neither truly nor humbly

Below is the opening and essence of our gospel reading from Luke 14 for the upcoming Sunday. The preacher can wrestle it out as the harsh saying it is, or can focus on more pleasant verses that follow, or can preach on something else altogether.

Luke 14:26 "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. 27 Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple."

As shown above and below, this stunning confrontation appears only in Luke, Matthew, and Thomas. Bible scholars like to say the canonical evangelists lifted it from Q (which likely would have been the Luke version). Matthew regards it as too harsh and so softens it a bit by making it comparative instead of absolute:

Matthew 10:37 “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

Thomas (55) Jesus says:  (1)"Whoever does not hate his father and his mother cannot become a disciple of mine.  (2) And whoever does not hate his brothers and his sisters (and) will not take up his cross as I do, will not be worthy of me."

Scholars whom I respect have rated Luke's version almost certainly the exact words of Jesus (except that the follow-on verse about carrying the cross obviously was not said by Jesus but was added decades later, after Easter when the gospels were written down). The hardest of his hard sayings.

In fact, on the premise that the harsher the saying is before editors have a softening hack at it, the more likely it is to be original, it appears to me that Thomas 55:1 is likely Jesus' exact concise original words.

But why? What a hard saying. What to make of it? Everyone, me included, says Oh well, surely Jesus did not mean it as stand-alone absolute, "Whoever does not hate his father and his mother cannot become a disciple of mine," obviously he meant it as Matthew offers it.

And yet, this is Jesus, Son of Mary? Harder than Elijah's call of Elisha, it relates with the story in which Jesus says, "Let the dead bury the dead; as for you, come and follow me."

What's a preaching rationale? It could be that Jesus calls us to drop everything, shed the possessions we love so much, even give up precious relationships, and follow him. But follow him where?

One of our prayers asserts that "the Way of the Cross is the way of life," so follow him in the Way of the Cross as our Way of Life: love God, love neighbor - - where love is agape, which is not a feeling, but how we are with people who are different from us, even people who detest us and whom we naturally despise. Turn our back on all that is dear to us about earthly life, and follow Jesus?

Don't know about you, but I can't do it. Life is Good, and Every Day Is A Beautiful Day, and I just cannot do it and am not going to do it.

All of which brings me to a dead end confronting the Confession of Sin we pray on Sunday mornings:

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.

It's a trap into which we lead ourselves every Sunday morning. The truth is that we are not truly sorry or we would not continue in our selfish ways; and we do not humbly repent, which would mean turning around and going in the opposite direction, which we are not about to do, there ain't no way.

Chief of Sinners, I'll continue in the prayers and the breaking of the bread, I'll keep on leading the congregation in the Confession, and I'll keep on standing and pronouncing the Absolution. But it's quite clear that if we are damned, it's our own fault: damned by the glaring hypocrisy of our own words and inaction.

Which, to ramble on, calls into question what we truly believe and how seriously we take our promises. At a very difficult Time of life eleven years ago, my sister assured and tried to comfort me by saying "some promises can't be kept."

IDK.

RSF&PTL anyway, eh?

image: looking west from 7H last evening