family ties

Matthew 10:34-39

Jesus explores several family relationships leading up to his conclusion of his instructions to his disciples. The key words are: peace (in contrast to the sword) and not worthy of me. Jesus asks his disciples to compare their love for their fathers, mothers, sons and daughters to their love for him. He also uses an oxymoron: whoever finds their life will lose it and whoever loses their life will find it.
This connects to what Jesus said earlier in his speech about brother betraying brother to death. He comes back to that theme here, quoting Micah. It also echoes Jesus' teaching about the cost of discipleship in several other passages, especially the phrase "whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me."
The point of this passage is that no matter what the people who are closest in my life think of me, I have to put Jesus first and follow him, even at the cost of family relationships and even to death if necessary. I struggle with this teaching because so much of what I hear today is that I should make my family my priority (after God and before my ministry). I agree that my ministry is not my job and that I could tend to make my job my priority but I'm not sure how people can seperate their obedience to God and their ministry so cleanly and I'm concerned that North American Christians are sometimes using their families as an excuse to not take risks for the kingdom of God. I wonder if we are showing Jesus that we actually love our families more than we love him. If that is the case, then we are not worthy of Jesus. Again, I'm asking the questions because I don't have the answers - I'm just trying to understand the teaching of Jesus here.