7th September 2025 – Father’s Day
Scriptures: Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 1
Philemon 1-21
Luke 14:25-33
If you’ve heard me preach before, you’ll be aware that I’m incapable of giving a sermon without also giving a word study! But today, especially, there are a couple of verses that can easily become stumbling blocks.
So let’s look at those, and then we can move on to what today’s readings really have to teach us.
Having come to Church on Father’s Day, you possibly weren’t expecting to hear, as we heard in our Gospel reading this morning, that you should hate your father in order properly to love Christ! It doesn’t quite fit with the sentiment of the Father’s Day cards that fill the shelves of the bookshops…
The Jewish fondness for hyperbole is pretty well known, and most of us probably don’t imagine that Christ was actually suggesting we should hate our fathers. It goes against the fourth commandment, if nothing else…
The concept of hate is offered here as a comparative – not so much that we “hate” our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers as that we “love them less”. You’ll find the same approach in Proverbs, where if we don’t discipline our children properly, we’re said to “hate” them; or in Genesis, where Jacob was married to both Rachel and Leah; he loved Rachel but “hated” Leah – meaning that she was valued less than her sister. Again in 2 Samuel, David was told that his extreme mourning for his son Absalom amounted to “hating” his friends.
So, in “hating” our father, mother, siblings and so forth, we’re simply being told to value them less than Christ – if you like, to keep our human loves and affections in their true place.
There’s another verse in the Lukan reading that can be difficult.
“So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions”. However much or little we may have, few of us warm to the idea of giving it all away and casting ourselves on charity!
The word ἀποτάσσεται (apotassetai) which has been translated “to give up” occurs exactly once in the Bible. It comes from ἀπο (apo), a very common preposition meaning “away from”, and τάσσεται (tassomai)[1] meaning to arrange, or to correctly categorise, or sometimes to place in military formation.
That’s well worth giving some thought to. We are basically being asked to put our possessions in their proper place, remembering that they are not core to ourselves. They are useful, but inherently separate, “away from” us. Our wealth – however much we do or do not have – is not intrinsically linked to us.
And if we treat it as though it is, Christ is saying, we cannot follow Him.
***
So much for the word study! I hope that leaves the readings sitting a bit more easily with you, because they’re challenging enough, in honesty, without making them any harder!
***
All three readings of our readings today put a choice put before us.
Choose life and obedience or choose death and rebellion, says the writer of Deuteronomy. Choose revenge or choose forgiveness, says Paul to Philemon. Choose the challenging road of following me or choose not to make that effort, says Christ.
They all come with a fairly strong warning, but Christ is particularly adamant in reminding us that taking the best path isn’t going to be easy.
No half-measures will do.
This makes a lot of sense if we look at our other relationships. A good marriage doesn’t happen by accident; a strong friendship doesn’t build itself. Our human relationships need effort, and they need an ongoing investment of our time. The relationship itself is an entity that needs nurturing.
We’re told, here, that following Christ means putting Him first – always, even ahead of competing needs, and even when it’s difficult. That following Christ means “carrying the cross” – a path of sacrifice. As we so often pray in our Great Thanksgiving, we’re “called to suffer” – remembering always that he gives us “hope in our calling”.
Between Christ and Paul, we get some useful illustrations of how this works.
Jesus uses the parable of a person building a tower. Anyone who has embarked on any building project – a house, or a renovation, never mind a tower! – will know what a huge investment of time, effort and resources it takes. This isn’t, as Jesus goes out of his way to stress, something we just take up on the spur of the moment. We’re taking on a major, long-lasting responsibility.
In a similar way, a King going to war needs total commitment. This is a more difficult metaphor for our culture. Many of us have been involved in building, but probably few of us have seriously considered going to war! – and we tend to expect our leaders to avoid it, too! But although the word-picture isn’t pretty, when we consider it for a moment the parable still holds true. Just like the would-be builder, the King needs to know exactly what resources they can commit, and then to stay with the job until completion – otherwise, they court disaster.
If you were here on Wednesday morning, you’ll have heard Reverend Kim speak on the topic of “prayer as a pouring out of time to God”. This struck a chord with me, because time is one of the most precious things we have; pouring it out in prayer to God is giving him a precious gift. The time we spend in prayer, worship, contemplation and so forth is an investment in our relationship with God in exactly the same way that time we spend with our friends, spouses etc. is an investment in those relationships. No relationship, at all, can thrive without that.
Paul, in his letter to Philemon, shows us another outworking of Jesus’s words.
The letter to Philemon is the only one we have, where Paul was writing a personal letter to an individual. That makes it interesting on an historical level; but it is so much more. It’s the shortest of Paul’s letters that we have; but in some ways, the most explosive.
Onesimus was a young runaway slave – he’d run away from Philemon. He became close to Paul, as we heard – Paul called him his own son, and his own heart. This slave, who it appears Philemon had considered “useless”, had become a key support to the great Apostle.
(Which, as a side note, is a good reminder that none of us are ever “useless” to God, whatever people may think, or whatever we may think of ourselves.)
In agreeing to go back to Philemon, Onesimus took a huge risk. Philemon was, clearly, a Christian; but he was still a slave-owner. Revenge, up to and including execution, was entirely within Philemon’s legal rights and social norms. Indeed, many people would have considered it only proper – a due warning to other slaves.
Paul could have sorted this issue out with Philemon before sending Onesimus to him. But Paul and Onesimus took a chance, and gave Philemon a choice.
We hear Paul asking Philemon to free Onesimus – to greet him not as a runaway slave, not even as a forgiven runaway slave, but as a beloved brother.
This was no small ask. In every slave-owning society, slaves are expensive property.[2] most scholars believe the value of a male slave at this time was around four to six months’ wages for a skilled worker. So, tens of thousands of dollars. Freedom was a princely gift.
Paul was asking Philemon to view his slave – his possession, his wealth – as something outside of himself, not intrinsic to his being.
The Bible doesn’t tell us what Philemon chose to do with this request.
However, history gives us an interesting footnote. One of the Church father, Ignatius, writing fifty years later to the Ephesians, addresses their minister & Bishop, Onesimus. He uses exactly the same words as Paul used – “the one who was formerly useless to you, but now he has become useful to both you and to me”.
So Onesimus, the biblical scholars believe, was freed and went onto minister to countless others – because Philemon chose the right way.
What choice do we make? Life and obedience, or death and rebellion? Revenge, or forgiveness? Following Christ with all that entails, or an easier life?
For most of us, of course, it’s a messy mixture of all these. The beautiful thing is that we follow a God of second chances, not a God who gives up on us because we sometimes get it wrong.
And by the grace of God, every day offers us a whole new opportunity.
Juli Meiklejohn
[1] from τάττω (tattoo)
[2] Zechariah, in a passage generally thought to prophecy Christ’s betrayal by Judas, notes that the “price of a man” was thirty pieces of silver. It’s not possible to know exactly what that might be worth today, but most scholars believe 4-6 months wages for a skilled worker.