He's hyper
Commentary
"I worry about him," my wife said as the credits rolled for Bowling for Columbine, referring to filmmaker Michael Moore.
"His weight?" I asked.
"No," she said. "I always worry about the prophet."
Since controversy follows Michael Moore wherever he goes, I'll do my part to add to it: I agree that he is a prophet. I've been watching his movies since Roger and Me, finding his blend of high dudgeon and low humor both sobering and exasperating. (Moore's most recent film, Fahrenheit 9/11, will have been in theaters by the time you read this, and is sure to generate more celluloid controversy.) Roger and Me found him stalking the head of General Motors while longing for the good-ole-days of auto manufacturing in Flint, Michigan. In The Big One, he assembled a group of unemployed auto workers willing to manufacture shoes, as Nike CEO Phil Knight insisted on camera that Americans wouldn't work in sneaker factories. Bowling for Columbine is at once a serious, satirical, enlightening, maddening, profound, and silly film that presents a view of gun violence that spans traditional conservative/liberal distinctions, an anti-gun screed by a dues-paying NRA member and gun lover. Don't watch it to confirm your prejudices or heighten your comfort level. Watch it to see the prophet in action.
Moore's critics question his construal of facts. (Did the Columbine shooters really go bowling that morning? Moore says he has witnesses.) They impugn his veracity (Moore and his crew insist that it wasn't staged -- he really did walk into a bank, open an account, and walk out with a free rifle). They accuse him of losing touch with his working-class base (now that he's rich and famous, he can live in Manhattan and send his kids to private schools), and treating his own employees worse than the corporations he rails against (some ex-employees love him, some are disillusioned). At the least, they say, he's over the top (witness his pursuit of Charlton Heston with the picture of a murdered child, or his hyperventilation at the Oscars).
Such a critique might be taken as that which is naturally due a prophet. They didn't exactly relish Jeremiah in the king's palace. Modern newspapers would have had a field day with someone like Ezekiel. Isaiah, Hosea, Peter, Paul, and Jesus all had vociferous detractors. At least one of them managed to get crucified.
This is the mark of the prophet, after all: he's hyper. He's over the top. If he weren't, he wouldn't be a prophet.
Jeremiah 18:1-11
They must have wondered what Jeremiah was doing in that part of town -- the prophet in the manufacturing sector. Jeremiah had to "go down" to the potter's house (v. 2), because it would have been in the lower part of the city, where there was a steady water supply. It was also a descent into the working class, since pottery making, though a highly skilled craft, was still manual labor. In the palace they were no doubt asking, why would Jeremiah think this a setting in which to receive a word from the Lord?
The prophet recognized that the Lord might be heard in the centers of industry. Those of you familiar with the famous pottery wheel scene in Ghost (or its satire in The Naked Gun) have pretty much the same picture Jeremiah would have seen: a wooden platform set on a stone wheel, turned by the hands or feet so that the clay could be shaped by the centrifugal force. The image was apt: the clay pushed against the hand, but the hand was the dominant force in shaping the clay. The potter could change the shape of the clay at any moment. Or the potter could turn it back into a lump and start over again.
"Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done?" says the Lord. "Just like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand" (v. 6). Like the potter, the Lord could reshape the people "at one moment" or "suddenly" (rega' v. 7). God could reverse the judgment on the nation at any time, depending on whether it was willing to turn from evil (vv. 8-10). In fact, God the potter (or "planner" yozer) was now devising a plan (or "planning a plan," hoshev mahashvah, v. 11) that would shape evil rather than good, because Judah had chosen to do evil. Note that Jeremiah's prophecy had a national and communal focus, not an individual one. Judgment came to the nation as a whole.
There was always hope that repentance was around the corner, and so God would be able to revise the potting plan. However, verse 12 (probably a later, but authentic, addition by Jeremiah) indicates that the people had chosen otherwise: "We will follow our own plans (mahashvah), and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of our evil heart" (author's translation). This was as silly as the clay planning to shape itself into a pot; the only difference was that the clay didn't know any better. A gracious God had given Israel due notice that other plans were in the works.
Philemon 1-21
When the Apostle Paul is accused of being less than a prophet, the letter of Philemon is Exhibit A. Why would Paul, who said, "In Christ there is no slave or free" (Galatians 3:28; cf. 5:1; 1 Corinthians 7:21; 2 Corinthians 11:20-21), send the slave Onesimus back to his master? Wouldn't a true prophet stand up for the truth that God made us all free and equal? As always with Paul, we must read between the lines in order to reconstruct the situation, which will show Paul to be more farsighted and prophetic than history has credited him.
This brief letter is one-of-a-kind, addressed to an individual as well as "the church in your house" (v. 2), dealing with a personal matter that has far-reaching social consequences. Onesimus, the slave, is with Paul, and the letter to his master, Philemon, is written from prison (vv. 1, 9, 10, 13, 23). Exactly where Paul is imprisoned is a matter of speculation, but this cast of characters is connected with Colossae in Colossians 4:7-17, so nearby Ephesus is a good guess. Apparently, Onesimus has been converted by Paul, who calls him "my child," one of his favorite metaphors for converts (v. 10, cf. 1 Corinthians 4:15; Galatians 4:19; Paul also had converted Philemon, v. 19). Paul wants Onesimus to stay with him as a worker in his ministry, but is not willing to defy social convention by harboring someone else's slave (vv. 13-14). Nothing is said about the circumstances under which Onesimus came to be with Paul; speculation that he was a runaway or a thief may explain why Paul feels the need to appeal rather than command Philemon. Despite attempts to distance ancient slavery from the modern, race-based variety, slavery in ancient times was often harsh; reports of the benevolence of slavery in biblical times are greatly exaggerated, because the system is inherently cruel, however implemented. Roman penalties for errant slaves included imprisonment, scourging, or possibly crucifixion. We don't know what punishment Onesimus may have incurred for whatever he did; Paul's offer to repay his debts may simply reflect the Roman law that those who harbor runaway slaves be liable for the value of their lost work. However, Onesimus may have sought out Paul without running away, following a Roman law that allowed a slave to seek a third-party advocate in a dispute with his master (v. 18). We simply do not know, and the letter can be plausibly read several different ways.
Paul, faced with a sticky situation, becomes a master of subtlety and indirection. His use of kinship language is poignant: he speaks to a "brother" and a "sister" as a "father" who has a "child," noting that the community of faith is a family or household, a place of love, faith, and encouragement (vv. 1, 2, 5-7, 10). Rather than issuing a command, he speaks as an "ambassador" (presbytes, which the NRSV translates literally as "old man") on the basis of love and compassion (vv. 9, 12). He appeals for Onesimus, whose name means "useful, beneficial," a formerly bad or "useless" (achrestos) slave; now a good slave, "useful" (euchrestos), because of his conversion. He is now more useful, as a good Christian (the pun eu-Chrestos is obvious in Greek). Paul uses the passive voice to describe Onesimus' flight from his master, "he was separated from you" (v. 15), echoing the biblical "divine passive" idiom, since his separation fulfilled God's purpose to bring him back as a member of the household of God, "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother" (v. 16). "More than a slave" suggests that Onesimus should be released from his slavery, even as Paul says he expects Philemon to "do even more than I say," i.e., read between the lines (v. 21). Ever so subtly, he requests Philemon to return the man named "Beneficial" to him in freedom: "Let me have this benefit from you in the Lord" (v. 20). "Refresh my heart in Christ," he says (v. 20), having already called Onesimus his "very heart" (v. 12).
Here we see the prophet crafty as a serpent, but innocent as a dove. He does not denounce the root of the institution of slavery. He knows he does not wield the political power to change the entire economic system of Rome -- not yet (we must remember that Christians were a minute percentage of the population of the Empire in Paul's day; if you walked down the streets of Rome, you probably wouldn't see one, or anyone who even knew what a Christian was!). Instead, Paul asks a favor from a brother who knows personally the power of the gospel to transform lives. Where Onesimus no doubt deserved every punishment the law had to offer, God's grace sought otherwise -- and Paul seeks to set him loose for the furtherance of the young Christian movement. He does not support the institution of slavery, nor does he feel the need to rail against it, because the very nature of the gospel subverts it.
Luke 14:25-33
"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" (v. 26). The family-values crowd screams "Hyperbole!" before Jesus gets the sentence out of his mouth. The balanced-life crowd blanches at the words that do come out of his mouth. Should we take Jesus at his word, or do we have reason to believe he's just being hyper?
We might first recognize that this is the first of three parallel sayings, separated only by the dual parables in verses 28-32. Each of the sayings has the same structure: a condition; a required activity; and the result -- "cannot be my disciple." Presumably, we should take all three at the same level of literalness.
Did Jesus really mean "none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions?" (v. 33). Well, yes he did. Jesus was addressing the large crowd that was following him on his way to Jerusalem (v. 25). Those people literally could not follow Jesus to Jerusalem and the cross with their trunks in tow. The only way to follow the historical Jesus was to physically be with him, and he did not travel in a moving van. They would have to give up their possessions to fulfill the main condition of being a disciple: "Follow me."
Similarly, the injunction to carry the cross would prove to be the literal truth, not just for Simon of Cyrene, but also for each of the twelve. Tradition has it that they all died martyrs' deaths (except for Judas, who died otherwise). Such a prospect fits well with the giving up of possessions, since one who is expecting an imminent death has no need of superfluous things. Self-denial means little when you are facing certain death.
So, too, those disciples must have felt a literal sting at Jesus' first command. How many of them left their families and homes with the words ringing in their ears, "You must hate us"? To give up one's family and possessions, and drag a cross toward certain death was, in that sense, to hate life itself (v. 26). The choice to follow Jesus in his own lifetime was a rejection of the usual claims on one's life, in hopes of gaining a new life.
Here the preacher faces the insurmountable gap between the meaning of the story and its meaning for a congregation. The crowd that blithely followed Jesus to his death, according to Luke, needed a poke in the eye to understand what they were doing. We modern readers of Luke find ourselves in a different situation. Post-resurrection Christians do not have to rely on the physical presence of Jesus, for we know him through the Spirit. We do not have to literally leave family, possessions, and life itself to be disciples. Thus Luke's tradition gets softened, and we call it hyperbole (note that Matthew's version is much less stern, Matthew 10:37-38; although there is a tradition similar to Luke's in Gospel of Thomas, pp. 55, 101).
Nevertheless, undue entanglement in possessions and people present a common impediment to discipleship, even for Easter people. We can't tithe or do much giving at all, without the spouse's permission. The household may not be conducive to Bible study or prayer. It's hard to get up on Sunday to go to church when everyone else in the house stays up late for Saturday Night Live. This is why Jesus invited us in two parables to "count the cost." No one builds a tower, and no king goes to war, without first counting the cost (vv. 28-32).
Jesus demands that he come first. He is not willing to accept a subordinate place. So radical is his demand that allegiance to him may look like hatred of others. The giving of one's possession for the sake of others looks like radical foolishness to those who think that there's only so much stuff in the world. And death -- well, death is the great fear in our world, so much so that we sequester it behind hospital doors and nursing homes and walls of self-denial. Die? Who me? Let's think about something else.
But, if Christianity is the least bit true, death cannot be the end. As Christ was raised, so we, too, will be brought into newness of life. The only question is whether we are willing to share that life in the here-and-now. It may require dying to self in ways that we cannot know until we make the commitment. Radical commitment, radical self-denial, and radical use of family ties and material possessions are still the marks of the disciple.
Application
I once sat in a seminary class where the subject was Amos 5:21, "I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies." "What does this say?" asked the teacher. Several students traded profound insights on the relative value of worship and justice, liturgy and social action. "But what does it say?" repeated the teacher. The point: It says that God hated their worship. Period.
Before we shout "Hyperbole," before we soften a radical demand with mitigating interpretation, we ought to sit with it a while. It says you have to hate your family, carry your cross, and give up your possessions to be a disciple. No, there is no secret Greek word that tells us that "hate" is less than "hate." No, there is no loophole for those who are having a bad year financially. Discipleship is an ultimate demand, and we need to sit uncomfortably with it to realize its full implications.
A sentimental faith is less than discipleship. We may wear a gold cross around the neck, but it means nothing unless we are willing to apply it to the things we care most about. The cross was an instrument of violence, torture, retribution, and occasionally, but not necessarily, justice. We need to ask ourselves why we have turned a nefarious form of execution into jewelry. Would we wear a little gold electric chair around our necks?
The folly would be not giving all our possessions away, but thinking that we could come to Jesus with our loves and hates and fears and not go away changed. The folly would be to think that discipleship serves us. ("The church is here to serve!" No, I say -- the church is here to make disciples of all the nations.) The folly would be to think that we could shout "Hyperbole" and make the demands of discipleship go away.
Count the cost. It might be the price of a tower; it might be a mere ten-percent tithe. It might be war with a king twice your strength; it may be ridicule from a family that just doesn't understand. Count the cost of wearing an instrument of torture on a gold chain around your neck. That symbol proclaims you a disciple, and is not to be worn lightly.
Alternative Applications
1) Jeremiah 18:1-11. The potter remakes the clay. Jeremiah's judgment oracle is unusual in its imagery, because of the nature of clay. It's really just the dirt of the ground, but it can be molded and fired and painted and turned into a thing of beauty. Certainly that is God's goal for us -- to transform us into a thing of beauty in the eyes of the Lord. We do not have to worry about making ourselves into pretty pots, because that is God's job. All we need do is submit to the gift of God's hand shaping us. Similarly, those days we don't turn out so well, we have the comfort of knowing that God can easily and quickly reshape us. While we don't have the power to remake ourselves, God certainly can turn us into the people we are called to be. While Jeremiah's image focuses on the communal view (and it would be misleading to drop that focus), the idea certainly applies to each of us as individuals as well as a community and a nation.
2) Jeremiah 18:1-11; Philemon 1-21. While Jeremiah focuses on social change, Paul seems to deal with the exact opposite: talking one individual into doing one good deed. While the two are not entirely unrelated (many individuals doing many good deeds can surely transform a society), they represent two poles that reflect two historical situations. Jeremiah spoke as a national prophet who had access to the seat of power. Paul wrote as an obscure missionary of an obscure sect that had barely, if at all, emerged from a minority religion, Judaism. Both seek means appropriate to the transformation of their own society. Paul could not hope to stop global slavery, and even to try would divert him from his primary mission. Jeremiah would have been negligent if he had not tried to use his access to proclaim God's judgment on the nation. We modern Christians need to ask ourselves where we can help God transform society, even as we seek to lead individuals to a greater knowledge of God's grace.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
The psalmist raises an interesting question. He writes "You hem me in, behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me" (v. 5). He also writes, "Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?" (v. 7).
The latter questions are rhetorical, of course. They are questions that make an assertion: There is nowhere I can go where your spirit is not present.
The problem this raises is the problem of free will. The psalmist's statement that God "hems me in" makes it sound like he has no choice. Like a master chess player God so maneuvers the field of choices and options that the only real option is for the writer to do what God wants.
But if that is true then are we correct in believing we are really free to choose at all? If we are left with only one choice, as the psalmist seems to be saying, does that mean that our lives are scripted? Are we merely puppets on strings dancing and acting according to God's predetermined dictates?
There are many who are ready to read the psalm that way, and in fact find a good bit of comfort in that sort of reading. The ambiguity and uncertainty of this world yield to the governing forces of God's infallible choices. We need only to "wait on the Lord," and enjoy the life God has crafted for us to live.
But the absence of choice removes the demand for responsibility. If we can only choose what God has left for us to choose, then we are not responsible for our choices. Obviously that is not the biblical position. In every encounter with the presence of God we are, in fact, accountable for our choices.
So how are we to reconcile these seemingly contradictory ideas? How is it possible that God can "hem me in" and yet at the same time not hem me in?
One possible resolution is found in the opening verse: "You have searched me and known me."
Parents who have more than one child know all too well that trying to treat all children exactly the same is not practical. If all children in a family were exactly the same in personality and temperament, it might be possible, but that is not usually the case. Some children are extroverts, some introverts. Some respond to positive reinforcement, others only to negative reinforcement. Attentive parents must find out, usually through trial and error, what works with their child.
The same is true with God. God wants us to make good choices. God wants us to do well. But God is not going to override our freedom in order to make us what God wants us to be.
Since God knows us better than anyone, even better than we know ourselves, God is able to work in our lives and in our world in just the right way as to give us the best position to make the best choice. Do we always make the right choice? No, sadly we do not. God is always faithful to make sure that the best choice is available to us in a way that is uniquely designed for us to understand it.
God "hems us in." Not in a constraint that allows no freedom, but in a carefully constructed moment of opportunity that allows us to see or hear or feel what is right. God can do this because God has searched us and known us.
"His weight?" I asked.
"No," she said. "I always worry about the prophet."
Since controversy follows Michael Moore wherever he goes, I'll do my part to add to it: I agree that he is a prophet. I've been watching his movies since Roger and Me, finding his blend of high dudgeon and low humor both sobering and exasperating. (Moore's most recent film, Fahrenheit 9/11, will have been in theaters by the time you read this, and is sure to generate more celluloid controversy.) Roger and Me found him stalking the head of General Motors while longing for the good-ole-days of auto manufacturing in Flint, Michigan. In The Big One, he assembled a group of unemployed auto workers willing to manufacture shoes, as Nike CEO Phil Knight insisted on camera that Americans wouldn't work in sneaker factories. Bowling for Columbine is at once a serious, satirical, enlightening, maddening, profound, and silly film that presents a view of gun violence that spans traditional conservative/liberal distinctions, an anti-gun screed by a dues-paying NRA member and gun lover. Don't watch it to confirm your prejudices or heighten your comfort level. Watch it to see the prophet in action.
Moore's critics question his construal of facts. (Did the Columbine shooters really go bowling that morning? Moore says he has witnesses.) They impugn his veracity (Moore and his crew insist that it wasn't staged -- he really did walk into a bank, open an account, and walk out with a free rifle). They accuse him of losing touch with his working-class base (now that he's rich and famous, he can live in Manhattan and send his kids to private schools), and treating his own employees worse than the corporations he rails against (some ex-employees love him, some are disillusioned). At the least, they say, he's over the top (witness his pursuit of Charlton Heston with the picture of a murdered child, or his hyperventilation at the Oscars).
Such a critique might be taken as that which is naturally due a prophet. They didn't exactly relish Jeremiah in the king's palace. Modern newspapers would have had a field day with someone like Ezekiel. Isaiah, Hosea, Peter, Paul, and Jesus all had vociferous detractors. At least one of them managed to get crucified.
This is the mark of the prophet, after all: he's hyper. He's over the top. If he weren't, he wouldn't be a prophet.
Jeremiah 18:1-11
They must have wondered what Jeremiah was doing in that part of town -- the prophet in the manufacturing sector. Jeremiah had to "go down" to the potter's house (v. 2), because it would have been in the lower part of the city, where there was a steady water supply. It was also a descent into the working class, since pottery making, though a highly skilled craft, was still manual labor. In the palace they were no doubt asking, why would Jeremiah think this a setting in which to receive a word from the Lord?
The prophet recognized that the Lord might be heard in the centers of industry. Those of you familiar with the famous pottery wheel scene in Ghost (or its satire in The Naked Gun) have pretty much the same picture Jeremiah would have seen: a wooden platform set on a stone wheel, turned by the hands or feet so that the clay could be shaped by the centrifugal force. The image was apt: the clay pushed against the hand, but the hand was the dominant force in shaping the clay. The potter could change the shape of the clay at any moment. Or the potter could turn it back into a lump and start over again.
"Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done?" says the Lord. "Just like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand" (v. 6). Like the potter, the Lord could reshape the people "at one moment" or "suddenly" (rega' v. 7). God could reverse the judgment on the nation at any time, depending on whether it was willing to turn from evil (vv. 8-10). In fact, God the potter (or "planner" yozer) was now devising a plan (or "planning a plan," hoshev mahashvah, v. 11) that would shape evil rather than good, because Judah had chosen to do evil. Note that Jeremiah's prophecy had a national and communal focus, not an individual one. Judgment came to the nation as a whole.
There was always hope that repentance was around the corner, and so God would be able to revise the potting plan. However, verse 12 (probably a later, but authentic, addition by Jeremiah) indicates that the people had chosen otherwise: "We will follow our own plans (mahashvah), and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of our evil heart" (author's translation). This was as silly as the clay planning to shape itself into a pot; the only difference was that the clay didn't know any better. A gracious God had given Israel due notice that other plans were in the works.
Philemon 1-21
When the Apostle Paul is accused of being less than a prophet, the letter of Philemon is Exhibit A. Why would Paul, who said, "In Christ there is no slave or free" (Galatians 3:28; cf. 5:1; 1 Corinthians 7:21; 2 Corinthians 11:20-21), send the slave Onesimus back to his master? Wouldn't a true prophet stand up for the truth that God made us all free and equal? As always with Paul, we must read between the lines in order to reconstruct the situation, which will show Paul to be more farsighted and prophetic than history has credited him.
This brief letter is one-of-a-kind, addressed to an individual as well as "the church in your house" (v. 2), dealing with a personal matter that has far-reaching social consequences. Onesimus, the slave, is with Paul, and the letter to his master, Philemon, is written from prison (vv. 1, 9, 10, 13, 23). Exactly where Paul is imprisoned is a matter of speculation, but this cast of characters is connected with Colossae in Colossians 4:7-17, so nearby Ephesus is a good guess. Apparently, Onesimus has been converted by Paul, who calls him "my child," one of his favorite metaphors for converts (v. 10, cf. 1 Corinthians 4:15; Galatians 4:19; Paul also had converted Philemon, v. 19). Paul wants Onesimus to stay with him as a worker in his ministry, but is not willing to defy social convention by harboring someone else's slave (vv. 13-14). Nothing is said about the circumstances under which Onesimus came to be with Paul; speculation that he was a runaway or a thief may explain why Paul feels the need to appeal rather than command Philemon. Despite attempts to distance ancient slavery from the modern, race-based variety, slavery in ancient times was often harsh; reports of the benevolence of slavery in biblical times are greatly exaggerated, because the system is inherently cruel, however implemented. Roman penalties for errant slaves included imprisonment, scourging, or possibly crucifixion. We don't know what punishment Onesimus may have incurred for whatever he did; Paul's offer to repay his debts may simply reflect the Roman law that those who harbor runaway slaves be liable for the value of their lost work. However, Onesimus may have sought out Paul without running away, following a Roman law that allowed a slave to seek a third-party advocate in a dispute with his master (v. 18). We simply do not know, and the letter can be plausibly read several different ways.
Paul, faced with a sticky situation, becomes a master of subtlety and indirection. His use of kinship language is poignant: he speaks to a "brother" and a "sister" as a "father" who has a "child," noting that the community of faith is a family or household, a place of love, faith, and encouragement (vv. 1, 2, 5-7, 10). Rather than issuing a command, he speaks as an "ambassador" (presbytes, which the NRSV translates literally as "old man") on the basis of love and compassion (vv. 9, 12). He appeals for Onesimus, whose name means "useful, beneficial," a formerly bad or "useless" (achrestos) slave; now a good slave, "useful" (euchrestos), because of his conversion. He is now more useful, as a good Christian (the pun eu-Chrestos is obvious in Greek). Paul uses the passive voice to describe Onesimus' flight from his master, "he was separated from you" (v. 15), echoing the biblical "divine passive" idiom, since his separation fulfilled God's purpose to bring him back as a member of the household of God, "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother" (v. 16). "More than a slave" suggests that Onesimus should be released from his slavery, even as Paul says he expects Philemon to "do even more than I say," i.e., read between the lines (v. 21). Ever so subtly, he requests Philemon to return the man named "Beneficial" to him in freedom: "Let me have this benefit from you in the Lord" (v. 20). "Refresh my heart in Christ," he says (v. 20), having already called Onesimus his "very heart" (v. 12).
Here we see the prophet crafty as a serpent, but innocent as a dove. He does not denounce the root of the institution of slavery. He knows he does not wield the political power to change the entire economic system of Rome -- not yet (we must remember that Christians were a minute percentage of the population of the Empire in Paul's day; if you walked down the streets of Rome, you probably wouldn't see one, or anyone who even knew what a Christian was!). Instead, Paul asks a favor from a brother who knows personally the power of the gospel to transform lives. Where Onesimus no doubt deserved every punishment the law had to offer, God's grace sought otherwise -- and Paul seeks to set him loose for the furtherance of the young Christian movement. He does not support the institution of slavery, nor does he feel the need to rail against it, because the very nature of the gospel subverts it.
Luke 14:25-33
"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" (v. 26). The family-values crowd screams "Hyperbole!" before Jesus gets the sentence out of his mouth. The balanced-life crowd blanches at the words that do come out of his mouth. Should we take Jesus at his word, or do we have reason to believe he's just being hyper?
We might first recognize that this is the first of three parallel sayings, separated only by the dual parables in verses 28-32. Each of the sayings has the same structure: a condition; a required activity; and the result -- "cannot be my disciple." Presumably, we should take all three at the same level of literalness.
Did Jesus really mean "none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions?" (v. 33). Well, yes he did. Jesus was addressing the large crowd that was following him on his way to Jerusalem (v. 25). Those people literally could not follow Jesus to Jerusalem and the cross with their trunks in tow. The only way to follow the historical Jesus was to physically be with him, and he did not travel in a moving van. They would have to give up their possessions to fulfill the main condition of being a disciple: "Follow me."
Similarly, the injunction to carry the cross would prove to be the literal truth, not just for Simon of Cyrene, but also for each of the twelve. Tradition has it that they all died martyrs' deaths (except for Judas, who died otherwise). Such a prospect fits well with the giving up of possessions, since one who is expecting an imminent death has no need of superfluous things. Self-denial means little when you are facing certain death.
So, too, those disciples must have felt a literal sting at Jesus' first command. How many of them left their families and homes with the words ringing in their ears, "You must hate us"? To give up one's family and possessions, and drag a cross toward certain death was, in that sense, to hate life itself (v. 26). The choice to follow Jesus in his own lifetime was a rejection of the usual claims on one's life, in hopes of gaining a new life.
Here the preacher faces the insurmountable gap between the meaning of the story and its meaning for a congregation. The crowd that blithely followed Jesus to his death, according to Luke, needed a poke in the eye to understand what they were doing. We modern readers of Luke find ourselves in a different situation. Post-resurrection Christians do not have to rely on the physical presence of Jesus, for we know him through the Spirit. We do not have to literally leave family, possessions, and life itself to be disciples. Thus Luke's tradition gets softened, and we call it hyperbole (note that Matthew's version is much less stern, Matthew 10:37-38; although there is a tradition similar to Luke's in Gospel of Thomas, pp. 55, 101).
Nevertheless, undue entanglement in possessions and people present a common impediment to discipleship, even for Easter people. We can't tithe or do much giving at all, without the spouse's permission. The household may not be conducive to Bible study or prayer. It's hard to get up on Sunday to go to church when everyone else in the house stays up late for Saturday Night Live. This is why Jesus invited us in two parables to "count the cost." No one builds a tower, and no king goes to war, without first counting the cost (vv. 28-32).
Jesus demands that he come first. He is not willing to accept a subordinate place. So radical is his demand that allegiance to him may look like hatred of others. The giving of one's possession for the sake of others looks like radical foolishness to those who think that there's only so much stuff in the world. And death -- well, death is the great fear in our world, so much so that we sequester it behind hospital doors and nursing homes and walls of self-denial. Die? Who me? Let's think about something else.
But, if Christianity is the least bit true, death cannot be the end. As Christ was raised, so we, too, will be brought into newness of life. The only question is whether we are willing to share that life in the here-and-now. It may require dying to self in ways that we cannot know until we make the commitment. Radical commitment, radical self-denial, and radical use of family ties and material possessions are still the marks of the disciple.
Application
I once sat in a seminary class where the subject was Amos 5:21, "I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies." "What does this say?" asked the teacher. Several students traded profound insights on the relative value of worship and justice, liturgy and social action. "But what does it say?" repeated the teacher. The point: It says that God hated their worship. Period.
Before we shout "Hyperbole," before we soften a radical demand with mitigating interpretation, we ought to sit with it a while. It says you have to hate your family, carry your cross, and give up your possessions to be a disciple. No, there is no secret Greek word that tells us that "hate" is less than "hate." No, there is no loophole for those who are having a bad year financially. Discipleship is an ultimate demand, and we need to sit uncomfortably with it to realize its full implications.
A sentimental faith is less than discipleship. We may wear a gold cross around the neck, but it means nothing unless we are willing to apply it to the things we care most about. The cross was an instrument of violence, torture, retribution, and occasionally, but not necessarily, justice. We need to ask ourselves why we have turned a nefarious form of execution into jewelry. Would we wear a little gold electric chair around our necks?
The folly would be not giving all our possessions away, but thinking that we could come to Jesus with our loves and hates and fears and not go away changed. The folly would be to think that discipleship serves us. ("The church is here to serve!" No, I say -- the church is here to make disciples of all the nations.) The folly would be to think that we could shout "Hyperbole" and make the demands of discipleship go away.
Count the cost. It might be the price of a tower; it might be a mere ten-percent tithe. It might be war with a king twice your strength; it may be ridicule from a family that just doesn't understand. Count the cost of wearing an instrument of torture on a gold chain around your neck. That symbol proclaims you a disciple, and is not to be worn lightly.
Alternative Applications
1) Jeremiah 18:1-11. The potter remakes the clay. Jeremiah's judgment oracle is unusual in its imagery, because of the nature of clay. It's really just the dirt of the ground, but it can be molded and fired and painted and turned into a thing of beauty. Certainly that is God's goal for us -- to transform us into a thing of beauty in the eyes of the Lord. We do not have to worry about making ourselves into pretty pots, because that is God's job. All we need do is submit to the gift of God's hand shaping us. Similarly, those days we don't turn out so well, we have the comfort of knowing that God can easily and quickly reshape us. While we don't have the power to remake ourselves, God certainly can turn us into the people we are called to be. While Jeremiah's image focuses on the communal view (and it would be misleading to drop that focus), the idea certainly applies to each of us as individuals as well as a community and a nation.
2) Jeremiah 18:1-11; Philemon 1-21. While Jeremiah focuses on social change, Paul seems to deal with the exact opposite: talking one individual into doing one good deed. While the two are not entirely unrelated (many individuals doing many good deeds can surely transform a society), they represent two poles that reflect two historical situations. Jeremiah spoke as a national prophet who had access to the seat of power. Paul wrote as an obscure missionary of an obscure sect that had barely, if at all, emerged from a minority religion, Judaism. Both seek means appropriate to the transformation of their own society. Paul could not hope to stop global slavery, and even to try would divert him from his primary mission. Jeremiah would have been negligent if he had not tried to use his access to proclaim God's judgment on the nation. We modern Christians need to ask ourselves where we can help God transform society, even as we seek to lead individuals to a greater knowledge of God's grace.
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
The psalmist raises an interesting question. He writes "You hem me in, behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me" (v. 5). He also writes, "Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?" (v. 7).
The latter questions are rhetorical, of course. They are questions that make an assertion: There is nowhere I can go where your spirit is not present.
The problem this raises is the problem of free will. The psalmist's statement that God "hems me in" makes it sound like he has no choice. Like a master chess player God so maneuvers the field of choices and options that the only real option is for the writer to do what God wants.
But if that is true then are we correct in believing we are really free to choose at all? If we are left with only one choice, as the psalmist seems to be saying, does that mean that our lives are scripted? Are we merely puppets on strings dancing and acting according to God's predetermined dictates?
There are many who are ready to read the psalm that way, and in fact find a good bit of comfort in that sort of reading. The ambiguity and uncertainty of this world yield to the governing forces of God's infallible choices. We need only to "wait on the Lord," and enjoy the life God has crafted for us to live.
But the absence of choice removes the demand for responsibility. If we can only choose what God has left for us to choose, then we are not responsible for our choices. Obviously that is not the biblical position. In every encounter with the presence of God we are, in fact, accountable for our choices.
So how are we to reconcile these seemingly contradictory ideas? How is it possible that God can "hem me in" and yet at the same time not hem me in?
One possible resolution is found in the opening verse: "You have searched me and known me."
Parents who have more than one child know all too well that trying to treat all children exactly the same is not practical. If all children in a family were exactly the same in personality and temperament, it might be possible, but that is not usually the case. Some children are extroverts, some introverts. Some respond to positive reinforcement, others only to negative reinforcement. Attentive parents must find out, usually through trial and error, what works with their child.
The same is true with God. God wants us to make good choices. God wants us to do well. But God is not going to override our freedom in order to make us what God wants us to be.
Since God knows us better than anyone, even better than we know ourselves, God is able to work in our lives and in our world in just the right way as to give us the best position to make the best choice. Do we always make the right choice? No, sadly we do not. God is always faithful to make sure that the best choice is available to us in a way that is uniquely designed for us to understand it.
God "hems us in." Not in a constraint that allows no freedom, but in a carefully constructed moment of opportunity that allows us to see or hear or feel what is right. God can do this because God has searched us and known us.
