Prop. 18c.01
In
today’s gospel lesson, Jesus,
who taught us to love (Philos-unconditionally?
Jt.)
our enemies, now tells us to hate our families
(in the same way? Jt.). Elsewhere he says our
enemies will be our families. So what are we to do – love
(Eros? Rape? J.t)
them as enemies
or hate them as families
(Agape
Conditioned? Jt.)?
Tricky, isn’t it?
Well, when Scriptures seem to conflict it sometimes helps to study the words closely.
What did Jesus’ actual words really mean?
When Jesus says to love our enemies,
he doesn’t mean by “love” what we might think.
He doesn’t mean sentimental fondness.
He means to wish them well and to act
accordingly, in ways that allow them to flourish
and be happy. He means to direct blessing in
their direction in our thoughts, words, and deeds.
And the word we have translated as “hate” doesn’t mean to cultivate hostility.
It doesn’t mean to nurse a grudge.
It isn’t a feeling word at all. It means to abandon, to leave behind, to let go.
Still a hard saying – but now we can work with it.
In our language, love and hate are opposites, but Jesus’ words weren’t opposites. So we
need to ask whether one may
abandon one’s family in a way that blesses them.
Psychologist and sex therapist,
David Schnarch, regards the main problem in
marriages as being not failure to
communicate, not indifference, not having
drifted apart -- but quite the opposite, the
problem of being too close. It’s called
emotional fusion; which means a bond of
dependency in which each person’s feelings and moods
shift automatically in response to the other.
It’s basing our mood on the tone of someone else’s voice.
Emotional fusion often wears the name tag of love;
but is the death of real intimacy.
Fusion sometimes manifests as family violence.
More often, it just produces patterns of perpetual misery
in which no one ever becomes themselves; no one ever lives their lives.
Or it produces patterns of rebellion, which are just emotional fusion
wearing a different name tag.
The opposite of fusion is differentiation. Differentiation is the ability to remain
one’s authentic self in a relationship. Differentiation doesn’t mean we don’t care
about others. It means that we don’t depend on them
to make us feel whatever way we are trying to feel.
It means their anger does not automatically produce
our fear, guilt, defensiveness, or counter-hostility.
Their behavior doesn’t pull our strings and make us dance.
And we don’t need them dance to our tune either.
Now back to the point of Jesus’ strange teaching
that we should abandon and that we should love:
Schnarch says in his book,
Passionate Marriage, “Becoming more differentiated is possibly
the most loving thing you can do...
– for those you love as well as yourself.”
There is a kind of abandonment that doesn’t require
getting divorced, moving out, or getting separate bank accounts.
It’s abandoning the fused relationship; it’s giving up trying to make people
think, feel, and act the way we want; it’s declaring our
independence of them in our struggle to become ourselves.
[The truth to which our Gospel lesson points is fleshed out by C. S.
Lewis, in his classic
The Four
Loves. New Testament Greek has four words for love.
The first three are familiar kinds of love we all experience quite naturally:
eros,
which means romantic love;
philos, which is friendship;
and storge, which means the kind of affection
we feel for family members including pets.
Each of these loves is good in itself; but standing alone they are unstable.
They invariably lead to something else. They either degrade into fusion; or
they mature into the fourth kind of love,
Agape is the love a differentiated person feels
and lives out for another. It is compassionate, patient, and unconditional.
It doesn’t need the other person
to be different than they are; so it doesn’t manipulate or play games.
Agape is the opposite of emotional fusion. So insofar as our romances, our friendships,
and our family loves are grounded in agape
and are growing toward agape,
such relationships are instruments of grace, crucibles in which we are sanctified
and we sanctify each other.
Insofar as they are not grounded in agape, insofar as they are mired in fusion,
insofar as they consist of repetitive patterns
of blame-shifting, codependency, self-martyring, exploitation, and addiction,
then they are obstacles on our path.
The step away from fusion and toward differentiation,
the step toward agape,
is a kind of abandonment. We aren’t abandoning the real person.
We are abandoning the false person,
the role they play in our lives. It sounds
healthy, but (trust me) it hurts.
So Jesus is giving us a hard saying. He is calling us to let go of the familiar patterns
of relationship that make up our lives. But he isn’t calling us to animosity.
Quite the contrary,
he wants us to love agape-style out of a differentiated self.
He wants us to walk our own spiritual paths,
looking to him – not our families, lovers, and friends –to save us, to heal us.
Then we can offer those good people a gift we could never have given
when we were still loving in our fused, dependent way.
We can give the gift of our caring unconditional
presence, the gift of love which asks nothing,
but blesses beyond measure.
Amen.
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today's gospel lesson
Luke
14:25-33 Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he
turned and said to them, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father
and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life
itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross
and follow me cannot be my disciple. 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? Otherwise, when he
has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will
begin to ridicule him, saying, `This fellow began to build and was not
able to finish.' 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?
If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a
delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you
can become my disciple if you do not give up all
your possessions."
Optional parts of the readings are set off in
square brackets.
The Bible texts of the Old Testament, Epistle
and Gospel lessons are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible,
copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National
Council of the Church of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.
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Notice! This is
not a DIFFERENCE, but it is ANOTHER
IDEA, is't it?
There are two Greek words,
fhiloς,
eroς,
and one Turkish/ Hebrew word,
agape,
written with Greek
letters. (Why did Jesus use the
Turkish word for Lord?). Notice,
again: aga (a-ga) n. Also a-gha. A high official of the Ottoman Empire.
[Turkish a-ga, "lord". {"root word"} and peh, “mouth”, from
the Hebrew language.] The American Heritage
Dictionary of the English Language 1969 pg. 23 and pg. 963.
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Jesus,
as a Lord, A High Official from Heaven says, "Love Me,
Peter,
and do what I say.
Finish my conditions.
Take care
of the baby! You will be
given a better position when we
get home". Amen! This thought is shown
every where that the word
aga-pe is used.
This Authority began in Heaven, given to Adam, and continued through
to you and me. You, too, have authority. Learning how to give
respect to "authority" (sometimes,
it is themselves)
is a necessary art. Amen! |
To see more,
check
here;
or call me now. Amen!
1-212-926-2683.
<fitnfreejt@msn.com> |
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