Sermon for 9 September 2001, 10am Holy Communion, St Mary Magdalen, Sheet, published on www.trikeshed.com

Bible reading: Luke 14:25-33

As far as news goes, this has not been a very good week. Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor proclaims that Christianity has been vanquished as a moral force in 21^st century Britain. Christianity is dead, say the headlines. But even that quite shocking story has nothing on the images of those terrified little girls in Ardoyne trying to walk to school through a corridor of riot shields, facing stones and pipe bombs and shouts of hatred. Child abuse on the streets of Belfast. Protestant and Catholic. I would like to have seen cardinals and bishops and moderators joining hands and walking down those streets together. It’s always a heart-wrenching moment, seeing a little child to school on their very first day. I imagine many with little ones starting in reception classes must have wept when they saw those scenes. As a father I found it hard enough; somehow this week in Ardoyne a new low was reached, not worse than Omagh or some of the other terrible violence we have seen, but different, and very depressing.

With such bad and sad news, like many Christians, I turn to the Scriptures for comfort and guidance, and I read this: 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. That’s just great. I do not want to read words of hate. What kind of comfort is this?

Well, this is our faith. This is the man we worship and the book we respect as the word of God. Either we take it seriously or we ignore it. We take it seriously! We know that the family has a very special place in the Bible and in the history of our salvation. Honour your father and mother. And everything that Jesus did was to uphold families, celebrate families, strengthen families, re-unite families. Whereas what Jesus is saying here seems to have more to do with those awful sects that brainwash young people and tear them away from their families? What is going on?

When Jesus says something like this it deserves to be taken seriously, studied with the head as well as taken to heart. So we must try to work out what Jesus was getting at here. I can perhaps offer three suggestions to help us read and understand those words.

First, the fact that the Jewish way of speaking (and the Arab for that matter) is very much to express things in black and white. If you want to say "I like A better than B" you can also say "I love A and hate B" and it would mean the same thing. Here’s an example from the Old Testament: Jacob lay with Rachel and he loved her more than Leah, but in the next sentence, When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he opened her womb. So to "hate your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, your own life" means nothing more than to put them second. It’s interesting to compare the gospels and look at how Matthew writes about the same story. Matthew is good at explaining Jewish ways and he writes, anyone who loves his father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.

But even then what Jesus is saying is pretty tough. There is something a bit sinister in a charismatic man saying "put me first, before yourselves and all those dearest to you". But this demand of Jesus was not something he had just sprung upon them. He had been preparing people for this harsh kind of conflict of allegiance for some time. I am not come to bring peace on earth, but division… Enter by the narrow way… When you give a dinner, don’t invite your family, but invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. Jesus is asking a lot but what he’s asking is completely transparent.

And the third point is that he really did have to get his followers to count the cost. Jesus had won many hearts and performed some amazing miracles. Large crowds were now travelling with Jesus. He had to warn them off the false idea of an easy ride. It’s precisely because Jesus didn’t want to tear up the fabric of society that he said these tough things about counting the cost. He didn’t want to disrupt lives and break up families just for the sake of it. People knew about crucifixion and the victim having to carry his cross. So when Jesus said that was the cost of being a disciple, it was pretty clear discipleship was not going to be easy.

Remember that none of this high cost would be worth it for the sake of an idea, or for a denomination, or for an institution, or even for a group of friends. It could only be worth it for God himself. It could only be worth giving everything up for Jesus if it was for God and to bring his love to the world. Now all that Jesus did, especially in dying and rising again, is the living proof that he is worth this kind of sacrifice.

It is worth thinking back to Northern Ireland and Holy Cross Primary School. If a few people in that situation (I say if, but I’m sure there are some people who are) were able to put their families and their immediate circle into second place, to think across to the other side of those riot shields, to embrace Jesus and his cross and pay whatever it costs, then maybe even now the ways of justice and peace and love could prevail. To give up all for Jesus is not the kind of reckless sacrifice of your body and mind for some crazed religious leader. It’s paying for that pearl of great price, love that goes beyond father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, our own lives. The love that really can be the moral force our nation needs, the way of the Holy Cross.

© Mike Knee, 2001

[Editorial note: The events at the Holy Cross school were the main news item in the UK at the time of this sermon, and would probably have remained so were it not for the terrible events of 11 September 2001, two days later]

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