Pentecost 13C (Luke 14:25-33)

How could Jesus require his followers to hate father, mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even life itself? (To make this more complicated, husbands are spared in his hate requirement, which simply indicates that this whole teaching account is written from a strictly male perspective.) Hate is such a strong term, and this saying of Jesus is not only confusing but also baffling. Is he really telling his potential followers to hate? Isn’t Jesus all about love?

If we take Jesus’ words at face value in a very literalistic sense, the statement is profoundly troubling and self-destructive. Not that it doesn’t make sense, but more so that it is harmful and dangerous to ourselves. Hate doesn’t transform—it consumes; it destroys not only relationships but also ourselves.

So, what does Jesus really mean by these words? Here’s how I make sense of it, and my interpretation of it is that his teaching is about the radical change of the way we see people and things we care most about in life by unveiling unexamined assumptions of our desire. Simply put, unless we become aware of our projected and biased perspective, we cannot follow the way of Jesus.

Now, there’s a pattern of his teaching in terms of how to follow him. The first one is hate, then the cross, and lastly all your possessions. These three things appear disconnected, but together they form a sequence of letting go. Hate as letting go of unhealthy attachments; the cross as taking on a new orientation; possessions as things relinquished in that process. I think the key is the cross. People we deeply care about and possessions belong to the category of letting go of, while the cross is something we are to carry with ourselves. The cross can be the lens through which we look at and perceive our loved ones and all our possessions. Confusing? Yes, it is. Let me unpack more.

Imagine you have a pair of sunglasses. This is not just a typical one but shows you things and people as they are, not as you are. It undoes your filter of seeing things and people. For example, when you look at your sibling without these sunglasses, they’re nothing but your sibling. They exist as your sibling. You slot them into a role, based on shared history and feeling—ordinary, predictable, shaped by memory and expectation. But once you wear this special sunglasses through the special lens developed by the most innovative lenscrafters named “cross” you’re to see them as they are. This lens helps you set aside whatever memories, feelings, and thoughts you have about that person. Basically, you get to have a view that you have NO attachment to that person or any object you decide to look at. This detachment isn’t about coldness, but about seeing beyond projection and attachment. It is about looking, for the first time, without clinging or agenda. It’s about meeting the other with honesty and humility, freeing both ourselves and them. Does this make sense?

The cross symbolizes suffering or stress that every human being faces. This stress is only possible in the state where we’re personally invested in and therefore are attached emotionally. What if we don’t have any clinging to these and become somewhat dispassionate? Less stress, less suffering. But something else emerges, too: by letting go of grasping, we create space for genuine compassion.

Through this lens of the cross, fathers, for example, are no longer fathers only as we define them. They are human beings filled with their own suffering and stress, broken, fragmented, damaged, trying to do their best despite they fail again and again. What’s left with after all through looking at everything and everyone through this lens of the cross, is compassion. Suddenly, we see not a role or a history, but a fellow traveler in need of compassion. Grace is most needed.

Through this lens of the cross, whatever we possess are mere objects. We put values and meanings onto these things as if they’re true and real. Even our desire to have these objects and things is not our own but mirrors the desire of others. We simply desire the desire of others and trick ourselves as if that’s what we really desire. This, in many ways, is the secret engine of consumer culture—the heart of marketing.

Sunlight that keeps our eyes closed is still scorching hot. So, would you risk the challenge of wearing these special sunglasses with the lens of the cross, to see reality as it is—without illusion, projection, or fear—but with compassion, truth, and a strange, fierce grace? Would you—would I—dare to see others, and even ourselves, as they are, unguarded and unpossessed?