This Week at the Center for Excellence in Preaching

Neal Plantinga once reminded me of an article written many years ago by one of Calvin Seminary’s finest professors, Henry Stob.  Stob noted that the Bible is an endlessly surprising, if not at times also a rather odd, book.   How curious, for instance, to celebrate (as Christians often do) the fact that Jesus tells us to love our enemies and to bless those who persecute us and yet this same Jesus was also known upon occasion to advise hating our parents and spouse and children!!   As they sometimes sing on the children’s television show “Sesame Street,” “One of these things is not like the other.”

What can account for Jesus’ call for us to hate our families?  To understand this, we need to see this saying in a wider biblical context from both the Old and New Testaments.  As F.F. Bruce pointed out in his book “The Hard Sayings of Jesus,” there is throughout the Bible a tendency to use the word “hate” when what is really meant is a secondary form of love.  So when in Deuteronomy 21:15 there are regulations for a man with two wives (one of who is loved and one of whom is hated) the meaning is not that there is literal, visceral hatred per se of the second wife but more that the second wife is less preferred than the first.  Similarly when God says things like “Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated,” the meaning is not that God literally hates Esau or his kin in the colloquial use of that word but rather that Jacob was preferred over Esau and that Esau, therefore, received love but a love that was perhaps a bit less in intensity or scope.

Bruce also points out that this idea of “hate” meaning a lesser form of love is backed up by the parallel to Luke 14 in Matthew 10:37 when Matthew makes it explicit that what Jesus is getting at here are those who love father or mother more than they love their Savior and Lord. 

All of this is also backed up by the fact that Jesus in Luke 14 quickly goes on to mention cross-bearing in verse 27.   We all know how misinterpreted this verse has been in the history of the church.  How many people have not literally dragged crosses behind them on Good Friday or other times as a way to show solidarity with Jesus and also as a way to fulfill what they believe this verse and its parallels in the gospels mean.

But in reality Jesus had in mind something far more broad-reaching and, just so, far more radical.  In Jesus’ day, to be under the sign of the cross was to be under the sign of death.  It was to live in such a way as to make clear that you have put to death the things of this world—its addiction to power, its adoration of only the beautiful and successful, its cut-throat ways of climbing to the top of any and every heap, its love of violence and intimidation and war.  To live under a cross-bar was to engage in a form of living death, of sacrificial living for the sake of others and of the kingdom of God.

It’s this kingdom awareness that can also explain why Jesus suggests we love family and friends less than we love him.  If this world is all that there is and if we have no higher calling and no grander a destination than this life, then taking care of our families or being the best husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, siblings, and spouses that we can could properly be seen as the highest goal of them all.   And even with a kingdom perspective, those things carry a high value.  But they do not carry the ultimate value that we get from the kingdom of God and the higher calling we now have as citizens of God’s new and still-coming order. 

The incarnation, life, and death of Jesus prove one thing for sure: even God knows that salvation and a cosmic turn-around for the better will never bubble up from within this world.  We cannot locate anything in this fallen world—even such good things as nuptial love or the love of a mother for a child—and then magnify and multiply that thing a thousand times as a way to bring salvation.  For the world to be saved, it requires an infusion of something divine from the outside.  Jesus was just that divine infusion into this world.  His love, grace, mercy, and humility—through which the power of God was paradoxically channeled—is what saves us and the entire cosmos.

So yes, let us love our children.  Yes, let us be loving spouses.  Yes, let us be loving and respectful children, honoring our fathers and mothers in this land the Lord our God has given to us.  Yes, yes to all that.  But let’s never mistake family values for the way the kingdom of God comes.  Let’s never mistake healthy marriages for what the kingdom alone will bring to all our relationships, starting with our relationship to God and then going from there.  Let us never forget that salvation comes via a cross and that all who want to experience the joy of that salvation walk under that symbol of death as a lifelong reminder of what matters and what does not and of the Only One who ever was so filled with truth and grace that he caused a light to shine in our darkness—a light that will never go out.

What does success in ministry look like?   Some while ago on TV I saw a news profile of megachurch pastor Joel Osteen.  Peppered throughout the interview with this pastor were brief video clips showing him preaching to his congregation that numbers into the tens of thousands.  The people of the congregation stretch out before this pastor like a vast sea of humanity with the people seated the farthest from the pulpit mere specks in the distance.  The ministry this man built started from far more humble beginnings.  But in America, there is no better sign of his “success” than the size of the crowd that gathers to hear him preach each Sunday.  “Nothing succeeds in America like success” they say.

Large congregations may or may not be a true indicator of faithfulness to the gospel: sometimes they are, sometimes they are not.  But if the gospels make one thing clear, it is that Jesus never regarded a large following as necessarily a good sign.  In fact, he seemed intent on a regular basis to thin out the crowds that followed him.  To Jesus’ mind, a large following probably meant that a lot of those folks did not know what they were doing in hitching their wagons to his particular star.

The closing verses of Luke 14 are a classic example.  Notice how Luke structures the narrative.  We are told in verse 25 that “large crowds were traveling with Jesus” only to have Jesus immediately turn to that same throng of people to say some things that seemed calculated to turn people off.   Luke does not directly tell us that Jesus said what he did because the crowds were so large, but that is clearly the implication.

What’s more, it is clear that Jesus says something so radical, he must have known it would be both puzzling and also finally a turn-off to many people.   The call to hate father, mother, spouse, and children is a tad on the harsh side and surely did not fail to make at least a few folks—and perhaps more than a few folks—turn away.

That was curious enough.  But Jesus then goes on to tell two quasi parables (they are really more like analogies) that talk about counting the cost and doing prudent calculations in advance of undertaking major projects.   The upshot of these two analogies is easy enough to discern.  But the way Jesus told them seems to be a left-handed rebuke to the crowd.  It’s almost as though Jesus is chiding the many people who were following him for not having a clue as to what they were doing in that they were the ones who had in fact not counted the cost ahead of time.  They were the people who had to abandon a building project before it was finished because they ran out of money.  They were the people who had gone to war against a superior opponent due to lack of prudent advance work as to the strength of the enemy.

Twice Jesus says that you have to give up everything and take up a cross if you are going to follow him.   The implication is that these people had not done that but had found it altogether too easy to fall into line behind Jesus.  

For those of us who preach, this passage has a lot of relevance.  After all, how many of us in the church today are not there in large part because we were raised in the church?  Yes, at some point most of us made some kind of conscious decision to be a follower of Jesus: we willingly went through confirmation, we initiated our own profession of faith, we underwent the sacrament of baptism, etc.   But do those formal, “typical” ways of growing up into church membership rise to the level of thoughtful seriousness and astute calculations that Jesus talks about in Luke 14?  

In short, do we find it altogether too easy to fall into line behind Jesus?  Especially in America, is it relatively painless to join the vast throngs that crowd into the more popular churches in the land?   Many churches have in recent years and decades done all in their power to make it convenient to be a member of the church: they have established excellent parking lot flow patterns, they have greeters and Information Booths and excellent latte and family-friendly programming for every conceivable need for every possible age group along with sermons guaranteed to provide advice for things like “Five Ways to Grow Your Business” and “Seven Ways to a Healthy Marriage” and “Four Ways to Raise Successful Children.”

With programming like this, it seems unlikely that once people enter into these churches that they will hear pastors saying things that appear calculated to make them walk right back out the door.  Indeed, a well-known pastor of a large church in Minneapolis once had over 1,000 members leave his church after he shared some political thoughts that the pastor knew up front would not sit well with his congregation but that he believed were true to the gospel message he was charged to preach truthfully.  The spectacle of a pastor willingly sacrificing some members was so rare, it made headlines all around the nation, including on the front page of the New York Times.

The relative rarity of that kind of thing makes news.   And that kind of makes you wonder . . .

This week’s textual point was detailed elsewhere in this set of sermon starters and ties in with how we are to understand the nuance of meaning applied to the Greek verb miseo in Luke 14:26.  The upshot as detailed above is that we err if we believe that Jesus was calling for literal hatred in the sense of being love’s opposite or in the sense of this being a form of loathing and anger.  Rather, in the Bible “hate” is often used metaphorically as a lesser form of love with the “hated” party being not so much actively despised, rejected, or dismissed as in a secondary rank within a person’s heart.

Across the year 2008 Rev. Ed Dobson decided he was going to “live like Jesus.”  Among the things Rev. Dobson did that year was read through all four gospels over and over and over again on a regular basis.   He also did his best to live out Jesus’ words and principles in as literal and careful a way as he could as he tried to let the gospel shape his life in ways more intentional than is probably true for even the more devout among us.

He knew going in that this could create problems for him but even after counting the cost, he wanted to do this.   But 2008 was also an election year in the United States—indeed, it was one of the most hotly contested elections in a long while.   And through much prayer and discernment, Dobson felt led as a follower of Jesus to vote—on that particular occasion at least—for the Democrat candidate, Barack Obama.   As news of this choice spread, the man who tried for a year to live like Jesus received some Jesus-level persecution and criticism from his right-leaning Christian friends, colleagues, and former parishioners.

Whether one regards Dobson’s political choice as correct or incorrect, he surely did suffer to a degree for that choice.   But what is striking about that experience is that it is somewhat unusual.   Many Christian people today are very sure they have it all figured out when it comes to voting, lifestyle, childrearing, and the like and so long as everyone sticks to the same playbook, following Jesus comes with very little by way of cost or hardship.   Most of us don’t have to make hard choices like leaving friends and family behind if that’s what is required to follow Jesus as best we can.   We don’t so much “count the cost” as just accept the asking price, which seems pretty low most of the time.

And that itself may be something worth pondering.

In the United States in 2010, this Year C Lectionary passages occurs on the Sunday just before Labor Day.  And so maybe there is something oddly appropriate about God’s using the labor of a craftsman to bring a new message to Jeremiah.   It was the normal exercise of the potter’s vocation, after all, that God exploited so as to prompt Jeremiah into a new understanding of the message God needed to communicate to his wayward people.

The image of a potter at a wheel molding a wet lump of clay into various shapes is both a vivid image and one that most people can picture easily in their minds.   Skilled potters are downright amazing in their ability to move their fingers and hands ever-so-slightly only to yield very dramatic results on the spinning lump of earth.  They make it look easy, but any novice at the wheel knows how deceptive that is: one wrong application of pressure from your left thumb can be enough to turn a nicely developing vase into a collapsed mess that threatens to spin clean off the wheel.   But really skilled potters can also be remarkable for how quickly they can rescue such a mess by instantly starting to fashion a whole new pot, cup, bowl, vase, or other vessel.   It’s a project that looks almost magical!

Skilled potters are in control and are sensitive to very subtle shifts in the clay mass in front of them.   And perhaps there is something to that fact that adds to the poignancy of God’s words to Jeremiah as well.   God is constantly shaping his people, sensitive to subtle shifts and able to bring about remarkable beauty with seemingly little effort.  But for that same reason God can radically alter conditions if the circumstances warrant.  It can happen in a flash, both the production of great beauty and the ruination that may lead to something else.

Of course, ultimately Jeremiah 18 is a grim passage of judgment.   Were we to read beyond the end point of this particular lection, we’d see the prediction that the people of Israel will hear Jeremiah’s warnings and choose to ignore them, even plotting to get rid of Jeremiah altogether since the only messages he seems capable of delivering are of the doom-and-gloom variety (if you can’t stand the message, shoot the messenger).

For preachers today in the Christian Church who seek to proclaim the Good News of hope and joy and grace that is the gospel, a heavy passage of judgment like this one can present certain challenges.  Where is the Good News here?   Is a passage like this an occasion only for shouting, for fire-and-brimstone preaching meant to condemn the less-than-devout (and prop up, by proxy, those who feel confident in their own piety)?

Well, certainly we cannot ignore the fact that in the long run, there is such a thing as judgment, as choices in life that trend toward the ultimate side of existence.   But perhaps we can find glints of the gospel in this passage by reminding ourselves and reminding those to whom we preach that what is absolutely startling about the Bible is that ultimately God the Potter let himself become the clay.   Yes, Israel failed again and again, as people tend to do (ourselves included were it all left up to us).   So in the longest possible run the way God brought salvation into this sorry old world of ours was to let himself become the clay.   Or perhaps it can be better said that the Triune God became simultaneously the Potter and the Clay, thus ensuring that a vessel could be shaped and molded that would at long last fit the bill for righteousness and holiness.

We call that vessel now The Body of Christ.   And the divine Potter has been very careful in applying his own fingers to the shaping of that Body so that we who are caught up in God’s great salvation by grace alone can be assured that we will never again become vessels of destruction, never become a useless heap of clay with no destiny other than to be thrown out.

Sometimes people respond to God’s call for repentance, sometimes they don’t.  In the long run, though, God didn’t want to play the odds.   God wanted to fashion a people of grace who would be beautiful.   It took a lot of pain and sorrow on the part of God the Son (and of the Father and Spirit, too, of course) to accomplish this.   But the gospel is here to tell us that it has been accomplished.  “It is finished!” Jesus cried.   Thanks be to God.

The title of a 1997 article in Christianity Today asked this question: "Can We Be Good without Hell?" The author traced out what he sees as a decline in hell-talk over the last number of years. Ministers just don't preach on hell much anymore and the result, according to some, is that people no longer have a fear of damnation--a fear that is necessary to make folks behave. Take away the possibility of hell and you take away God's wrath. Take away God's wrath and you basically take away the true God.

Can we be good without hell? The author of the Christianity Today article answered, "No." Hell, he wrote, must make a comeback so that we can recover the proper picture of God. What is that proper picture? It is the image of God as the one who doles out rewards and punishments--this is the God whose very nature woos people to be good so they can avoid burning in hell forever after.

So should we talk more about hell here in church? Well, if such talk increases our gratitude by reminding us of what Jesus rescued us from, then such talk may be appropriate to help us give God glory. But if such talk is designed to make us or our children afraid, if it fans the flames (literally!) of our worry by making us think we are forever teetering on the brink of the abyss, if it is designed to frighten us into being good, then such talk is wrong because it short-circuits our hope in Christ and so destroys the real reason for being good: namely, because grace is where we live already.

But what about elsewhere in society? Do people need the message of hell in order for them to be good? Well, here it seems like perhaps the answer is yes and no. On the one hand, to a society that has lost its moral moorings, to a world that increasingly believes that most sin is really just a legitimate lifestyle choice, we need to be very firm that there is much that is so fundamentally wrong God cannot let it slide. The sin that hurts, maims, wounds, and destroys so many lives and creatures all around us every day must be dealt with once and for all. In short, a God who makes no moral judgments is not a God worth worshiping for such a God proffers no hope.

On the other hand, however, even this message needs to be colored by grace. God does not want people to love him because they're scared to death of him but because he is their loving and good Creator. In this world anyone with enough power, money, and weapons can command respect. The goal of a great many mafia kingpins and two-bit political dictators is to inspire dread in the people around them--and they usually succeed. But rarely if ever are such thugs also loved.

That's why, even in our witness to the world, talk of God's wrath must be in a minor key compared to the major theme of God's grace--a grace that is such a powerful force within even God's heart that God put the hell of sin onto Jesus so that it would not have to fall upon us. Any witness to the Christian faith that fails joyfully to tell people that accepting Jesus as Lord is the way out of evil's hellish mess is not an authentic witness to the gospel.