Of course, I aim to lead a life that is not either/or but both/and. My favorite sport of soccer can end in not two, but three ways: a win, a loss, or a draw. When someone asks questions like: Pepsi or Coke? Simp’s or Railyard? Mountains or Beach? I want to answer both, of course!
Life is not typically an either/or choice. Life is not even a multiple choice test. Almost always more than one way exists to the problem of skinning a cat, or solving another challenge. With this preexisting belief I always find it troubling when at first glance Jesus lays out an either/or choice, like in today’s Gospel lesson.
Clearly Jesus articulates a dichotomous pathway of discipleship in this text. He said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” His words sound crystal clear: choose me or choose your family. These words have a troubling tone when they hit my ear.
Being 45 days until our due date, I struggle with God Incarnate saying that I either have to choose Jesus or my unborn baby boy. This seems cruel. I am sure we all have a family member or two—think of that crazy uncle or that annoying cousin—that we would gladly leave behind for Jesus. Still I find it so challenging that Jesus outlines the way of faith being exclusionary to loving our family. But, is that what he really said?
When Matthew and his community came together to write down the Good News of Jesus they did so in a very particular context. In its most infantile stage, many believed the Way of Christ was simply an offshoot of Judaism. These ragtag followers of Jesus believed some outrageous things that many Jewish people struggled to comprehend. Namely, these disciples thought that the hope of the People of God had actually come to earth, he had fulfilled all the law and the prophets, and his victory was fulfilled in the shameful death Jesus died on the cross. I can understand why some people of Israel would have given early Christians an odd glance or two. Many members of the Early Church would have thus been standing up to their parents, or perhaps the other way around with parents converting as their children wanted to keep the way of the Torah. In this world then, an either/or choice seemingly existed: Family or Jesus.
Jesus though did not stop with his statement on family. He continued saying, “Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Buried in this statement about taking up the cross, following Jesus, and losing one’s life for Christ’s sake—buried in this statement—a mysterious kernel hides that pushes us to see the aforementioned choice of family or Jesus differently. The way of the Cross stands out as profoundly difficult, requiring one’s entire life, and at the same time filled with overabundance from God’s bounteous grace!
The way of the Cross actually pushes us beyond the either/or way of seeing the world. We could be presumptuous believing that Jesus only had a couple of choices when it came to the cross; however, I believe this belief is false. Jesus could have become a victim in the moment—taking on the suffering of the cross to an unhealthy point and identifying as one who was persecuted. Jesus could have become a victimizer in the Resurrection—taking out revenge on those who had killed him. And yet, he did neither. Jesus walked a third way neither becoming victim nor victimizer, but instead redeeming the world through self-emptying love. When Jesus asks us to pick up our crosses and follow him we are not being asked to make an either/or choice. No, instead we must do something much harder.
The way of Jesus requires us to give up our old way of seeing the world and living in it. We must take up the sword that Jesus speaks of not to cut others and certainly not to inflict physical harm. Instead, God calls us to discern how we might more closely follow Christ by cutting away material items, unhealthy relationships, selfish tendencies, and all that only serves to build us and our egos up. We must practice a type of living martyrdom in which we give up what we would otherwise be doing, so that Christ may live within us, through us, and between us. This is impossibly hard though and we will fail over and over again. And still we must keep going.
The world around us would have us to believe that everything is either/or: black or white, male or female, rich or poor, old or young, weak or strong, hungry or full, Muslim or Christian, us or them. And yet, we find even within our Scripture for today an example of God destroying all the binary boundaries that we so fiercely put into place, so that God could bring salvation to Hagar and Ishmael the ancestors of Muhammad, the founder of Islam.
When Father Abraham and Mother Sarah had finally conceived and bore Isaac a tension arose around Ishmael being in their household. In fact, Sarah could not stand to look upon Hagar, so the handmaid was sent on her way with enough supplies to make a short journey. When Hagar walked away from her son she had given up on life, but God had not given up on her. Though she was in the lowest station of that day—a woman, a mother without a husband, a servant, and a person without land or a support system—God not only spoke to her, but he brought about her salvation!
God will always find a way to break down the barriers of either/or that we set up in our world. The question is are we going to help God to break down those boundaries to co-create the ways beyond choice A) or B)? Love is not a finite resource. While we might be mere mortals we have within us the eternal resource of God’s unconditional love that calls us to love God by loving family, friend, neighbor, and stranger!
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