Hate Is Such a Strong Word

Hate is such a strong word at least that is how the saying goes. I would imagine that parents, teachers, coaches, mentors, and religious leaders have uttered warnings about refraining from saying, “I hate ________” for centuries. But why? Why all the hatred towards hate?

Perhaps people want to avoid the feeling of hatred itself. Maybe human beings fear that hatred will overcome them entirely (see Anakin Skywalker’s transformation into Darth Vader). And yet, when we attempt to ignore or avoid something by quietly sweeping it under the rug, rather than dealing with it, we tend to veer straight towards that object. If we do not want to get angry ignoring our anger is a perfect way to get angrier. The same may apply to hatred. Rarely can we control such strong, existential phenomena as angry, hate, or love. However, what if this is not what is really meant by the word hate?

In this coming Sunday’s Gospel lesson (Luke 14:25-33) Jesus says to large crowds traveling with him, “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.” Hate may be a strong word, but Jesus does not shy away from using it when addressing a mass of humanity following him. Jesus, I believe, was not calling his disciples to some strange practices with harsh rhetoric, but rather was using hate in a much different way than we use the word today.

When Jesus said to hate life itself he was not blithely tossing around a power-packed word, nor was he carelessly dropping the h-bomb (hate-bomb in case you are wondering) to gather attention like an angsty teen. No, Jesus’ use of hate was a morally sophisticated challenge for all those who listened to him speak and even to us today. Hate was not a feeling of dissatisfaction, distaste, or repulsion, but rather the verb Jesus used implied making a decision about one’s life and choices.

The word μισέω (miseó) is the Greek verb meaning to hate (who doesn’t love looking at a Greek word for hate on a Monday morning?), and it is a translation of what we believe Jesus said to the crowds. This word calls one into making a moral choice, as it implies not so much a negative feeling as a preferred value. In other words, Jesus was not asking us to be brats towards our family or to carelessly throw away our lives, but rather he was saying to be a follower of Jesus means elevating that way of existing above everything else—even really good other choices like our spouse. Hate in this regard then is a very strong word and it requires us to examine how we are ordering our lives.

What must you be willing to give up, so that you may more fully be in relationship with God? What must you value more, so that you may deepen your relationship with the Divine? How must you live and move and have your being, such that you instinctively exude the love, peace, forgiveness, and joy of Christ? Hate is a strong word, but it is a word that requires you to make a choice. What do you choose?  

Justin: A Martyr Seeking the Truth

Today, June 1, the Church celebrates the Christian martyr and apologist Justin.

Every once in a while a moment will emerge allowing us to take stock in life. These can be transitional events like a graduation, a marriage, a birth, a move, a new job, a retirement, a change in health, or a death. In thirty days, precisely one month from now, I will get married. And even now I feel myself taking a step back to gain some perspective.

In these reflective moments, I find that we mostly discover that life moved as we anticipated with each step happening in a predictable manner. OKAY, JUST KIDDING! This hardly ever happens. Life does not move in easily foreseeable ways. As the old saying goes, “If you want to hear God laugh, tell God your plans.” We may lull ourselves into a false understanding that we know what today will look like because it is a Wednesday, and all Wednesdays are the same because they all have this thing that happens and that part of my routine and whatever it is that we think makes Wednesday different from Tuesday and Thursday. Sure on the surface this seems apparent, but truthfully it is not the case for Wednesdays, or for Junes, or for entire years. For we are not re-living other parts of life, in fact, there has never been this moment, this day, this week, this month, or this year, so how can it be like anything else?

Life actually moves in unpredictable ways to us humans. We may believe that we chose something, but so often events happen to us, and so we these occurred by happenstance. Later on these seemingly random events though may become the very things that drive us into who we are today, what we are doing today, or the people with whom we share life. I do not subscribe to a belief in coincidence. Strangely in the midst of chaos, God weaves this sort of tapestry that is our collective life together. We cannot always tell what the pattern is until much later in life. This was the case with the second century Christian martyr Justin.

Justin began his life as a Greek-speaking pagan who grew up in the middle of Israel near Shechem. Within him lay this intellectual thirst that drove Justin to seek greater understanding, so he was educated in various Greek philosophies. First, he learned in the school of the Cynics. Then, he moved on to studies in Pythagorean thought. Finally, Justin found wisdom in Platonism. This movement through Greek philosophies only gave him a deeper desire for the Truth.

One day when Justin was walking on a beach in Ephesus, he happened upon a stranger. This old man told him of Jesus fulfilling all the prophets of the Old Testament. This coupled with the impression that Christian Martyrs made on Justin lit a flame within this seeker’s heart. All the bouncing around from one philosophy to another had not been random, but had put Justin into a precise moment when God spoke to him through this man on the beach of Ephesus.

Justin went on to start a school of Christian philosophy beginning in Ephesus, then moving to Rome. In this school Justin did not discount the traditions that had brought him to his acceptance of Christ Jesus as the Ultimate Truth. Instead he wrote that Platonism especially can serve as a teacher that will lead us to know Christ. Justin’s three surviving works give to us today a knowledge of Christian practices of his time, as well as an understanding of the development of Christian philosophy during the second century.

During a public debate in Rome Justin accused a Cynic philosopher named Crescens of being both oblivious and unethical. Instead of fighting back in the debate Crescens took up a legal case against Justin, which led to the arrest of not only Justin, but also six of his students. The Roman prefect gave the Christians an opportunity to deny their Faith in Jesus, but they did not and were subsequently put to death around June 1, 167.

The witness of Justin serves us well today. We may look at the events of our lives as random. We can even allow ourselves to believe that we are somehow in control of the things that happen around us and to us. However, in hindsight we clearly see through the lens of Faith that God weaves together the diverse strands of our lives into the larger pattern that is Ultimate Truth. Justin sought the Truth and articulated that it is present not exclusively within the Judeo-Christian Tradition. Christ’s life, death, and Resurrection extend to all parts of Creation such that Truth is not solely possessed in one place, one people, or one period. Instead, the healing, uniting, and loving works of God in Christ Jesus sent shock waves of Truth throughout all time and space.

Take a moment to take stock, to reflect, and to look back. How has the Truth been woven into your story? What has propelled your life to this very moment? In what ways have diverse threads been tied together to reveal the pattern that is life in Christ?

EUREKA

Audio of sermon can be found here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/dfc_attachments/public/documents/3201704/Olson_010715_Wed_Noon_Eureka.MP3

Have you ever had a “eureka moment”? You know what I am talking about, right? When something clicks into place for the first time. A time when something becomes clear that was not so clear just a moment ago. Where does it come from?

I got curious about the word itself. Eureka has become an English word, but originally it meant something a little different in the Greek. “I found it,” that’s what eureka means, and the great mathematician Archimedes gets credit for first saying it. Of course, the moment when he said it is more fascinating to me. Archimedes stepped into a bath tub when he realized that the water level rose as his body’s mass sunk beneath the surface, thus he discovered the law of water displacement. Only a mathematician would shout out loud, “I FOUND IT! EUREKA!” when discovering a law in the bathtub.

Have you ever had a eureka moment? A moment when something becomes apparent for the first time. Maybe it was when you first fell in love with your spouse. Perhaps it was that time when you first fell out of love with someone. A eureka moment could be when you happened upon your life’s great passion, or when you came to connect with God in a deeper way.

Yesterday in the Church we remembered a collective eureka moment, the day of Epiphany. Epiphany is another old word that means revelation or manifestation, and it is the time when we celebrate the Incarnate God in the person of Jesus being revealed as messiah to a people outside of his own tradition. This is our collective eureka moment. We most closely connect the Epiphany with the story of the Magi, three wise men from the East following a star, so that they could bestow gifts upon a child savior, but strangely enough today’s story is another Epiphany moment, another eureka!

A professor in seminary once wondered aloud about today’s gospel lesson. She said, “What does it say about John’s gospel account that the first of Jesus’ miracles that he writes down is turning water into wine at a wedding feast in Cana?” “Is he a drunk?” I thought. “Does John just really love wine? Maybe he’s a big proponent of preparing for wedding feasts?” Of course, what my professor was going for is that Our God is abundant and loves to celebrate with us. Hold onto those two revelations from this story for a moment because we need to explore what happens between Jesus and his mother to fully observe this epiphany.

The way that John records this story strikes me as peculiar, at least upon first reading. “There was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.” John needs for us to know that Mary is there. Then he tells us that Jesus and his disciples were there. “When the wine gave out,” the story continues with a twist in the plot introducing us to some drama, Mary says, “They have no wine.” At this moment I am struck that Mary takes on someone else’s problem. This is not her son’s wedding. She could have left this problem alone, but instead she turns to Jesus.

Now, I am not opposed to taking our problems to Jesus, but I do not think that is the eureka moment. This is not what we are seeking to find. Jesus responds to his mother almost coldly, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” If I talked to my dearest darling mother in this way, I would get at least a death stare if not worse. Yet, what Jesus does here is fascinating. He does not urgently panic about what to do, nor does he immediately coddle his mother or the stewards or the bride and groom. His mother also does not get defensive about how Jesus speaks to her, instead she simply says, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Mary has faith in her son that he will do the will of God. Jesus though is not a magic eraser, he’s not Mr. Fix-it, nor is he some magician who waves a wand over the problems of the world. That is not why God became incarnate.

Jesus was a Jewish man, but for him to ask the servants to fill the jars of purification with water was a big no-no. In this moment he reveals a true miracle: Yes, it is turning water into wine! Yes, it is producing enough wine to open up a Galilean winery! Yes, it is helping the celebration of two people coming together in marriage to continue late into the night! Yet, it is even more than this. Jesus transforms the rite of purification into a moment of celebration. Jesus initiates his ministry with this first miracle not to solve a problem that is not really a problem, but to show that He is God and our God is a God of plenty and festivity.

This is the eureka moment! We have found God and Our God is not just here for purification, but for celebration. Our God is not just here for fixing problems, but for responding to even our small concerns with great richness. And our response to this Epiphany should be following mother Mary’s words, “Do whatever he tells you.” In this time of year when we recognize God’s manifestation as Savior of all people let us observe God’s abundance, celebration, and presence all around us and even within us.