“Hate-preaching” – Unfromme thoughts to Luke 14,26-27

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If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife […], Yes, even his own life hate, he cannot be my Disciple. Whoever does not bear his cross, and follow me, cannot be my Disciple. (Lk 14,26-27)

His hate… A provocation that has it.

“I hate you all!” Door and get away. “Away from here!”

The hot outburst of anger pubescent teenager most of the families know. “I hate you!” is an expression of Rebellion against the Old, against their expectations and standards, against the everyday life that you embody.

“Hate father and mother, your closest friends, or even yourself, if you want to be my student!” – a dangerous, seductive sentence, a claim, the life is attacking in its radicalism, the foundations of human together. What remains, when the hatred between children and parents, between spouses, or the self-hatred becomes a permanent condition? Smashed, ruined lives.

A terrible claim, these words, destructive, and totalitarian.

Jesus of Nazareth has spoken so. Such a scandalous Statement sticks in the memory. Elsewhere, in Matthew, that sounds like you, but there is, as it were, tamed: he Who loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me! (10,37). What is the difference between the required hatred, and a More-or-Less to love!

Hatred as the condition for inclusion in the school of Jesus. The teacher as a hate-preacher. Since it runs the Christians people cold on the back. Not at all: An attacker as a teacher.

How to deal with such a sentence, as a reminder. The translation variants in the popular Bible editions show the effort to get the “hate” in the handle. The parish of St. Luke, or he has enclosed this evil by means of another idea: Who does not take his cross and follow me cannot be my Disciple. Now it comes to allegiance until death, to the willingness of the hatred of a violent world to deliver as the teachers themselves. A subtle perpetrator-victim-reversal.

The Hate seems to be harder acceptable than the cross. Generations with the word of the Cross the troubles of the family and everyday life stood by: “It is already a cross with the… and the…”. The bears and endures as a pious Christian man in Jesus ‘ successor. But to hate for the sake of Jesus, seems to be intolerable and absurd.

His hate – There is me thinking that Jesus was not, according to Tradition, not a family man, he cared for the expectations and demands of its closest Relatives: Who is my mother and who are my brothers… (cf. Mk 3,31-33). What do we know about his family? That he was a child born out of wedlock (Matthew 1: 18)? Him its own nationals for crazy explained (Mk 3,20-21)? As it is, it was not a “Holy family” in Nazareth or wherever: For the Relatives and for Jesus, probably not (cf. Mk 3,20-21). His “Holy family” were the ones that he has to draw itself, and to be able to bind. The tax collectors and the whores were including, it is said, a city well-known sinner, and stemming from the wives. And his father? In The Sky! Binding to him was his confinement from the family of origin. Binding to him was his emancipation from the conventional life, made him a habitat and a Form of freedom: live under the sky without possession and without hedging, the risk in reliance on the “dad” up there.

Sure this is only a facet in the image of the Lord Jesus, the drawing of the earliest evidence. But it is surprising how little is taken this aspect seriously. How often (Christmas is coming faster than you think – ) is summoned to the Holy father-mother-child family, and no one is to disturb the Idyll. In ecclesiastical synods, and the teaching of the Holy father-mother-child be able to write-family, so to speak, of the divine standard.

Nothing against families. You are, and the power source remain for many of the emotional your whole life. For others, however, they can be fatal, the to not escape is.

Where but in the Church and among Christian people, the father-mother-child-claimed family as the only sacred Form of life, communities, and others, to be devalued any kind of binding relationships, and exclusion because of the “hatred of driving in between-sermon” of Jesus: In the views of the father in heaven, also other ratios are possible, wanted and sanctified.

 

About The Author:

Dr. theol. Hildegard king, apl. Professor of Church history at the Institute for Catholic theology at the TU Dresden. Lives in Chemnitz.

 

 

 

 

Editorial Responsibility: Martin Cords, Catholic Radio Representative