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Well, let’s all pretend we are lexicologists for a moment. You folks know what that is, right? It’s someone who studies words and how they function in a language. Let’s toil with the word possession for a minute. Possession can mean a couple of things. A possession can be something we possess, something we own. Our possessions are our stuff. Another meaning of possession is when something gets a hold of and takes control of us. Demon possession would be an example of that. So, there’s a double meaning that can come into play when we talk about possessions, we think we possess them, but in fact it just might be that our possessions possess us. Keep that in mind.
Let’s play another word game now; not Wordle. Let’s be etymologists for a moment. Etymology is the study of the origin of words and it’s at this point that I’ll go Greek on you. The word we have translated here as “Possessions” comes from the Greek verb “hyparcho” which is two words smushed together “hypo” which means “under” and “archo” which means “rule”; thus, “under rule”. It also has that double meaning to it that our word “possession” has. It can be either something that rules over us or something we ourselves have rule over.
Let’s go back to being lexicologists. Don’t you just love how I’m playing with big words here? Didn’t think so. Oh well. In order to understand which meaning of the word to go with, we have to examine the context it’s used in. Is Jesus talking about the things we own, the things we rule over. Or, is he talking about things that possess or rule over us. If we look at the whole passage, Jesus never talks about stuff and that makes it kind of odd for a translation to have Jesus just up and sum up this teaching he’s just given by saying, “So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” So, maybe he’s not telling us that we have to give up all our stuff to become his disciple. He does that elsewhere, but I don’t think he’s saying that here.
I think it’s the other meaning he’s working with and he is saying that to be his disciples we have to give up those things that possess or have rule over us. What he’s been talking about here isn’t stuff but rather relationships; father, mother, sister, brother, wife, children, even ourselves; life itself as it’s translated but its really our “soul” which is our “self”. So, I don’t think he’s pushing us in the direction of giving up our stuff, our possessions as he does in other places. I think he’s rather making us examine our loyalties. The other things that compete for our faithfulness. You know, if we were looking for a biblical definition of the word faith, loyalty is probably the best way to define it – a strong trust that leads to serving another. He’s asking us to prioritize our relationships around him.
He says a very difficult thing here: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters…cannot be my disciple.” (yes, I know I left out the life part, but I’ll get to that in a minute.) Hate is a very strong word. Is Jesus telling us that to be his disciple we have to loathe our families and seek their harm? Afterall, that is what it is to hate, isn’t it? That doesn’t sound like Jesus. Another way to translate the word we translate here as hate is simply “to love less”. “Whoever comes to me and does not love less father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even, life itself, cannot be my disciple. I don’t know why translators persist on the word hate. Well, I do know why, but it would take too much time and you probably don’t want to know.
Regardless, even to say love your family less than him can be a bitter pill. Here’s how I wiggle around it. It’s that we don’t let our loyalties to family supersede our loyalty to Jesus but rather let our loyalty to Jesus undergird how we love and serve our families. I’ll come back to this in a moment. We need to look at this thing of loyalty to ourselves and what it means to take up the cross and follow Jesus as his disciple.
I know the translation here says “life itself” but just saying life doesn’t fully capture the meaning of the Greek word there. The word is “psyche” and is usually translated as “soul”. Jesus isn’t talking life as simply being life as in life or death. He means the entirety of who we as persons who live with and before God and with and before others. He’s talking about the totality of who we ourselves are and not just about life. He is saying we must love our selves less than we do him. Our loyalty to self must not come before our loyalty to him. I could shout off a rant here about how selfish we are as a culture and about how we tend to think only of ourselves and do a lot of hurt to others and ourselves for doing that. But that’s too easy a sermon. We know he’s not asking us to hate ourselves. I don’t know about you folks but I’m pretty good at that already. He’s still asking us to love ourselves, but we must let loyalty to him define what it is to love ourselves.
Let’s step back for a moment and talk about how our loyalties to family and to ourself interact. We know that if our loyalty to family is greater than our loyalty to self, we ourselves suffer. We feel trapped and unappreciated and so often in that kind of a family system shame is the whipping strap used to keep us from a full, and healthy sense of self love. So also, if our loyalty to self is greater than our loyalty to family, the inevitable is that our families suffer. Parents feel unappreciated for the sacrifices they’ve made. Spouses feel taken advantage of and unloved. Children feel neglected, unimportant, and like they can’t trust the two people they need to be able to trust the most to do what’s in their, the child’s, best interest.
The way around this problem of superseding loyalties and the damage that is done by them is to let our loyalty to Jesus supersede and define our loyalties to family and self. Jesus tells us to carry the cross to be his disciples. Roughly, that’s loving our families and ourselves according to the way God has loved us in through and as Jesus – unconditionally, selflessly, and sacrificially.
Winding on out of here, let’s look at this loyalty to Jesus component. Returning to our reading, let’s imagine what’s happening there. Jesus is walking up the road heading towards Jerusalem where he knows he’s going to die and large groupings of people are following him. They are following him likely because they feel he is their only hope. By all they have seen and heard that he has done, things only God can do, they have determined that he is the one through whom their God is acting to restore his people who are oppressed by Rome and their own corrupt political and religious leadership.
To these people who are daring to hope in God, Jesus wants them to consider what loyalty to him is going to cost them. He knows he’s likely to be crucified. That’s what happens to those who appear treasonous, but also in this in this twisted, hurting, broken world that’s what happens to those who dare to love as God loves, who give their lives for the soul-healing of others and so that we all may know that we are beloved by God. He knows that in order for his death to happen he is going to be betrayed, deserted, and denied by those closest to him for that’s what we twisted, hurting, broken beloved children of God do to presence of God in our lives. These crowds of people have left everything behind and put boots to the ground trusting that Jesus is the one to deliver them. This act of hoping in God will soon seem like futile stupidity once he’s dead and nothing on the surface has changed. They will be shamed and shunned by their families. Their families will be shamed because of them. If you’re into self-interest or even just respect yourself enough not to do something that appears blatantly foolish that will cost you everything, then following Jesus isn’t for you. It will cost you everything. That is the cost of hoping in God. Will they still follow him?
To summarize what Jesus is telling them, it is that they/we will be unable to be his disciples, unable to love as he loves and be for the saving and healing of this painfully broken world, unless we put behind us those other loyalties that have rule over us. On the other side of that is that our loyalty to him, our discipleship will be lived out in the field of those other loyalties that once ruled over us but now for their healing or salvation.
This unconditional, selfless, and sacrificial love that Jesus demands of us, his disciples, is costly but it has a purpose. We put ourselves aside and serve these others to whom we have particular loyalty for the purpose of their soul-healing and that they might come to know they are God’s beloved.
In real life this looks like…well, you’re an adult and your parents are up in years and are not able to live safely on their own. They don’t want to be a burden to you. But they don’t want to go to a retirement community either. To bring them to your own home would cost you some freedom. Babysitting your parents wasn’t how you envisioned retirement. But as a disciple of Jesus you must ask yourself which of your options would give your parents the soul-healing touch of knowing they are beloved? How do we help our parents know they are still beloved by God in their last years?
The primary goal of parenthood for a disciple of Jesus should be raising your children to know they are beloved by God. Ain’t easy. Spouses, love each other as Christ has loved the church laying our lives down for each other. What do we do to let our spouses know that they are not only beloved by us, but by God as well. Any amount of selfishness in a marriage will constipate it.
Anyway, in closing, we must live out our loyalty, our trust and service of Jesus, by loving our other loyalties according to the questions of how can I be a soul-healing presence in the lives of those I love and how can I help them to know that they are God’s beloved. Hard stuff. That’s why we must pray for the help and the indwelling of God’s presence, the Holy Spirit. Amen.
