Proper 18 Year C 2025: Luke 14:25-33

As parents, one of the life skills my husband and I are teaching our kids is how to proportionally react to things. That it’s ok to feel disappointed, but maybe sitting down and screaming isn’t the best way to express those feelings. It’s ok to be angry, but hitting is not an acceptable way to express that anger. It’s ok to be sad that we’re leaving the park, but running away and hiding is not an option. Even as we learn to self-regulate as we grow up, we don’t always react to things appropriately. We overreact or underreact all the time, just usually not by sitting down and screaming. But we do the adult equivalent. We push away people we love. We inappropriately use substances. We pretend problems don’t exist - the adult equivalent of when my kids pretend not to hear me when I have something to say that they don’t want to hear.

Today, in eight short verses, Luke gives us two opportunities to overreact and one to underreact. We start out strong with an overreaction. Jesus says, “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.” Woah. This is one passage where I certainly don’t envy the translator. Because the word translated as “hate” doesn’t have a great English translation. The translator did the best they could, choosing the least bad among bad options because you can’t use several sentences as an explanation in the middle of your sentence. The Greek maseo can mean to hate, to detest or persecute, or to love less. The word consistently denotes active aversion, antipathy, or repudiation. In Scripture, it can describe God’s moral opposition to evil, the world’s hostility to Christ and his followers, the decisive renunciation demanded of disciples, and the unregenerate posture that betrays spiritual darkness. Context alone determines whether the hatred is righteous or sinful.

Maseo often translates the Hebrew sahnay, with Romans citing Malachi’s “Jacob have I loved but Esau have I hated”, revealing covenantal preference rather than capricious animosity. Hebrews chapter 1 uses the word to apply Psalm 45 to God the Son: “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.” God’s antipathy is never arbitrary - He opposes what contradicts His holy nature.

Radical allegiance to Jesus relativizes every other attachment. That Greek μισέω frames a stark moral polarity. Divine hatred is the settled, righteous opposition to sin; human hatred, apart from alignment with God’s holiness, is darkness. The word exposes the heart, delineates spiritual kingdoms, and calls believers to a love that refuses to compromise with evil yet remains free from the world’s venom.

In today’s text, Jesus uses μισέω idiomatically to demand unrivaled loyalty. Jesus was likely speaking Aramaic, which then Luke put into Greek, and now we see in English. So we had to do some work here. To hate is a Semitic expression meaning to turn away from, to detach oneself from. There is nothing of that emotion we experience in the expression “I hate you”. That is in Jesus’ culture, this phrase is no more than a vivid way of expressing a greater and lesser degree, so “hate” here is not the passionate dislike implied in English, but rather simply to “love less”. All this to say, Jesus isn’t saying you must dislike your children. He is saying that to follow Jesus means to put him above all else.

We continue to the very next verse in today’s text where we reach our “underreaction”. Jesus says, “whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” We prefer the way Jesus says it in chapter 9, where he says, “if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (9:23) It allows us to determine what our crosses are instead of what Jesus’ cross is oftentimes leaving us with a lesser cross. An easier to bear cross. Or even a joking cross - I’ve certainly heard jokes about something being someone’s “cross to bear”, usually something trivial. The joke at least affirms that whoever telling the joke knows that a trivial item certainly is not a cross to bear.

But the cross for Jesus’ contemporaries was no joking matter. It was a constant reminder of the Roman occupation and the power held by the Roman state. The use of the cross in Christian iconography did not begin until around the time of the conversion of Constantine in the fourth century. Because crucifixion was a brutal, painful, public way to die. Jesus' audience would have witnessed this. The publicity was purposeful. We are shielded, today, from the realities of executions carried out by the state. Very few people have witnessed an official execution. And we have convinced ourselves, through scientific advances, that there is a humane way to take a life. That because the person is unconscious, that we don’t see them thrashing about or gasping for air, that it is somehow merciful. The large crowds to whom Jesus was talking would have had a very firm grasp on the gravity of what Jesus is demanding of his followers - a demand that we would do well to take more seriously today.

Today’s text ends with our final overreaction: “none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” (14:33) At two other times in Luke, Jesus instructs us to sell everything and give to the poor - the version we prefer is in chapter 12, which mercifully excludes the word “everything”. I would say that how literally one should take this instruction should be directly proportional to how uncomfortable it makes you. One of the major themes in the Gospel of Luke can perhaps best be summarized by Jesus’ quote in Matthew, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Luke is very clear that wealth will get in the way of the relationship between us and Jesus.

But throughout this entire passage, Jesus shows self-awareness that the disciples lack. Jesus began his 10-chapter journey to Jerusalem back in chapter 9. Everything from 9:51 where he sets his face to Jerusalem to the triumphal entry into Jerusalem in chapter 19 should be seen through the lens of Jesus being on his way to Jerusalem. Sometimes that journey can seem like a funeral procession. Oftentimes it seems that Jesus is the only one who is aware that it is one. By today’s text there are large crowds traveling with him. These people come to him, he is not calling them out to a life of discipleship. So we can read this text as the response of Jesus to the enthusiasm of people who seem totally unaware that he is going to his death. The crowds swell; everybody loves a parade. What does Jesus have to say to these hasty volunteers? (Craddock, 181) In his own way, Jesus is asking, are you sure you wish to follow me? Is the price more than you are willing to pay? Because the price is everything. Think about what you are doing and decide if you are willing to stay with me all the way.

In these eight short verses, we are called to take the text more seriously. To not gloss over things that make us uncomfortable or too comfortable. To sit with our own discomfort and question why it is that the text makes us feel a certain way. And to ask ourselves how far we are willing to follow Jesus’ call on our lives. Amen.