Coffee With God

Reflection: Luke 14: 25-33

Corporate planners and management trainers would insist to always make positive statements instead of negatives. Anything that begins with “Don’t” or “No” is not much appreciated. To the standards of today’s management strategists, Jesus’ plan was a failure from the start! How could he draw up his masterplan for recruiting his disciples by such strange and negative requirements? Today’s passage presents three conditions for discipleship and they are non-negotiable! If you don’t hate everyone else, if you don’t carry your own cross, and if you don’t give up everything you have, then you cannot be a disciple of Christ! Wait a moment! Did we not say that we are disciples of Jesus? Take time to go back to the gospel of today. Jesus has some message for us. Discipleship of Christ does not come free of cost; it involves a price. Evangelist Luke deliberates on the price of discipleship. If not careful with the reading, the passage could lead to some wrong understanding of the teaching of Jesus. The text proposes that the requirement for discipleship is ‘to hate’ father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters and even one’s own life. How would we understand this exhortation “to hate”, when throughout the rest of the Gospel, we find Jesus command his disciples to love even the enemies and to pray for those who persecute. This command “to hate” seems totally unchristian! Jesus does not recommend a literal abandonment of one’s family. That could be an act of irresponsibility and a violation of that commandment of love. It is rather a dramatic way of saying that anyone who puts any person, even those closest to them, before total commitment to Christ and his mission is not ready to be a disciple. You do not give anything to the Lord until you give him everything. There is no middle way, it is either total or nothing. This is the cost of discipleship. Jesus speaks of the new family that he establishes for the people who listen to and accept his Word. Remember when the Mother of Jesus together with his brothers came to meet Jesus, he pointed towards those who were listening to him and said, here are my Mother, brothers and sisters. The only criteria to become a member of the family of Jesus is to listen to the Word of God and keep it. Again, when a woman from among the crowd shouts praising the mother of Jesus, his response was also exactly the same: ‘Those who hear the Word of God and keep it are even more blessed’