Our local St. Vincent de Paul Society distributes food on Saturday morning. The thrift shop is open. Twenty or thirty people are milling around. Wright Avenue is a hopping place by 9:30! Recently, we added one more service: two people sit ready to pray with anyone who would like us to pray with them. I take a turn once a month. It is fascinating to me that most of those who come to our “Prayer Pantry” want prayer for family troubles. We hear the stories, then pray.
The readings this week and next approach the omnipresent issues of living a Christian life with those near and dear to us. One way or another, our families challenge us. Everybody has family troubles. What does our faith say to us about how to manage them?
Luke 14:25-33
Jesus is still walking uphill from Jericho to Jerusalem. It’s a long walk that likely took him several months. At the end of the walk came the cross and resurrection. Today Jesus is speaking to the crowds—the people who are drawn to him, but who are not yet disciples. He is telling them what he has already told his disciples: there is a cost to discipleship, and that cost includes whatever it takes to put God first.
The Greek word miseo translated in Luke 14:26 as “hate” does not mean “to reject” or “to have strong negative feelings about”—the common understandings in English of the word “hate.” It is a verb of comparison and means “to love less” or “to diminish.”
We’ve all probably have had moments (sometimes days or years) when “hate” in the English language sense is what we have felt toward brother, sister, parent, child, husband, or wife. Jesus is not saying today that such feelings are virtuous!
We know they are not virtuous. We know strong negative feelings and the desire to reject someone are miserable places to be. But they are common places to be when people we care about complicate our life by how they act, what they say, and what they want from us.
Sometimes what people we love want from us is something we cannot give and stay within God’s way: family members who want us to join them in missing Sunday mass; children who live outside the faith; spouses who are unfaithful to the marriage, abusive, or disengaged from family life; brothers and sisters who ignore the needs of elderly parents, etc., etc., etc.
Jesus words today seem harsh and unloving, but what they mean is actually a balm and a guide for managing family troubles: Follow the wisdom of God. Love as God loves, which includes seeking a way to stay within God’s standards (the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount) yourself as you struggle with others. Love the best you can to seek the good of individuals AND the common good of the whole family. Not easy!
I have had my troubles with this. The road to do it in my life has not been the straight and narrow. Loving family when there is infidelity, alcoholism, severe depression, or rejection of both love and common sense are part of my history. At one time or another, each of those has been a problem in my family that I did not handle well. Dysfunction or sin in one person pulls others into patterns of behavior that are not of God—that also are dysfunctional and sinful.
Yet, as I learned early in my family therapy career, the opposite is also true: responsible, loving behavior by one person pulls others into patterns of behavior that are of God.
In my first job as a family therapist, I went into homes where a child’s behavior was so out of control that they were in danger of long term placement outside the home. Part of our training included these directions: “Go into the home and make yourself like a member of the family. Help do the dishes. Wash the dog. Sit with grandma while she tells stories. In all these things, act as a responsible, caring person who also has boundaries, sets limits, and follows through. Then identify someone in the family that you can train to carry on those loving, responsible behaviors. Teach them to do it. Then your job is finished.”
We were part of a grant, not billing mental health insurance. It was an experiment. It was hard work. But it often created major changes in a family.
In time, I learned to do that with my own family. It didn’t heal and change everything, but, over time, it has made all the difference—for me, for others.
But it is hard to follow Jesus here. Sometimes very hard. Sometimes too hard because of levels of violence or chaos or disengagement in the family. In those situations, God’s way might include getting out of an abusive situation. Complex problems do not have simple answers, but seeking God’s way through the troubles is a better way to find a good way.
Philemon 9-10, 12-17
Scripture today even covers what to do when the situation is very fragile. Philemon is only one chapter. It is a letter from Paul, imprisoned in Ephesus, to his friend Philemon who is a Christian in Colossae. The situation is that Onesimus, a slave belonging to Philemon, is being sent by Paul back to Colossae. Onesimus had stolen something and run away from Philemon. By Providence, he ended up in Ephesus where Paul converted him to Christianity.
Paul’s letter here is very gentle, very persuasive, with Paul offering to pay Philemon anything Onesimus owes. Yet, the reality is that Paul could be sending Onesimus to his death, because a slave owner had the legal right to punish any slave that ran away by severe beating or death.
While our culture cannot imagine that slavery could ever be right, in New Testament times, it was part of the culture. A city state made war with another city state and attacked it. If the attackers won, they could confiscate all the riches of the attacked town and take its citizens as slaves. Or the Roman armies conquered foreign lands and brought back slaves.
My personal repulsion at the thought of owning another person is so strong, I don’t think my conscience would let me do what Paul did. But, Paul was actually upholding Roman law. The letter we have today shows how distressed he was about sending Onesimus back.
His strategy was to obey the law—a matter of justice to Philemon–and also do all he could to create safety and hope for Onesimus–a matter of compassion for him. He walked a Christian tightrope. Did it work? We don’t know. There is nothing else in Scripture about Onesimus’s fate. We hope God blessed Onesimus, Philemon, and Paul with resolution.
Wisdom 9:13-18b
The first reading asks the questions that the other readings seek to answer: “Who can know God’s counsel, or who can conceive what the Lord intends?…Or who ever knew your counsel, except you had given wisdom and sent your Holy Spirit from on high? And thus were the paths of those on earth made straight.”
Patrons at St. Vincent de Paul seek our prayers. Clients who come to me as family therapist seek my guidance. We all have stories of how hard it is to even know what to do in some family situations. Yet Truth (honesty), Love (compassion), and Fidelity (responsibility) are core characteristics of God—and good guidelines for how to follow God’s way in troublesome family situations. What is honest and faces reality? What is loving (both just and compassionate) to all? What encourages people to fulfill their own responsibilities to self and others? Those questions help us love like God.
Sometimes, as we will see next week, the thing to do is to forgive. Sometimes, as with Onesimus, the thing to do is a tough-love decision. Sometimes, the thing to do is accept that self-denial, prayer, and patience are the way to be until something beyond our control changes.
No easy answers.
Prayer
Lord, You would like all families to be holy families that flourish, loving each other while putting You first. Seek and find the places in my family that need Your Wisdom, Your touch, Your Love. Help me find ways to balance truth, compassion, and responsibility in times of family troubles and in times of family joy. Lead me, guide me, Lord.
