If You re-read Mt 10:34-37 in context, it means that when Your family HINDERS You from picking up Your cross, then something is wrong. The passage doesn't say that You SHOULDN'T care for Your family in order to be a proper Christian. Also, the passage is not speaking about whether You go to Church or not.
Mt 10:34-38 (2009 Catholic Public Domain Version, corrected in 10:34b from the 2008 Comprehensive New Testament, 10:38 from NRSV-CE except And capitilized): Do no think that I came to send peace upon the earth. I tell you: No, but the sword. For I came to divide a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And the enemies of a man will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever loves son or daughter above me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
Below from Hermenia -commentary-series, the volume on Mt 8-20, by Ulrich Luz, Fortress Press, January 1. 2001. This volume is 600 large pages. (This English edition of volume two is a translation of volume two and part of volume three of Professor Luz's German four-volume commentary on the Gospel referred to as 'Matthew'.) Ulrich Luz has been Professor of New Testament at the University of Bern, Switzerland, since 1980.
Interpretation
■
37 Verse 37 helps us recognize where the evangelist Matthew stands on the long road from an original radical eschatology to Christianity as a fermenting agent in today's Western society. The comparative element is characteristic for his version of the saying about hating one's own family. Matthew basically affirms familial love (15:3-6, 19:19), but a conflict may arise between discipleship to Christ and loyalty to one's family. When that happens, one must love Christ
more. Basically that has the same practical meaning that we also find in Epictetus: "One must value the good higher than any kinship."46 It corresponds to the Matthean
way to perfection (5:20, 48). On the other hand, the final clause, "is not worthy of me," is not formulate comparatively. As the use of "worthy" in 10:11-13; 22:8 and the context (vv. 32-33, 40-42) make clear, Matthew is thinking in the framework of the last judgement that will also include the disciples and that will end only in a yes or in a no.
The original saying of Jesus was formulated in a more radical, viz., in an antithetical, way. It was a condition for becoming a disciple: "Whoever does not hate father and mother ... cannot be my disciple." For our understanding of the word, the obvious statement that it does not mean hatred in the sense of a psychic emotion47 is of less importance than the statement that Jesus prononunced the disciple's rejection of the family with the strongest possible word, "hate", and its condition in the most basic form possible.48 Discipleship as a special ministry in the proclamation of the kingdom of God and attachments to one's family obviously were irreconcilable for him (cf. Luke 9:60; Mark 1:20).
History of Interpretation
■37 The history of interpretation has essentially continued along the lines laid out by Matthew. There is an ordo of love: God, father, mother, children. Only in the case of necessitas should the commandment to love one's parents be transgressed.49 The first table of the Ten Commandments basically takes precedence over the second, at the beginning of which is the command to love one's parents.50 The fourth commandment can be diminished only if the parents keep us from doing God's will.51
That is, in any case, not what normally happens in discipleship, but an "ethical borderline case" that may not be generalized. It is something done by "prophetic people" who have "special ... tasks." The practice of loving less consists then not of hate and controversy, but perhaps also of a "distancing ... in all peace and even in mutual understanding."52 Luther warns against making this Jesus saying a pretext for living out one's adolescent rebellion.53
In my judgement, all this follows the lines laid down by Matthew. The accents are shifted only where the command to honor one's prants, the second most important of the commandments, is emphasized above everything else.54 In the Lutheran tradition the context of the two kingdoms doctrine later becomes important. The command to honor one's parents is part of the "bourgeoisie life." The Christian obeys it in all cases and is "emancipated" from it only inwardly.55 We find the main points of an ethic of intention already in Calvin, who argues against monasticism's special way and thus puts the entire weight on the willingness to obey God more. "Thus, true abnegation, which the Lord asks of His people, is sited not so much in deed (in actu, as they say), but in intention (in affectione)."56
The original radicality of Jesus' command is preserved most clearly in the sign-like radical lifestyle of monasticism. Leaving the family is characteristic of the perfect way; remaining with one's parents is the sign of the "secondary way."57 Parents, brothers, relatives, possessions, one's own life are, according to Macarius, part of what goes on in the world; the "lonely life" must be related solely to the love of Christ.58
The Gospel of Matthew stands between the basic demand to make a break with the world and the simple internal willingness to do so. It does not merely abandon the "old" commandment to honor one's parents. If in the antitheses the Old Testament commandments of the Decalogue were intensified and thus at the same time changed and preserved, here the fourth commandment is superseeded and in cases of conflict thus relativized. Thereby Matthew, without explicitly saying it in the text, raises principally the possibility of deciding conflicts on the basis of love.
46 Epictetus
Dissertationis 3.3.6. This also agrees with Jewish practice. Cf. Josephus
Antiquities of the Jews 11.145-47 (in Ezra's day those living in mixed marriages divoce their wives for the sake of the law);
Bellum Judaicum 2.134 (the Essenes are allowed to support their relatives only with the consent of the supervisors);
Babylonian Talmud tractate Yebamot 5b
Baraita = Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch (4 vols.; 2nd ed.;Munich: Beck, 1956) 1.587 (keeping the sabbath holy as a duty towar God takes precedence over honoring the parents).
47 Otto Michel, "μισέω," Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, eds. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964-76) vol. 4 (1967) 690.
48 One can compare statements about the holiness of Levi: Deut 33:9; 4QTestim 15-17 (Levi no longer knows his family); and Exod 32:27, 29 (killing family members who worship the golden calf).
49 Jerome [Hieronymus] (c. 340-420), Commentariorum in Matthaeum libri IV (CChr.SL 77; Turnholt: Brepols, 1959), 74.
50 Martin Luther, Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar edition) 38.511: "
Prima tabula est supra secundam ... Deus supra creaturas."
51 Cyril of Jerusalem Catechesis mystagogica 7.15 = FC 61.178; Thomas Aquinas S. th. 2/2, q.26, a.7 ad 1.
52 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols., ed. and trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance (2nd ed.; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975) 3/4.262, 264, 265.
53 Martin Luther, Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar edition) 38.511
54 Musculus, 319-20: After Christ there immediately follows the command about the parents. If we want to love Christ in a special way above the members of the family,
necesse erit, ut eos diligamus.
55 Nicolaus Ludwig Graf von Zinzendorf, Reden über die view Evangelisten, 3 vols., ed. G. Clements (Barby Theological Seminary, 1766-69) 2.757
56 John Calvin (1509-64); A Harmony of the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, 3 vols., ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972) 1.315
57 Liber Graduum 19.9 = 466.
58 Macarius Homilies 45.1 = George A Malony, ed. and trans., Pseudo-Macarius: The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter (New Yourk: Paulist, 1992) 226-27.
Good to see You are back, Minty! Sorry for the slightly late reply, it's been difficult to notice where and when You write!
Any help and replies will be gratefully received. Thank you
Hi, and Bless your sweet heart. Hopefully I will merely be one more voice in a cloud of witnesses to you that you are indeed doing the right thing. If you look at a Scripture that confuses many, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated," you will note that this can only be understood the way intended; a sense of priorities. Not hate in any sense of the word we use today.
