Hate?
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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 14:25
Earlier this week I was reading Psalm 139. It is a well-loved and well-known psalm.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me….
the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you…
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made…
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
It’s a psalm about God’s unfailing presence in our lives, about God’s deep knowledge of and love for us, about how profound God’s wisdom is. It is a truly beautiful psalm of praise.
And then you get to the last stanza:
O that you would kill the wicked, O God,
and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—
those who speak of you maliciously,
and lift themselves up against you for evil!
Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with perfect hatred;
I count them my enemies…
Whoa! What happened to all the lofty and beautiful sentiments ? Kill the wicked? Hating with a perfect hatred? This does not sound like what we expect faithfulness to sound like. What comes through loud and clear is that the psalmist is pretty angry at his enemies and wants God to do something about them!
And similarly, this Sunday’s gospel reading from Luke has Jesus telling a crowd that if they do not hate their dearest family members and even life itself, they cannot be his disciples. What’s up with that, Jesus?
There is a parallel passage in Matthew, but in Matthew’s softer, gentler version, it says that unless you love Jesus more than close family members or life itself, you are not worthy of him. Still a stark message, but at least not about hate. It sounds like Luke, like the psalmist, has some pretty strong feelings here.
Luke is known for his hyperbole, and this teaching is definitely challenging. And the words Luke chose just make it all the more challenging. Professor Carolyn Sharp points out that “Luke 14:26 is not advocating intense hostility toward kin and life, but, rather, is promoting the steadfast refusal to allow something less valuable to displace something more valuable.” Luke is trying to shake his readers into wrestling with their priorities, hopefully shaking them up enough to accept the challenging call to put God first in all things. Well, Luke, it worked. We are wrestling with it!
The word “Hate” in the bible is jarring to our ears, for sure, but you’ve got to admit that most of us understand what hate feels like. We know what a powerful and sometimes unavoidable feeling it is. And it is interesting to me that the bible never shies away from powerful feelings. It is not a book of dispassionate facts and tenets. It is not a lecture or a lesson, but a story that we can personally relate to, even when it’s through our most powerful and difficult emotions.
So I’ll be wrestling with this challenging passage all week and hopefully will have something life-filled to say about it, despite its tone, next Sunday when we meet together in Fuller Park for the last time this year. Hope to see you there!
