We're Supposed to Hate Whom?

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
September 7, 2025
Proper 18, C
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 1
Luke 14:25-33

What are the two greatest commandments? Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. That’s what Jesus taught. Any other rule we have in our way of life as disciples of Jesus depends upon love God and love your neighbor. In our way of life as the church, everything we do is to be tested, evaluated by, love God and love your neighbor. 

If something we start to believe or something we start to do fails the love God and love your neighbor test, then it’s probably not something we should believe or do.

Then we get today’s lesson from Luke 14, where Jesus said that we are supposed to “hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself.” We’re supposed to hate all of those people and even life itself, Jesus said, or else we can’t be his disciple. 

That sounds unfortunate. Somehow, we need to figure out how Jesus’ teaching to hate our family and even life itself can possibly pass the love God and love your neighbor test. 

So first, let’s try the hyper-literal method. Jesus said to love God, love your neighbor, and even love your enemies. Well, our families aren’t God, aren’t our neighbors, and mostly aren’t our enemies, so I suppose we do get to hate our families, right? Yea, Jesus! Even better, Jesus told his disciples to bless those who hate them, so if we hate our families, they will bless us? Doubtful. Besides, Jesus also said to give up all your possessions. So, going hyper-literal, if we want to be Jesus’ disciples, we all have to live naked without a penny to our names, despised by everyone who once loved us because we decided we had to hate them in order to be Jesus’ disciple. I’m guessing at that point, we might very well hate our own lives.

Obviously, that’s not what Jesus meant. So much for the hyper-literal method of biblical interpretation. (No one tell the your hyper-literal friends that doesn’t work.)

What if we actually look a little more deeply into Jesus’ words? Whoever comes to Jesus and does not hate their loved ones, he said, cannot be his disciple. At least that’s what it says in English, in this particular translation. The word was translated as “hate,” however, can also mean “disregard.” Whoever comes to me and does not disregard their loved ones and even life itself cannot be my disciple. In other words, be able to let your loved ones go, if need be, to follow Jesus’ ways. Be able to let your life go, if need be, to follow Jesus’ ways. That makes a lot more sense with what Jesus taught than, hate your family. 

As a side note, in about 10 different translations I read for this passage, all but one used the word hate, rather than disregard. I think that says more about us than it does about Jesus, the fact that we seem to want to translate the word as hate, despite how that goes against Jesus’ teachings.

Let’s look at what Jesus meant by disregard your family and even life itself. In Luke 8, we hear about Jesus teaching a large crowd of people. His mother and brothers came to see him, and when folks suggested he stop teaching so he could meet with his family, he said that his family are all those who hear the word of God and do it. Jesus did not show any hatred toward his mother and his brothers. He did show some indifference to them. He disregarded them in order to show his love for those he was teaching. They too were his family.

Jesus didn’t hate his family, but he disregarded them, he set them aside, when he needed to in order to live God’s kingdom in that moment. He was not forever saying goodbye to them, and he was not disowning them. He was just acknowledging that right then, other people needed him more than his family did, and if his family got upset about that, he was willing to let them. No anger. No hatred. Just setting them aside for a little while, rather than letting them be an excuse to stop his ministry. So no, Jesus didn’t hate his family.

Jesus didn’t hate his life either. Shortly before being crucified, just before being arrested, Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane begging God not to have to be crucified. He was really hoping to skip that part, his painful and premature death by the state, because he really liked his life. 

Nevertheless, he was willing to disregard his life if it meant following God’s will and God’s ways. 

Jesus had been led to preach, and teach, and heal people, and in all of that, his preaching, teaching, and healing, he angered the religious and political leaders of the day. Remember all that stuff God said about not exploiting the poor? Yeah, God meant that. Remember all that stuff God said about religious practices not really have a heart of love for the people society disregards? Yeah, God meant that too.

Jesus had run afoul of the religious and political elite, and at the same time, many of the people who followed him wanted him to be a great military ruler. They misunderstood and thought Jesus was going to lead an armed revolt against Rome, killing and driving them all out. 

So, at the time of Jesus’ arrest, it was either take up the mantle of military ruler and lead a rebellion to kill to all the Romans, or let himself be killed. Jesus chose to let himself be killed. Peter tried to stop it, grabbing a sword to try to kill Jesus’ accusers, and Jesus said, nope, thanks so much, Pete, but we’re gonna let this death thing happen. I’m going to disregard my life rather than kill and lead a rebellion, disregarding tens of thousands of lives in order to save mine.

Jesus loved his life, and he disregarded it in order to save others. Jesus loved his family, and disregarded them when he needed to in order to live God’s will and God’s ways. 

So, Jesus tells us, if we want to be his disciples, we need to be willing to disregard our loved ones and even our lives for the sake of following God’s will and God’s ways. If someone harms a member of my family, my gut instinct is to find that person and get terrible revenge against that person, beating them senseless, but that’s not the teaching of Jesus.

I’d definitely try to hold that person accountable for what they did. If I needed to get the authorities involved. That could be about keeping others safe too, but going out and seeking revenge, blood for blood, eye for eye, that is not following the teaching of Jesus. So, if I’m going to live as his disciple, I wouldn’t go seek revenge on my own against that person, and my family might just feel like I was disregarding them, letting them down. Why do you hate us so much that you won’t get revenge? 

Because I believe in the ways of Jesus. I believe that seeking revenge only brings about more revenge from the others person. Fighting and killing as revenge for fighting and killing never ends. If we need to disregard our family’s desires for revenge in order to break a cycle of violence and follow Jesus’ teaching, then so be it.  

Being Jesus’ disciple has a cost to it. Sometimes it’s disregarding the desires of those we love. Sometimes it’s disregarding our own desires, because trusting in Jesus’ teaching and Jesus’ ways, we come to believe that there will be greater healing and greater love in the world if we sometimes disregard our own desires. We come to believe that there will be greater healing and greater love in the world if we sometimes disregard our loved ones’ desires. 

That’s a cost. What we get for that cost is greater peace, with work, over time. Disregarding our own desires and our loved one’s desire in order to follow Jesus’ teaching is a cost, and what we get for that cost is to be servants of peace, offering peace and healing to those around us. 

Living as Jesus’ disciples comes at a cost. Not always getting what we want, not always giving our loved ones what they want to. Consider, however, that we’re not always going to get what we want anyway, and we’re definitely going to let our loved ones down anyway. The cost of living as Jesus’ disciple can be high, but you know what? We’re usually going to end up paying some kind of cost in this life anyway. Paying the cost as Jesus’ disciples, we get peace. We get love. We get healing, and we get to share that peace, love, and healing with the world. 

K Pop Jesus - Driving Out Hate with Love (& Fantastic Singing, Dancing, and Outfits)

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
August 24, 2025
Proper 16, C
Isaiah 58:9b-14
Psalm 103:1-8
Luke 13:10-17

So, being the father of an 11-year-old daughter, I sometimes end up reading books and watching shows that I wouldn’t necessarily watch on my own. The latest example of this was on Friday night, watching the Netflix animated movie, K-Pop Demon Hunters. The story is about a 3-member, girl K-Pop group who, as the title suggests, also hunts demons. When they’re not killing demons, they are using their music to fight against the darkness of demonic influence. 

The songs are really catchy and fun, and I really enjoyed watching K-Pop Demon Hunters with my daughter. Welcome to your glimpse into the Sullivan household. As interesting as that may be, however, I bring it up because of how they work to overcome the demonic influence in the world. 

Of course, they use magical swords and things like that to attack the demons, but they also use their music to stop the influence of the demons over everyone else. At one point, however, they are also coming under the demonic influence. They’ve let their hatred of demons eclipse their desire to help others, and they begin fighting with each other. They’d been trying to hide all their faults from one another, so when their struggles come to the fore, they turn against each other, and the darkness spreads even further.

Then, after coming together again, they sing a new song, admitting their pain and brokenness, admitting everything the demons had been using to drive them apart. They sing:

We’re shattering the silence, rising, defiant

Shouting in the quiet, “You’re not alone”
We listened to the demons, we let them get between us

But none of us are out here on our own 

 

So we were cowards, so we were liars
So we’re not heroes, we’re still survivors
The dreamers, the fighters, no lying, I’m tired

But dive in the fire, and I’ll be right here by your side

 

I broke into a million pieces, and I can’t go back
But now I’m seeing all the beauty in the broken glass
The scars are part of me, darkness and harmony

My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like

As they sing their new song, the light spreads and the demonic influence is driven out. Their light spreads, not because of how much they hate the demons. Their light spreads because of how they love each other and connect to all the people around them through that love. 

Now, I’m pretty sure none of us have superpowers to hunt and kill demons, none of us have visible light that emanates from us as we sings, I’m guessing most of us aren’t K-Pop stars, or animated. 

Even without magic, glowing swords; energetic dancing; and aggressively cheerful music, however, we do have a way, to overcome the demonic forces in our lives that keep us separated, that keep us down. We have a way to be freed from the demonic influences that bind us and keep us alone and angry, fearful and contemptuous of others. That way is Jesus. 

While the K-Pop Demon Hunters didn’t exactly ask Jesus for help (it wasn’t that kind of film), they still found the truth Jesus taught, that Satan cannot drive out Satan. As Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.”

We heard in our story today from Luke 13:10-17, that Jesus freed a woman who had been bound by Satan for 18 years. We don’t know what had happened to her, only that a spirit had crippled her and she couldn’t stand up straight. Whatever it was, we know from Jesus’ previous teaching that she hadn’t been crippled by the spirit because of being particularly awful. 

Despite a lot of the beliefs of people at the time that any tragedy in your life was because you had angered God, Jesus had made clear in the first part of Luke 13 that this woman wasn’t a worse person than anyone else. So, when he saw her in need of healing, he healed her. He freed her from her bondage to Satan. Now, we’re not talking eternal damnation here. We’re talking about a woman who had been crippled by the devil. 

Most of the people, when the saw her healed and heard Jesus proclaim that she had been set free from the Adversary’s bondage, most of the people began rejoicing. Her being set free set them free as well. The influence Satan had on all of their lives was lessened when Jesus freed this one woman. 

That was true for most people, but it wasn’t true for the leader of the Synagogue. The leader didn’t like seeing this woman freed, and he immediately began telling the people Jesus was wrong for healing her because he did so on the Sabbath, the day of rest. He saw a miracle. He saw a woman healed after 18 years of suffering, freed after 18 years of bondage, and all he could say was, you should have waited till tomorrow. 

There was no love there, only fear. There was no freedom there, only continued bondage. The leader of the Synagogue was so caught up in doing things in just the right way and believing things in just the right way, that when God performed a miracle right in front of him, he didn’t even recognize it. He was also trying to free people from bondage, but he was so bound up in being right, that he turned against God, thinking that he was speaking for God. 

‘Behave, y’all. Don’t you dare mess up with any bit of the laws of Israel, or you’re gonna be in a world of trouble,’ or maybe he was more forgiving towards others, and he just really had a problem with Jesus. It’s hard to say exactly, but any way you slice it, the leader of the Synagogue was very upset when Jesus freed this woman from bondage, and it’s hard to see how he could have been walking in the love of God with a heart so bound against a woman being made well.

So, what about us? How are we bound, and what might freedom from that bondage look like? Thinking eternally, we are freed from Satan’s bondage, Jesus has freed us, and nothing can separate us from God. Still, in this life, there are many ways we end up bound or influenced by dark forces. As Paul writes about in Ephesians 6:12, we can end up bound by “the cosmic powers of this present darkness…the spiritual forces of evil...” 

What is it like to be bound by these forces? We have an idea from Jeremiah what it is like to be bound by spiritual forces of darkness and evil. It looks like pointing the finger and speaking evil, being constantly at odds with others. Being bound by forces of darkness looks like being so full of fear and anger that we don’t care about others. 

Being bound by spiritual forces of darkness looks like a nation, and state, and city that criminalizes being homeless, without putting up the money needed actually to house people. Look at what Jeremiah said.

If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.

As individuals, we can be bound. As a nation, we can be bound. As individuals, we can’t force a nation to unbind itself to injustice and oppression of the poor, but we can show others what freedom looks like. Being freed, ourselves, from the darkness of constantly being at odds with those around us, we can let the light and love of God shine from within us and into the lives of those around us. We can call on the Holy Spirit to grant us peace and patience, gentleness and self-control, peace and joy, faith and love. We can offer a little dose of kindness and let that light shine, freeing others from little bits of bondage, just as we are freed from the little bits of bondage in our lives. 

Most of us probably aren’t K-Pop Demon Hunters, but we do get to be freed from the forces of darkness, we get to be freed by Jesus, and as we are freed, the light of that freedom shines into the lives of others, as love spreads, as kindness spreads, as faithfulness spreads, calling on Jesus to set us free.