The Value of Loyalty
One of the most important phrases in the Old Testament is, as our New Revised Standard Version translates it, “steadfast love,” in Hebrew, hesed. That is how God’s love for God’s people is constantly described. This love is not just a feeling, but an act of loyalty to the people of Israel with whom God made an everlasting covenant.
The LORD God’s hesed is not explicitly referred to in today’s reading from Deuteronomy. But when Moses says to the Israelites in today’s reading that they are to “obey the commandments of the LORD your God…by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways and observing his commandments,” he is asking the people of Israel to respond to the LORD’s loyal love with their own active loyalty.
And in today’s Gospel reading Jesus also asks for loyalty. Luke is usually clear when Jesus is giving “insider information” to his followers, or as in today’s reading, “great crowds” along for the ride or looking for a great show. So Jesus’s call for loyalty is out in the open, and at first hearing, harsh. His language about “hating” one’s relatives may have been hyperbole. The books of the New Testament were written in the common Greek that served as an international language in the Roman empire. But Jesus and his fellow Jews spoke Aramaic, similar to but still separate from Hebrew. And biblical scholars today believe that what Jesus actually said in Aramaic was that his followers must “love less,” not “hate” their family.
However, to express a preference for someone not of your blood over a relative would still have been extremely countercultural. And in Luke’s sequel, The Acts of the Apostles, widows are frequently mentioned as those for whom the Church cared and supported, not their families. To claim the crucified Jesus as the Anointed King of Israel and Son of God was bound to lead to conflicting loyalties, with those closest to you, and potentially, those with the power to put a crossbeam on your shoulders.
Pail himself struggles with conflicting loyalties in his Letter to Philemon. Onesimus was Philemon’s slave who had been so captivated by Paul’s preaching to Philemon’s household that he ran away from his mater to serve Paul. Paul himself had said that in Christ there was no slave or free. But Paul also believed that Jesus would come again in his and Philemon's and Onesimus's lifetime and do away with those manmade distinctions. Sending Onesimus back to Philemon, with the the request that Philemon send Onesimus back to Paul, was Paul’s way of balancing those conflicting loyalties with the hope of reconciliation. Two millennia later, our obligation as Christians to challenge such injustices is quite clear.
But amid the conflicting loyalties and risks of our time, Jesus recommends a risk assessment, or more positively, that we calculate the value of following him. How big a foundation and house can we afford to build? How big a fight are we prepared to have, and is that the hill we are prepared to risk dying on? Yes, there is a “cost” for us to consider, as Jesus says. But we pay for things from which we gain more than we lose, things which are more valuable to us than what we are giving up.
What is the foundation of your life? What is the tower that will be seen by those you choose to love and who choose to love you. To whom you are loyal, in this world and the next? What hill are you prepared to die on, and with whom are you prepared to die on that hill? That tower and hill is where your loyalty should lie. And nothing else in this world is more valuable.
September 7th, 2025
13th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 18, Year C
The Rev. David Kendrick