Pentecost V

1 Kings 19.15-16, 19-21
Gal. 5.1, 13-25
Luke 9.51-62

+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

If there’s one thing that has been evident to anyone around me this past week, it’s that I absolutely hate to move. This week my family moved from the third floor of the Parish House to our new place a block north on 12th Street. Looking back, I can see just how impossible to live with I’ve been. I snapped at Renee’ because I couldn’t find my black pants among all the boxes, so I had to wear shorts to work. I couldn’t find my clerical collars, which somehow threatened my brand new priestly identity, so I grumbled about that. In a word, moving stinks.

In today’s gospel, though, we see Jesus on the move. We come to a turning point, quite literally, and the gospel “tilts” as Jesus, after having spent his entire ministry in Galilee, turns and “sets his face” toward Jerusalem and what waits for him there. For the next ten chapters of Luke’s gospel, and for most of the Sundays from now until Advent, Jesus moves inexorably toward Jerusalem, toward his passion, toward death. It was common for Jews in Galilee to make this three- or four-day pilgrimage south through Samaria and up to Jerusalem, and on their way they would talk about God’s magnalia, or “mighty acts,” chief among which was the Exodus, the story of how God freed Israel from slavery in Egypt. Marvin Wilson, a professor of Biblical Studies at Gordon College in Massachusetts, just down the road from my seminary, writes: “The Exodus event and the revelation at Mount Sinai are to the Jew what the crucifixion at Calvary is to the Christian – supreme acts of deliverance, holy pillars of redemptive history.” For Jesus it is the ultimate Exodus, and he is the ultimate Moses (Deut. 18.15-19), leading his people out of slavery not just to the Egyptians, but to sin and death. In his Institutes, John Calvin said “instead of supposing that the [Exodus] has no reference to us, [we] should reflect that the bondage of Israel in Egypt was a type of that spiritual bondage, in the fetters of which we are all bound, until the heavenly avenger delivers us by the power of his own arm, and transports us into his free kingdom.” So that’s where we are in the story, and at the outset of this movement to Jerusalem we meet three would-be disciples that teach us something about what discipleship is. We learn that discipleship is: (1) Definite; (2) it’s difficult; and (3) it has a direction.

First, the definiteness of discipleship –Jesus tells one of the would-be disciples: “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9.60.) Being a disciple of Jesus’ isn’t without merely action without content; it is about proclaiming the kingdom of God.

If you go to the Episcopal Church website, you will find that last summer’s General Convention adopted as a mission priority the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, which include working to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, promote gender equality and universal primary education, reduce child mortality and sustain the environment. Now, I agree that it is meet and right for the church to work toward these goals, and I certainly don’t want to run afoul of General Convention, but Christians work for these and other goals not just because the UN has declared them to be humanitarian, but because it’s where the kingdom takes us. There’s a sense in which social justice actions are commensurate with the work of the kingdom, but they are not the kingdom. Walter Rauschenbusch, who championed the Christian social justice movement, wrote: “To those whose minds live in the social gospel, the kingdom of God is a dear truth . . . calling for equal rights and complete justice.” For the Christian, the kingdom is the motivation. It’s what propels us out to keep our baptismal vow to serve Christ in all persons. Working for justice is good, but done for any other reason than the love of Jesus and the kingdom of God, the work is not discipleship.

Second, the difficulty of discipleship – When Jesus calls his disciples to a life shaped by the kingdom of God, it’s not an easy life. Bonhoeffer said “When Christ calls a man, he bids him ‘Come and die.’” T. S. Eliot describes being a Christian as: “A condition of complete simplicity/(Costing not less than everything).” Jesus tells one of the would-be disciples: “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” (Luke 9.58.)

The disequilibrium I felt moving this week is part of life as a Christian because following Jesus means we go where the Spirit goes. It’s a pilgrim life, so the things that ground the people we walk among are not the things that ground us. For instance, our allegiances are different - Loyalty to Jesus takes precedence over loyalty to family, clan or country. Elisha promised to follow Elijah if he could kiss his father and mother first, and Elijah said “OK,” but Jesus tells this would-be disciple “no.” It’s not that the Jesus is making light of these closest of human relationships; it’s precisely because these relationships are so important that Jesus frames his demand in this way. One commentator puts it this way: “The call for total and primary loyalty is underscored by setting Jesus’ demands over against, not the worst or lowest, but the best and the highest loyalties.” Our identity doesn’t flow primarily from family or clan or country but from being disciples of Jesus, and we are to be so committed to Jesus that even our closest relationships pale in comparison.

Once on that path, rejection is guaranteed – Jesus wasn’t welcome in Samaria, and following Jesus means we won’t always be welcome either. Friday was the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, both of whom were martyred because they were Christians. At mass on Friday, Father Conner pointed out that Peter and Paul remind us that following Jesus can be dangerous to our health. Although most of us won’t face physical violence because of our faith, we may face violence to our reputations, to our careers, to the comfort levels at which we live our lives. But God, in his grace, uses the resistance we meet to shape us into Christ’s image, which is what we are destined to become. Peter Kreeft puts it this way: “[T]he very blows of our persecutors are, in the ironic economy of God’s providence, the blows on the chisel that sculpt us into ourselves. The world’s very attempts to destroy us help to make us.” That is why we can be “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” (2 Cor. 6.10 (NIV)).

Last point: The direction of discipleship – The third would-be disciple says “I’ll follow you, Lord, but first let me go back to say goodbye to my home,” and Jesus responds with this bit about putting your hand to the plow and looking back. I remember as a kid seeing people in Mississippi plowing fields behind a mule. As long as they held the plow handles straight, and the mule went in more-or-less a straight line, they’d dig a straight furrow to plant in. But turning your head to look back or to watch your buddy plowing the next field could tilt the plow blade and throw the line off.

Paul, in Philippians 3.13-14 (NIV), writes “One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” One thing not looking back means, practically, is forgiveness – forgiving those who trespass against us even as we allow God to forgive us. And often it’s harder to accept that we are forgiven than it is to forgive. How many of us, myself included, keep little mental lists of the ways we’ve let God and other people down. We file away all the times we’ve slighted people, all the times we’ve gotten angry, bent the truth, acted proudly or selfishly. If that’s what is always in our minds, it cripples us spiritually and affects our “fitness” for the kingdom. Jesus saying someone who looks back is “not fit” for the kingdom means not so much that the person is too sinful to be a member of the kingdom as it means the person is not doing any kingdom good. We need to confess, certainly, but we also need absolution. We need to hear the words of the Rite of Reconciliation: “The Lord has put away all your sins.” If I could emphasize one point more than any other this morning, it is this: “Your sin is not an axe that can fell the sacred tree.” Quite simply, there is no sin so great as to empty the cross of its power to save, and believing that makes us disciples willing to sacrifice everything to follow Jesus.

This gospel is about movement, and there is “movement” around 12th and Mass. these days. There are new faces almost every week, people are answering calls to take up new work for the kingdom of God, the gospel is taking us to serve people not just on N Street, but in Nicaragua. At the beginning of movement like that, these three ask us what we are: Are we real disciples or “would-be” disciples, disciples in fact or disciples in intention only. Clearly these three people Jesus met had the intent to follow him, but they drew up short, either because they hadn’t counted the cost of discipleship, or they weren’t ready to pay it. Discipleship has been called a “long obedience in the same direction,” and the only way we can be fit for this work is if we keep Jesus always before us, “forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,” praying always “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” in our hearts, in our church, in this city, and in the world, as it is in heaven.

+ In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

1. Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone (London: SPCK, 2001): 117.

2. Marvin R. Wilson, Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989): 251.

3. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion § 2.8.15, Henry Beveridge trans., 1 vol. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989): 328.

4. The Millennium Development Goals can be found at http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ (last visited 30 June 2007).

5. Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology of the Social Gospel, p. 131 (quoted in Linwood Urban, A Short History of Christian Thought, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995): 351.

6. Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987): 77-78 (quoting T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding” (No. 4 of Four Quartets), http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets /gidding.html (last visited 30 June 2007)).

7. Fred B. Craddock, et al., Preaching Through the Christian Year: Year C (Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press Int’l, 1994): 320.

8. Peter Kreeft, Back to Virtue (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 185-86.

9. Book of Common Prayer (New York: Church Publishing, 1979): 448.

10. Caedmon’s Call, “Forget What You Know” (http://www.lyricsdownload.com/caedmon-s-call-forget-what-you-know-lyrics.html (last visited 30 June 2007)).

11. Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 1980).