23^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C); Sept.  7, 2025

Wis 9:13-18b.  Ps 90.  Phlm 9:10,12-17.  Lk 14:25-33

Deacon Jim McFadden

         This Sunday’s Gospel from Luke is really hard to take.  Jesus—the one we associate with love fully incarnate—is telling the crowd, is telling us, that we must hate people.  Not just anyone, but our family members!  This may be the most “slap in your face” challenge  that he has proposed to his followers:  “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters…cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26). These words stop us in our tracks, and we want to respond, “Jesus,  did you really say that?  Do you really mean what you just said?”  Surely, if the Prince of Peace and the embodiment of love is telling someone to hate someone else, something has got to have been lost in translation.  But the original texts were written in Greek and the word for hate (miseo) is right there.  It’s the prefix for misogyny or misandry.  There is no other connotation for this word.  We’re just stuck with it.  The majority of parents love their children so much that they’d throw themselves under the bus if their child was endangered.  And Jesus wants us to hate our children along with our parents if were going to follow him.

         These words are troubling and seemingly scandalous especially within the historical and cultural context in which they were said.  Family obligations were very serious stuff in Jesus’ time.  One had a moral and religious duty to care for family.  Indeed, honoring one’s parents is the 4^th Commandment and one even risked death for disobeying your father.  You were obligated to take into your home your widowed mother in need.  So, in this Lucan passage Jesus ostensibly undermines those  family structures. 

         Jesus’ words run contrary to those who think entry into the Kingdom of God can be limited to bonds of blood or by extension to membership in a particular group, tribe, or nation.  When “family” becomes the decisive  criterion for what we consider to be right and good, we can end up  justifying or even “consecrating” practices that lead to a culture of privilege and exclusion: we favor our in-group, whether it be family or nation, which leads to favoritism, patronage, and eventually corruption.  Jesus is demanding that we see beyond these parochial concerns and to see others as our brothers and sisters, of being sensitive to their lives and situations regardless of their racial, cultural, social, or national background.  If we don’t do this, we can’t be Jesus’ disciple.  His devoted and unconditioned love is a free gift given to all and meant for all.  If we’re going to follow Jesus, then our hearts must be as expansive as he is.

         If Jesus words on family were hard to take, he takes it further when he says that unless you hate your own life, we cannot be his disciple (cf. v. 26). Oh, my, this is not a namby-pamby, kumbaya Jesus but one who is turning our lives upside down.  I wonder if were ready for this kind of radical discipleship.  I think what Jesus is getting at is our continual drive to self-justification, because we really think that when push comes to shove that our lives are really about ourselves and everything we do depends exclusively on our efforts and resources.  Instead Jesus is saying that a commitment to follow him must entail placing him in the center of our lives and all other allegiances, including our life, are secondary.

         A prayer from Psalm 63, Ardent Longing for God, offers us insight into what Jesus may mean. We hear, “Lord, …your love is better than life (v. 4). Sit with that People of God.  Does it resonate with you?  If so, everything in our lives has got to be kicked out of the central place—even our own life—so that Jesus’s love can occupy our very being.  Jesus must be loved first and last, and everything in our lives has to find its meaning in relation to him.   Are we ready for that kind of commitment?  Are we ready for everything—EVERYTHING—to give way for the Kingdom of God?

         We cannot follow Jesus half-way, though we’re tempted to do so.  We follow him to some extent, but then reserve other parts of our lives for our purposes and agendas.  In so doing, we don’t make that decisive step to total commitment; as a result, we don’t take risks for being a Catholic Christian; we don’t follow Jesus’ example by helping others, by putting their needs ahead of our private interests.  Jesus is getting in our face and challenging us: live the Gospel and you will live your life, not half-way, but to the full.  Live the Gospel, become a committed disciple with no compromise and you will “give glory to God by being a human being fully alive”         (St. Irenaeus).

         May the Blessed Virgin Mary, who gave her whole heart and soul to God, help us to lay the foundation of a life in Christ and to finish the work of becoming a disciple of her Son, Jesus.  Amen.

Reflection Questions:

1. How did you initially respond to Jesus’ challenging words in today’s Gospel?
2. Is Jesus’ love better than your own life?
3. Are you a committed disciple of Christ?  Why or why not?