23 OT C, Lk 14:25-33 ~ "Being Disciples" Rev. Richard Eslinger, PhD

This is now the tenth day (or “ninth day” if preached at a Vigil Mass) since that horrible morning at Annunciation Church School when a shooter killed Fletcher Merkel and Harper Moyski and wounded 18 children and three adults during Mass. Our grieving and prayers continue. That Mass was to be a celebration for the new school year at Annunciation Parish, but it suddenly became a war zone for the children and adults. A shooter armed with three weapons and dressed in black gear fired more than a hundred rounds through a window outside the church at the worshippers before ending his own life. We were relieved a bit to learn later that awful day that the wounded children and adults were likely to survive, but those two beautiful children were the latest casualties in the ongoing violence at schools and churches across the country.

Pope Leo XIV prayed for the wounded and for the dead children. He added, “Let us plead God to stop the pandemic of arms, large and small, which infects our world." As the authorities investigated the twenty-three year old shooter, it was revealed over several days that there was a hate-filled “manifesto” left behind in which not only Catholics, but Black people, Jews, Hispanics, and the President were named. The acting U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota that said “the suspect was full of hate and was obsessed with the idea of killing children.” So it is a huge challenge to preach, or even understand Jesus’ words in our Gospel Lesson today. The Lord addresses a large crowd and says that we must “hate” our father and mother, our entire family, and even ourselves if we are to become his disciple.

How could Jesus say such a thing? The Teacher of “Love one another” and “Love our enemies”? And what shall we make of such words only ten (nine) days after the shooting at Annunciation Church and School? Those of us called to preach these words from Saint Luke’s Gospel are driven back to the original Greek New Testament and to responsible New Testament scholars perhaps in a depth not experienced throughout much of the liturgical Year. How can Jesus say such a thing?

When we look at the Greek word St. Luke uses here, “miseo,” (mis-SEH-o) it is

sometimes found in the very context we have described. The word is used to speak of true hate,…such as in St. Luke’s telling of the Beatitudes as the Lord warns, “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.” (Luke 6:22) The evil hate those who are holy, righteous, and who follow the light that is Christ according to the Gospel of John. The Greek word really can mean “hate”! But here is where the term is much more elastic in Greek than in English. Our tern, “miseo,” also has a

quite softened use as well. In the classic vocabulary of Common Greek, the word also can mean “to love someone or something less than someone (something) else, i.e. to renounce one choice in favor of another.” 1

So one New Testament scholar comments that Jesus does not refer to a hate toward family members in the sense of an absence of love. But Jesus is addressing the consequences and sometimes contradictions and challenges

that occur when one chooses to follow God, as Jesus does. 2 In this sense of the Greek word, we come across times when decisions are made in our lives, decisions that of necessity result in elevating one moral or vocational choice above another. We do know of this kind of “hating” when someone is called into the monastic life or the priesthood. Especially for men and women seeking the monastic life, a choice is encountered that elevates one community—the monastic community—even over the person’s family. Such a choice does involve a certain leave-taking and a joining that are real watersheds in life. Our choice, as well, between “life as usual” and becoming a disciple of Christ is just as profound.

Still, we know of eruptions within the family that are not of God, that do bring hateful outcomes. We are not talking about the distances we bump into as an adolescent member of the family struggles with their own identity. Also, these are not moral choices that are made in the course of becoming disciples. They are such diseases as any of the addictions that plague our culture. To think for a moment about alcoholism. We have learned that this illness is communal and not just individual and that it can endure from generation to generation. The person who is addicted to alcohol is, to be sure, at the center of the disease with its death-dealing power. But the disease is more: it is communal and can infect family members and even entire communities. To discover that you are a child of an alcoholic is to begin to understand that this addition has consequences that expand well beyond the individual at the center of the disease. The prolific

writings on adult children of alcoholics spots consistent and enduring traits and patterns shared by most ACOAs. One of these is given birth within a family system that learns to hide the truth of the situation and to cover over one’s own feelings. It may seem odd, but when we hear the witness of a person who is recovering from such a family system, they report that one of the first rules they learned was that nobody speaks about it. That is, the entire family that is afflicted

learns to self-censure feelings and to not speak of the most dominant issue in its life.

Learning to speak the truth about ourselves and each other is among the first steps to healing and wholeness. But the same pattern can be seen in families and church families that are recovering from sexual or spousal abuse or an addiction to other chemicals and drugs. At some point in the journey to recovery, those who have been ensnared may comment, “Wow! There was one thing we did not

talk about to each other, the one thing that was the most hateful in our lives!” A hateful disease in every respect, with hateful outcomes in so many people’s lives.

Finally, Jesus proclaims to the crowd that was following him, “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” We who are baptized into Jesus Christ are baptized into his death and resurrection. In today’s Gospel Lesson, this crowd was gathered to Jesus as he made his own journey to Jerusalem, to his Passion and Death and, on the third day, his glorious resurrection. The journey in Christ then continues as we go down into the water, are baptized in the Triune Name, and receive the Holy Spirit. This was not the finalé of Christian faith but its beginning. The Baptized are the Spirit-filled community who now are about the work and joy of being disciples. This vocation—becoming “missionary disciples” 3 —is who we are by grace. (Here the preacher may name particular lay ministries of the parish which are ways we live out this vocation of being “missionary disciples.”) Through such lives of mercy, witness, and service we become what Jesus proclaims when he calls us to live as the people of God. Along the way, we all meet the challenges and tensions of following Jesus. That Greek word, meseo, does speak of the considerations, the hard choices we face as those who are the Baptized. But Baptism lacking the vocation of being Jesus’ disciple falls short of a life of carrying our cross and entering into the joy of Christ’s resurrection. Our “loving something more” is this life together that our Lord has called us to, in this parish and here at this Mass.

Today we gather to worship our God in Jesus Christ, attending to God’s Word and

making Eucharist together. We also come as a grieving people united with the Annunciation parishioners in their grief and trauma and loss. And we join with those sisters and brothers in witnessing to the martyrdom of young Fletcher and Harper. And this, too: We ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit that we may discern more clearly what our discipleship should be and how it should grow. We are being built into the glorious tower of his Kingdom and we are members of

Christ’s ranks who live out of the light that is his and oppose all forms of darkness and hatred. Amen, Lord Jesus. Abide with all your flock who remains in sorrow and fear this day.

Amen.

1 Strong’s Concordance, https://biblehub.com/greek/3404.htm.

2 Mitzi J. Smith, “Commentary on Luke 14:25-33,” Working Preacher, September 8,2019.

https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-23-3/commentary-on-

luke-1425-33-4.

3 Evangelii Gaudium, 40).