giving up, giving back

Luke 14:25-33 contains some of the truly “hard sayings” of Jesus. In particular I note two parallel statements in three sentences which frame the stories Jesus tells to illustrate the meaning of following him (discipleship). Those statements, two sentences at the beginning and one at the end of the text, are:

“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. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (vv. 26-27).

“So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions (v. 33).

The main reason for seeing these statements as parallel, of course, is that they both pronounce requirements for following Jesus, framed in the negative. “Whoever . . . does not hate father and mother . . .”, “Whoever does not carry the cross . . . cannot be . . .”, “ . . . none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up . . ..” What one cannot be, of course, without doing what Jesus commands is—in all three sentences—his “disciple.”

If, therefore, we see them as parallel, then we also begin to see the connection between those different “things” which Jesus tells the “large crowds traveling with him” (v. 25) that they must forsake. In other words, there is some connection between “hating” family members and “giving up” possessions. Indeed, though we may more readily accept—in theory if not in practice—that we should give up material possessions on which we have become dependent to our destruction, we are less likely to regard our beloved family members as possessions to be given up. We are very likely, in fact, to see our loving duty as precisely not to give them up, to keep them close, to protect them at all costs. In other words, even if we do not regard family members as possessions, we are inclined to treat them as such. We treat “father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself” as possessions. We regard our relationships with others as things to be possessed, held on to, maintained at all costs. Jesus calls us to “give them up”, release them, set them free.

Good relationships progress because they are free. The best relationships are those which we did not expect, those in which we found ourselves loving a person we did not set out to love. This does not mean that we set out not to love them; it simply means that we had no intention for the relationship itself, no expectations of where it might lead. We began to relate to a person free of requirements, pressures molding the relationship into a preconceived form. The moment we awake, however, to the goodness of relationship, is the moment we begin to possess it. The experience of love creates the desire to love more, and the desire to love more—beyond where we have even now loved—becomes the expectation toward which we strive to steer the relationship. The relationship becomes a thing possessed, an object of our control.

Because the goodness of relationship is the gift of God—pure grace, that which we did not expect, that which we could not create—our attempts to control it will destroy it. That which is created free cannot live possessed. Jesus says we must “give it up”, release it from our control, forfeit our expectations of it. The good news, however, is that our “giving it up” is really “giving it back”—into the hands of the loving God. God wants us, like Abraham with Isaac, to give up that which is most precious; God knows that is the only way we will remain in love.

-Joe