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have a small confession to make. The gospel lesson from Luke which I shared a moment ago was actually assigned for last Sunday. But last Sunday was Homecoming Sunday, and a text about hating your family, carrying the cross, and giving up all your possessions just didn’t seem to strike the right tone as we were welcoming first time worshipers. So I switched it with the text that was actually assigned for today, the one we heard last week about welcoming tax collectors and sinners. So when Adrienne called me about having Dorothy baptized today, and I read the switched text I had planned to use today, I cringed. Here is cute little Dorothy with her brothers and sister, her mom and dad, her grandmother and friends of the family, and we hear a text about hating father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters. Nice. Maybe, I thought, I could switch it with next weeks’ text?

      The truth is, this text is likely to make us cringe no matter what Sunday we hear it. What could Jesus possibly have been thinking to ever say such a thing? You have to imagine that the disciples were wondering the same thing. Here, according to Luke, Jesus is just starting to attract a crowd, and he lets loose a bombast that seems designed to winnow down the crowd. Perhaps that was his point. Jesus knew that what he was up to was dangerous, and he wanted those who might follow him to know the same thing.

      For all our talk about “family values,” Jesus– it turns out– was not a very family friendly guy. Just a few weeks ago in worship we heard him warm his disciples that he came not to bring peace, but a sword, and that he would divide families father against son and mother against daughter. When his own mother and siblings come to visit him, and send in a messenger to bring him out to see them, Jesus ignores them and stays inside, explaining to the crowd, “Whoever does the will of God is my mother and brother and sister.” Not exactly the response his own mother was hoping for.

I t’s even more shocking when you recognize that family loyalty was of a high order in the ancient world, much more so than now. You didn’t leave your family behind, as my siblings and I have done, to relocate across the country and embark on a new career. Loyalty to family and tribe came before self-fulfillment. Following your bliss would have been a foreign notion to Jesus’ listeners. You knew who you were in relation to your family, your tribe, and your nation. To “love” your family in this context does not mean emotional affection, as we would take it, so much as attachment, loyalty, and allegiance. If they want to be his followers, Jesus insists, they must break old allegiances and give their primary loyalty to him.

      Notice that Jesus did not ask his followers to disavow their allegiance to the Roman Empire, the Temple Establishment, or the wealthy elite who controlled the city. Frankly, they didn’t care much about those folks anyway. He asked them to disavow their allegiance with the things that mattered most in their lives: their families, their possessions, their personal security. So he says to us, if you want to be my disciple, your ultimate loyalty belongs not to your job, not to your family, not to your home and possessions, not to your church, not to your country. But to God in Jesus Christ.

      That might not be a message that most parents want to hear just before they hand their child over to be baptized. But it’s a message that I try to deliver, in one way or another, to every parent who comes to present their child at the font. Count the coast. Baptism isn’t about some magic ritual to protect your child from all the boogiemen in the world. It’s about letting your child loose into a community that pledges their loyalty to a strange messiah who got himself into a world of trouble. If you want to keep you child safe, this might not be the best place for them.

T his summer at the Presbyterian Youth Triennium at Purdue University, about 4500 Presbyterian teenagers gathered for a few days of Bible study and worship. One of the keynote preachers was Mark Yaconelli, a veteran youth leader from California, who encourages youth to pursue a contemplative life. (Talk about a counter-cultural message!) So one evening he gets this crowd of teenagers to sit quietly on the grass with candles lit all around them singing Taizé songs. Pretty sweet picture. But then he starts talking about this “wild-man” Jesus, and how he kept getting himself into trouble, and how he inspired some of his followers to tear the roof of the house he was staying in so they could bring their paraplegic friend inside– not exactly the sort of behavior most of their parents would applaud. “People in churches,” he told them, “your parents, are glad you’re here at Triennium; they want you to go to church, because they want you to be nice; they want you to be safe. But let me tell you, God has a totally different dream for you. God wants you to be fully alive, to live your hopes, your dreams... Jesus wants you to live love– and that can be dangerous. When you begin to love, you suffer.”

      Reflecting on this passage, Barbara Brown Taylor writes:

      When Luke wrote his gospel, Christians were already being persecuted for following Jesus. To have a Christian in the family was dangerous for everyone, because the Romans were thorough. If they found one believer in a household they would arrest everyone, so it really was true that turning toward Jesus meant turning away from your family, whether you wanted to or not. Once you made following Jesus your first priority, everything else fell by the wayside– not because God took it away from you but because that is how the world works. As long as the world opposes those who set out to transform it, the transformers will pay a high price. Ask Harry Wu, Nelson Mandela, and Aung San Suu Kyi. No one tangles with the powers that be and gets away unscathed... If the world were kinder to its reformers, discipleship might be a piece of cake, but it is not, and Jesus does not want anyone to be fooled.

P erhaps it’s too late for you, Steve and Adrienne. Noah, Sophie and Alex have already been brought into the fold. One of the most dangerous things you do today is promise to bring Dorothy into the life of the Christian community to hear the stories of our faith. By the time she’s Noah’s age she will already have heard stories about Jesus welcoming tax collectors and sinners, about how he healing the blind and the lame, about driving the money changers out of the temple, and how he was betrayed by a kiss and nailed to a cross. Who knows where such listening might lead. One of our former interns, Evans McGowan, graduated from college, and spent a year working as a missionary in Kenya, and is now in seminary in San Francisco. The former moderator of the Presbyterian Church, Rick Ufford-Chase, dropped out of seminary, and at the age of only 23 founded a ministry along the Arizona-Mexico border. Now he serves as Executive Director of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship. Just last month Baltimore Presbytery commissioned one of their own as Presbyterian Church’s Young Adult Intern. They are sending her off to New Orleans, where she will work with a group of community organizers for a year, helping residents come together to rebuild their still ravaged neighborhood. These are young adults who know who they are!

      Which is what this passage is really about. This passage is about identity. That’s the issue Jesus was striking at with all that talk about hating one’s family. How do you know who you are? That’s what Jesus asked of people. To know who they are. In the ancient world, you knew according to your family identity. They defined who you were. In baptism, we are given a new identity. We belong to God. We don’t belong to our family. We don’t belong to our jobs. We don’t belong to our nation. We don’t even belong to the church. We belong to God. When we know who we are, we can carry that cross. When we know who we are, we can count the cost. When we know who we are, we can make those tough choices that sometimes face in us life that we don’t even know about until we’re faced with them. When we know who we are, we are ready to love, even when we know that love might bring suffering. When we know who we are, all things are possible.

      So let us gather at the font, where together with Dorothy and her family, we will celebrate what she already is– a child of God. And as we do so, let us be reminded once again who we are– and to whom we belong.

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© 2007 Jeffrey K. Krehbiel