Spiritual Hiccups - Letting Go

When we hear about Jesus calling his first disciples, we are told, "Immediately they left their nets and followed him... Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him."  And in today's gospel, Jesus turns to the crowds and says, "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."  Then after a couple of illustrations about calculating the cost of something before undertaking it he adds, "So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up  all your possessions."


Following Jesus means letting go of other things.  It means turning loose of what had been the best hope for security, for protection, for belonging.  In the hyperbolic style of  Middle Eastern speech, Jesus' instruction to "hate" actually mean to "love less."  Still, there is a shift of loyalty, which requires old loyalties to recede.

I was at my local presbytery's "Church Professionals' Retreat" for the last couple of days.  It featured Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann talking about how renewal comes out of loss, but how it requires grieving and lamentation for God's new possibility to become visible.

I wonder if Jesus isn't speaking in a similar way here.  He is not saying that families and possessions are inherently bad things.  But just as a successful marriage requires "hating" (in the sense of loving less) parents and siblings and shifting one's primary love to a spouse, the new life that comes from Jesus requires a similar shift. 

For some people, the leaving home that comes with marriage and adulthood provokes a profound sense of loss.  But if a marriage is to thrive, somehow goodbyes must be said, old ways must be abandoned.  There is loss that must be experienced in order to move to something new.

If someone "hates" (loves less) spouse rather than mother or father, the marriage is on shaky ground.  So, says Jesus, trusting money or possessions to provide us security, happiness, fulfillment, or meaning makes it nearly impossible to discover our true humanity, our true selves in life as Jesus' family, as God's children.

Our culture works very hard to sell us the lie that we can have it all, and that chasing after it all is what we should do.  But Jesus insists that abundant life, true humanity, salvation, is about letting go of some things so that our lives can move toward their truest destiny. 

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