Geoffrey Piper's Sermon for September 8th, 2013
Why on earth would Jesus tell
a whole adoring crowd, pressing in to touch him, to hear him, and to follow him
wherever he leads, that if they want to continue with him, they will need to
hate the most important members of their families, their own lives, and
everything they have ever owned? Was he that weary and vexed with them, that
he could think of no more effective way to get rid of them all quickly? Or is
there a diamond of spiritual truth hidden beneath that off-putting challenge,
for all those willing to search it out?
There is no question that
Jesus sometimes resorts to throwing rhetorical buckets of cold water in our
faces to get us to wake up and think seriously about God’s plans for our
salvation. He knows our preference—in every age--for the comfortable status
quo. And he knows that we sometimes need a forceful and dramatic jolt to get us
to consider making the critical changes in our lives that lead us fully—and
wonderfully--into God’s presence.
It is important to understand
Jesus' use of paradox and hyperbole if we hope to respond to
today’s gospel teaching with wisdom and faith.
Here is a quick review for
those of us who haven’t taken an English class for a few years.
Our English word, paradox,
comes from the Latin, paradoxum," a
statement seemingly absurd, yet really true." The earlier Greek roots are para,
meaning “contrary to” and dokein, meaning “to appear, seem, or
think.” A paradoxon in something contrary to expectation, or incredible.
Our
English word, hyperbole, comes to us from from two Greek roots: First, hyper, which means excessive, or
exaggerated, and ballein, which means to throw or launch. The
Greek word, hyperballein, means "to throw over or beyond."
The fact that Jesus uses this rhetorical device does not mean that the points
he illustrates in this way are any the less true and of central importance. It
simply requires some reflection on our parts to find our way to the core,
take-home truth for our lives.
We have heard Jesus, in the
Sermon on the Mount saying, "if
your eye offends you, gouge it out… if your hand offends you, cut it off…" I’m
here to declare with confidence that Jesus does not intend for his most
faithful followers to mutilate themselves. He is using dramatic figures of
speech to make a strong impression about self-control. Whatever might draw our
allegiance away from God, or entangle us in sinful patterns that distract or
degrade us--even though they may be what our eyes love to look at, or what our
hands naturally reach for—these must be forsaken.
Jesus relies on the same
dramatic approach to make a similar point when he says this startling line to
the great crowd following after him:
"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."
He does not mean us to take
this line literally, hating everything and everyone around us... any more than
he intends the lines about "gouged eyes" or "severed hands"
to lead to assemblies of blinded and disabled Christians.
If he did mean this
literally, it would obviously contradict all the rest of his teaching about our
imperative to love universally—family, friends, neighbors, and enemies--just as
God loves us.
This whole passage is about
our deliberate, intentional letting go of what is good in order to obtain
what is absolutely glorious. It is about emptying our hearts… so that God can
enter them and fill all the places in which He wants to dwell. It is about
dethroning the good people and the good things that we routinely elevate and
deify… so that God can truly take the
ultimate place in our lives.
Think along these lines:
• We are designed for an ultimate loyalty; That
pre-eminent allegiance is due to God alone. Christ loves us enough to tell us
this truth, to remind us that we are all responsible citizens in a larger
Kingdom than any represented by the flags of our many earthly nations.
• It is necessary for all of us to release our
"lesser loyalties," as good and pleasant as they are, in order to fix
our hearts first on this one transcendent allegiance. This surrender, or
self-abandonment, usually entails a conscious, deliberate choice, based on our
trust that God will lead us in a new life, a life rooted in these new,
spiritually-based priorities.
• This highest, ultimate love will order, guide, and
ennoble all our human loyalties, and every other aspect of our lives. We will
be better sons and daughters, better fathers or mothers, better spouses or
siblings to the degree that we are given over to the One who is the living
source of all love, and of life itself.
So even though you may, this
morning, like Christ’s original listeners in Luke’s account, be wiping cold
water out of your eyes, don’t be daunted. Jesus welcomes and invites you to
journey with him through this world’s treasures, traps, turmoil and tears. He
has promised, as our Good Shepherd, never to abandon us as we exchange our
shifting, worldly reference points for His sure, reliable truths of the Spirit.
In this perspective, our old
hymn text becomes a sensible prayer of self-offering for any of us:
Take my life, and let it be consecrated,
Lord, to Thee…Take my will, and make it Thine; it shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart, it is Thine own; it shall be Thy royal throne.
Take my love, my Lord, I pour at Thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.
Good God, let this be true and lovely and lasting among us all. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment