Jer 18:1-11; Ps 139:1-5, 12-17; Philemon 1-21; Luke 14:25-33 Trinity Episcopal Church
The 15th Sunday after Pentecost – September 5, 2010 The Rev. Linda Spiers
The word hate is seen and used all too frequently in our modern day. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible gives its meaning as “dislike, antipathy, aversion, between persons, in a variety of human relationships…. As a concept it is based essentially upon the religious commitment to reject and turn away from those who deny God and God’s laws.” In addition to the troubling words of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel for today, the Old Testament has equally troubling ones such as in Malachi where we hear the notion of God hating. “I have loved you, says the Lord. But you say, ‘How have you loved us?’ Is not Esau Jacob’s brother? says the Lord. Yet I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau; I have made his hill country a desolation and his heritage a desert for jackals.” (Mal 1:2-3). Here the words love and hate are really focused on God’s election. Jacob God loves in election, and Esau God hates in rejection.
The word hate is sprinkled throughout the Psalms (34:21, 35:19, 38:19, 139:19-22). Hate is used even in the Psalm we recited today—one that is a favorite of mine, and one that is always part of our Rite-13 liturgy. Psalm 139 is one that touches my heart for it speaks to the closeness of God to us—a God who search us through and through and knows everything there is to know about us. The verses that are generally cut out of Psalm 139 when we use it liturgically are the ones that include hate:
They speak despitefully against you:
Your enemies take your Name in vain.
Do I not hate those, O Lord, who hate you?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with a perfect hatred;
They have become my own enemies.
The Old Testament also reveals that God hates idolatry and false worship (Deut 12:31; 16:22; Jer 44:4).
We hear in the media all too often about hate crimes of one human being against another. Some of it even revolves around children and youth in the form of bullying. Much hate has surfaced in the direction of our Muslim sisters and brothers. This week there was a Hartford Courant editorial written by 18-year-old Tasmia Kahn, who graduated from East Lyme High School in June. The article was entitled “Headscarf Draws Hateful Outburst.” Her parents are first generation immigrants from Bangladesh, and Tasmia and her brother were born in the United States. As a Muslim woman, she wears the hijab as “an expression of modesty and faith.” For three summers Tasmia has worked at The William W. Backus Hospital in Norwich, never encountering a problem with her headscarf until this year.
Tasmia was pushing in a wheel chair a patient being discharged. In a crowded elevator she encountered an older woman who gave Tasmia “a cold stare and shook her head and looked down.” Eventually as the elevator emptied Tasmia was left with only her patient and this older woman. When Tasmia wheeled her patient from the elevator, the older woman on the elevator said, “You must be from another country because you wear that thing on your head.” Tasmia replied, “No, actually I was born in America.” As the elevator door began to close, the older woman put her arm out to stop it from shutting and continued, “Well why don’t you dress like an American? You should dress like an American. When we go over to your country you make us wear those things. You should dress like an American.”
Tasmia was deeply hurt and offended by the older woman’s outburst. Her coworkers comforted Tasmia, and in the end of her editorial this 18-year-old says the following, “Across America, Islamophobic hate speech and political grandstanding have painted Muslims antagonistically, creating deep negative impressions among those who do not know Muslims personally. We need to change that and promote peace. The work could start here in Connecticut with more schools, colleges and institutions making a commitment to diversity and organizing events that promote ethnic, religious and racial tolerance.”
The word hate is often used by one group against another, and yet we hear Jesus using the word in the context of family: “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.” (Luke 14:26). The cost of discipleship is higher than most of us want on those terms. Matthew’s Gospel softens it a bit: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me….” (Matt 10:37).
Just before today’s passage Jesus tells a parable about a dinner that is held where the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame become the invited guests. So, the stakes for discipleship grew from last week when behavior at a dinner was marked to now honoring the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. This week the discipleship stakes get higher with language that makes us uncomfortable.
It’s important to be reminded that discipleship is not something that happens overnight but rather gradually and throughout our lifetime. Little by little we become more aware of what it means to live as Jesus teaches and as Jesus demands. It takes learning that within a community, to face life’s challenges and joys together, to allow ourselves to be in the potter’s hands being formed and reworked into loving God and loving neighbor and loving self. It takes a lifetime to be transformed into disciples, and it is hard and heart work.
In the process of becoming disciples, Jesus wants us to learn how to give up the things of life that fill our lives so completely that there is no room left for Jesus. He invites us to look at our lives—our thoughts, our words, our actions—to explore what keeps us further and further from walking with Jesus. What is it that discipleship demands of us at this particular time? It’s different for us at varying points of life. The cost of discipleship grows as we mature in faith, discovering that it includes both transformation and salvation. And we discover that together in community, because the road there is a lifelong journey of learning to sit with the uncomfortable and the comfortable words.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer says it profoundly in his book The Cost of Discipleship: “The call to discipleship is a gift of grace and the call is inseparable from grace.” For each of us the invitation to discipleship is freely offered, and the cost is high but it’s within the range we can afford!
Tasmia Kahn, “Headscarf Draws Hateful Outburst,” The Hartford Courant, September 1, 2010, A10.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 55.
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