13th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 18, Year C
Sept. 7, 2025
Well, my first thought upon reading today’s Gospel was that Jesus really could have used a PR manager. If he was hoping to recruit disciples and rally the crowd to his cause, turning to a large gathering of people whose culture was rooted in the importance of family only to tell them they needed to hate their family, this was not exactly the way to go about it. It’s just a terrible marketing campaign from the get go. I came across a preacher one time that addressed the difficult teachings of Jesus by saying, if you can’t say “amen!” let me hear you say, “ouch!” So, ouch!
But what is really going on here? Why would Jesus say such a thing? The translation of the greek word for hate, miseo, is better translated, “dislike” or “disregard for”, but it doesn’t make it all that much easier to hear. It doesn’t seem like the Jesus we know that took the time to make sure someone was going to care for his mother even while he was dying. In the end, we cannot escape our duty to our neighbor, especially our parents and spouses (both enshrined in the teachings of the Law,) so why is he using hyperbole here? Why is he trying to shock them?
Luke tells us that Jesus’ teachings are in response to the large crowds that have enthusiastically joined him and his company of disciples. Jesus speaks to those who came to him out of curiosity, not to those called away from the crowd and summoned to follow. It is an important distinction. There’s a difference between religious observers and true discipleship, making it essential for one to count the cost of that discipleship.1
And don‘t forget, Jesus is headed towards Jerusalem. He knows the cost for himself and for his closest disciples. He warns all hasty volunteers whose heads are full of miracles and feedings, that it is not a festive parade they are joining. He jolts this mob into reality. He uses these harsh words to get their attention. Please count the cost of discipleship. You need to understand what it is you are actually committing to.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his 1937 book, “The Cost of Discipleship”, which is considered one of the most influential works on Christian discipleship in the last century, wrote a chapter about what Jesus meant by this passage in Luke. That every Christian has a call to follow Christ but is often afraid to stand before God alone. Frightened of vulnerability one hides behind family, possessions, and their responsibilities and duties, and are loath to part with them. “But all this is only a cloak,” he writes, “to protect them from having to make a decision. They are unwilling to stand before Jesus and to be compelled to decide with their eyes fixed on him alone. Yet neither father nor mother, neither wife nor child, neither nationality nor tradition, can protect [one] at the moment of [their] call.” It requires a detachment from the things that become greater to us than God–sometimes even replacing God. We cling to the things of this earth leaving no room in our arms or heart for Jesus. In order to hold on to Jesus, we have to let go of the stuff of earth.
The family in ancient Israel was the basic social unit for the people and for survival. Most of the authority in the nuclear family belonged to the father, who exercised legal control over his children and wife, although his power was not absolute. The extended family (the “father’s house”) was composed of two or more nuclear families that claimed descent from the same ancestor. The extended family acted as a corporate entity and was granted certain legal rights in order to maintain its solidarity. Several extended families were sometimes linked together to form a clan. Clan members usually lived in the same geographical area and sometimes made up an entire village. The family metaphor was extended beyond the clan to include the tribe and the nation of Israel itself, so that the whole people could be seen as one enormous family represented by a complex segmented or branched genealogy.2 Jesus brought about change in understanding this structure, which is why the crowd was probably shocked when Jesus suggested that loyalty to God was superior over loyalty to the family, nation, or system. On the other hand, Jesus quoted approvingly the command to honor parents and thus supported the traditional Jewish family structure, too. The traditional view of family was transformed by seeing the Christian community as a new family, and being willing and able to reorient their lives with Christ at the center.
As we all know, families are complicated. We live in a broken world and in that world families get broken, too. Even within the ancient Israelites, the social structure of family worked well for some and not so well for others. There is no perfect family no matter what Facebook seems to indicate. The early church soon became a chosen family for many Christians as many of them had to break away from and let go of tradition and structure in order to become Jesus followers. Some were evicted from their families for turning to Christ. Jesus lifted up the lowly, honored the poor, let women in to learn and lead from him, elevated children to more than possessions. He did then and he does now challenge the way we’ve always done things and the systems we cling to when, and that’s the important distinction, WHEN they get in the way of truly following Christ. You want to live wholeheartedly as a Christian? Let go of what you cling to and pay attention. It really is that simple. Which means it really is quite hard.
When coupled with discipleship and being living examples of the Good News of Jesus Christ, one can see the power of Jesus’ call in this passage and the commitment it demands of us as hearers and doers of the word. Discipleship, we must remember, is a process. This takes time and involves both false starts and modest successes, as we grow in our faith journeys to live into the fullness of our humanity and dare to begin to live the holiness that resides in each of us. As disciples, we learn to face life’s challenges and joys with a spirit of love, hope, faith, and peace that leads us to an ever deeper spirituality and life of prophetic witness.”3
At the heart of discipleship is transformation. The cost of discipleship is not just changing our behavior in regard to Jesus’ teachings. The cost is engaging in a profound shift toward the principles of Jesus with every fiber of our beings. There is no driftwood in discipleship, as we are called to live lives of complete devotion to God. Jesus reminds us in today’s passage from Luke that following him means that we cannot be shallow or uncommitted believers—the adjectives simply do not fit the noun.
As part of this transformation, the cost of discipleship means entering into an intimate relationship with God in Christ that teaches us that obedience to God is not blind. It is a thought-probing and deliberative process in which we grow in our ability to ask the tough questions about life and living, not only of God but also of ourselves. This intimate relationship helps us to mature in our faith.
We do not take the journey of discipleship alone. Our journey is only possible because of Jesus’ journey. As Luke will reveal later on, even the most determined disciple—Peter—will fail to count the cost. But this commitment is inherent in our baptism, we are dying to the old and being born in the new. To carry your cross is to carry the choices and burdens and realities of a life where you chose a certain commitment — a commitment to a way of life that is devoted to bringing about the Kingdom of God here and now. That’s certainly what it meant for Jesus.
This looks like loving the elderly in your community and congregation as much as you love your own parents. Loving the stranger, the addict, the lonely, the immigrant, the prisoner as much as you love your own brother or sister. Loving the children in your community who need school supplies and an encouraging word as much as you love your own children.
The cost of discipleship is also a risk we take in the daily things for the love of God, too. It’s not always in big, dramatic ways. Mother Teresa painted this reality so clearly in her now famous prayer:
People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.
Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.
Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten.
Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.
Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.
- Gary Percesepe. https://www.christiancentury.org/sunday-s-coming/ordinary-23c-percesepe
↩︎ - Harper Collins Bible Dictionary. https://www.bibleodyssey.org/dictionary/family-the/
↩︎ - Emilie Townes. Feasting on the Word, Year C.
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Magdalena's Musings 