Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS
§14.7
the cancer of mistrust and the poison of unhealed sores. Jesus evidently saw
clearly that a community can be healthy and outgoing only when forgiveness is
regularly both given and received among its members. So it should be in the
community of the kingdom of God.
14.7. A New Family?
In recent years much attention has been given to those passages in the Jesus tradition
where Jesus seems to encourage his disciples to disown their families and
to offer discipleship itself as a quasi-familial structure in which God is father and
fellow disciples are brothers and sisters to whom primary loyalty should be
given. The two most important texts are (a) Matt. 10.37/Luke 14.26/GTh 55, 101
and (b) Mark 3.20-21, 31-35 pars./GTh 99.
a. Luke 14.26
Matt. 10.37
He who loves father or
mother more than me is
not worthy of me; and
he who loves son or
daughter more than me
is not worthy of me.
Luke 14.26
If anyone comes to me
and does not hate his
father and mother, wife
and children, brothers
and sisters, yes, and
even life itself, he
cannot be mv disciple.
GTh 55
He who does not hate
his father and his
mother will not be able
to be mv disciple; and
(he who does not) hate
his brothers and his
sisters and does not
bear his cross as I have,
will not be worthy of
me.
GTh 101
He who does not hate
his faftherl and his
mother as (I do), will
not be able to be mv
[disciple]. And he who
does [not] love his
[father and] his mother
as I (do), will not be
able to be my
[disciple], for [my
mother] . . . but in truth
she gave me life.
There can be little doubt that Jesus said something like Luke 14.26: the shocking
nature of the wording ('hate' — miseo) is confirmed by the Thomas parallels. 217
It is also likely that Matthew has softened a harsher-sounding saying (Q). 218 To
(Bultmann, Theology 1.24); 'One cannot be a recipient of forgiveness unless and until one is
an agent of forgiveness. It's as simple as that and as difficult as that' (Funk, Honest to Jesus
213).
217. Perrin, Rediscovering 141; Funk, Five Gospels 174-75, 353; Becker, Jesus 309-10;
Lüdemann, Jesus 362; 'all but universally credited to Jesus' (Davies and Allison, Matthew
2.221). Further detail in Fitzmyer, Luke 1060-64; Charlesworth, Jesus 84-89.
218. It looks as though Matthew has added the phrase 'is not worthy of me' to 10.37, to
increase the parallel with Matt. 10.3 8 (axios is a thematic term for Matthew in this chapter —
592