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S. Pentecost 13.25 (25 years at OSLC!) Deut. 30:15-20, Luke 14:25-35

‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he is not able to be my disciple.’

And your first thought is “Well, finally! There’s something I can do! Maybe I can be a Xn? I can hate with the best of ‘em—especially those idiots driving 25 on a long highway on-ramp. [Memo voice] ‘Hey kids; here’s a tip from Elmo: when you’re merging onto the highway, you gotta Speed Up! Speed Up! Somma’ you are like “Wow! They’re going so fast. But I gotta go slow. I’m gonna go so slow everyone behind me has to jam on their freakin’ brakes and get run over by a freakin’ semi! Learn it! Learn it! 😉

But then your second thought is: “Wait a minute! I’ve heard all my life that hate is not a family value and that JESUS is all about family values! Doesn’t he want us to luuuv everyone and everybody, starting with our families and branching out even to enemies? [Or is it the other way around? Start with enemies and work up to family? I know Vance and Francis were arguing about that, but I can’t remember who won] Anyway, I’ve heard all my life that Jesus is all in on luuuv and family values.”

Which leads to a third thought: “Pastor will explain this away, surely? He’ll explain how Jesus doesn’t really mean what he says here, and chase those first bad thoughts from my mind and teach me how to be good.”

Well, Concordia Seminary St. Louis, during my penalty year for getting an M.Div from Yale tried to teach me how to twist scriptures, square them with modern missional sensibilities. But guess I learned too well from Mr. Holmer and Mr. Frei that Jesus always means what he says and never changes his mind. (Jesus also Speeds Up!, briskly, when merging on the highway. Just sayin’ 😉

I decided long ago, well before I got here 25 years ago, that I’m going with Jesus and the Holmer-Frei-Lewis-Luther reading of scriptures over Concordia St. Louis’s! Which, apparently, means we won’t be getting anymore CSL vicars. Well; it’s not the first time they’ve banned me! On the bright side, the CSL shunning helps me with the hate thing Jesus says is so essential to being a Xn 😉

Yeah, this is a simple sermon. Your first thought was correct! and the next two were… wrong! Jesus MEANS WHAT HE SAYS, always! When he says: “If anyone comes to me and doesn’t HATE his family and his own life too, he’s not able to be my disciple…” he absolutely MEANS IT!

For my entire adolescence, I really struggled with Christianity. I heard so much about how we have to prove we’re sorry for our sins and worthy of forgiveness by being really nice and meek and mild company men and women, marching lock step with whatever some tyrant of a teacher or pastor says, even if it’s obviously stupid, and if I don’t love my nasty enemies enough to go and bang on their door and cajole them until they surrender to the saving love of Jesus, well; there’s just no place for me in the Kingdom of Christ Jesus!

This was only difficult for me because I really love Jesus—well; the one I read about in the Golden Children’s Bible. Everything he says and does in the scriptures seemed awesome to me. I especially liked how he really slammed the holy-rolling Pharisees and hypocritical chancel-prancing Sadducees! And when he drove the hedge fund managers out of church with a whip that had some nails on the end to leave a mark, I’m like: “I really like this guy.” Did I mention how he always Speeds Up! when merging on the highway?

Early on, I discovered Ps. 139, my favorite (!) where David (another guy I love! Killing Big Ugly with a well slung stone from his slingshot and then cutting off the dude’s head with his own sword? Beautiful! 😉 My favorite part?: “Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? I hate them with perfect hatred!” Well, then! Perfect hatred seems a great goal, one I have the capacity to grow into…

But Lutheran grade school and Lutheran college rammed it into my head this was not the right way to read the scriptures! Supposedly, holy scriptures are about becoming good people by loving our neighbor, and persuading them to love Jesus, too. But I didn’t even like my neighbors, much. Most seemed hell-bent on going to hell, seemed to hate Jesus and the old fashioned Western Common Service way of worshiping him. They looked like freakin’ hypocrites who also drive too slow—especially merging on the highway! David says he hates them, and will be happy to see God’s judgment on them. Why is that so wrong?

But I heard so much and for so long it is WRONG!, I decided I must not be a Xn at all, even though I really, really love the bad-ass Jesus I met in the scriptures.

Desperately confused, my philosophy teacher sent me to Yale to study with Paul Holmer and figure out what my problem was. Turns out, it was the opposite of the old break-up cliche, “It’s not you, it’s me. You’re great, I’m just no good…” 😉 The problem was THEM!—all the mass men of Modern Institutional Christendom—not me.

But what I hated most, the whole time, was my own life. I am such a mess. But discovering from Lewis, Luther, Holmer, and holy scriptures that this hatred is the first step to following Jesus, opened a Door! Because Jesus hates us sinners too (!), and plans to kill us (!) by sharing his suffering and cross with us by faith in him, in order, at The Last, to raise us up NEW!… 😉

The ultimate tear-down and rebuild!

What I hate about the world, I find constantly cropping up in myself, every day! I cannot climb the ladder to heaven. Jesus is going to have to descend into hell, and scoop me up, and carry me home. That’s the only way.

And that’s precisely what he did Good Friday!—died and descended to hell to raise me up with him! And every time I hate myself and my sinful life, the cross and grave begin to look less like punishment and more like the Gateway to the Undiscovered Country Lewis pictures so well in the Narnia books.

Counting the cost of tearing down the old me and raising up one, in Jesus’ Image, I see: I can’t afford it. But by his word and sacrament I receive here, now, Jesus pays the price for me, totally gratis, and—by the hatred of a sinful world, a hypocritical self—puts my feet on that narrow, difficult path that leads to heaven by way of Golgotha.

So heaven has a place for haters? Yes! It turns out: the hatred of the sinful world is the flip-side of the love of Christ which brings Peace, surpassing all understanding, guarding your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Amen.