ST. MARY’S SEMINARY AND UNIVERSITY
JESUS AND FAMILY VALUES:
A STUDY IN LUKE’S GOSPEL
A THESIS SUBMITTED TO:
THE ECUMENICAL INSTITUTE OF THEOLOGY
IN CANDIDACY OF THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS IN THEOLOGY
[NOTE FROM WEBSITE EDITOR: IN THE CONVERSION OF THIS THESIS FROM WORDPERFECT TO WORD FOR THE PURPOSE OF LOADING TO THE WEBSITE, CHANGES AUTOMATICALLY OCCUR IN SOME PARAGRAPH INDENTATIONS, FOOTNOTE STYLE, ETC. THEREFORE, THE DOCUMENT DOES NOT APPEAR HERE EXACTLY AS SUBMITTED TO ST. MARY’S SEMINARY AND UNIVERSITY.]
BY
SARAH STEVENS-RAYBURN
BALTIMORE, MARYLANDMAY, 1998
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1
Chapter 1: Family and Family Values
6
Chapter 2: The Family in Jesus’ Day
12
Chapter 3: Jesus and His Own Family
31
Luke 2:41-52 - Jesus in the temple
31
Luke 8:19-21 - Who are my family?
36
Chapter 4: Discipleship as Family
42
Luke 9:57-62 - Let the dead bury their own dead
42
Luke 12:49-53 - The time of judgment
49
Luke 14:25-33 - The cost/conditions of discipleship
56
Summary
63
Chapter 5: Jesus, Family Values, and the Religious Right
64
Who are the Religious Right?
65
What’s right with the Right?
70
Family values in Luke
73
Alternatives to the Religious Right
78
WORKS CONSULTED
84
1
INTRODUCTION
On a hot summer's day in 1993, on a rocky corner lot in one of the more depressed neighborhoods in Baltimore, a group of some 200 people from around the country raised their voices in song:
You took a solitary people
And put them together in a family;
You broke the chains that have bound us so long,
And your love has made us free.They sang with an unrestrained joy, a feeling of connection, conviction, and commitment that God had brought them together thus, and they really have become “family.” They had come from near and far to work together on a Habitat for Humanity “Blitz Build Week.” At the beginning of the week, many had been strangers in a strange land. Most had little experience of poverty or any understanding of what subsistence living is all about. They spent their week working side by side with neighborhood residents, gutting hundred-year-old rowhouses and beginning the slow process of rebuilding them from the inside out. By the end of the week, they held hands and exchanged hugs as they sang in the sure knowledge they had been knit together into a real “family,” the one into which they had been baptized, usually years before. A not dissimilar feeling of connection, conviction, and commitment has been reported by the thousands of men called together in Washington, DC in October 1997 to pray together as “Promise Keepers,” and these gathered Christians spoke at length about wanting to renew their faith and commitment to “family.”
What is family? What does it mean in terms of who we are as the people of God and who we want to be? There has been much talk in popular culture and in religious circles in recent years about “family values.” What often appears to be implied by this phrase is some
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strict, uncompromising code of behavior, allegedly based on biblical precepts, often with the implication that the teachings of Jesus reflect this code and that deviation therefrom surely leads down the path to perdition and eventual damnation. Yet, among the first group of people mentioned above are those that many of the current proponents of family values would condemn — present that summer day were “families” that surely stretch any commonly accepted definition: gay, divorced, blended, single moms, and single dads. By what definition of the word family can they be defining themselves? Could they possibly be basing their definition on an understanding of what the single man, Jesus, had to say about family? This is what we will explore in the following chapters.
Our aim is to look at what Jesus had to say about discipleship and family, specifically in the gospel of Luke, and to see how Jesus’/Luke’s understanding of family accords with certain current religious/political understandings of family values.(1) As James Dunn has suggested, “How Jesus spoke and acted within the social structures and everyday life is bound to provide some sort of definitive paradigm or principles for his followers, however much that paradigm or those principles were conditioned by time and culture.(2) From our reading of the gospels and especially the Lukan passages below, it seems clear that Jesus calls for a subordination of household and family ties to his call to discipleship. Yet there are many in contemporary American society who project a belief that the good of the family is a higher good than any other. Would Jesus recognize his own teachings in those being promulgated today,
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especially by those on the Religious Right? How does Jesus’ understanding of allegiance and service to God translate into current understandings of what it means to be a Christian? Is there a difference between the concept of discipleship in the teachings of Jesus and in those of the Religious Right? Are there points in common between the Religious Right’s interpretation of family responsibility and Jesus’ message?
Luke’s gospel is especially significant for a study such as this because of his emphasis on the disenfranchised in his society and because he showed cognizance of the broader political world in which Jesus lived. As Jim Wallis, social activist, lay theologian, and founder of the Sojourners’ community, has said, “The gospel is biased in favor of the poor and oppressed. It presents a call to the church — that body that is most dynamic when it is most a minority living in radical contradiction to the values of the world by its proclamation and demonstration of a whole new order called the kingdom of God."(3) By the time of Luke’s gospel, it seemed likely that the parousia was not going to be “next Tuesday” as the very early Christians believed, so it became more important to integrate the gospel message with society. Ray Barraclough speaks of Luke “see[ing] the church’s existence as oriented less to the eschaton and more to its position in Heilsgeschichte and in relation to the world.(4) Given that this is an even more critical question for us today and that the Religious Right seems somewhat disinclined to be sympathetic to society’s disenfranchised, Luke’s perspective is likely to provide insights that one might miss by concentrating on the other synoptic gospels.
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We will begin with a brief look at family and family values as expressed in our culture. Our look will examine what sometimes seems to be cultural confusion about what family is, especially as it relates to Christian faith. This will be followed by examining the family in the first-century middle east, particularly in Palestine, to situate Jesus and Luke in their historical contexts. Next, we shall explore five of Luke’s references to family to try to discern any specific pattern or understanding of how Jesus viewed family and the ways in which his disciples (and by extension ourselves) should relate to one another. Our final chapter will first explore the Religious Right’s understanding of family responsibilities and of their scriptural underpinnings. It will then attempt to draw some conclusions about what the Right is saying and how their assertions do or do not accord with the picture we have drawn from Luke’s gospel.
A brief note is called for here to explain what this thesis is not. It is not a survey or even an outline of an international understanding of family and family values. Our focus is rather on that entity and those attributes as they exist in contemporary America. Likewise, some of what we say about fundamentalism as represented by the Religious Right in America may also be applicable to religious fundamentalism as it is expressed in other parts of the world today, especially Israel and Iran, but such comparisons are beyond the scope of the current undertaking. When we speak of “fundamentalism” therefore, we refer specifically to those Christians on the conservative side of both the religious and the political spectra in the contemporary United States. A further description of this specific group will be found in chapter five.(5)
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CHAPTER 1
Family and Family Values
Peter Gomes, in a recent book aimed at laypeople on the use and abuse of the Bible, says that those in the Christian temperance movement thought they were “reading the signs of the times through the lenses of the Bible,” but that they were, in fact, “attempting to read the Bible through the lenses of the signs of the times."(6) The prohibitionists were certainly not the first generation of believers to do this and will certainly not be the last. Nonetheless, it is incumbent that all believers try to read the scriptures with an eye to understanding and letting the scriptures speak, rather than trying to impose a meaning on them that may be more wish than fact. The danger of using the wrong lenses applies to fundamentalist and liberal alike. The importance of trying to hear the word of God clearly in our scriptures cannot be overestimated; the danger of our hearing and seeing through the filter of our own desires similarly cannot be underestimated.
“Family values” is an odd sort of phrase. What is it, if anything, that distinguishes family values from, say, Christian values, or Islamic values, or democratic values? Indeed, what is the distinction from values in general? Webster’s(7) defines “value” as “relative worth, utility,
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or importance: degree of excellence”; the word has an intrinsically positive meaning. One can then make a bit of a leap and suggest that family values are those that emphasize the importance of the family. Urofsky and May provide a concise description of family values as they are understood in contemporary America. They distinguish the idea of mutual familial nurture and support from the more politically charged phrase bandied about today:
Yet another kind of “family values” has emerged as the convenient shorthand in the 1990s for a political agenda of the Christian Right and its conservative allies. This set of “family values” include selective state intervention in private life, policies that emphasize “responsibility” rather than assistance, and a renewed celebration of feminine domesticity and nurture.(8)
Before we can hope to gain any real understanding of what family values may mean outside of or independent from such a politically-charged definition, especially as the phrase may have meaning in connection with Jesus, we must look at a much more fundamental question: What is family? Interestingly enough, the first definition in the dictionary for family is “fellowship” and definition 2 says merely that family is “a group of persons of common ancestry.” Note there is no mention of spousal relationships at all until we get to definition 5: “the basic unit in society having as its nucleus two or more parents living together and cooperating in the care and rearing of their own or adopted children."(9)
Our current understanding of family is deeply rooted in what we believe the Bible has to say about its importance and centrality to the godly life. John Sommerville traces the beginnings of this rootedness in an enlightening essay on religious movements, showing a not so subtle shift
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in the church/family lenses or perspective.(10) He first points out that “from the very beginning there was a certain tension between the Christian movement and the contemporary family,” but that
by the time the Church was accepted as an institution of Roman life, in the fourth century, it had become the spokesman for the family. Lactantius, at the beginning of that century, offered the Church’s theoretical defense of the family. . . . He looked forward to a withering away of the state, as the Christian family became the model of a new, classless and non-coercive society, bound together by love. . . .
By the fourteenth century . . . most masses were said privately, at the request of the family and for the sake of family members. Those requested for the dead suggest something like a cult of living family members in the service of their ancestors. Can one imagine a greater transformation of the original impulse of the Christian movement? Jesus had said to let the dead bury the dead. By now the Church was primarily concerned with burying the family’s dead.(11)
As Sommerville indicates, Lactantius’ vision was not to be. Not only did society become more and not less coercive but, in many ways, the family took its behavioral cue from society, rather than vice versa.
This tension between the Christian movement and the contemporary family has had a long history and continues into the present day. The Reverend Canon John Kitagawa spoke recently of being a visitor to a Japanese church in which parishioners shared what it meant to choose to become a Christian in a non-Christian society. Talking with the Church members reminded Canon Kitagawa of his Japanese grandfather:
When he became a Christian, Chiyokichi Kitagawa was cut off from all contact with his family. He was, in effect, disinherited. In Japan, not being a member of a family is like being a non-person. For it is through the family that one gains identity and place in the
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social structure. In Japan, the choice to become a Christian is to risk all ties with one’s history and identity, and to risk subtle forms of discrimination.(12)
There are other contemporary views of family and what it is and means, as we can see from some additional examples. We see among some members of groups like the “Promise Keepers” a yearning to return to family life as Sommerville described of the fourth century, with the Church as spokesperson. Some Promise Keepers, like Lactantius, long for a day in which there would be a clearly defined, biblically ordained hierarchy of responsibility and power, with the Christian family as its model and ideal. Within such a hierarchy, there would be no question about who makes decisions and how they are to be made; right or wrong, at least there would no question about who is in charge.
Many of today’s fundamentalists see the family and the church as a power base, a way of brokering power in order to achieve a particular, specifically political, end. The distorted lenses of which Gomes speaks turn what ought to be a mutuality of love and support within the family into a power struggle that plays itself out in the political arena and presents to non- believers a view of the faithful that is a far cry from the community encouraged by Jesus. Peter Wehner, in an article last year in the Washington Post, says:
Assume you had never read the New Testament and were asked to draw some conclusions about Christianity based on the conduct and statements of today’s many political active Christians, on both sides of the spectrum. You would probably conclude that Christ and His followers spent a lot of time forming coalitions, networking among the politically powerful and writing laws; that in order to advance His “social agenda,” Christ demanded political access, influence and a “place at the table” and that the best way, as He saw it, to re-moralize Jewish and Roman society was to become rulers of the nations.(13)
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What Wehner does not say, but very well could have, is that not only do these alleged Christians want a “place at the table,” they also wish to define who should be allowed at that table and who should be back in the kitchen preparing the repast. As we shall see in the chapters ahead, the only political agenda that Jesus pursued was that which he understood as coming from his divine Parent, and he was supportive of family and family values only insofar as they were supportive of what he perceived to be the call to obedience to God. A major part of Jesus’ “political agenda” was a deep understanding of the nature of discipleship.
Charles Talbert sees several dimensions to discipleship in Luke-Acts which have special bearing on our study of family values:
[Discipleship] involves a detachment from all other allegiances and a total allegiance to Jesus; . . . repentance and baptism in the name of Jesus . . . that is, detachment from old ties and attachment to a new authority; . . . submission to the will and purpose of the living Lord . . . and obedience to the heavenly vision.(14)
Talbert goes on to lay strong emphasis on the communal nature of true discipleship that has significance for our work here:
Luke resists the type of reductionism so characteristic of much contemporary Christianity. On the one hand, in Luke-Acts discipleship cannot be reduced to mission: it also involves formation. But neither can it be reduced to formation: it involves mission. It is not either formation or mission in Luke-Acts; it is both/and. On the other hand, the Lukan view of discipleship has no place for a Robinson Crusoe Christian: discipleship is communal. Neither does Luke have room for an “enthusiastic” Christian. . . . Discipleship is lived out in this world and is shaped by the tradition of Jesus and the apostles.(15)
In the chapters dealing with specific Lukan passages, we shall see that the importance of community in defining the parameters of discipleship cannot be sidestepped and that community must, by definition, be wider than our sectarian interests would desire or dictate. Family values,
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for the Christian, must be closely tied up with those values we take from our scriptures, but they must be carefully interpreted so that the lenses of our contemporary lives do not distort our visual acuity. Let us therefore look at what we know of family in Jesus’ day before we see what Luke’s Jesus has to say on the subject.
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CHAPTER 2
The Family in Jesus’ Day
Before attempting to look at the family in first-century Palestine, we need to do some preliminary examination of “family” in general. To assist in that effort, we will first look at a contemporary event that caught the hearts and imaginations of many of those who have grappled with what it means to be part of a family. This will be followed by a discussion of the difficulties inherent in attempting to describe an entity such as “family,” the meaning of which, as we saw in the introduction, can be quite different to diverse people, groups, or cultures.
On November 7, 1995, the family of the confessed murderer of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin send the following statement to Mr. Rabin’s widow, Leah:
To the Rabin family.
A great tragedy has befallen us and the entire people of Israel with our son’s murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (of blessed memory).
The loathsome murder caused the people of Israel and us a terrible tragedy that shook to its foundation the education and values we have taught to our children — love for the Jewish people, respect for one’s fellow man, love for the country and for Jewish values.
Deeply ashamed, mourning and with bowed head, we ask for forgiveness and absolution from Mrs. Rabin, from the (Rabin) family and from all the people of Israel, and hereby declare our rejection of all acts of violence!!!
Once again, we ask for forgiveness and absolution.
The Amir family
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Parents, brothers and sisters(16)
The following day, Geula Amir went one step further and publicly renounced her son on Israeli TV.(17) As Americans, it is difficult for us to understand this sequence of events. Certainly if a member of one of our families does a despicable act, we are (usually) ready to be sure that she or he accepts responsibility for that act, but we are also alarmingly ready to probe the depths of what could have led them to such behavior and to find a culprit outside of the individual or the family.(18)
What is family? What, in the history and/or psyche of Amir’s family, led them to their radical renunciation of their son and brother? We as Christians have always admired and been somewhat in awe of the strength of Jewish families, their visible sharing of their common heritage in the feasts and fasts of the Jewish year, and their resilience even after millennia of persecution and oppression. We have believed that they have survived at least in part because of the strength of their family ties. To examine and try to understand the kind of family that felt it necessary, indeed obligatory, to renounce one of its members, we have to go back in time, for the modern Jewish family is deeply rooted in the family of first-century Palestine. It is what it is
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today because of what it was then. Just as Israel’s struggle for peace today is a continuation of its struggle from its earliest days, so its understanding of family is equally tied to that heritage.
There is some danger, however, in looking at family life today, imposing that back 2000 years, and then saying what is now was also then, except that we have indoor plumbing. In an article on the history of the family in the recent Encyclopedia of Marriage and the Family, Stephanie Coontz says, “Generalizations about 'the' history of 'the' family require extreme caution, since family forms, relationships, values, and even definitions have varied tremendously across cultures and over time."(19) Mariam Peskowitz, as part of an insightful essay on the family in antiquity, speaks of the limitations of the “always already perception of the family."(20) “Most scholars of 'the family' in late antiquity have assumed that we already know what the family is,” she says, “and so have proceeded to catalogue differences and anomalies among families, within the same culture and between different cultures. The family is often assumed to be a universal human structure, with relatively superficial modifications . . . ."(21) Certainly on the surface, such assumptions sound reasonable, but if we consider, for instance, the changes in American family life in the past 200, or even 20, years, we can see there are real dangers in sweeping statements that family is family is family. The culture in which we live cannot help but have an enormous influence on the ways in which families intra-act among themselves and interact with non-family members. Carolyn Osiek asks, “What did "family" mean to the inhabitants of the Mediterranean shores in the imperial period? Historians agree that whatever the term meant, it did not mean
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what it means to most Westerners.(22) John Meier says specifically that “ "family" meant something very different in ancient Palestine than it does in contemporary middle-class society in the United States today,"(23) and Peskowitz points out, “broad references to 'the Jewish family in late antiquity' generally contain more unexamined stereotype than arguable fact."(24) Nonetheless, we shall make a few such “broad references” in order to try to get a grasp on the first-century Palestinian family.
Before making those references, however, we need also to make a few remarks about the sources of information concerning family life in that period: there are not many, and those that exist are widely scattered. That is to say, there are no one or two definitive sources to which one may turn for information on the period.(25) Furthermore, predating the sociologists and psychologists by a few millennia, the sources that do exist must be understood to have certain filters through which they are viewing the society about which they speak. As Peskowitz describes it, one needs to understand that
[F]amilies existed in plural sociological and social historical forms; perceptions of “family” depend on who is perceiving, and on the social location and ideological conditions of the perceiver; that “family” is a cultural construction, often implicated in a web of all sorts of social and religious concerns; and that families are inextricably connected to gender relations.(26)
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Indeed, one such filter is gender bias. Since, from what we can tell, all of the preserved writings from that era are of male authorship,(27) we at least need to be aware of the possibility of bias, that the lenses through which those authors viewed the world have a slight (or even not so slight) built-in aberration. Ross Kraemer asserts that “the androcentric lenses through which we are forced to see antiquity systematically distort the realities of women’s lives."(28) Similarly, in order to evaluate his writings more accurately, we need to be aware that the first-century historian Josephus was reflective of the conquering Romans with whom he had thrown his lot. Paul and other authors of early Christian scriptures were more often making a point about what it meant to follow Jesus and what the imminent end of the world demanded in terms of family responsibilities than they were trying to present a realistic portrait of everyday life.(29)The authors of that library of materials we call the Dead Sea Scrolls were also often writing of an ideal of behavior among people that was perhaps more hopeful than actual.
In addition to these witnesses who lived in and around the first century, we can often extrapolate at least broad outlines of lifestyle by seeing what features of family life are described in the Hebrew scriptures composed several hundred years before Christ and the rabbinic literature recorded more than a hundred years afterward.(30) Thus the Deuteronomist’s exhortation
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to Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you (Deut. 5:16) becomes in the Talmud of the sixth century an obligation/duty to provide “parents with food, drink, cloth, and helping them to enter and leave their house (Kiddushin 31b)."(31) We will return to this consideration of honor of one’s parents at the end of this chapter, but for the present, the point is that since these obligations were taken seriously both before and after Christ, it is likely that similar principles were also operative during the time of Jesus. See for example Matt. 15:3ff: He answered them, "And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.' But you say that whoever tells father or mother, 'Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,' then that person need not honor the father. So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God.” Jesus here is interpreting the honor due one’s parents as falling within a broader need to understood the honor due to God.
Just as we can deduce that commandments operative in the Hebrew scriptures were also applicable in Jesus’ day by looking at pre- and post-first-century writings, we can do the same with descriptions of family life in general, and it is largely from such descriptions that we shall draw our rough portrait of the family in first-century Palestine.
First-century Palestine was primarily agrarian. Families frequently lived together in extended households that included not just what we today consider the nuclear family — a father,
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a mother, and 2.3 children — but also often parents, sons and their families, unmarried daughters, unmarried sisters, and possibly widowed ones as well (although these last would more likely stay with the husband’s family or even go on their own), and sometimes siblings and slaves. They shared a common work, farming, or if living in the city, some trade or commodity production. Excavations from the period show the merging of work and residential activities.(32) Work was hard, and times were tough, so the more hands to join in, the better. The basic family unit was the bêt-'ab — the father’s house.(33) As Wright notes, the Old Testament had a structural hierarchy of kinship that went from tribe to clan to the bêt-'ab; this last was “the one in which the individual Israelite felt the strongest sense of inclusion, identity, protection, and responsibility."(34) Authority within the bêt-'ab rested, not surprisingly, with the father. It was his leadership that preserved and maintained the family. Under the patriarchal system, both women and children, as well as slaves, “belonged” to, were the property of, the father, but, as Lassen points out, although subject legally to their husbands’ authority, wives frequently exercised authority with their husbands: “so it is important,” she says, “not to ignore that a horizontal level within the family (for instance in the relationship between husband and wife) might have existed side by side the hierarchical structure of the family."(35) It is equally important to understand that
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this hierarchy was enormously important for the survival of the family, and all of life was structured to preserve this survival drive. There are really two pieces to an understanding of this. First, we need to be aware that the hierarchal structure of the family reflected the structure of society. As Lassen points out, “the hierarchy inside the family, with a strong father-figure, was used as a model for society: government, social structure, religion."(36) Everyone answered to someone higher; hierarchy was simply the way of life. Second, and more important from a survival perspective, there were few, if any, alternatives to accepting the paternalistic hierarchy, even if one were so inclined. “The fatherless, the poor, the widow, and the stranger were very often seen together as the most fragile and unprotected group in society,” says Lassen, in describing the importance of the family structure.(37) They needed the men in order to live. Similarly, without the women’s management within the household, the men would have been unable to carry out their farming or other .activities so that all could eat. In many ways, despite how it may appear to modern eyes, the arrangement was symbiotic and therefore necessary for the survival of all.
Excursus on polygamy: In considering the household residents, we should look briefly at the question of polygamy since it is mentioned in both testaments, from Lamech taking two wives in Genesis to the Sadducees trying to stump Jesus with the question of levirate marriage, and it gets extensive treatment in the Talmudic literature.(38) Despite all the talk, polygamy appears to have been a rare occurrence. Economics appears to be one reason for
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its scarcity, at least according to Jeremias: “Wives formed a second important item of expenditure. Polygamy was allowed among Jews at the time. However, the maintenance of a household with several women involved such heavy financial burdens that in general we find polygamy only among the rich. . . . There is therefore evidence of polygamy among the aristocracy of Jerusalem, but it was by no means the rule.(39) Levirate marriage, which could result in polygamy, was apparently also a rare occurrence. Westbrook tells us that when the levirate was practiced, its “main purpose . . . was to provide the deceased with a successor to the estate(40) and that it was “an institution with a single legal object: to prevent extinction of the deceased’s title to his landed inheritance."(41) Thus even when the levirate was enforced, it was for the support of the family. The topic of polygamy also appears briefly in the Dead Sea Scrolls, a somewhat remarkable fact given that most of the rules in these documents assume an all male, ascetic community. Nevertheless, Lawrence Schiffman says that “the Zadokite Fragments wage a spirited attack on polygamy and other practices that the sect considered violations of Jewish marriage laws."(42) Moving forward several centuries and looking over the Talmudic sources, Lowy concludes that “there is no evidence for any widespread practice; most of the facts are exceptional cases."(43)From this we can infer that although the practice was rare, it apparently was frequent enough that the major sects felt the need to speak on the topic.
The drive to survive incorporated much, if not all, of life. It drove decisions — whom to marry, for instance. Marriages occurred young: for girls, it was often shortly after puberty that a marriage was arranged(44) and for boys, the marriage age was sometime between the early
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twenties and thirty.(45) Survival of the family, the clan, the tribe drove these early (to us) marriages.(46)A girl would go off to join her husband’s household, thus leaving one less mouth to feed for father. And since young girls were not allowed outside except in unusual circumstances, for fear they would come into contact with men, they could not participate in the farm or business work. Young girls did help out with work within the house, as long as there were no strangers present. It was considered enormously important for a girl to be shielded from possible harm, to maintain her purity, and therefore not suffer the possible loss of marriageability. Kraemer points out that “apparently describing the customs of Jews in Jerusalem, 2 Maccabees is also among several sources referring to the seclusion of young unmarried girls (2 Maccabees 3:19) [Women, girded with sackcloth under their breasts, thronged the streets. Some of the young women who were kept indoors ran together to the gates, and some to the walls, while others peered out of the windows].(47)
The operative commandment within Jewish marriage was to “be fruitful and multiply,” to extend and preserve the family, although by the time of the rabbis, this command was being interpreted a bit more tightly than it was in the days of Jacob and his twelve sons. According to
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Larry Yarbrough, “to fulfill the commandment to be fruitful and multiply the rabbis decreed that a man must have two children. Here the debate was whether he must have two sons (the school of Shammai) or a son and a daughter (the school of Hillel)."(48) Kraemer says that marriage was the “fulfillment of a woman’s life,"(49) and Countryman tells us that “it was the ideal destiny of an adult female to be some man’s wife."(50) To our modern ear, this sounds sexist, if not truly awful. We must keep in mind, however, that the call from God was to be fruitful and multiply. Therefore to marry was to answer God’s call in the affirmative (and the economic realities of the time meant that survival for a woman more often than not required marriage). In extending Suzanne Dixon’s study of the Roman family to Jewish families, Kraemer quotes her as noting the emphasis on children as “progeny who were able to continue the family name and cult, supply labor, inherit and maintain the family, support their aged parents, and supply them with proper funeral rites."(51) Obviously, these are primarily the obligations of male progeny, but the females certainly made it all possible, for even if the male carried the name, the female carried the child. There is some suggestion that girl children were less valued than boys,(52) and Kraemer provides two reasons why this may have been so. One is that women and girls were universally
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held in lower esteem, so that, during times of famine or scarcity, they would more likely be allowed to starve. Secondly, in addition to the girl child’s higher likelihood of dying young, even if she lived she would go off at an early age into her husband’s household; thus mothers may have been loathe to allow themselves to get too attached to those they would surely lose.(53)
Nevertheless, while children were there, the task of rearing them within the family household often fell to the mother. There is no clear answer to the question of who provided whatever education a child got and whether children of both sexes were given equal educational opportunities, but it is clear that education was considered of enormous importance.(54) As Archer points out: “education is a process of cultural transmission [and] if it is restricted to knowledge of one’s own culture [as we believe it to have been in first-century Palestine] it becomes a primary means of reinforcing national consensus and religious and ethnic identity."(55) Linzer tells us that ancient and modern sources show parents as symbols of the Jewish community values and that “parents serve as a medium through which children enter the Jewish world of faith, ideals, history, and community leadership."(56) It seems likely that very early on education was provided in the home, most likely by the mother, which means that women were at least educated to the extent that they could pass some learning on. We see, for instance, in the fourth- or third-century
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BCE book of Tobit that Tobit is taught the Torah by his grandmother (1:8) since his father had died.(57)
Virtually all sources say that it was the father’s duty to teach his children Torah.(58) Linzer says that the mother is exempt from the six obligations imposed on the father by the Talmud: “The father is bound in respect to his son, to circumcise (him), redeem (him, if he is firstborn), teach him Torah, take a wife for him, and teach him a craft. Some say to teach him to swim, too (Kiddushin 29a)."(59) But it is obvious that if the father, for whatever reason, could not fulfill these requirements, they should be met by someone who could, even if that someone happened to be female. Jeremias tells us that “Joshua Ben Galnalo (high priest from 64-65 CE) decreed that every town should have established a school."(60) This was likely a concern about illiteracy, but may also have been concern over home teaching by women. It may well be that, as Countryman and others claim, “children, like women, were first and foremost possessions,"(61) but they were possessions to which one owed much in helping them thrive and survive, and education was a primary means to fulfilling this debt.
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To summarize what we have gleaned so far about the family in first-century Palestine, let us describe a hypothetical first-century Palestinian Jewish woman.(62) She was born into her father’s house, a compound(63) in which she and other females were often restricted to a few back rooms, and there was concern in her early years that she would not survive because food during famine had to go to support those who tilled the land or provided protection.(64) She spent her formative years in company with her siblings, and they received instruction from their grandmother who lived with them. She also learned much by paying close attention at the many festivals, feasts, and other occasions that were part off her family’s Jewish heritage. They attended Sabbath services at the synagogue, where she heard the Torah read and explicated. Although it was not likely encouraged, she could learn at least the rudiments of reading and writing from a parent or a male sibling who attended the town school. It was important that she stay within the compound and, when men came to visit her father, she was to stay isolated, for the merest hint that she had spent time alone with a male who was not a relative could taint her
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chances to effect a good marriage, and it was her destiny and desire to marry well so as to perhaps increase her family’s land holdings.(65)
The young girl would customarily go on her wedding day from the control of her father directly into the control of her husband and would likely move to his family compound. However, it was sometimes the case that marriages were arranged to enhance land holdings, and women often married within the clan to preserve both the purity of the lineage and the clear title to the land (cf. Tobit’s concern with this: Tobit 4:12-13). If all went well and she survived childbirth and famine, she lived a long life, not unlike that of her mother, and produced the heir to carry on the line. Her day-to-day life consisted of household management, teaching of young children of both sexes, and instructing her older daughters “the knowledge and skills of household tasks, as well as the customs and traditions of the family."(66) Although this life is fairly circumscribed by modern standards, we do know that there were good marriages, (67) and so we shall assume that as well for our mythical woman.
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If a woman’s husband predeceased her, she would likely have returned to her father’s house if she were childless, or remained in the household of her husband if she had a son. Under special circumstances, she might actually go out on her own, but this would require that she have funds to support herself or means thereto.(68) If her husband outlived her, he was required to give her a suitable funeral. Jeremias quotes from the Talmud that says that one of the husband’s duties is “to provide a funeral for her if she died — even the poorest man had to procure at least two flute-players and one woman mourner, and moreover, where it was the custom to make a funeral oration for a woman, he had to provide that too (T. Ket. iv.2,264; M. Ket.iv.4)."(69) Birth to death, the woman was under the control of a man, and if there were no man, her lot was likely to be deadly. Few and far between were those women who had independent means to lead a free life, but as Carolyn Osiek points out, we tend to view this through a different lens than those who lived it. Osiek uses the term “dyadic” to describe the person who experiences life in relationship with others (much like our modern understanding of the relationship among the persons of the Trinity) versus “monadic,” those who live their lives so that they can move among different groups. To use her words:
It is probable that the people of the ancient world did not know each other as we do . . . and that therefore terms like “relationship” and “intimacy” would have meant something quite different to them than to us. Whereas we function day after day with a basic assumption of the autonomy of individuals, first century Mediterranean people lived with the assumption of the necessary and natural inherence of persons in their society. As opposed to our
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individualism or monadism, this is what the social sciences sometimes call “dyadism,” the continual need of another in order to know one’s own identity.(70)
In other words, although it is difficult for the twentieth-century American to understand what it is to live with the good of the group, whether that group is family or community, as the ultimate aim of life, this understanding of kinship is critically important to comprehension of the individual in first-century Palestine.
The matter of kinship was and continues to be of utmost importance to Jews. Kinship among humans is reflective of the relationship of God to humankind. Indeed, Philo wrote that “but as for these kinships . . . which have come down from our ancestors and are based on blood relationship, or those derived from intermarriage or other similar causes, let them all be cast aside if they do not seek earnestly the same goal, namely, the honour of God, which is the indissoluble bond of all the affections which make us one.” (71) Pilch and Malina state that “the prevailing institution in the biblical world was kinship. The rules of kinship controlled the main ways in which core and peripheral values of the society were realized."(72) The essay on family- centeredness in their collection expands on this and notes that “the well-being of the collective is of paramount importance."(73) It goes on to say that “a circular movement of societal formation is established: tradition grounds and informs family structure, and family structure perpetuates
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tradition . . . [leading to] the attitudes of respect for authority, and exclusiveness; i.e., suspicion of outsiders."(74)
Add this concept to that of Lassen, who tells us that “Israel was a society consisting of persons who, in a sense, belonged to the same family,"(75) and we perhaps begin to gain a little insight into how the actions in early November 1995 might be viewed in their cultural and historical context. “The essence of the patriarchal family structure used as a model in the government of Israel is illustrated by the fact that 'father' was a metaphor and a kind of honorific title for elder or distinguished men."(76) So in one sense, the person whom Amir murdered was the nation of Israel’s father, and the disgrace of this quasi-patricide led his family to reject him. According to Pilch and Malina, “those outside the tradition or those who remove themselves from it are cut off from life."(77) Amir would, of course, deny this and has suggested that it was Rabin who violated the sacredness of the family by giving away the land. “Control and maintenance of the land (family property and national borders) are not simply matters of survival,” argue Pilch and Malina, “but are questions of honor/shame and tradition."(78) When family is so intimately wrapped up with the land, and survival of both is a primal instinct, tragedy may often result. Barbara Arrighi says that
the family is not a stable, unchanging, nuclear entity. It never has been. The family is a social construct, a social creation influenced by social forces that alter conjugal and
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parental relationships at all times and in all places. Family values, like the family, are social constructs, societally created and affected by institutional and systemic forces.(79)
But there is something stable and enduring in the Jewish family in Israel today; it is this element that can be traced to its roots in the first century and before; and it is this element that the family of Yigal Amir believes he violated, and that he believes he did not — the understanding that obedience to God supersedes every other relationship, even that of mother and son. It is a tragedy that the son of Geula and Shlomo Amir understood that obedience so differently from his parents.
In summary, our exploration of the first-century family has exposed some of the roots of present-day life and shown how conflicted loyalties can sometimes lead to tragedy. Is it possible that the family, as important as it certainly is, may not always be more important than culture/clan/nation? Can obedience to God supersede loyalty to parents? Who is to determine what is obedience to God and what is disobedience of God’s ordinances? In order to explore some of these questions further, we next turn to Luke and his presentation of Jesus’ interactions with his own family.
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CHAPTER 3
Jesus and His Own Family
Family is not a widely discussed concept in the Christian scriptures. Indeed, the word appears only 18 times and, of these, only three are in the gospels. Of course, familial relationships are mentioned often, brothers, sisters, and so on, but overall, the mentions of family tend to be descriptive more of fellowship than of legal relationship. There are very few instances of Jesus’ interaction with his birth family. We shall look at two of them in the chapter, for despite the paucity of references, we can gain certain insights into how Jesus viewed blood ties of kinship vis-à-vis deliberately undertaken relationships. The first of these is in Luke 2:41-52, the only canonical reference to Jesus as a boy, while the second is a description by Jesus of who are his true kindred (Luke 8:19-21).
Luke 2:41-52 - Jesus in the temple
41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. 44 Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day's journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, "Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety." 49 He said to them, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" 50 But they did not understand what he said to them.
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51Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.
The first reference to Jesus and his family after his birth is to a willful adolescent who wanders away from his parents and causes them some panic at his absence. As Sharon Ringe points out in her commentary on Luke, this pericope has an air of reality about it: “Except for the statement about his subsequent obedience to his parents (2:51), the other details of the story are very realistic."(80) It is a dramatic vignette. Ringe asks, “What readers cannot identify with the shock, anguish, and confusion of the parents, or the tension felt by the adolescent between piety owed parents and the pull of a higher vocation?"(81) There are questions, moreover, about what this story means in terms of family values: is Luke suggesting that already at this young age, Jesus was drawing himself away from his biological family and attending to what he perceived as the needs of God’s family? This is perhaps our first hint in Luke that there may be a call to obedience that supersedes one’s call to family responsibilities.(82)
And yet, the story is built on the theme of family responsibility and the importance of family members being mutually responsible to and for one another. It occurs in the gospel immediately after the story of Jesus’ first appearance in the temple in Jerusalem, to which his parents took him in fulfillment of the law. As Robert Karris asserts in his chapter on Luke in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, “Stress is laid on Jesus’ family and its devout adherence
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to the law as the environment in which he was brought up."(83) Jesus’ family did all they were required and expected to do under the law. Fulfilling requirements is an important concept for Luke. Thus it is that several commentators pick up on his use of the word dei in verse 49: He said to them, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must [dei] be in my Father's house? Karris notes that the word “conveys the theme of necessity” and is used 18 times in the Gospel and an additional 22 times in Acts.(84) Fitzmyer says of the word’s use, “It expresses not only a necessity in general, but the peculiar Lucan connotation of what had to be as part of the Father’s salvific plan involving Jesus."(85) I.H. Marshall speaks of dei as expressing “a sense of divine compulsion, often seen in obedience to a scriptural command or prophecy, or the conformity of events to God’s will. Here the necessity lies in the inherent relationship of Jesus to God which demanded obedience."(86) One can well imagine our reaction to that sort of necessity being conveyed to us by a twelve-year-old in response to what we considered inappropriate behavior. Nonetheless, it does help us to understand the obligatory nature inherent in Jesus’ call to his disciples. Service to God is not just important. Once one understands the nature of one’s call, there is a sense of absolute necessity; there is no choice but to obey.
We need to look at one other phrase in this passage, for it too contributes to our understanding of Jesus’ relationship to his family. The Greek en tois tou patros mou (v. 49) has baffled scholars because of the variety of meanings it might have. It is commonly rendered as
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Jesus saying that he “must be in [his] Father’s house,” but may also mean “among those belonging to my Father” or “(involved) in my Father’s affairs."(87) As Luke Johnson says, “The point of the statement remains frustratingly obscure."(88) What is clear here is a sense of surprise and disappointment for Jesus that his biological parent(s) did not understand the necessity of being about his heavenly Father’s business. As Fitzmyer says, “He [Jesus] expresses disappointment that his earthly parents have not understood that his relation to his heavenly Father transcends all natural family ties."(89) Equally important is Johnson’s pointing out that this failure to understand on the part of those associated with Jesus is thematic in Luke; e.g., 9:45 (But they did not understand this saying; its meaning was concealed from them, so that they could not perceive it. And they were afraid to ask him about this saying.) and 18:34 (But they understood nothing about all these things; in fact, what he said was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.)(90). If those closest to Jesus during his earthly life continually misunderstood him, it is little wonder that we too fail to understand.
This passage tells us a bit about Jesus as a boy but, unfortunately, it is the only bit we have (outside of the non-canonical stories in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas). Although the story may have been included because Luke did not wish to have the entire period of Jesus’ life between his birth and the beginnings of his ministry 30 years later as a blank slate, Karris asserts that it is a pre-Lukan pronouncement story and suggests it originates in “the human tendency to
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find the man in the boy."(91) That suggestion is certainly supported by what we have seen of the boy Jesus’ understanding of a responsibility that may supersede familial responsibility. We shall see this theme again in our consideration of our next passage, but it is important to note here that the first words attributed to Jesus in Luke’s Gospel speak of Jesus’ relationship and obligation to his heavenly Father. Fitzmyer carefully points out that
[t]hough the episode ends with the Lucan notice of his obedience to his earthly parents (2:51), his obedience as son toward his heavenly Father transcends even that filial piety and obedience to Mary and Joseph. His independent conduct here strikes a chord that will be heard again in the Gospel proper. . . . In other words, for Luke Mary may be 'the mother of the Lord' (1:43), but it is much more important that her maternal ties yield to those of Jesus’ heavenly Father. This is foreshadowed here.(92)
Jesus the boy was lost and then found, but for his mother, that finding has a bittersweet taste. Luke Johnson reminds us that, for Luke, being lost is analogous to being dead, as is even more evident in the prodigal son story.(93) However, to find the lost, only to suspect that the finding is temporary must have been hard on Mary, the first indication of the truth of Simeon’s prediction:
The Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposedso that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed--and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (Luke 2:34-35)
To love a child is to leave oneself vulnerable to pain, but how much harder the lesson must be when you can trace that pain to God’s will. This, however, is a large part of Jesus’ message, that of needing to be lost in order to be found, to die in order to gain eternal life. It is a
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tale of paradox and ignorance that must be played out again and again, before understanding begins to seep in.
Luke 8:19-21 - Who are my family?
19 Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. 20 And he was told, "Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you." 21 But he said to them, "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it."
Our next passage refers to an incident from years later. Jesus has, we presume, spent some years living the more traditional life, perhaps working with his father in the carpentry shop.(94) At age 30, the gospels tell us that he embarked on his career of preaching and teaching and defining the kingdom of God for those who want to believe. His words are stark and often harsh, as in this passage, for indeed Luke shows us a Jesus who turns the world upside down. Here, as elsewhere in scripture, family takes on a meaning of association based on something other than the accident of birth. Paul and other Christian scripture writers refer to the followers of Jesus often as brothers and sisters; the phrase appears some 90 times in the New Revised Standard Version, but in few cases are relationships based on blood ties. In this particular occurrence, however, it is definitely Jesus’ birth family to whom he refers.
It is instructive to note the differences between this version of the incident in Luke and the earlier rendering in Mark’s gospel on which it is presumed that Luke bases his text. Mark says:
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21 When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, "He has gone out of his mind." . . . . 31 Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. 32 A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” 33 And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" 34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother." (Mark 3:21, 31-35)
Stephen Barton suggests that the authors of Matthew and Luke “found Mark’s hostility to the family difficult to sustain,” and therefore omitted verse 21 so as to remove the implication that Jesus’ family thought him mad and thereby consequently “reduce considerably the element of conflict in Jesus’ relations with his natural kin."(95) Ieuan Ellis points out that “it would have been very difficult for Jesus as a Jew to have gone against the family,"(96) and indeed as we saw in chapter two, the concept and importance of family and the loyalty due it in that era were enormous. Ellis goes on to say that Luke’s softening of the incident “has been interpreted by Orthodox commentators as a plain acknowledgment by Jesus that his family were, indeed, faithful people who heard the word of God and did it."(97) It is perhaps also true that Luke omitted the negative implication because he did not need it to sustain his point of the requirement for true discipleship. Johnson, like Ellis, has it that, in fact, Jesus’ natural family, especially Mary, epitomizes the true family, for she “does hear the word and keep it (1:45 and 11:28 [And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord and
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Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!])."(98) Fitzmyer’s interpretation is similar:
The Lucan Jesus’ reply does not imply a denial of family ties or a criticism of his kin; it does imply that another relationship to himself can transcend even that of family ties. Genuine relation to him consists not so much in descent from common ancestry as a voluntary attachment involving the acceptance of God’s word, which he preaches, as the norm of one’s life. Here Jesus’ mother and brothers are shown to be prime examples of that relation.(99)
Whether the hostility in Mark’s version (3:31-35), which appears to be strongly anti- natural-family ties, is more authentic, or, as we have seen others suggest, Luke’s version, affirming of Jesus’ family as exemplifying true disciples, is closer to what the original recorder of the incident wished to convey, the passage nonetheless suggests that the real definition of family has to do with doing the word of God and nothing less. Ringe points out that we are not even told if Jesus honored the request of his family to see him:
Instead, he continues his teaching on the word of God, offering a new definition of family. Not simply hearing the word of God (presumably not even listening with understanding), but bearing and doing is what makes people Jesus’ family. Whether the members of his biological family meet those criteria is not the issue. Rather, with those criteria the boundaries of that most intimate human community are opened up. What matters is not genealogy, but embodying the word of God in one’s life and actions. . . . Just as hearing Jesus’ words and doing them are inextricably bound together, so are hearing God’s word and doing it. . . . The implicit question posed to the people who have been following Jesus is whether they are ready to make the move from followers to family.(100)
Karris, in reviewing this passage, says “Christian disciples become God’s family neither by birth, nor by being male, nor by observing laws of ritual purity, but by hearing and acting on
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God’s word."(101) This is a message we see over and over again in Luke. It is the question posed by the ruler in Luke 18:18 ("Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?") and the harsh reality and promise of Jesus’ words in 18:29-30 (And he said to them, "Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not get back very much more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life."). Family counts for nothing if you choose it over doing the will of God. Just as the parable of the Good Samaritan redefined the meaning of “neighbor,” so this passage helps us understand Jesus’ definition of “family.”
Before leaving this pericope, we need to look briefly at another brief vignette in which a similar definition of family is expressed, Luke 11:27-28:
27 While he was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, "Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!" 28 But he said, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!"
It has been suggested that this may even be a reiteration or reworking of Luke 8:19- 21,(102) although Fitzmyer suggests otherwise: “This, however, seems unlikely, given the difference in setting (an outdoor crowd), comment (from a woman), and wording (a beatitude)."(103) Even if not a reworking of the same incident, the message is strikingly similar. Ringe says, “Jesus’ response [to the woman’s exclamation] does not refute or deny her blessing, but rather it recalls the true basis for blessing and kinship with Jesus (8:19-21), God’s word —
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by implication, the word of God’s reign — heard and embodied in action.(104) Schüssler Fiorenza concurs: “A similar critique of 'natural' family claims and bonds is expressed in the double corrective macrarism of beatitude in Luke 11:27f. . . . Faithful discipleship, not biological motherhood, is the eschatological calling of women."(105) Fitzmyer, too, reads it this way: “[The woman’s] comment about how wonderful a mother so eloquent a preacher-son must have had serves as a foil for Jesus’ remark about who is truly blessed. As in 8:19-21, he again shifts all the attention to those who listen to God’s word and observe it."(106) Brown states the lesson to be gleaned from these few verses: “Luke describes the difficult process of learning that obedience to the word of God transcends family ties. . . . [H]e insists that it is a process that is not without its perils and suffering."(107) According to Luke, these perils and this suffering extend even to the mother of Jesus.
In summary, we have looked at the boy Jesus in conflict with his family over his call to hear and do the word of God, and we have seen that this conflict intensified after he began his ministry. He distanced himself more and more from his natural family, as he sought to convey his understanding of the kingdom of God and what one must be and do in order to be a member of God’s family.(108) In our next chapter, we will look at several other pericopes that bring the parameters of this understanding into even sharper focus and elucidate certain concepts of
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responsibility towards family members that are in marked contrast to how such responsibilities are understood by some contemporary Christian writers.
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CHAPTER 4
Discipleship as Family
In this chapter, we will examine three additional Lukan passages. These pericopes focus on the nature of discipleship and what it means to answer Jesus’ call. As Jesus got closer and closer to his own destiny, his drive to convey his message got stronger and more stark. Association with him was not to be taken casually or lightly. One would likely be required to reject those people and possessions that meant the most. Indeed, we shall see again and again that discipleship cannot be a part-time occupation and that the answer to the call of Jesus cannot be nuanced or compromised. We see this clearly in this first passage, in which there are three separate responses to Jesus’ request to “follow me.”
Luke 9:57-62 - Let the dead bury their own dead
57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." 58 And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." 59 To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." 60 But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." 61 Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." 62 Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."
This passage is likely to give the family-values crowd and others some pause. Here we see Jesus not just disowning and ignoring his own family as he did in the last chapter, but advocating the breakup of other families, encouraging his followers to ignore the most important
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aspects of familial life at the time.(109) In chapter two we learned that not only was it the duty of progeny to “supply labor,” but that one of the most sacred duties of a child to a parent was to “supply [the parents] with proper funeral rites.(110) Here, however, we hear Jesus saying essentially, “Forget all that. I have more important things for you to do.” Let us look at the passage more closely to see if this apparent negation of family responsibility is actually going on.
To begin, we need to understand something of the context. This pericope in Luke comes at a critical juncture: Jesus has “set his face to go to Jerusalem” (9:51). Fitzmyer calls this a “markedly christological motif of Jesus fixedly facing his Jerusalem destiny."(111) No more simply a preaching prophet, he has knowingly begun the journey to his death. The pace and the tempo increase from here on. An urgency has entered into his teachings and a certain loss of patience with those who hesitate is now present. As Sharon Ringe explains this new intensity of tone, “”It costs something to follow Jesus now, and those who would join the movement need to be aware of how high that cost is."(112) Johannes Louw says the passage shows that following Jesus means being put into a new frame of reference; “it can no longer mean mere accompaniment;"(113) discipleship is not simply running after Jesus or becoming part of the church “in a rush of enthusiasm that evaporates as quickly as it appears when the going gets rough,” as
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Ringe puts it.(114) Fitzmyer, in looking at the specifically Lukan aspects of this passage, helps us understand something of the nature of Jesus’ call:
Thus for Luke Christian discipleship is portrayed not only as the acceptance of a master’s teaching, but as the identification of oneself with the master’s way of life and destiny in an intimate, personal following of him. Because of the geographical perspective in the Gospel, the “following” has a pronounced spatial nuance: the disciple must walk in the footsteps of Jesus.(115)
Kevin Giles puts an emphasis on the point that Jesus and his disciples are spatially “on the way:” “In Lukan thought the journey that Jesus takes is one that is essential for the true disciple as well. Luke cannot use the word disciple of anyone who does not actually accompany Jesus. . . . The true disciple is one who follows in the actual presence of Jesus."(116) That “following” comes at some cost, and that cost is explained in three different ways in this pericope.
First, verse 57 is the only case in which we are told that someone apparently spontaneously announces that he would like to follow Jesus. Thus Jesus’ response sounds especially harsh: his followers must understand that creature comforts and the security of family life are not at this point part of what comes with answering Jesus’ call. The least of God’s creatures have a place they can call “home,” but there is no such comfort for the Son of Man nor, we can extrapolate, for those who align themselves with him. We are not told if this “someone” therefore withdrew his offer, but one would suspect he at least decided to think about it a bit
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more.(117) This, one expects, is exactly what Jesus wants: he has concern about those who offer to follow him without understanding the true nature of the commitment required. Again and again, he presses the issue with his disciples and those who would be his disciples, as in this case here. How often do we hear him asking them, “Do you love me? Do you understand what it means to love me? Are you prepared to carry my cross and drink my cup?” And so, we are given to understand that following Jesus means first and foremost that one loses control over one’s environment; the Son of Man is of no fixed abode, a wandering Aramean.
The second cost that we see is the required abandonment of familial duties. How easy it is for us today to give the answer of this second potential disciple: let me take care of this duty; to find some valid reason to take the easier course? Johnson reminds us that this is “no trivial excuse,” but rather part and parcel of the commandment to honor one’s parents.(118) James Dunn correctly points out that “the offensiveness of Jesus’ reply would be difficult to match."(119) The third century BCE book of Tobit is considered an important source of understanding every day Jewish life in that era: “Tobit’s piety is based on commandments and injunctions in the Torah and a wisdom tradition (attested also in Sirach) spun out of the Torah."(120) We read in the fourth chapter of Tobit:
Then he called his son Tobias, and when he came to him he said, “My son, when I die, give me a proper burial. Honor your mother and do not abandon her all the days of her life.
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Do whatever pleases her, and do not grieve her in anything.Remember her, my son, because she faced many dangers for you while you were in her womb. And when she dies, bury her beside me in the same grave.” (Tobit 4:3-4)
Thus, a son’s duty was to care for his parents even unto death. To say to a son, “Let the dead bury their own dead” is to ask him not just to ignore a duty, but to ignore an injunction from Torah. Ringe claims that “[e]ven priests serving in the temple were obliged to incur the ritual impurity brought on by contact with a corpse in the case of their own parents."(121) Much of Jesus’ teaching is aimed at helping us understand that there are rarely any clear, unambiguous choices. Fitzmyer points out that Jesus’ answer to the second would-be disciple here “stresses that the element of sacrifice . . . is involved in every choice. It is not for that reason cruel; it is done in order to announce the kingship of God."(122)
Fitzmyer provides a summary of the various ways that commentators and exegetes have tried to interpret this saying so as to soften the quite harsh sound of it, ranging from those who would maintain that Jesus never uttered such a statement, to those who would have the word nekrous refer to a society of pallbearers, and finally to those who would give it an allegorical interpretation such that the dead to which Jesus refers are the spiritually rather than physically dead and therefore not of particular concern.(123) Ieuan Ellis, in his apologetic on Jesus and the subversive family would have us believe that Let the dead bury their dead is but a metaphor for urgency, “that there is no more time for delay."(124) As attractive as some of these rationalizations
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may be, they simply ignore the urgency of Jesus’ call and would becloud that which is here quite clear. As Duncan Derrett asserts, “the saying is a gratuitous insult to the family upon whom falls the duty the would-be disciple appears to escape."(125) The furtherance of the kingdom of God must come before all else, including even familial responsibility. Fitzmyer maintains that the phrase but as for you, go and announce the kingdom of God (v. 60)
has been added to sharpen the urgency put on one who would follow Jesus; it specifies why he must give up even the filial obligation to follow straightaway. The Lucan Jesus does not say this only in a teacher-disciple relationship; he knows, rather, that the demands of the kingdom are bound to rupture even ordinary family life.(126)
And there is really no way to escape the reality and the consequences of this. Ringe says,
Jesus’ response denies the legitimacy of any such cultural obligations — and emotional ties — to one’s biological family. The wording is harsh, implying that those who are not following Jesus are already among “the dead,” so they might as well handle the burial chores. Family ties, like the security of a home, are superseded by the demands of following Jesus. . . . The lines are drawn with stark clarity: One is either with Jesus one hundred percent, or one is against him (11:23). . . . [D]iscipleship is not something to be taken lightly or entered into casually. Almost with every step, the stakes get higher.(127)
Indeed, we see in the last section of this pericope the third example of how high those stakes are. Perhaps also in response to Jesus’ “Follow me” in verse 59, the eager but hesitant would-be disciple replies, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home” (v. 61). Ah, how easy and attractive it is for us to say, “I will follow you, Lord; but . . .” and how often we do. It all seems so reasonable, whatever our excuse. As Robert Tannehill says, the text
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is deliberately trying to make things hard for us in order to block the natural tendency to simply add discipleship to the configuration of duties and values by which we live. Discipleship is not merely another commitment which we may add to a long list of our commitments but is the commitment, demanding a reordering of our lives from the bottom up. (128)
As many commentators on this section of Luke’s gospel have pointed out, this passage is clearly parallel to the call of Elisha by Elijah in I Kings:
So Elijah set out from there, and found Elisha son of Shaphat, who was plowing. There were twelve yoke of oxen ahead of him, and he was with the twelfth. Elijah passed by him and threw his mantle over him. He left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said, ?Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.’ Then Elijah said to him, "Go back again; for what have I done to you? He returned from following him, took the yoke of oxen, and slaughtered them; using the equipment from the oxen, he boiled their flesh, and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out and followed Elijah, and became his servant. (1 Kings 19:19-21)
The parallel is as clear as the message: there is no longer time for bidding farewell to kith and kin. Although Elisha was permitted to bid farewell to his parents, Jesus’ call has an even greater sense of urgency. Just as Elisha had to slay the oxen he was leading to show the depth and finality of his commitment, so the would-be disciple has to be able to follow without looking back. The call from Jesus demands an immediate, total, irrevocable response, and anything less will not do. Paul Leser, in writing about this verse and the Elisha/Elijah parallel, points out that since “the plow proper requires the undivided attention of the plowman, he may not look back."(129) He goes on to say that the literal meaning of the Greek in 9:62 is that “if you begin working and you are thinking of what lies behind you, you are not fit for the kingdom of God."(130) This is indeed a harsh reading, but all we have read suggests the appropriateness of
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such an interpretation. The task to be done requires full attention and full devotion. As the journey toward Jerusalem progresses, there will be no time for regret nor the possibility of changing one’s mind. Fitzmyer sums up this section by saying
The pronouncements set forth warnings to those who would identify themselves with Jesus’ mission: they must count the costs and reckon with a conflict of loyalties that such an identification might entail. They give a new dimension to the idea of “following Christ,” to discipleship. . . . Thus, the following of Jesus does not simply mean imitation of him, but entering into the very conditions of his life, ministry, and lot. It calls a person to a sacrifice of security, filial duty, and family affection.(131)
Luke 9:57-62 show us that accepting the call to discipleship requires not just the metanoia, the conversion, the creation of the new person, but a complete reversal of all one has previously valued and honored. The call to follow Jesus means following him not just exclusively, but to the exclusion of all previous obligations and responsibilities. In the next section, we will see how this radical reorientation plays itself out in Jesus’ warnings about the last days.
Luke 12:49-53 - The time of judgment
49 "I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! 51 Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 52 From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; 53 they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
Those who did not abandon familial ties as part of accepting the call to discipleship are presented with the possible consequences of that choice. As William Klassen says in a helpful comment on verse 51, “This is surely one of the most arresting statements preserved by the early
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Christians."(132) Jesus, whom many looked on as a source of peace and release from oppression, is here preaching notions quite to the contrary. Klassen says that “Jesus is using the image of the sword to describe the havoc which the kingdom will bring to the family and the exclusive claims which he must have on the disciple’s loyalty."(133) He goes on to discuss the strong tradition of the importance of the family, from within both Jewish and Stoic perspectives, quoting from the first- century Stoic Musonius: “Thus, whoever destroys human marriage destroys the home, the city and the whole human race."(134)
Klassen points out, however, that an equally strong tradition exists that says there is a calling higher even than family loyalty. He cites both the Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, who is reputed to have said that the “true seeker after wisdom . . . cannot be deterred by sentimental obligations to loved ones,” and Jesus, whose knowledge of the Old Testament law would have included the Deuteronomist saying “if members of the family lead one into apostasy . . . then you shall have no pity on them. . . . Your own hand shall be the first to be raised against them’ (Deut. 13:6ff)."(135)
What has happened since the first chapter of Luke, where we hear the angel Gabriel telling Zechariah that his son John “will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared
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for the Lord” (Luke 1:16-17)? Instead of the hearts of the parents being turned to their children, we have words of Jesus sounding remarkably like the prophet Micah:
2 The faithful have disappeared from the land, and there is no one left who is upright; they all lie in wait for blood, and they hunt each other with nets. 3 Their hands are skilled to do evil; the official and the judge ask for a bribe, and the powerful dictate what they desire; thus they pervert justice. 4 The best of them is like a brier, the most upright of them a thorn hedge. The day of their sentinels, of their punishment, has come; now their confusion is at hand. 5 Put no trust in a friend, have no confidence in a loved one; guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your embrace; 6 for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; your enemies are members of your own household.
(Micah 7) Carolyn Osiek uses this Micah passage in discussing the Matthean parallels to Luke 12:51-53:
Micah 7:6 had lamented the breakdown of family loyalties, so that the enemy lay within the household. Echoing Micah, the Q passage has Jesus say without the slightest sign of regret that it is part of his mission to set son and father, daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-law against each other (Matt. 10:34-36 par. Luke 12:51-53). Not only does his mission pit members of a household against each other but Jesus pits family love and loyalty against discipleship in a disturbing either/or dichotomy: whoever loves father, mother, son, or daughter more than Jesus is not worthy of him (Matt. 10:37), or, in the rendition of Luke and The Gospel of Thomas, whoever does not hate father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters, and even one’s own self cannot be Jesus’ disciple (Luke 14:25-26 par Gos. Thom. 55, 101).(136)
The context of Jesus’ harsh words, echoing Micah, is important. He is in the heart of his preaching mission on his way to his death in Jerusalem and has expended much energy warning against hypocrisy (12:1-3) and the importance of being prepared to meet God face to face (12:13-21, 35-41). Just as Micah warned that the day of punishment had come, Jesus is saying that those who have not been with him will reap the consequences of their choices and
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that, contrary to common belief, judgment falls on the individual, not the household, and so households themselves will be rent asunder.(137)
Looking at what various commentators have had to say about Luke 12:49-51 is enlightening, if not occasionally contradictory.
Robert Tannehill comments on the bluntness of the speech:
The text contradicts our desire to think of such family divisions as temporary and accidental, as problems which can be overcome with time or better counseling techniques. It claims that such divisions are inherent in Jesus’ mission and therefore a fate which we cannot avoid if we follow him. It speaks not of temporary personal problems but of the dark will of God, of a cup which we wish would pass from us but which we must drink.(138)
Luke Johnson, on the other hand, finds the references to fire to be sufficiently vague that he says “they could refer to the coming judgment of the Son of Man, or to the eschatological gift of the Spirit in fire at Pentecost."(139) I find this latter suggestion a bit far-fetched simply because the tone of the passage exudes such anger and passion that it seems unlikely that the fire to which Jesus alludes is a benevolent one. Johnson, however, does suggest that this passage clarifies the enigmatic prophecy to Mary by Simeon: “Here the programmatic prophecy of Simeon in 2:35 is given its explicit fulfillment in the mouth of the prophet himself: he divides households and creates a division in the people."(140) All who come within the sphere of the influence of Jesus will feel the effects. If one has to choose, it is not unlikely that the choice will
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be between God and loved ones. Fitzmyer understands this section as being a commentary by Jesus on his ministry and where it would inevitably lead him:
To my way of thinking, it is quite possible that Jesus realized during the course of his ministry that his continued preaching of the kingdom and of God’s word was meeting with staunch and growing opposition from opponents who might one day adopt extreme measures against him. . . . Jesus is depicted commenting on parallel aspects of his earthly ministry. First, he longs to see the earth ablaze and consumed by the fire which his coming was meant to enkindle. He states clearly the aims of his ministry under the figure of a discriminating fire, the fire of krisis. Second, he views his ministry as a 'baptism,' not only of water, but again of 'fire' (recall 3:16). But it is not one that he merely administers to others, but that he must undergo; he who baptizes with fire must himself face the testing and krisis that that figure connotes. He longs that this be accomplished, because it is related to the aim of the ministry set forth in v. 49. . . . his ministry is now described by him as a source of discord among the very people he came to serve and save.(141)
This discord is not only among the people he came to serve and save, but it strikes at the very building blocks of the social milieu of creation. Sharon Ringe helps our understanding of the intensity of these verses with regard to the family:
Of all social units, the family was the most tightly knit of Jesus’ and Luke’s societies. A person’s family gave one a history and a place in the social order — an identity. The more highly placed one’s family was, the more important it was to preserve its integrity. Obligations to other family members were most strictly observed of all the obligations that accompanied the social and economic relationships by which the society was structured.(142)
Yet here is Jesus saying that these units will be split apart, that new alignments will be forged, and that this will further the kingdom of God. Ellis says that “Jesus is speaking as a realist, one who knows and appreciates what the family means to a good Jew, above all other races, when he speaks in sorrow of the nature of the division which the preaching of the gospel brings."(143) The question of whether Jesus’ remarks are eschatological hyperbole or a realistic
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assessment of the difference the gospel makes in the lives of disciples is, as we can see, not an easily answered one. Indeed, besides the personal repercussions intrinsic in this pericope, it is important to be aware of their political consequences as well. Luke is widely seen as the most pro-Roman of the New Testament writers,(144) but the predicted disruption of familial units can be seen as a threat to society as a whole. Thomas Wieser says,
The dissolving effect of Jesus’ message on human communities is explicitly stated. . . . Jesus predicts that “henceforth in one house they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother” . . . . The effect even extends to the community of the disciples that formed around Jesus.(145)
Walaskay claims, in speaking of 12:49,51: “These words of Jesus could not have been more opposed to the imperial goals of peace and harmony. Only with great difficulty can one conclude that a non-Christian Roman reader would have construed these messages as politically harmless."(146) The society’s on-going tranquility was largely dependent of the maintenance of its traditional structure and the structure of the family on which is was based.
Further understanding of this comes from consideration of a point often overlooked in commentaries on this pericope: the divisions which Jesus predicts cut across generational lines. Just as the family was an enormously important social unit within Jewish society, so the honor and respect due the older generation by the younger was simply a given. As we noted in our chapter on the family in the first century, the hierarchical sphere of influence was quite strong.
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Jesus says, however, that under his influence, father will rise up against his son and vice versa. As Yitzhak Rabin was considered the father of Israel, so Yigal Amir felt called by God to rise up against him. We can be sure that the shockwave that resulted from Amir’s action was no more than that felt by the hearers of Jesus’ seeming blasphemous words. John Crossan invites us to “[n]otice the emphasis on generation rather than gender. The Kingdom’s attack is at the point of hierarchy, of the older generation over the younger one. The Kingdom tears the family apart along the axis of its (abused?) power."(147) If Jesus’ followers came to understand that following him meant a dissolution of the current power structure, then the societal consequences, especially for the Empire, would be grave indeed. In another discussion of this important understanding of the nexus of the conflict, Crossan says:
Imagine the standard Mediterranean family with five members: mother and father, married son with his wife, and unmarried daughter, a nuclear extended family all under one roof. Jesus says he will tear it apart. The usual explanation is that families will become divided as some accept and others refuse faith in Jesus. But notice where and how emphatically the axis of separation is located. It is precisely between the generations. But why should faith split along that axis? Why might faith not separate, say, the women from the men or even operate in ways far more random? The attack has nothing to do with faith but with power. The attack is on the Mediterranean family’s axis of power, which sets father and mother over son, daughter, and daughter-in-law. That helps us understand all of those examples. The family is society in miniature, the place where we first and most deeply learn how to love and be loved, hate and be hated, help and be helped, abuse and be abused. It is not just a center of domestic serenity; since it involves power, it invites the abuse of power, and it is at that precise point that Jesus attacks it.(148)
This is a crucial point both for understanding the political consequences of Jesus’ preaching, and thereby an important cause of his crucifixion, and for interpreting Jesus’ call to discipleship: nothing, absolutely nothing, no matter how sacred we may have considered it to be,
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will stand in the way of the establishment of God’s rule. In the last pericope we examine this divisiveness in order to make unity becomes more clear and more poignant.
Luke 14:25-33 - The cost/conditions of discipleship
25 Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, 26"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. 27 Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, 30 saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' 31 Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. 33 So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.
The HarperCollins Study Bible calls the use of the word hate here “prophetic hyperbole,"(149) but is it? Is Jesus suggesting that the capacity to love is not infinite? That in order to serve God fully, you must not just abandon family, but you must hate them? Is Luke, the evangelist that we think of as compromising and always suggesting that we should all be able to get along, here suggesting that there is a point beyond which we cannot? Commentators have spilled much ink in trying to rationalize and sanitize these verses, but as we shall see, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to fully blunt their import. That they come where they do, after the invitation to the “great dinner” is extended to all on the highways and byways, gives a whole new meaning to the expression “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” even in the Kingdom of God. Jesus is here once again saying that if one wishes to accept the invitation to discipleship, one needs carefully to consider the cost.
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Crossan, in The Essential Jesus, helps put this pericope in an historical/sociological context:
Our extant versions of this saying all emphasize Jesus rather than the Kingdom of God. To be “like Jesus” or “a companion of Jesus” involves rejecting or hating one’s family, a shocking suggestion to kin-based Mediterranean society and morality. But the Kingdom of God as radical egalitarianism challenged alike both societal and familial hierarchies and discriminations, and, indeed, the latter as a possible model for the former. . . . His was the Kingdom movement, not the Jesus movement!(150)
Fitzmyer describes this pericope as Jesus “set[ting] forth three conditions of discipleship, uncompromising demands made on those who would follow him: the willingness to leave family ties, the willingness to face radical self-denial, and the willingness to give up one’s material possessions."151)( It is interesting to note the qualitative difference between the first of these demands in Luke and in Matthew. Consider the meaning of Luke’s “whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother” (v. 26) versus Matthew’s “Whoever loves father and mother more than me” (Matt. 10:37). The difference between “loving more” and “hating” is important.(152) Luke is here again trying to make it clear that accepting the call to follow Jesus is not something to be done casually or in haste; it is not something that can be hedged, for the consequences thereof will last forever. It is important to note too that scholars believe the source of this phrase (the Q source) used the stronger “hate” of Luke rather than “love more” of
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Matthew.(153) Matthew modifies the starkness of the word, but Luke wants to be quite clear that the demand is not one that can be compromised.
Ringe and others believe that Matthew’s version “may convey more clearly the point being made."(154) Fitzmyer says that “the choice that the disciple has to make is between natural affection for kin and allegiance to Jesus."(155) He goes on to quote A. Plummer in suggesting that “Christ’s followers must be ready, if necessary, to act towards what is dearest to them as if it were an object of hatred."(156) This interpretation lends an equivocal air to the word and it is here that I would personally part company with such interpretations. I believe that Luke (and Q’s) use of hate is unequivocal and entirely necessary to convey the weight of what Jesus is saying. Ringe, below, is likely correct that hate here does not represent loathing or contempt, but it does represent the necessity of total separation, something that is not possible if one is merely “loving less.” Ringe reasons that the use of the word “hate” is merely a vehicle for making Jesus’/Luke’s point as emphatically as possible:
The first requirement (14:26) — “hating” father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even one’s own life — does not prescribe the emotion we know as “hatred,” or in the case of one’s own life, self-hatred or contempt. Rather, it means even being willing to live without these loved ones, not being so attached to them that their well-being, or even one’s own survival, is one’s first priority. The saying is powerful precisely because one’s own life and family relationships are a baseline of one’s personal security and identity, regardless of one’s social position.(157)
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Ringe’s point, that the saying conveys the necessity of a paradigm shift in one’s outlook, is pivotal to our understanding (even if she and I disagree on the finality of the shift). Too much attention to the specific word that the evangelist uses to express this necessity can obscure the importance of the point. It is because we understand what it means to love that we can even begin to love Jesus, but we are being told much more here than that we are to love Jesus. We are being told that nothing can stand between us and Jesus if we are to be true disciples, and into that “nothing” we must place those that we love most; we must hate them, let go of them, understand we cannot stand between them and God any more than they can block our way.
That ability truly to love is not something to be taken lightly. For a parent, loving oftentimes means being able to let go, to allow a child to make choices on her own. John Westerhoff, a noted Episcopal educator, speaks often on the topic of baptism and the importance of the catechetical process. He says of baptism that it is in reality a giving up for adoption: the child is being given over to the church and that when, as it inevitably will, the choice comes down to choosing between the family Westerhoff and the family Christian, the baptized one must always choose Christian. He says, “[In baptism] you take the child away from the parents . . . and the child is taught forever after from that day and ever after that if Westerhoff and Christian come in conflict, Westerhoff has to go."(158) Peter Gomes adopts Westerhoff's language in describing the reality of baptism:
Baptism is not standing at the border of one realm and looking across at the other side; it is a renunciation of the citizenship into which we are born. It is a rejection of all that we understand to be real and powerful. It is not “joining the church” as so many institutionally
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minded Christians mistakenly think; it is taking out citizenship papers in another place, as opposite and far distant from this place as can be imagined.(159)
Similarly, John Sommerville, mentioned in our first chapter, asserts that “In Puritan childbearing manuals . . . parents were warned that children must obey God rather than parents in case of clear conflict."(160)As Fitzmyer says of v. 26, “The first condition calls for a willingness to put parents, family, relatives, even one’s own life in subordination to discipleship."(161) For some, in order to subordinate, there must be a clearcut separation, and hate may be the only way to achieve the needed separation. It is much lik