Buechner, Brownie, and St. Luke?

A sermon by Jamie Howison on Jeremiah 18:1-11  and  Luke 14:25-33

In the 1970s Frederick Buechner published a series of four novels—Lion Country, Open Heart, Love Feast, and Treasure Hunt—all dealing with an eccentric sort of evangelist named Bebb, and his bible-teaching associate Brownie. They are, I’d have to say, rather odd and often quirky novels; comic, yet deeply insightful and at times almost tragic. I don’t mean to give you an overview of the long story that these novels trace, but rather just offer a glimpse of Brownie, the bible teacher. Brownie is a likeable figure, for whom the reader always has sympathy. A little lost, certainly overshadowed by Bebb, and ultimately quite sad, Brownie consistently shows this ability to somehow make any biblical passage sound positive and affirming.

Frederick Buechner

There’s an episode in Lion Country where Bebb and Brownie are leading a church service, and Brownie is called upon to teach on the story in Matthew 18 where Jesus gathers children around himself and warns the disciples that rather than cause one of these children to sin, “it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.” This is how Brownie’s teaching is summarized:

In explicating the passage, Brownie drew attention, as might have been expected, to some facts about the ancient world that illuminated the meaning and prevented the possibility of certain obvious misunderstandings. In the time of Jesus, he pointed out, the grain was of such poor quality and so easily pulverized that millstones were often made of a very light, porous stone resembling pumice. This stone was, indeed, so unusually aerated almost in the manner of Styrofoam that, combined with the fact that the salt content of the Dead Sea was so notoriously high that even fat men could float in it like corks, a millstone around the neck might under certain circumstances serve the function of a life-preserver. And this was clearly what the passage intended, Brownie argued. (Lion Country)

Which is, of course, utter hogwash. But as a preacher faced with challenging texts, I’m often reminded of Brownie, and am grateful to Frederick Buechner—himself a preacher—for creating a character who sort of gently pokes at my side when I’m at all tempted to try to sidestep the toughness of a text.

I’m sure you heard the toughness: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate—hate— father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” The version of this teaching carried by Matthew is considerably milder—Jesus says those who love family members more than they love him are not worthy of him—but we’re in Luke and are confronted with how Luke sought to convey the person and teachings of Jesus. Why did he take hold of such a strong and troubling word as “hate,” in Greek miseō?

Well, for one thing, that’s what Luke had been taught that Jesus had actually said. Remember, Luke was not a disciple—not a first-hand witness to the life of Jesus—but rather a person who came to faith later, and who had traveled with Paul during the last portion of his journeys. He was close in time to Jesus’ life and would have inherited written texts and oral stories from those who’d walked with Jesus, and he would have preserved what he received with great care. And—like all of the writers of the gospels—he brought his own, overarching sense of Jesus to his gospel project.

So let’s first ask the question as to why Jesus would have taught that in order to be a disciple one would need to hate father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and even life itself? Here I turn to Carolyn J. Sharp, Professor of Hebrew Scriptures at Yale Divinity School. “In Jewish traditions,” she writes,

In Jewish traditions, “hate” is used regularly of the animosity between actual enemies, to be sure. But it is also used in binary wisdom aphorisms employing “love” and “hate” as paradigmatic responses of discernment: the wicked are said to hate discipline, justice, and knowledge, while the righteous hate wickedness, falsehood, and gossip. Luke is not advocating intense hostility toward kin and life, but, rather, is promoting the steadfast refusal to allow something less valuable to displace something more valuable. John Carroll observes that in Luke, “the priority of the realm of God is pictured in the most extreme terms imaginable … Jesus is challenging listeners to embrace a singular commitment and allegiance to him.”

Jesus is standing in the traditions of Judaism, drawing on those teaching methods and styles of discourse to make a very clear and admittedly rather tough point, namely that those disciples—and we with them—are called upon to have an extraordinary allegiance to all that he is and all that he does. For the disciples, that meant quite literally walking right to Gethsemane with him. Oh, they stumbled there in Gethsemane, and three times Peter denied even knowing him, but in the resurrection light and under the fire of Pentecost, they exploded into a life of “singular commitment and allegiance to him.”

I would also say it is important to further reflect on two things that we do know from the gospels.

Firstly, earlier in Luke’s account, Jesus had said quite clearly that, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it,” and this was at a time when his mother Mary and his brothers were trying to get through the crowds to talk to him, and—at least in Mark’s telling—to take him home before he caused too much trouble. And yet Mary is there at his crucifixion, and in John’s telling Jesus entrusts her to the familial care of the beloved disciple John. She is also there with the disciples in the opening portion of the Book of Acts, along with Jesus’ brothers. For all of the force of the teaching today about “hating” family, his own family remains faithful and present.

Secondly, it is interesting to see how Luke places this hard teaching in the overall flow of his telling of the gospel. Do you know what follows today’s gospel? Three parables—three of the most beloved parables, in fact: the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the prodigal and his father. In that latter parable we have the most extraordinary picture of a parent’s love for a child, right? And it is meant to tell us something about the love of God for us; all of us, whether we are more like the prodigal who makes such a mess of things, or perhaps more like the older brother who has his nose so high in the air that he can’t make his way into the feast the father is holding to celebrate the return of the lost son.

Here is the most germane moment in the opening portion of that parable. Having gone off with his half of the inheritance—while the father is still alive, no less—the bankrupt son begins to mull. “I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.’” And off he heads for home, with his tail between his legs and his plea for mercy on his tongue.

But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

Now notice he gets the first half of his rehearsed speech out of his mouth, which is his confession of guilt. That’s all the father wants and needs, so the prodigal son never manages to blurt out the rest of the speech—”treat me like one of your hired hands,” which rather than being a confession of guilt is an expression of shame, and the father will have none of it, “for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”

We, of course, also read from Jeremiah today, and perhaps here it is worth recalling his image of the potter and the clay. As N.T. Wright summarizes the image, “The clay was being put back on the wheel, to be reworked into another vessel. Same clay, new pot: a vital, teasing image of the continuity and discontinuity that comes about when God’s chosen and beloved people rebel. The potter is not arbitrary or whimsical, but is responding in creative love to the failure of the first pot.” (Wright, Twelve Months of Sundays)

And so it is with us, who are called to follow with a “singular commitment and allegiance” to our Lord, yet trusting that when we stumble he will, in his steadfast compassion, pick us up and put us back on our feet again. Or, in Jeremiah’s terms, keep remolding the clay that is our lives until we become the vessels he most desires us to be.

That’s gospel, pure and simple.