Today’s gospel lesson captures one of Jesus’ most provocative sayings. If all these sayings are quoted without disclosing those are his words, we would most likely dismiss them as divisive and unhealthy. Let me reiterate his problematic and challenging sayings: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword...For I have come to set a man against his father...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.”
While his sayings are deeply troubling and do not meet our common image of Jesus as morally perfect, their goal in a literary sense is to shock the audience. Pedagogically, it’s effective that those sayings would last longer in our memory than others. So how are we to understand his words? We need to connect the two dots here, and how we connect them is from the second dot to the first in reverse order: 1) The first dot is the context in which Jesus sends his disciples to proclaim God’s immediate and intimate reign in the lives of people and to heal the afflicted. For him, sending his disciples feels like sending his sheep in the midst of wolves. He has to warn them: “My friends, you will be persecuted for my name’s sake, for the sake of the good news about the immediate and intimate reign of God on earth.” This is his way of preparing his disciples for any unexpected hostility from people they encounter. 2) The second dot is the provocative message of Jesus that unravels our family relationships and requires us to love him more than our family. I don’t believe his intention is to destroy a family unit and become irresponsible for our family responsibility. But there’ll be a conflict because of his teaching of love. This love is not only just interested in one’s own kind but in others who are not biologically related. So, his rhetorical saying, “Whoever loves father, mother, son, or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” challenges and extends one’s spiritual capacity to love strangers, especially those who are not valued in our society. To put it rather bluntly, Jesus may be saying, “Don’t just love your own kind only. If that familial love is locked up in there without ever reaching to others, it is mere self-love for self-preservation that is simply self-centered and self-serving!” From this second dot, we connect to the first dot. The second dot is Jesus’ challenge for us to broaden our horizon of who is to love. It is not just focusing on our family or our own kind who is more likable and easily loveable but on strangers who are totally not like us. This is the impetus for Jesus to proclaim God’s immediate and intimate reign among people and to heal the afflicted. The love which is worthy of Jesus is the same love Jesus taught and lived out. That is, love of one’s neighbor as oneself which eventually got him murdered. What then is your spiritual capacity for love? The way we can measure it is to see how compassionate we are to those who are different. Again, this kind of love has nothing to do with pity. The difference between pity and compassion is the power dynamic between giver and receiver. Pity places the giver on higher ground than the receiver. That’s cheap, arrogant, and dehumanizing. Compassion places the receiver on the same ground as a giver. It presents genuine solidarity with those suffering and is always humble and understanding. It is much harder to have compassion than to show pity. Pity doesn’t last long. It is temporary and momentary, which is why it’s easier to do. Compassion, on the other hand, continues as a relationship in which there’s no giver or receiver but only friends who are standing together on the ground of Christ. This call to compassion for others is our Christian calling. Living out a compassionate life that Jesus exemplifies is to take up our own cross which is ourselves that tends to be narrow-minded and only interested in preserving and empowering an egoistic self. There really is nothing in self-love and self-preservation. It only sees others as a means to serve selfish wants. What we believe to be who we are is simply empty by which we afflict ourselves and others as we try to fill in the void. Father Thomas Keating once said, “The cross Jesus asked you to carry is yourself. It’s all the pain inflicted on you in your past and all the pain you’ve inflicted on others.” Only in Christ where we are timelessly united with God, we can truly be fulfilled and satisfied with eternal life and unconditional love. Lose yourself to gain yourself. Empty yourself to be filled with God’s love. Don’t limit your God-given potential to love strangers as yourself. Let your love flourish like an abundant river. That life of love is not only worth living for but also definitely worthy of Jesus. That is our only way to experience the resurrection right here and right now. Amen. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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