Seen here:
For example, one case that Pitre makes is that scholars are almost unanimous in their belief in the historical plausibility of Jesus’ demand that His disciples love Him more than their parents [Matthew 10:37]. But many scholars also agree that in a first-century Jewish context, the love of parents is second only to the love of God. Pitre thus persuasively argues that we must logically conclude that Jesus of Nazareth makes a demand of His followers that only the God of Israel can make. He quotes Rabbi Jacob Neusner, who says, “For, I now realize, only God can demand of me what Jesus is asking… In the end the master, Jesus, makes a demand that only God makes.”
This point of view comes from the introspective conscience of the West, not from the text.
The Jesus of Matthew 10 does not imagine our existence, that we would be born to live and worship him. The entire narrative is
about the sending out of the Twelve and the imminent end of the world
and about their role in it. Jesus actually elevates the disciples as fellow itinerant prophets. He does not demand their worship.
The Matthew 10 narrative is the eschatological prophet sending out his disciples to evangelize Israel, which they will not complete before the end of the world comes, the climax of which is the coming of the Son of man:
But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord.
The impending judgment of the world demands a kind of repentance which turns away from all conventions of family, work, and life. It is not simply a question of loving parents more than their master, but also of sons and daughters. The narrative describes a climactic descent into social chaos involving the persecution of Jesus' true and few followers by their very own kin:
And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. ... He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward;
This is not about Christology, but about eschatology and the cost of discipleship. The price is intensely personal.
There is hardly a more vivid repudiation of the idea of the Christian family anywhere in the gospels, let alone of a high Christology.
