Brief synopsis of the readings: In the book of Wisdom we learn that we can’t fully know what God intends. Our deliberations are timid and our corruptible bodies burden us. We can only know God through Wisdom. Luke’s Gospel describes one of Jesus’ teachings. He told his followers that they cannot be his disciples without hating their families and indeed their own lives. “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” Jesus went on to talk about how a builder ensures he has enough money before he begins a job and how a king does not go to war without having enough troops to win. “In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

We normally think of the Gospels as being the “good news” but that’s a hard sell this week. Our first reading tells us that we can’t always know what God knows, and that’s pretty clear and even a little comforting. But did Jesus really tell us that we need to hate the people closest to us? Also, while we see the cross as the way to salvation, those at the time of Jesus saw crosses as horrible, humiliating, torturous executions. Finally, why did Jesus tell us that we need to prepare before beginning a job? We can learn the need for preparation in any Boy Scout manual.

OK, let’s take a breath and look at this Gospel anew. We can say that when Jesus told us who to hate, he didn’t really mean it, right? Well I’m always been careful with that because too often I’ve seen that used to justify not caring about the poor (Matthew 26:11: “the poor you will always have with you”). On the other hand, it is hard to imagine Jesus wants us to hate our families when he also wants us to love our enemies.

Perhaps there is a clue in our first reading: “who ever knew your counsel, except you had given wisdom”. I believe we can hate ignorance and this tells us that while Wisdom comes only from God, it is accessible to us. Funny thing, ignorance: it can come from many places, and even places we don’t expect. We can all nod while Jesus talks about builders who need to ensure financing but I have witnessed several building projects in my neighborhood that have stopped halfway through because the money ran out. And don’t get me started on wars. When South Carolina fired on Ft. Sumter on April 12, 1861 nobody envisioned that the Civil War would last almost exactly four years. The North believed the South would run out of supplies and surrender in a matter of weeks while the South believed the North would never send troops to preserve slavery or defend a part of the country they would never see. They were both horribly wrong and over 600,000 people died.

Ignorance comes to us in strange ways and can become insidious. As children we learn about the world initially through our parents, siblings and extended family. They kept us safe and taught us what to avoid. But they also passed along their prejudices. People of different religious beliefs, we are told, aren’t just wrong, they’re dangerous. Gay people, regardless of what they say, are grooming our children. Republicans hate minorities and the poor while Democrats want to take our guns and impose a socialist agenda.

As we know the Gospels were written decades after the events they describe; we date Luke’s Gospel to have been written around the year 70. By that time cracks had formed in the Jewish community between those who believed Jesus was the Messiah and those who didn’t. These beliefs divided social groups, friends, and even families. Much like the Civil War, no real communities were immune. So what does a person do who has to choose between two communities he loves? It’s easy for us to look back 2,000 years later and say they all needed to choose Christ, and large parts of Paul’s letters make that explicit. But the passage of time has not made these divisions obsolete, particularly when competing groups both claim Jesus is on their side. In 2024 thousands of voters who identify as evangelical Christians voted for a man who promised to cleanse the nation of undesirables while the Bible (Leviticus 19:33-34) explicitly commands us to treat aliens the same as everyone else. So what do we do?

Well, there is a whole school of what’s called “discernment of spirits” and St. Ignatius of Loyola (the founder of the Jesuits) has some good stuff on this. But in the context of today’s readings I suggest that we should be suspicious or at least more aware of the times when people we love try to leverage that love against us to keep our views from changing.

“We’ve always believed this” or “how can you abandon all that we’ve stood for” or (my favorite) “I thought we agreed on this.” Seeking wisdom should propel us forward, not keep us in place. The late President Jimmy Carter wrote a book in 2001 about his childhood called An Hour Before Daylight. In that book he discusses racism and segregation in Georgia in the 1920s and 1930s. He later came to oppose segregation but speaks lovingly of his father and his father’s belief in it. He writes about how segregation was something nobody challenged because, well, nobody challenged it. It was easy, too easy, to just follow along. And indeed, those first people who did question were met with question like: “Why do you have to be so difficult?” or “Who do you think you are to say this is wrong when everyone knows it’s right?”

Nobody suggests we should change our views without discerning what we previously believed. But true wisdom guides us forward; it’s what has called us to oppose slavery and segregation, oppression and revenge. Wisdom calls us to leave behind previously held beliefs and perhaps even the approval of our loved ones.

The call to embrace wisdom calls us to hate ignorance, even when it is costly.