NEGOTIATING THE DEMANDS OF MINISTRY AND FAMILY

NEGOTIATING THE DEMANDS OF MINISTRY AND FAMILY
A NanayPastor’s Interpretation of Luke 14:26

by
NanayPastor Carmel Villar-Paet



Introduction

NanayPastor is my blog’s identity . With this identity, I set my location, experience and embodiment: I am a mother and at the same time, a pastor, a minister, a worker in God’s wider church. Judith Berling mentions that “hermeneutics inevitably begins from one’s own location.” Location, according to Wilfred Cantwell Smith, “is not just about the personal identity (what labels or strands of influence we claim), but self-critical analysis of our particular location within the historical, geographical, or cultural ranges of the various religious and cultural traditions in which we partake.

I am a Filipino mother and at the same time a UCCP pastor. I have been a NanayPastor for 13 years now (my eldest child will turn 13 this year) and all these years, I tried to keep a balance between the demands of motherhood and ministry. I must admit that there were occasions, the demands of motherhood and ministry ensue a major tug-o’-war. A very recent incident clearly shows this tension between motherhood and ministry:

Sunday morning, as I was preparing to leave for church, my youngest son cried out, “Nay! Di ako makahinga!” After administering his medicine, I set off to a major mental and emotional debate: should I go to church and leave my son in his condition or should I stay with him and possibly prevent the worsening of his asthma attack.

That I even had that debate depressed me. I called my husband into the debate, “Tay… ano, alis ako?” This was an act of futility because my husband did not release me from my anguish, “Ikaw ang bahala, ‘Nay!” was his reply. You see my husband is the Salakot Temple-keeper and thus could not be absent from his ministry. And so I texted one of the church elders about my predicament. They went on with their worship service without a piano accompaniment.

Was I really released from anguish after this decision? Frankly no. I begin to ask, where is this tension coming from? Why don’t I feel relieved after having made the decision to stay with my son?

Admittedly, the tension comes from this recognizably difficult text found in Luke:

“If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26, RSV)

“Those who come to me cannot be my disciples unless they love me more than they love father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and themselves as well. (Luke 14:26, GNT)

Maybe you are one of those who encountered this text during your Discipleship Training Camp and with this text you were taught that the prerequisite for discipleship is our ability to leave not only our riches (as if we have) but our own family to follow Christ. Unless we are able to do this, we are not worthy to be called disciples of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

As a UCCP Pastor, I saw how young people keep this verse literally at heart. Young people who were raised in a family who are not members of the UCCP struggle over obeying the wishes of their family to stay at home or to participate in youth fellowship and activities.

Now as NanayPastor, I recognize the tension between my commitment to Christ’s mission and my role as a mother. From this identity as NanayPastor, I set out to revisit this text and to try to understand the meaning of the text from my location and my story.
The Text
Luke 14:26 is classified under prophetic pronouncement. This pronouncement is said to be addressed to a large crowd. The intent of this pronouncement is “to urge persons who are seeking to be disciples to consider first the demands of discipleship.” The preceding verse, 25, describes the setting of the pronouncement. “Large crowds were traveling with Jesus…” To this crowd, Jesus addressed this pronouncement. Imagine these multitude of people following Jesus, perhaps, leaving their field, their boat and fishnets, their family, and all he could tell them was ,”If you do not hate your family, you are not worthy to be my disciple.” Wow!

Did Jesus really say those words? Could Jesus, who has preached on love and whose ethos is love, espouse hating ones family to be his disciples? Luke 14:26 appears to contradict Jesus’ message of love and reconciliation.

The problem in the text is the word “hate” which is Greek (misew)) means to despise; to disregard, to be indifferent to one’s family. This pronouncement must have shocked, even offended the hearers. Among the Jews honoring ones parents was considered to be the highest obligation and ones family was considered as ones greatest joy. How could this rabbi Jesus demand from his followers to hate the very thing that gives them ultimate joy and to go against the basic demand of their society of honoring parents?

Is it because Jesus did not value his own family? Or is it because like many male pastors, they can leave their family behind knowing that a capable and loving mother, wife or sister is taking care of the family?

A popular episode could possibly give light to how Jesus regards his family. In Luke 2:41-52, Jesus went with Mary and Joseph to Jerusalem for the yearly Passover Festival. Upon their return, Mary and Joseph discovered that Jesus was no longer with them. They searched for him but could not find him among relatives and friends. So they went back to Jerusalem. There they found Jesus discussing with the teachers. Of course the parents reprimanded Jesus for leaving without permission, for causing them anguish. But his response to their reprimand astonished Mary and Joseph, for instead of apologizing, Jesus said, “Why did you have to look for me? Didn’t you know that I had to be in my father’s house?” In our time, Jesus would have been regarded as “bastos.” Even in the Jewish context, this response of Jesus would have been regarded as a violation of one of the most important commandments, that of honoring ones parents.

In another incidence, much later in Jesus’ adult life when he was already thick into his ministry, Mary, his mother, and brothers and sisters went looking for him. As crowds surrounded Jesus, they could not go near him, so they sent in words that they wanted to see him. What would have been the expected response was for Jesus to meet his family, introduce them to the crowd as his beloved family and attend to them first. But instead, Jesus addressed the crowd saying, “Who are my mother and my brothers? ... Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (Luke 8:19-21).

His response could be viewed as very insulting to Mary and his brothers and sisters who only have his best interest at heart. These two incidents could be evidences of Jesus’ attitude to his family. “He had not shown respect, loyalty and obedience as was expected of him.” Even Rose Sallberg Kam accused the adult Jesus to have abandoned his family.

Is this the example that Jesus expected his disciples to emulate?

No commentaries ventured as to remotely suggest that this is what Jesus wanted his disciples to emulate. Instead, commentaries tried to soften the intent of the pronouncement by saying that the pronouncement is a typical Semetic hyperbole, and exaggeration; that what Jesus meant with hate is to “love less” instead of hate. But John Nolland insists that
the language of hate is intended with all seriousness (Ps 139:21–22; 1QS 1:10; 9:2113). The point here is that where there is hate no “ties that bind” limit one’s freedom of action (cf. 9:59, 61). There is likely to be an allusion to Deut 33:9 with its link in turn to Exod 32:27–29, where the Levites demonstrate that they are on the Lord’s side by carrying out the required slaughter with a single-mindedness that disregarded their own family ties

So how are we going to take this pronouncement? Are we going to take this as a figure of speech or take this literally with all of its “intended seriousness’?

Another way of looking at this pronouncement is to look at the source of the pronouncement. Kee identifies this pronouncement as part of the Q material. According to Kee, the central interest of the Q tradition is the preparation for the coming of the coming age; that eschatological expectation characterizes the call of discipleship. Therefore, discipleship calls for extraordinary lifestyle, which included abandoning ones family. As Kee explains,
Routine family obligations, burying one’s father, even bidding the family farewell – are to be ignored in the light of the urgency of announcing God’s kingdom as disciples of Jesus.
The Q tradition overturns society’s set up where one’s identity was intimately bound with the family. In the Q tradition, the family is no longer the locus of identity and security. There was a complete break from family and familial network. According to Kee, this is so, because the disciples lived an itinerant existence. They set out without food or money and were only dependent on whatever the village offered them and their hospitality. Kee is convinced that the community that preserved these traditions has adopted them as their own.

Luke 14:26 as a Dangerous Text
Unfortunately, the text is being read literally. This text becomes a requirement that ministers impose on themselves and which the church imposes on its workers. There is no indication in the Minister’s Manual or in Church Workers’ Magna Carta that anyone who wishes to become a worker of God has to hate his family. But in the unwritten tradition, ministers are expected to put church ministry over and above family concerns. What is even scarier is when ministers impose this on themselves, so much so, that a minister prided himself of being able to attend to a Bible Study rather than be with his family in their mourning. A woman minister told me that she left her child convulsing in fever for an evangelistic meeting in a remote barangay.
Shiela struggled over the demand of the church for her to serve the church for two years after she finishes her Seminary education. Her husband was assigned in Mindanao, her conference was in Cavite. She wanted to join her husband right after graduation so they can start building a family. As she shared with me her concern, I comforted her by saying, “You will find out that the church is merciful.” After graduation, I learned that she served her conference first and was separated from her husband.

Grace struggled over leaving her child high with fever to go to her church assignment.

On my way to church, I heard a high school teen tell her friend that if her father would accept a church assignment, she would really beg her mother to stay where they were and just let her father take the church assignment by themselves.

In many Bible Studies, the requirement of Jesus to “sell what you have…” to be able to qualify as his disciples, is a favorite topic. And for many of us, this is a rather acceptable requirement. So we have in our midst ministers who left their profession in medicine, their millions in business and their popularity to heed God’s call and be ministers. We applaud their commitment to the ministry. But we have been silent regarding Jesus’ requirement “to hate our family.”

But this “biblical principle” is in practice. Ministers leave their family to study in seminary. Of course economics has a lot to do with this decision. In Local Church setting, ministers leave their family to pastor a small church in a remote barrio without the possibility of work for the spouse or schooling for the children. Does the church care regarding these matters? In cases like these, the pastor leaves their family where his wife can look for a job (perhaps a public school teacher) and where his children can go to school. He leaves for his ministerial assignment.

As a result of this separation, and this devaluing of family, we have in our midst pasaway na pastor’s kids. The church seems to expect pastors’ kids a problem in the church in stride. A school guidance counselor told me of a case of problematic student who is a pastor’s kid. She then asked, “bakit karamihan ng mga anak ng pastor problematic?”
The church continues to be silent regarding marital problems created by this devaluing of family as a cost of ministry.

Hermeneutics of Narrative Disclosure, the Methodology
In my MDiv Thesis, I introduced an hermeneutical approach which is called The Hermeneutics of Narrative Disclosure:

The Hermeneutics of Narrative Disclosure begins with a stance of respect – the narratives of women are respected; the community, who receives the narratives, is given due respect and the authority of the Scripture is affirmed.
As a starting point, the community of faith recognizes that women’s stories bear truth and this truth discloses how to be a community. In the exchange of stories, the bearer of the narrative and the community who receives the narrative grow in a never-ending cycle of growth.
The community then looks at the Scripture for enlightenment and affirmation of these narratives. In this engagement, the community looks at the Scripture for validation of women’s experiences. “This validation leads to further and more intense engagement with the community, the individuals in the community and the text itself in an ever increasing degree of intimacy and identification until the Scripture narratives of long ago becomes in a true sense the actual experienced story of the individual and the community of faith.”

I am convinced that some difficult Biblical text would be given new perspective or understanding when they are evaluated and validated by women’s experience. As a starting point, women’s stories are brought into fore. As Carol P Christ claims,

Women’s stories have not been told and without stories there is no articulation of experience… Without [a woman] cannot understand herself. Without stories she is alienated from those deeper experiences of self and world that has been called spiritual or religious… The expression of women’s spiritual quest is integrally related to the telling of women’s stories. If women’s stories are not told, the depth of women’s soul will not be known.


We need to look at Luke 14:26 from the perspective of women’s experience, particularly, from women clergy’s experience.

The church structure had been fashioned and designed based on male clergy – male clergy who can leave their family behind knowing that their wife can very well look after the family.

As this paper was read, a male colleague commented, “Hindi ko yan problema kasi andyan naman si Misis na mag-aalaga sa mga bata.” Precisely the point of this paper. Male clergies can easily get into their ministerial task, even take on church assignments away from their family confident that their wife will take on the task of taking care of the family single-handedly. Male clergy can dust off their hands and smugly say that they have complied Jesus’ requirement for discipleship.

But how about the women clergy? They who dedicate themselves to the demands of the ministry as well as lovingly hold on to the task of rearing a family? How does she negotiate the demands of ministry and family?

Venturing into a solution.
The clergy woman need not negotiate this all by herself. She can take this up with the church council up to the church hierarchy. She can declare to the church how important her family is to her and will appreciate it if the church is willing to give her space to be able to function as a wife, mother and pastor.

Sharon has a special child. Her child needs to be in a special school. When her conference assigned her to a church located in a remote barangay, she insisted that she be assigned in a church where there is a school facility that meets the need of her child. Insist women clergy must. If this means challenging the existing structure of the church, so be it.

Get the community and the church to support your family and its needs. As an Indian proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child,” so it takes the entire church community to raise a pastor’s family.