Sermon Preached at Christ the King Anglican Church, Mondeor, Johannesburg (Diocese of Christ the King) on Sunday 8 September 2019 (Twelfth Sunday After Trinity)
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters – yes, even his own life – he cannot be my disciple”. (Lk 6.26)
May I speak in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes even the most Bible-based of Christians encounter a passage of Scripture that offends much of what they take as given about the Christian faith. Often it is a saying of Jesus Christ Himself. When that happens, there are two natural reactions: one is to try to minimise the importance of that passage; the other is to try and rationalise away the obvious meaning of the words, to somehow force them to fit a more conventional understanding.
This morning’s Gospel reading contains just such a phrase, and I ask you to avoid either of those temptations, and to allow for the possibility that Jesus Christ will have known exactly how disturbing and uncomfortable these words will have been. They will have been disturbing to the devoted and strong families of both the Jewish and Roman Imperial cultures of his day. Beyond that local context, this passage is offensive and disturbing to people across the vast chasms that separate us from the world that Jesus Christ walked, for these words strike at the heart of the closest human relationships that are most treasured by people in every place and time. God can only have inspired these words as Holy Scripture knowing them to be offensive.
In early 21st Century Christianity, family values have come to be seen as being at the very heart of the faith. I do not for a moment wish to decry strong family values. Those of you who live in homes shaped by them are truly blessed – give thanks to God for your fortune and pray that he will guide you so that this will continue. But there is a strong warning here that we must not make an idol of our families and, indeed, that we must not make an idol of any of our preconceptions of what living as a Christian means. None of us can ever perfectly and completely understand the message of the Christian Gospel – that perfect knowledge belongs to God alone. We Christians are not perfect, and there is a great temptation to pick out the parts of Scripture that are comfortable for ourselves. It is a natural temptation to pretend that we already at least very close to what God wants us to be. Instead, cherish these difficult parts of Scripture, and allow God to provoke you out of your comfort zone, driving you forwards to become ever more like the people he has made you to become.
I am always very cautious about criticising other Christians in a sermon, but I can’t help wondering when I drive around when I see these churches that describe themselves as ‘family churches’, what message they are sending to Christians who do not live in traditional nuclear families, or to those who are the only committed Christians in their families, or to those who live on their own. How would they preach on a text like our Gospel reading today?
When I watch Christian television, in particular, I too often hear the claim if you are a really faithful Christian, then things will always go well in your life; that you will be blessed with material prosperity and a ‘perfect’ home life. Jesus Christ didn’t promise us that we would be perfect, or live perfect lives, and he certainly did not promise us that we would be seen as perfect in the eyes of the world – in fact, he said precisely the opposite.
If you live on your own – you are not a failure. If your marriage has broken down – you are not a failure. If you have always had to bring up your children on your own from a young age – you are not a failure. If your husband or wife or partner will not go to Church, or goes to a different Church, or belongs to another religion – your marriage is not a failure. If you are a young person who comes here on your own and your parents do not come to church with you – your family is not a failure. I am sorry that I even have to say this, but I hear so many messages that tell people the opposite. Whatever the world says, if you really and truly live for Christ and come to the altar in humility and faith Sunday by Sunday, you can never be a failure.
This passage of Scripture is difficult if we think we have it all worked out – but it is one of great hope if we are honest enough to admit that we must always be seeking to grow more like Jesus Christ, that we always have new things to learn about God’s purpose for our life, that there are always new depths of God for us to be caught up in. This is true for all of us, even the Archbishop!
There is a wonderful phrase that the Roman Catholic Church uses to describe the deep truths of the Christian faith, including the truth that is Holy Scripture, and that is that they are ‘inexhaustible mysteries’. We can study them and pray about them and contemplate them for our entire lives and we will never cease to learn new things from them.
In that light, I think there is another meaning of this strange and difficult saying of Jesus, that we must hate our families if we are to follow him. It one that speaks directly to the situation in this city at present. I am speaking of course of the outbreak of looting and hatred – let us not obscure what is involved by using sophisticated terms like ‘xenophobia’ – that has afflicted Johannesburg since we last broke bread here last Sunday.
Some of this week I spent with Reverend Joe travelling around the churches in Rosettenville and Turffontein giving out information about the march for peace and unity that is taking place this afternoon at two o’clock from the Spar on Tramways Road in Turffontein. It was very heartening as we travelled around the churches how much unity there was in wanting to take a stand against this. We found this at the AFM Church, the New Apostolic Churches, the Roman Catholic Churches, the Pentecostal Churches – everywhere! We found this also from the Muslim community. It was uplifting to see such a united approach from people of faith.
That is not, however, the whole story. I also spent a bit of time this week trying to get a feel for what the South African public was thinking about the events by looking on social media. There was a depressing number of people supporting these attacks – a minority, but too many. There was a much larger number of people saying things like, “Well of course it is wrong to attack people, but…”
But what?
Perhaps in our own families – or in our workplaces, or among our friends, maybe on Whatsapp or Facebook, we hear comments seeking to justify the violence, or perhaps ugly stereotypes about foreigners. It is very difficult to stand up against these things sometimes. I come from a country, Northern Ireland, which has had for half a century a major problem with violent vigilante actions and also a serious history of violence between the main ethnic and religious groups. You are not always popular when you stand up in the name of Jesus Christ to criticise violence, especially when people think you are standing up for outsiders against ‘your own people’. I have experienced this myself often enough! It takes real courage to do this; pray for strength and wisdom if you find yourself in that position.
Let us also be honest that there is a major problem with crime in this country. Yes, there are Nigerian criminals pushing drugs and pimping; and Mozambican criminals doing the same. We also know there are plenty of South Africans committing exactly the same crimes. And there are White European criminals who come here to do similar things. There are criminals in this city who look like me and sound like me. They may not be driving round the streets of Turffontein selling tik to matric students, but they are here because they know this is a country where there is money to be made from crime and a high chance of getting away with it. We must understand people’s anger about this – God is angry when a society allows criminals to get rich by violating the honest citizen. I am angry when I see many things that happen in this country. Again, we must always remember this crime is not the preserve of any single nationality; often the perpetrators of crime are South African and the victims are from other countries. This was the case with much of the criminal looting we saw this week – how can you say you are a vigilante against crime and then steal from a shop you have just burnt?
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus reminded us that to follow Him is to carry his Cross; truly following Christ is very difficult. We are called to love every human being as a creature made in the image of God. But how must we respond when those we are called to love are so profoundly disfiguring the image of God in themselves? How are we to love the drug pushers and the pimps and the corrupt and the rich who manipulate the system to exploit those who are struggling to survive? How do we love those who destroy a shop, and the livelihood and the dreams of a family along with it? How do we love a man who can burn another man alive? I have no simple answer; I do not find this easy. It is here that I must cast myself on God’s strength for I know that I am not strong enough to love with this degree of perfection. I only know that Christians cannot respond to violence with violence, nor can we respond to criminality by putting ourselves outside the law. Jesus Christ showed us this in His life, and he was very firm with his disciples when they wanted to fight fire with fire.
Above all, at this difficult time in this country and around the world, I commend to you all not to pretend that you can live a Christian life in your own strength. When you are feeling weak, when the anger of the injustice and immorality of the society in which you live threatens to consume you, cast yourself on God – and not as someone who thinks he or she is a perfect Christian, demanding rewards for your faithfulness as if your faith was a business contrast. Instead, take up your Cross and come to God honestly in your weakness, in your inability to live fully as Jesus Christ commanded, in your inability to read Scripture as God would wish you to read it, in your inability to stop desiring wealth and adulation from your peers and an easy life. Only then can God use your weakness to display His strength, to use you as a channel for His glory, to steer you away from an easy life to the harder but much more wonderful life that he has intended for you.
Abandon everything you have, be prepared to rethink everything that you thought you believed, and follow Jesus Christ to the Cross, for it is only there that you will find Resurrection and Eternal Life.
Absolutely excellent.