23rd Sunday 2025
Wisdom 9:13-18; Philemon 9-10, 12-17: Luke 14: 25-33
We have another tramstopper of a Gospel today. We begin with a call to “hate” our nearest and dearest, move to a demand to take up our own Cross, and conclude with a warning that discipleship entails “renouncing” (literally “separating ourselves from”) all our possessions. Sandwiched among them are those two parables which don’t appear to belong, of the tower-builder and the warlike king. What do we make of it all?
Firstly, we have to ask what Our Lord means here by the word “hate”. Is He really asking us to hate anyone, especially those closest to us? That would make no sense, if taken in its literal English meaning. In particular, it would contradict that Second Commandment which Jesus insists is similar to the First, namely to love our neighbour as ourselves.
The point is that Jesus wasn’t speaking in English. He was a Jew, a Semite, and the word miseo (I hate) is here what is described as a Semitic usage, effectively an exaggeration for the sake of emphasis. Our Lord is insisting that we must not put anyone before Him, that we must not put the Second Commandment before the First, that love of God must always have primacy. Elsewhere in the Gospels, He expresses the point in a more easily comprehensible way, saying that “anyone who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me”. It is not a matter of hating: it is a matter of sorting out our priorities.
As for taking up the Cross, that is a call to follow in the Master’s footsteps, as Simon of Cyrene did when he helped to carry the Cross of Jesus. It is interesting that Jesus here speaks of the disciple taking up his/her OWN Cross. The Cross comes to each of us in a different way: it is uniquely our own, yet in taking it up we are, in a mysterious way, taking up Jesus’ Cross too, as did Simon.
To “bear” or “take up” is, in Greek, bastazo, as in St. John’s account of Jesus’ carrying His own Cross. It is almost as if Our Lord lifts the Cross with a flourish, and we are asked to do the same. What though is our own Cross?
I would suggest that it entails the difficulties and struggles which all of us encounter at various points in our lives. It may also include the concept of voluntary penance, but it involves principally those things which come upon us unasked, sometimes because of our faith. How do we respond to setbacks, to failures, to illness, to the approach of death? Do we grumble and complain, blame God, go into “Why me?” mode. We are perfectly entitled to resist our sufferings, but we do so in the light of God’s love, uniting our sufferings with those of Jesus, our Cross with His, refusing to become bitter or negative, recognising that He is with us in our sufferings. If they pass, we thank Him joyfully: if not, we bear them courageously.
In keeping with all of this is that final sentence, calling us to “renounce” all that we have. Like the apparent “hate” which we have encountered, it entails not being dominated by material things, not allowing possessions to possess us, sitting light to the things of this world. We are not to be acquisitive like the capitalists: we are to remember that love of neighbour entails a commitment to justice, to share fairly this earth and all that it offers.
What then of the two parables, which are linked to the instructions by the words “for” and “therefore”? According to the Jerome Biblical Commentary, to which I turn when even more flummoxed than usual, those words do not belong. They have been added to create an artificial connection. If we omit them, and allow the parables to stand on their own, then those parables make more sense.
Jesus is warning us not to charge recklessly into things, promising the earth but failing to deliver even a spadeful of soil. A modern equivalent is the injunction not to bite off more than we can chew. We do not make exaggerated promises to Jesus: we do our best and discover that, with that, He can and will deliver more than we thought possible.
On the other hand, we must not be over-cautious. For instance it seems to me that God is calling more people to the priesthood and consecrated life than are at present prepared to admit it. Some people appear to require cast iron certainty before they are prepared to respond. This is unrealistic. We have to go with the balance of probabilities, trusting God to sort out our future. Let us be sensible, but let us not be timid.
