty — except perhaps our own, which is an occasional but recurring figment of our imaginations. Yet a closer examination of the object lesson from the potter’s house reveals a remarkable caveat in the sovereignty of God. On the one hand, he asserts his absolute sovereignty as he speaks of his role in the affairs of nations. On the other hand, however, one senses that there is some limitation on his sovereignty when he asks, “Am I not able, house of Israel, to deal with you as this potter does?”
What is the answer to that question? Is he able to do with the house of Israel what the potter does with the clay? And, closer to home, is he able to do with you, with me, and with our congregations as the potter does with the clay?
The sovereignty of God is a central tenet in any thoughtful doctrinal formulation. Historically, however, different traditions have developed quite different understandings of how his sovereignty functions in our world, in our lives, and in our salvation. I hesitate to impose indirectly my theological perspective on your congregation.
What I sense in this moment in the potter’s house, however, is a beautifully nuanced portrait of God’s providence. On the one hand, the Lord is asserting the truth of his right to do as he pleases with Israel and with the rest of the world. On the other hand, by employing the scene to ask a question rather than make a statement, one senses that his heart is not inclined to run roughshod over his creatures. he prefers our willingness over his power. And this, it seems to me, has been his pattern since the beginning — when he chose to make free creatures in his image rather than robots under his control.
For our purposes, we do well to borrow Adelaide A. Pollard’s prayer. “Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way! Thou art the potter, I am the clay. Mold me and make me after thy will, while I am waiting, yielded and still.”1 This is what the Lord longed to hear from the people of Jeremiah’s day, and it is what he should hear from us.
Philemon 1:1-21
What David is in the Old Testament, the Apostle Paul is in the new. That is not a theological statement, but a literary one. For these are the two characters, it seems to me, whom we are able to know best by virtue of the fact that we have so much that is written both about them and by them. In the case of David, of course, many chapters of Old Testament history are devoted to his story. And that biographical material is complemented by so many psalms attributed to him. Meanwhile, in the case of the Apostle Paul, we find that roughly half of the Book of Acts tracks his story, while thirteen of the New Testament’s 21 epistles are said to come from his hand.
His letter to Philemon — which is perhaps as much a memo as it is a letter — is not the sort of theological treatise that Romans or Ephesians is. Neither does it give us the wealth of practical takeaways for Christian living that the Corinthian and Thessalonian correspondences do. Philemon is brief, and it is about as inextricably tied to its original context as any New Testament writing could be. Yet, still, it is a treasury of insight. And it helps to flesh out our portrait of the Apostle Paul.
As we understand the background story, Onesimus was a slave belonging to Philemon, who was evidently a member of the Colossian church. In the providence of God, it seems that Onesimus crossed paths with the Apostle Paul and became a believer. Now the apostle is sending the runaway slave back to his owner, and the accompanying letter is designed to guarantee a certain kind of welcome.
A slave-owner in the Roman empire had license to deal cruelly with a runaway. One can imagine that Philemon’s natural response might have been an angry attempt to teach Onesimus a lesson. The surrounding culture would have sympathized with — perhaps even encouraged — such a response.
Over against the prevailing winds of both natural impulse and cultural mores, however, the Apostle Paul deftly spoke a very different word. Forgive rather than avenge. Warmly welcome rather than harshly punish. Embrace as brother rather than keep as slave.
The apostle’s counsel might have been entirely foreign to both internal and external influences, but we recognize that he was speaking the same language of Jesus. For what Paul was advising Philemon to do was very much in the spirit of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. Forgiving, loving, turning the other cheek, and treating the other the way God treats us: this is the sort of fundamentally Christian conduct that made up Paul’s counsel.
Paul’s skill in his letter to Philemon is jaw-dropping. He is subtle, yet unmistakable. He asks while acknowledging that he could insist. And he inserts himself into an existing relationship in a way that somehow makes him the primary player in that relationship.
At a minimum, we should rejoice in the story of God’s providence that this brief epistle reveals. In addition, we might admire the masterful handling of a tough situation by the Apostle Paul. And, above all, we should recognize with Philemon that our Christian faith is not vertical only: it is not limited to our beliefs about God and our relationship to him; rather, it must impact and change all of our human relationships and conduct, as well.
Luke 14:25-33
We are unaccustomed to this sort of candor.
Ours is a consumer culture, and so much of our communication therefore is necessarily influenced by salesmanship. We are ever mindful of what the customer wants to hear, and we tailor our messages accordingly. We are perhaps caught up short, therefore, by Jesus’ words and style.
Make no mistake: there are plenty of things in our world that carry a heavy cost. It’s just that we don’t tend, in our messaging, to emphasize the cost. We are fond of highlighting benefits. It’s the features that get the bold typeface, while the fees are consigned to the small print.
But not so with Jesus. No, He goes out of hHis way to emphasize the price tag. Specifically, our focus in our gospel lection is on the cost of discipleship.
Luke tells us that, “large crowds were going along with him.” That sounds like success to us. Why would you do anything to make them want to go away? Why say anything that might alienate them? No, shouldn’t we do all we can to keep them coming, keep them within reach of our preaching and teaching?
“If anyone comes to me,” Jesus begins. Well, evidently there was some multitude of people who had come to him. He was not preaching a theoretical message; he was addressing his audience quite directly. “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
Did we hear that right? I may be sitting next to my wife and my children as I hear this message. What shall I make of this harsh demand? Do I pack up my family and go home now?
The earnest believer checks another translation. Perhaps the underlying Greek word can be construed differently. Let’s see how another version renders it. “Hate.” Another one? “Hate.” Another one? “Hate.” Indeed, almost every serious translation is exactly the same. Only the NLT, GNT, and CEV endeavor to soften the language by making it a comparative statement about whom we love most.
We are reminded of Cecil Frances Alexander’s hymn, putting into poetry Jesus’ call to follow. “Jesus calls us from the worship of our vain world’s golden store, from each idol that would keep us, saying, ‘Christian, love me more.’”2 And, indeed, we are willing to swallow hard and say amen to loving him more than the material idols that tempt us. But that’s still different from hating our loved ones.
Inasmuch as actually hating people is so completely a contradiction of so many other teachings and emphases of Jesus, it seems unlikely that his real goal is for us to hate our parents, children, siblings, and such. It simply doesn’t square with either the second commandment (Matthew 22:36-39) or the new commandment (John 13:34). What this teaching does square with, however, is the instruction to cut off one’s hand and pluck out one’s eye (Matthew 18:8-9). It squares with the assertion that one has a log in one’s own eye (Luke 6:41-42). It squares with the accusation of swallowing a camel (Matthew 23:24). In short, this strong message from Jesus has the sound of hyperbole. But Jesus’ use of exaggerated language is not an excuse to dismiss what he is saying. Quite the contrary: he is using such emphatic speech precisely so that we will take it seriously.
What he wants us to take seriously is the cost of following him. And so, in the rest of the passage, he uses practical, regular-life examples to illustrate the folly of any rash undertaking. Don’t start something you can’t finish. Don’t begin a project that you can’t afford to complete. And so, before we sign on discipleship’s dotted line, we must consult the price tag first.
The price tag is high, indeed. But a price tag does not just communicate cost; it also reflects value. Not “value” in the sense of buying an oversized box of detergent or jar of pickles. Rather “value” in the sense that Paul has in mind when he writes of “surpassing value” (Philippians 3:8). It is the surpassing value that both the pearl merchant (Matthew 13:45-46) and the field buyer (Matthew 13:44) have in mind.
Johann Franck sang of Jesus as a “priceless treasure.”3 That is the conclusion of all those who have chosen to follow him at any cost. For if he is priceless, then no price is too high.
Application
It would be an easy thing to read Paul’s letter to Philemon as little more than a historical curiosity. After all, his story and situation can feel so far removed from ours that we may not take Paul’s counsel very personally. But if we invest a moment’s imagination in climbing into Philemon’s situation, we may begin to appreciate the against-the-grain quality of what the apostle is encouraging.
It does not come naturally to us to limit the exercise of our rights. It does not come easily to substitute forgiveness for anger or embrace for revenge. Sacrifice of self in any form — one’s time or money or energy or ego — is not our natural reflex. Yet these are the sorts of instructions that Paul is gently giving to Philemon. And, by extension, we may hear that this is also how the apostle would encourage us to conduct ourselves and our affairs.
If we try to climb into Philemon’s shoes, we will probably feel some natural pushback in our souls against what Paul wrote.
Meanwhile, Jesus’ words in our gospel lection don’t require any exercise of our imagination. His message is clear and close to home. And his expressed expectations and the demands of discipleship elicit a strong pushback within us.
And then there is the case of Jeremiah’s object lesson at the potter’s house. As we noted above, we human beings are rather addicted to the (misguided) notion of our own sovereignty. And so, it is swimming upstream for us to subordinate ourselves to the sovereignty of God.
In all of these ways, then, we may hear the words of our assigned passages and feel a resistance within. Like my girls at bedtime, we protest. “No! Do we have to?”
Do we have to forgive and welcome the person who has betrayed and wronged us?
Do we have to subordinate all other loves and allegiances to Jesus?
Do we have to yield ourselves to the sovereign hand and plans of the potter?
Do we have to take up a cross?
No, we don’t have to. But let us seek the wisdom to recognize all these as good things. They are, like bedtime, more an invitation to blessing than they are an assignment of burden. For the greatest burden most of us carry is self. Self-interest, self-promotion, self-preservation, self-indulgence — these fallen inclinations deceive me, weigh me down, and sap my joy. At the end of any given day, I discover that there was much more joy in loving, in giving, and in trusting.
Each of this week’s assigned readings can be heard as part of the larger call to die to self. It is not an invitation that we naturally embrace. But when we are seeing clearly, we will recognize how truly very good it is!
Alternative Application(s)
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 — “Oh, To Be Known”
I was fortunate to be in the final class taught by a particular theology professor when I was a seminary student. He was an old man at the time, and well known in his field. But the particular specialness of being part of his final class was not merely the benefit of his expertise in the material; it was being privy to the many personal reflections that were elicited from him as he brought his career to a close.
Interestingly, his reflections were not exclusively about his years of scholarship and teaching. Rather, this watershed in his life had him thinking and reflecting much more broadly. And so, we heard him talk a great deal about his childhood.
Along the way, I remember him sharing that all of the members of his family of origin, as well as all of his closest childhood friends, were already gone. He had outlived them all. And that led him to the poignant observation that no one was left who had known him as a boy.
Over the more than thirty years since then, I have thought many times about that particular remark. The number of people who knew me as a boy has dwindled considerably. Only a handful are left. And I am prompted to wonder how well you can truly know a person unless you have a strong sense for what sort of child they were.
Meanwhile, I remember a scene in a television show in which two people, who had met late in life but had come from the same profession, expressed the pleasure of conversing with one another. And, specifically, the one said to the other that it was a relief not to have to explain oneself. They had found in one another, you see, someone who simply understood them in a way that others, who were not part of the same profession, could not.
And, in a similar vein, I am reminded of the old spiritual, which laments, “Nobody knows the trouble I see.”4
There is a profound loneliness, you see, in not being known, not having someone around who understands you. And, by contrast, there is such precious comfort — even a kind of tranquility — that is experienced when you have someone who knows, someone who understands. Oh, the blessing of someone who knew you when, someone who doesn’t require any explanation, and someone who knows and understands the troubles you’ve seen!
The psalmist bears witness the all-knowing God. But Psalm 139 is not about theoretical omniscience. It is not a cold and distant God who knows all of time and space. No, but rather this is an intimately personal God, who knows all about you, and who knows all about me.
The psalmist is marveling at God’s knowledge, to be sure, but it is not arm’s-length. It is up-close-and-personal. And see how comprehensive it is!
The Lord knew you before you were born. More than just knowing the boy or girl you were when you were a child, he knew you in your mother’s womb! He knows also how you are wired up. No need to give him some short-hard, like Myers-Briggs initials or Enneagram numbers. He doesn’t need to settle for knowing your type, for he knows you. And he knows your paths — where you have been, what your patterns are, and where you are going.
No introductions or explanations are necessary with him. No anecdote will make things clearer to him. He knows you better than anyone else ever has or ever will. He knows you better than you know yourself. And, astonishingly, he also loves you more than anyone else ever has or ever will.
The people who have known us longest and the people who know us best, typically, are our best and closest friends. These are the folks we find special pleasure in being with and talking to. How sweet, then, is the prayer life of the person who, with the psalmist, has discovered: “Lord, you have searched me and known me.”
1 Adelaide A. Pollard, “Have Thine Own Way, Lord” UMH #382
2 Cecil Frances Alexander, “Jesus Calls Us,” UMH #398
3 Johann Franck, “Jesus, Priceless Treasure,” UMH #532
4 UMH #520
If I told them we were going to spend the afternoon raking leaves, they’d be excited about it. If I said we would spend the morning shoveling snow, they’d get suited up and hurry outside. If I said our outing for the day was to go to a home improvement store and spend hours shopping for nails, they’d think it was the best day ever. They really are game for just about anything. But when I say, “It’s time for bed,” their faces fall and they begin to whine, “No! Do we have to?”
I wonder how many times I have said to them, “Don’t you understand that this is a good thing? That rest is a blessing? That sleep is a pleasure?” But this is a good thing that these little girls don’t recognize.
This is, it seems to me, one of the many residual effects of the fall. The serpent promised Adam and Eve that, if they partook of the forbidden fruit, they would know good and evil. Unsurprisingly, however, his guarantee was not to be trusted. For we don’t always know good. Sometimes good is right under our noses, and we don’t realize it — or at least don’t recognize how good it is.
Isaiah lamented a severe case of this problem in his day. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,” he preached; “who substitute darkness of light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isaiah 5:20 CSB). This is a truly crippling condition, to be sure. It’s a shame when a person doesn’t recognize good, but it’s tragic when the person actually thinks good is bad. Jesus encountered this sort of response several times in his ministry (see, for example, Matthew 12:22-24; Mark 5:14-17; Luke 7:33-35, 15:1-2; John 9:24).
I mention the phenomenon because you and I may be preaching uphill this week. Just as I try to persuade my little girls that bedtime is a good thing, we may be in the position of trying to convince our parishioners that our selected readings are good things. For they will hear some elements in Jeremiah, in Philemon, and in Luke that may feel off-putting to them. They probably won’t whine out loud like my children; yet, still, something within them may object: “No! Do we have to?”
Jeremiah 18:1-11, Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
Every parent and teacher has discovered along the way the value of a good object lesson. And researchers tell us that a person is multiplied times more likely to remember something that they experience than something they are simply told. Accordingly, 2,600 years ago, the Lord taught Jeremiah a memorable lesson.
The assignment was simple enough: Jeremiah was to go to the place where he could see a potter doing his work. And what Jeremiah witnessed there was noteworthy for its ordinariness. That is to say, nothing happened that day in the potter’s house that probably didn’t happen every day in the potter’s house. The thing that the potter set out to make went wrong, and so he made it into something else, instead.
It was a simple, unspectacular transaction. There was no fanfare. And there was certainly no resistance. Each of the two players in the scene — the potter and the clay — did their job precisely as one would expect.
The simple scene turned profound, however, when the Lord turned pottery into parable.
What if the relationship between the potter and the clay bears resemblance to the relationship between God and his people? What if he is the one with the plan, the skill, and the prerogative to make of nations whatever he chooses? The potter becomes a memorable metaphor for the sovereignty of God.
We human beings are not natural fans of sovereignty — except perhaps our own, which is an occasional but recurring figment of our imaginations. Yet a closer examination of the object lesson from the potter’s house reveals a remarkable caveat in the sovereignty of God. On the one hand, he asserts his absolute sovereignty as he speaks of his role in the affairs of nations. On the other hand, however, one senses that there is some limitation on his sovereignty when he asks, “Am I not able, house of Israel, to deal with you as this potter does?”
What is the answer to that question? Is he able to do with the house of Israel what the potter does with the clay? And, closer to home, is he able to do with you, with me, and with our congregations as the potter does with the clay?
The sovereignty of God is a central tenet in any thoughtful doctrinal formulation. Historically, however, different traditions have developed quite different understandings of how his sovereignty functions in our world, in our lives, and in our salvation. I hesitate to impose indirectly my theological perspective on your congregation.
What I sense in this moment in the potter’s house, however, is a beautifully nuanced portrait of God’s providence. On the one hand, the Lord is asserting the truth of his right to do as he pleases with Israel and with the rest of the world. On the other hand, by employing the scene to ask a question rather than make a statement, one senses that his heart is not inclined to run roughshod over his creatures. he prefers our willingness over his power. And this, it seems to me, has been his pattern since the beginning — when he chose to make free creatures in his image rather than robots under his control.
For our purposes, we do well to borrow Adelaide A. Pollard’s prayer. “Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way! Thou art the potter, I am the clay. Mold me and make me after thy will, while I am waiting, yielded and still.”1 This is what the Lord longed to hear from the people of Jeremiah’s day, and it is what he should hear from us.
Philemon 1:1-21
What David is in the Old Testament, the Apostle Paul is in the new. That is not a theological statement, but a literary one. For these are the two characters, it seems to me, whom we are able to know best by virtue of the fact that we have so much that is written both about them and by them. In the case of David, of course, many chapters of Old Testament history are devoted to his story. And that biographical material is complemented by so many psalms attributed to him. Meanwhile, in the case of the Apostle Paul, we find that roughly half of the Book of Acts tracks his story, while thirteen of the New Testament’s 21 epistles are said to come from his hand.
His letter to Philemon — which is perhaps as much a memo as it is a letter — is not the sort of theological treatise that Romans or Ephesians is. Neither does it give us the wealth of practical takeaways for Christian living that the Corinthian and Thessalonian correspondences do. Philemon is brief, and it is about as inextricably tied to its original context as any New Testament writing could be. Yet, still, it is a treasury of insight. And it helps to flesh out our portrait of the Apostle Paul.
As we understand the background story, Onesimus was a slave belonging to Philemon, who was evidently a member of the Colossian church. In the providence of God, it seems that Onesimus crossed paths with the Apostle Paul and became a believer. Now the apostle is sending the runaway slave back to his owner, and the accompanying letter is designed to guarantee a certain kind of welcome.
A slave-owner in the Roman empire had license to deal cruelly with a runaway. One can imagine that Philemon’s natural response might have been an angry attempt to teach Onesimus a lesson. The surrounding culture would have sympathized with — perhaps even encouraged — such a response.
Over against the prevailing winds of both natural impulse and cultural mores, however, the Apostle Paul deftly spoke a very different word. Forgive rather than avenge. Warmly welcome rather than harshly punish. Embrace as brother rather than keep as slave.
The apostle’s counsel might have been entirely foreign to both internal and external influences, but we recognize that he was speaking the same language of Jesus. For what Paul was advising Philemon to do was very much in the spirit of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. Forgiving, loving, turning the other cheek, and treating the other the way God treats us: this is the sort of fundamentally Christian conduct that made up Paul’s counsel.
Paul’s skill in his letter to Philemon is jaw-dropping. He is subtle, yet unmistakable. He asks while acknowledging that he could insist. And he inserts himself into an existing relationship in a way that somehow makes him the primary player in that relationship.
At a minimum, we should rejoice in the story of God’s providence that this brief epistle reveals. In addition, we might admire the masterful handling of a tough situation by the Apostle Paul. And, above all, we should recognize with Philemon that our Christian faith is not vertical only: it is not limited to our beliefs about God and our relationship to him; rather, it must impact and change all of our human relationships and conduct, as well.
Luke 14:25-33
We are unaccustomed to this sort of candor.
Ours is a consumer culture, and so much of our communication therefore is necessarily influenced by salesmanship. We are ever mindful of what the customer wants to hear, and we tailor our messages accordingly. We are perhaps caught up short, therefore, by Jesus’ words and style.
Make no mistake: there are plenty of things in our world that carry a heavy cost. It’s just that we don’t tend, in our messaging, to emphasize the cost. We are fond of highlighting benefits. It’s the features that get the bold typeface, while the fees are consigned to the small print.
But not so with Jesus. No, He goes out of hHis way to emphasize the price tag. Specifically, our focus in our gospel lection is on the cost of discipleship.
Luke tells us that, “large crowds were going along with him.” That sounds like success to us. Why would you do anything to make them want to go away? Why say anything that might alienate them? No, shouldn’t we do all we can to keep them coming, keep them within reach of our preaching and teaching?
“If anyone comes to me,” Jesus begins. Well, evidently there was some multitude of people who had come to him. He was not preaching a theoretical message; he was addressing his audience quite directly. “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
Did we hear that right? I may be sitting next to my wife and my children as I hear this message. What shall I make of this harsh demand? Do I pack up my family and go home now?
The earnest believer checks another translation. Perhaps the underlying Greek word can be construed differently. Let’s see how another version renders it. “Hate.” Another one? “Hate.” Another one? “Hate.” Indeed, almost every serious translation is exactly the same. Only the NLT, GNT, and CEV endeavor to soften the language by making it a comparative statement about whom we love most.
We are reminded of Cecil Frances Alexander’s hymn, putting into poetry Jesus’ call to follow. “Jesus calls us from the worship of our vain world’s golden store, from each idol that would keep us, saying, ‘Christian, love me more.’”2 And, indeed, we are willing to swallow hard and say amen to loving him more than the material idols that tempt us. But that’s still different from hating our loved ones.
Inasmuch as actually hating people is so completely a contradiction of so many other teachings and emphases of Jesus, it seems unlikely that his real goal is for us to hate our parents, children, siblings, and such. It simply doesn’t square with either the second commandment (Matthew 22:36-39) or the new commandment (John 13:34). What this teaching does square with, however, is the instruction to cut off one’s hand and pluck out one’s eye (Matthew 18:8-9). It squares with the assertion that one has a log in one’s own eye (Luke 6:41-42). It squares with the accusation of swallowing a camel (Matthew 23:24). In short, this strong message from Jesus has the sound of hyperbole. But Jesus’ use of exaggerated language is not an excuse to dismiss what he is saying. Quite the contrary: he is using such emphatic speech precisely so that we will take it seriously.
What he wants us to take seriously is the cost of following him. And so, in the rest of the passage, he uses practical, regular-life examples to illustrate the folly of any rash undertaking. Don’t start something you can’t finish. Don’t begin a project that you can’t afford to complete. And so, before we sign on discipleship’s dotted line, we must consult the price tag first.
The price tag is high, indeed. But a price tag does not just communicate cost; it also reflects value. Not “value” in the sense of buying an oversized box of detergent or jar of pickles. Rather “value” in the sense that Paul has in mind when he writes of “surpassing value” (Philippians 3:8). It is the surpassing value that both the pearl merchant (Matthew 13:45-46) and the field buyer (Matthew 13:44) have in mind.
Johann Franck sang of Jesus as a “priceless treasure.”3 That is the conclusion of all those who have chosen to follow him at any cost. For if he is priceless, then no price is too high.
Application
It would be an easy thing to read Paul’s letter to Philemon as little more than a historical curiosity. After all, his story and situation can feel so far removed from ours that we may not take Paul’s counsel very personally. But if we invest a moment’s imagination in climbing into Philemon’s situation, we may begin to appreciate the against-the-grain quality of what the apostle is encouraging.
It does not come naturally to us to limit the exercise of our rights. It does not come easily to substitute forgiveness for anger or embrace for revenge. Sacrifice of self in any form — one’s time or money or energy or ego — is not our natural reflex. Yet these are the sorts of instructions that Paul is gently giving to Philemon. And, by extension, we may hear that this is also how the apostle would encourage us to conduct ourselves and our affairs.
If we try to climb into Philemon’s shoes, we will probably feel some natural pushback in our souls against what Paul wrote.
Meanwhile, Jesus’ words in our gospel lection don’t require any exercise of our imagination. His message is clear and close to home. And his expressed expectations and the demands of discipleship elicit a strong pushback within us.
And then there is the case of Jeremiah’s object lesson at the potter’s house. As we noted above, we human beings are rather addicted to the (misguided) notion of our own sovereignty. And so, it is swimming upstream for us to subordinate ourselves to the sovereignty of God.
In all of these ways, then, we may hear the words of our assigned passages and feel a resistance within. Like my girls at bedtime, we protest. “No! Do we have to?”
Do we have to forgive and welcome the person who has betrayed and wronged us?
Do we have to subordinate all other loves and allegiances to Jesus?
Do we have to yield ourselves to the sovereign hand and plans of the potter?
Do we have to take up a cross?
No, we don’t have to. But let us seek the wisdom to recognize all these as good things. They are, like bedtime, more an invitation to blessing than they are an assignment of burden. For the greatest burden most of us carry is self. Self-interest, self-promotion, self-preservation, self-indulgence — these fallen inclinations deceive me, weigh me down, and sap my joy. At the end of any given day, I discover that there was much more joy in loving, in giving, and in trusting.
Each of this week’s assigned readings can be heard as part of the larger call to die to self. It is not an invitation that we naturally embrace. But when we are seeing clearly, we will recognize how truly very good it is!
Alternative Application(s)
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 — “Oh, To Be Known”
I was fortunate to be in the final class taught by a particular theology professor when I was a seminary student. He was an old man at the time, and well known in his field. But the particular specialness of being part of his final class was not merely the benefit of his expertise in the material; it was being privy to the many personal reflections that were elicited from him as he brought his career to a close.
Interestingly, his reflections were not exclusively about his years of scholarship and teaching. Rather, this watershed in his life had him thinking and reflecting much more broadly. And so, we heard him talk a great deal about his childhood.
Along the way, I remember him sharing that all of the members of his family of origin, as well as all of his closest childhood friends, were already gone. He had outlived them all. And that led him to the poignant observation that no one was left who had known him as a boy.
Over the more than thirty years since then, I have thought many times about that particular remark. The number of people who knew me as a boy has dwindled considerably. Only a handful are left. And I am prompted to wonder how well you can truly know a person unless you have a strong sense for what sort of child they were.
Meanwhile, I remember a scene in a television show in which two people, who had met late in life but had come from the same profession, expressed the pleasure of conversing with one another. And, specifically, the one said to the other that it was a relief not to have to explain oneself. They had found in one another, you see, someone who simply understood them in a way that others, who were not part of the same profession, could not.
And, in a similar vein, I am reminded of the old spiritual, which laments, “Nobody knows the trouble I see.”4
There is a profound loneliness, you see, in not being known, not having someone around who understands you. And, by contrast, there is such precious comfort — even a kind of tranquility — that is experienced when you have someone who knows, someone who understands. Oh, the blessing of someone who knew you when, someone who doesn’t require any explanation, and someone who knows and understands the troubles you’ve seen!
The psalmist bears witness the all-knowing God. But Psalm 139 is not about theoretical omniscience. It is not a cold and distant God who knows all of time and space. No, but rather this is an intimately personal God, who knows all about you, and who knows all about me.
The psalmist is marveling at God’s knowledge, to be sure, but it is not arm’s-length. It is up-close-and-personal. And see how comprehensive it is!
The Lord knew you before you were born. More than just knowing the boy or girl you were when you were a child, he knew you in your mother’s womb! He knows also how you are wired up. No need to give him some short-hard, like Myers-Briggs initials or Enneagram numbers. He doesn’t need to settle for knowing your type, for he knows you. And he knows your paths — where you have been, what your patterns are, and where you are going.
No introductions or explanations are necessary with him. No anecdote will make things clearer to him. He knows you better than anyone else ever has or ever will. He knows you better than you know yourself. And, astonishingly, he also loves you more than anyone else ever has or ever will.
The people who have known us longest and the people who know us best, typically, are our best and closest friends. These are the folks we find special pleasure in being with and talking to. How sweet, then, is the prayer life of the person who, with the psalmist, has discovered: “Lord, you have searched me and known me.”
1 Adelaide A. Pollard, “Have Thine Own Way, Lord” UMH #382
2 Cecil Frances Alexander, “Jesus Calls Us,” UMH #398
3 Johann Franck, “Jesus, Priceless Treasure,” UMH #532
4 UMH #520
