Scripture: Luke 10:25-37
As we shared with you last week that we are beginning a journey with Jesus who has now determined to go to Jerusalem to confront the religious, political, and economic oligarchs of his day with his message of peace, hope, mercy, generosity, and love. Jesus is going to Jerusalem to face his destiny, whatever that might be and on the way he uses the journey to teach his followers what it means to be his disciple.
The journey began with Jesus going through Samaria, a region inhabited by half-breed Jews who worship on Mountain in Samaria instead of Jerusalem where they once had a temple of their own until the Jews destroyed it, and who hold holy the same books of Moses as their neighbors the Jews, but who interpret them differently. Over centuries of hateful and violent actions the Samaritans don’t trust the Jews and the Jews don’t trust the Samaritans. Jews passing through Samaria are seen as troublemakers who are up to no good. Jews think of the Samaritans as unholy abominations and they refuse any real community with them.
Last week we read that Jesus sent the 12 ahead of him to prepare the way for his journey through Samaria and that when John and James are met with opposition they want to demand that God rain fire upon the troublesome village that rejected them, but Jesus tells them that hatred for hatred and violence for violence is not his way.
We are not reading it this year, but in the next passage from Luke, Jesus next sends out 70 of his followers to the surrounding Samaritan villages and cities and tells them that their mission is one of peace. They are to offer the blessing of peace to all of the villages and accept the peaceful responses they hopefully will receive. If they are met with opposition they are to leave that village and go on without confrontation or negative actions or words. If they are received peacefully then they are not to take advantage of their hosts but accept whatever gifts of hospitality and food are extended to them. When the 70 return to Jesus they celebrate the great peaceful reception that they have been given and they praise God. There is no question about it, Jesus’ way of peace works.
Then we come to today’s reading in which a scribe, that is a lawyer, an expert of the Jewish scriptures and an interpreter of the law asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. We are not given the location of this story, but we can assume that Jesus has now entered Jewish territory and he may be at someone’s home or even in a synagogue. Karl Allen Kuhn says that the lawyer is engaging Jesus in a common form of public debate known as the ‘challenge-response’ the intent of which I suspect was to show Jesus to be just an unlearned country bumpkin whose knowledge of the scriptures was inadequate and thus he may have hoped to embarrass Jesus in front of those gathered together. From the subtext of the words used we can probably assume that the lawyer already thinks he knows the correct answer to his questions. It was not a test to see if Jesus knew the right answer, but to see if Jesus could match the skills of the lawyer who was trained and proficient in this debating style.
Jesus doesn’t answer the lawyer but instead asks the lawyer what the scripture says. The lawyer answers Jesus’ question and appears to have the upper hand since Jesus chose not to quote the law himself. His answer repeats the Levitical Code found in Deut. 6:4-5 spelled out that our supreme commandments are to Love of God and to love of our neighbor as ourselves. Whereupon Jesus, adding nothing to the debate, simply affirms the man’s response and tells him to “do this and you will live.”
But lawyer is not satisfied so he presses Jesus with another question: “And, pray tell me, just who is my neighbor?” You see the Law also addressed who a neighbor is and how a neighbor should be treated. But this man wants to know what the limits are to who a neighbor might be that is consistent to the teaching of the law.
Simply asking such a question is setting up the answer to be one that will be full of boundaries and limitations. Within the Levitical code reasons are given which allow one to ignore and even demean others who are unclean according to the law because of something they have done or simply because of whom they are. Sick or injured people are unclean and they can safely be ignored because the literal interpretation of scriptures seems to assume that they must have deliberately done something wrong which has resulted in their punishment, or, their parents have done something wrong and they are being punished for their parent’s sins.
Simply put, some folk are your neighbors and some folk are not your neighbors. If loving God and loving my neighbor are evidence of my being in a good relationship with God and thus promised eternal life, then I must make sure that I take care of those who the Scriptures define as a neighbor, therefore I must know who my neighbor is and surely I also need to know who isn’t my neighbor. In other words, who do I need to love and who can I reasonably ignore without losing eternal life; that is losing my relationship with God? There must be limits to who I must love. Surely God doesn’t expect me to love everyone in the entire world? The Law clearly lays out who is clean and who is unclean. I know I must love those who are clean, but surely I don’t have to love the unclean in the world, do I? These are the hidden questions within the question the lawyer is asking.
But Jesus doesn’t engage the lawyer in debating the finer points of the law contained in the scriptures, instead, as was often his way, he simply tells a story and leaves us to figure out the answer for ourselves.
Jesus begins the story by telling about a man, we can reasonably assume he is Jewish so that his audience can identify with the man, who is on a journey to Jerusalem and he must go down through Samaria. Going through Samaria is bad enough all on its own with the animosity between the Samaritans and the Jews that have raged for centuries about the proper place to worship God and the correct scriptures to use and how to interpret those scriptures. We often argue the most with those who share our fundamental faith, but who differ from us in minor ways. The audacity of anyone who agrees with us only partially but not totally galls us to the point that we consider them to be our very worst enemies. We tend to think that our fundamentalist Christian friends are hypocrites who can’t see how hateful they are being toward us while at the same time they are preaching love and acceptance of others on behalf of Christ; and at the same time they think that we are horrible sinners because we don’t agree with their interpretations of the very same scriptures we both use. Guess you could say that things haven’t changed much over thousands of years.
But the trip through Samaria is much worse because of the geographical situation. The road rises some 3,000 feet over 20 miles making it extremely steep and very physically challenging. The road went through a rocky landscape filled with many caves where bandits could wait and pounce upon unsuspecting travelers. It rightly earned it’s name in ancient times as the “Bloody Pass.” No one in his or her right mind would travel this road alone, but that is the story Jesus tells us.
The man is attacked and stripped and beaten and left half dead lying in the road. Understand that because his clothing has been taken away from him there are no longer any identifying marks to tell you who he is or where he might be from. To anyone looking he’s just a bloody body lying in the ditch.
Along the road comes one who is thought of as one of the most righteous persons in all of Israel, a priest on his way to Jerusalem to take part in his assigned duties at the Temple which are rotated among the Priests. The Law tells us that to touch a dead body that doesn’t belong to a relative would make you ceremonially unclean and therefore the Priest would not be able to perform his expected functions in the Temple until he had gone through an elaborate process of becoming clean again, and he would therefore miss his assigned duties in the Temple and have to possibly wait another year for the privilege of serving again. Actually, just touching blood would have made him unclean even if the man were still alive. But, hey, why take the chance of missing my assigned duties in the Temple. This is my time to shine in front of family and friends and all of Israel! But then, if the man has been attacked by robbers, maybe they are still nearby and will attack me, too, if I stop and help him, so the Priest passes by without helping the man.
The next person to come along the road is also from a group renowned throughout Israel as righteous, one who follows the Law of God to the letter, a Levite, also an officer of the Temple. The Levites served the priests, led the singing of the psalms and did all of the construction work within the Temple, while performing many other tasks. They, too, had rotations of service in the Temple and this man was also most likely on his way to the Temple to serve in his assigned tasks. Jesus’ listeners would have known these things, so Jesus didn’t have to delineate their responsibilities as I am doing for you. Rather than risking becoming unclean by the blood or a dead body, or attacked by the robbers, the Levite also passes by the injured man without offering help.
Both the priest and the Levite seem to be asking the question of themselves: What will happen to me if I stop to help this man? How often do we walk by persons in obvious need and indifferently go on our way without even thinking about how we could help them? Take a walk through the University District, Capitol Hill, or downtown, early in the morning and you can see many who have spent the night sleeping on the street. But do you really see them and if you could would you ever help them? Or do you avoid looking them in the eye for fear they will talk to you or ask you for something as you scurry on your way to your place of service and duty?
Just as we have our expected characters in certain story situations like the Joke I told earlier, so, too did the stories told by people at this time. Everyone is expecting Jesus to fill the formula for the story by telling them that the next person to pass by is a simple Israelite, a humble person like themselves who ends up doing the right thing that the Priest and Levite wouldn’t do.
But not so in Jesus’ story. Instead of a humble Israelite, Jesus says that the next person to come along the road is a hated and despised Samaritan. After centuries of retelling this story in more modern contexts you and I think of the man as the Good Samaritan, the one who does the right thing, but that is not how those who heard the story from Jesus would have thought of the man.
In the original setting, when this story was first told by Jesus, to a Jewish scribe and Jewish listeners, a Samaritan would have been the exact opposite of a hero, he would have been the infamous "bad boy". That is an important emotion-laden element for us to remember as we proceed through this parable. The hero is a bad guy. In the lore of our own Western cowboy tales, the Samaritan was the one wearing a black hat. Ethnically and culturally speaking the Samaritan is the very last person Jesus’ audience would have expected Jesus to hail as an commendable neighbor.
This would have been not only extremely shocking but also greatly offensive to everyone hearing the story that day. How dare Jesus tell the story this way! How could he take a hated person like a Samaritan and make him out to be the hero in the story? Impossible! Ridiculous! Absurd!
But that’s exactly what Jesus does and he portrays the hated and assumed hate-filled Samaritan as taking extensive care and giving immense mercy and all-embracing kindness to the poor traveler even going out of his way by promising to pay extra for his care when he returns from his travels to check on him. It is the Samaritan who asks a different question of himself: What will become of the man left for dead if I walk on by and don’t stop to help him?
The Samaritan didn’t worry about the robbers coming back when he stopped to help the man. He gave up worry about his own safety and about completing his own responsibilities elsewhere. He had mercy and compassion upon the man and he did more than could have ever been expected of him in such a situation. He not only helped the man by cleaning him up and helping him to get to a helpful, hopeful place, he goes beyond the expectations and gives out of his own wealth and promises to give even more if needed.
Remember, throughout this journey with Jesus to Jerusalem we will be taking over the next few months, I will be reminding you that the New Community of God that Jesus keeps talking about is not something that will come upon us some day in the far distant future, but it is a reality that already exists in the here and now. The Samaritan knows this truth already in his life and lives it out by what he chooses to do for the man he discovers lying in the road. Instead of passing by, the Samaritan brings the man into his own neighborhood, into the New Community of God. The Samaritan does what a good neighbor should do for others: he cared and he took action that reflected his caring.
The priest and the Levite felt that to touch the hurt and bleeding man would somehow make them unclean and therefore unholy. The priest would not have been able to go into the Holy of Holies. The Samaritan’s actions tell us that touching those who are wounded by the world is an act of holiness. To touch the brokenness of another person is to enter the Holy of Holies.
As members of the Queer community we cannot let the issues of HIV & AIDS fall off the scale of importance in our communities just because there is an economic problem. Reducing the funding for HIV & AIDS, especially for insurance and medication, is to cause untold agony for thousands upon thousands whose lives might have been saved and extended. The same is true for the health issues of women and children as well as men. Cut other programs, but do not cut programs that give and sustain holy lives.
Let’s make it personal: Jesus' reply not only challenges the premise (of who is my neighbor) but brings a shocking surprise: each of us is to be a neighbor whenever we are needed and (we must) realize that neighbors can come from surprising places.
When Jesus finishes the story he asks the lawyer, “Who was a neighbor to the man?” Finding it impossible to say “the Samaritan” the lawyer simply answers “the one who showed him mercy,” that is the one who put his compassion into action.”
His reply is correct, and Jesus simply says, "Go and do likewise." Put your compassion into action! Jesus' point is: Simply be a neighbor. Do not rule out anyone as your neighbor. Jesus makes the point by emphatically providing a model from a group of people that the lawyer would have excluded from his own description of neighborhood. Samaritans were unclean according to the lawyers interpretation of scriptures.
Jesus’ parable has turned the whole question around. The lawyer asks who is his neighbor, in the hope that there will be some appropriate restrictions on whom he should include in his neighborhood. Jesus, however, replies that in order to determine who your neighbor is; you must become a neighbor to everyone, even to those who you would rather not include in your neighborhood.
To love God means to show mercy to those in need, to put your compassion into action. An authentic follower of Christ is one who loves God and who cares for others. This is a central tenet of discipleship. Men and women fulfill their created role--to love God supremely means being a neighbor to others by meeting their needs.
Neighbors are not determined by race, ethnicity, religious creed, political persuasion, economic or social position, sexual orientation, or gender identity; neighbors consist of anyone made in the image of God who has a need. The world cries out to us: Would you be my neighbor! And we answer them by our words and by our actions on their behalf. Will you be a neighbor today? Will you become holy by touching someone’s brokenness?
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Counting the Costs of Following Jesus, Proper 8C
Scripture: Luke 9:51-62
When we begin to talk about discipleship, about following the way of Jesus Christ, we tend to fall back upon what we have learned in our religious training as youngsters and youth. That may be good, or that may be bad. We have this system of belief that tells us what a disciple of Christ is and what a disciple is suppose to be and do. The problem is that what we have been told and what we have come to believe might not be very consistent with what Christ was trying to explain to us through his teaching and his example about what a follower of Christ really is.
We tend to believe what we have been told by others even when the evidence of the scripture is otherwise. Perhaps we should begin our discussion today of what it means to be a follower of Jesus by looking at what Jesus said to his followers.
One of the mistakes we make in looking at Jesus and his followers is trying to separate historically false teachings and misunderstandings from what Christ appears to have actually said that is recorded in the four Gospels. Again, we think we know what it says, but when we in fact go back and read the text as it has been handed down to us, we may often find that there are differences between the words reported and the understandings we have developed.
In today’s passage Jesus has determined that he will go to Jerusalem and confront the political and religious and social injustices of his day. From now through October we focus our attention on a very unique collection of stories about the life of Jesus which include some of the most familiar parables and teachings he gives to his disciples as recorded by Luke. All of these teachings and stories focus on what it means to be a follower of Jesus. In this section of Luke, Jesus is preparing his followers for what they will face and what they will have to do after he is no longer with them. He is teaching them what it means to be his follower, his disciple, and he is also teaching them that there are attitudes and actions that they cannot take when they represent him to the world. As we move through these stories and parables you and I ourselves will be on a journey with Jesus to Jerusalem.
Jesus will leave Galilee and the surrounding territory which have up to now been the primary focus of his ministry and go to Judea and the capital city of Jerusalem. It is in Jerusalem that he will confront the political, social, and religious authorities of his day and attempt to further his revolutionary teachings. We understand this kind of thinking. The only way to truly change our society is through the political process. When elected officials agree upon something, things change, things get done. Jesus wants to take his movement to the next level and that means going to Jerusalem.
There is only one problem. To get to Jerusalem you have to go through Samaria. Samaria is part of the region that originally belonged to what Bible historians call the Northern Kingdom. This area was overwhelmed by the Assyrians and the people were forced to intermarry with their conquerors. Their offspring are half-breeds and therefore considered to be aliens, outsiders, not part of the promise God has given to Israel. The Samaritans do honor the Law, the five books of Moses called the Pentateuch. They believe that Moses was given the law and they had their own temple on a mountain in Samaria until the Jews destroyed it as a sacrilege against the God that they worshipped. God couldn’t possibly be the God of both Samaria and Israel. That kind of thinking was as impossible for them to wrap their minds around as it is for fundamentalist Christians to accept that you and I can be gay and Christian. Things haven’t changed so much in 2,000 years. You could tell this story and replace Samaritan and Jew with Palestinian and Jew, Indian and Pakistani, or American and Taliban. Both sides in the conflict were so suspicious of the other that peaceful existence wasn’t likely.
Jesus sends his disciples ahead of him to prepare the way. There weren’t hotels, motels, or bed and breakfast inns, restaurants, or convenience stores along the way. So Jesus sends some of his followers ahead of him to arrange for their accommodations along the way. I think he may have also wanted them to prepare the Samaritans to hear what he wanted to teach them.
Jesus knows that the job will be difficult for them, given the fact that they are hated Jews traveling through Samaria. So we shouldn’t be surprised that the disciples encounter some problems and are rejected. James and John, referring to and incident in which the ancient prophet Elijah’s encounters with the soldiers of the King of this same area, want to call down fire from heaven and destroy the offending villagers, just like Elijah called down fire from heaven to destroy the soldiers sent to confront him. But Jesus says that such violence is not his way.
Jesus is likened to Elijah the prophet throughout the book of Luke and we will see that comparison again in a few moments. That Jesus does things differently than Elijah did in similar situations is not to say that Jesus is superior to Elijah, just that the way Jesus works is vastly different from what his followers have come to understand about their faith and how their faith works according to their interpretation of their scriptures and the stories of how their ancestors encountered God.
On at least one occasion Jesus says, “You have heard it said, but now I say to you…” Jesus is saying to his followers, “I don’t care what you think is the right way to believe or act in this situation, I’ve got a different way of doing things. My way honors God and honors our relationships with others at the same time.”
That’s a lesson you and I need to take to heart. We need to think about it before we take actions or before we speak to others, especially when we are trying to be followers of Jesus, representatives of God to the people around us, the persons we are in relationship with. We need to do and say what Jesus would do and say and not what we have come to believe is the right thing to do because of what we have been taught or seen others do. We’ve got to do some thinking and reflecting on what it truly means to be a follower of Jesus and not act out of some rote memory routine.
The Samaritans wouldn’t share hospitality with Jesus and his followers because of what their history and their belief system told them about the Jews. They were wrong. The disciples wanted to return hostility for hostility because of what their own history and belief system told them about Samaritans. Hate for hate, hostility for hostility, violence for violence. That’s the way they had been taught and that’s the only way they knew to act. But that wasn’t the way Jesus would act. When you and I want to return hate for hate, hostility for hostility, and violence for violence we are wrong, too. There is a better way. There is the way of Jesus.
How do you feel about Fundamentalist Christians who tell you that your beliefs are wrong or that you are an abomination, that you are sinful because of who you love, or that God as they understand God rejects you and I for whatever reason they state? What should we do when we come into contact with such persons?
As I walked down the street last Sunday morning I noticed a woman standing close to the parade route. A pleasant looking woman in her forties standing there with a sign that said, “I love you, but I hate your sin.” I didn’t have to ask her what sin she was talking about. I knew. She was trying to tell me that she thought that she loved me, the person I was, but that she hated the fact that I was a gay man who loved another man. I have to tell you that you can’t separate the parts of me and accept some of me and reject the rest of me. I am a whole person. I am gay but I am also a proud Christian man. However, this woman couldn’t or wouldn’t accept me as a whole person and had to divide me into parts she could accept and parts she had to reject. But if you reject any part of me, then you are rejecting all of me.. To her being gay and Christian are an oxymoron, impossible words and concepts to put together in the same sentence.
I was surprised at my reaction. Years ago I would have wanted to take her statements and impaired logic to task; I would have wanted to confront her to explain to her how abhorrent to the Christ I know her thinking and behavior were. But I simply looked at her with compassion and love, yes, love, recognizing that she is trapped in teachings and thinking that she can’t escape from without some love and prayer. I waved at her and I held up one finger…not the one you are thinking…but this one, the sign of Christ, meaning Jesus is one way to a relationship with God. I was trying to indicate to her that I believe that I am a beloved child of God and not a sinner because of who I love. Oh, I know I am a sinner, that I fail God in many ways, and every one of those failures is a sin, meaning it is something that separates me from God’s love, but my loving Mark is not one of those failures. My loving Mark is one of God’s gifts to me, just like anyone else’s relationship with their spouse is, and I will celebrate my love for Mark boldly by walking in Pride parades no matter who wants to stand in judgment of me. And I will return their hatred with love and their rejection with acceptance. It is the Christ-like way. It is the only way for me to be a follower of Jesus.
In the journey to Jerusalem Jesus next encounters several persons who want to become his followers. Here, too, I believe we have often been wrong in our interpretation of these passages. In the first one Jesus responds to the request by saying that life on the road with him won’t be easy because there will not be a safe place to stay along the way, perhaps not even a permanent home to return to from time to time.
I can relate to this passage. Several times in my life I have given up house and home to journey to a distant place of to become the pastor of a congregation or to go to seminary where I wasn’t sure I’d have any place to house myself or my family, where I wasn’t sure that the I was going to have enough income to live on much less get a house to live in. My decisions to follow Jesus in those circumstances were not what I would call logical or based on any economic assurance that the rest of the world would call appropriate before deciding to move across the country. But those decisions were always exactly what I felt God wanted me to do at that moment and I could not delay my following Christ.
Mark and I had to give a lot of thought to coming to Seattle from Tennessee in early 2009. Much of that thought and prayer time was given over to thinking about accommodations. Miraculously God worked on our behalf and directed us to townhouse we now live in. However, I must say that the places I have ended up on such previous journeys weren’t always as nice or as comfortable as our current home, but they were always warm and dry and my family and I were glad to have those places to call home. Just so you know, there have also been times in my life when following Jesus left me homeless.
The journey with Jesus isn’t always easy and we aren’t promised that all of our problems will miraculously be solved if we put Jesus first. In fact, putting Jesus first in our lives may in fact create bigger problems for us than we would have had had we not followed Christ. There is only one thing sure about following Jesus; wherever we end up there we will be with Jesus. Jesus promises to always be with us and to never leave us alone. We have God’s power and presence in our lives if we will follow Jesus. And that gives me a lot of comfort and hope.
Jesus then calls another person to follow him, but the person gives a unique request: Let me first go home and bury my parents, then I will follow you.” Sounds very reasonable, doesn’t it. Why wouldn’t Jesus agree to such a request? Doesn’t Jesus teach us about family values and respecting our parents? As strange as it may sound to you, no, Jesus doesn’t teach about family values as we have come to think about them in our society, nor does he teach about respecting our parents like we might think he would.
Jesus bent the rules of his society and he bent them in favor of God and right relationships with others. He bent them when it was clear that keeping society’s expectations would result in something less than God being honored. Jesus always put God in first place in his life and he expected others to do the same. When his mother and brothers became concerned because he was acting and talking so strangely and came to take him home, he refused to see them and said, “My mother and brothers are those who obey my commands.” Now that wasn’t very family friendly. Sometimes to be true to Christ may mean that we have to do that which seems like dishonoring our own families. It’s difficult, but sometimes it must be done.
We don’t know the situation in this verse. But we do know much about the expectations of the society Jesus lived in. People were expected to care for their elderly parents and to provide for them until they died. The assumption in this verse, according to some scholars, is that this man’s parents are still alive and he is telling Jesus that he must go back and out of obligation to his parents provide a home for them until the day they die and he can bury them. Then he will be free to follow Jesus.
But Jesus rejects this obligation as a rejection of his call to follow him in the here and now. When Jesus calls us we don’t get to say when it will be a good time for us to respond. Jesus calls us in the here and now. Jesus expects us to answer him in the here and now. No matter what our social obligations might be, Jesus wants an answer today. There is urgency in his call to us. Jesus puts obligations to God and following him above any obligations to one’s family or society.
Let me queer this passage for you. Many in our Queer Community put off coming out of the closet with family and friends and co-workers for one reason or another. It isn’t uncommon for me to hear that someone plans to come out about his or her sexuality after his or her parents have died, or when his or her children are grown, or when he or she finally retires from their job. I fully understand what it means to put off doing something important for reasons of family or society. Such decisions can cause us a great deal of agony and distress, especially when our secrets get told before we want them to be told.
Living a life of honesty and integrity is, I believe, a part of being a follower of Christ. I can’t live my life completely if I have to live part of it in secrecy. I tried to come out slowly. I tried to tell just one person at a time in the way I wanted them to be told. It was a good plan, or so it seemed to me at the time, but the first person I told decided to not keep my secret and instead told several other family members, so my story was out there before I knew who had been told or what they had been told. Same thing happened at work. With that history I gave up trying to keep a secret and just came out all at once to family, friends, church, and work. When I meet someone new I get my sexual orientation out in the open as soon as possible. And my life has been a lot better for that kind of honesty with myself and with others. Not having to keep a secret is a so much easier way to live my life.
Jesus isn’t saying disregard your family or society entirely. But he is saying that following him takes precedence over family and friends and church and work and any other obligations we might have.
That said, I must say that if the man had said yes to following Jesus he may have found Jesus telling him to go back home and take care of his parents and fulfill his obligations to them. Or not! I can only imagine. But what I do know from the teachings of Jesus is that when we become followers of Christ we become responsible for building right relationships with other persons in our lives, including our families, friends, and co-workers, and supervisors at work.
Jesus says to the next person, “Follow me,” and the man asks for leave to go home and tell his family goodbye. Reasonable. Sure. But not to Jesus. In fact this calls up the story of the prophet Elijah calling his successor Elisha. Elisha asked to go and tell his family goodbye and Elijah told him, “Yes.” Luke is telling us again, that Jesus is like the great prophet Elijah, but different. Where Elijah said Elisha could go home and tell his family goodbye, Jesus says that following him in the here and now is more important than even telling family and friends goodbye. Nothing is more important than following Jesus.
What is most important in your life? Is it following Jesus and doing those things that Jesus is asking of you or will something else take greater importance in your life and delay your decision to follow Christ? Following Christ means total commitment of everything that you are and will become and that may mean that other obligations and relationships will have to diminish in order for you to fulfill your obligation to Jesus.
When I was studying this passage this week. I thought of the song entitled, “Torn between two lovers.” Following Jesus is a lot like being torn between two loves, the love of God and the love for everything else in our lives. It’s hard to live up to both loves at the same time, as hard as it is to please two human lovers at the same time…though some of you have certain fantasies about that kind of a situation. The fact is that Jesus is saying God must come first. As a follower of Jesus are you willing to put God first in your life above everything and everyone else?
I love to procrastinate. I love to put off until tomorrow what I don’t want to do today. But Jesus is telling us that to be his followers we have to give up procrastination, we have to give up obligations to society and family if those obligations interfere with following him. Why is this so important to him?
Neil Elliot's comment on this text in the People's Bible (Fortress Press, 2008) is instructive: "All that Jesus teaches about justice, about the right use of wealth, about prayer and steadfastness in his cause, he teaches as he leads his followers toward a final confrontation in Jerusalem."
Jesus did not believe that God’s New Community would come into existence someday in the future, or after we die and go to heaven, whatever heaven might be. Jesus wasn’t talking about pie in the sky by and by as my southern family would put it. If the promised New Community of God is only in the future then it makes no difference if we follow Jesus today or tomorrow or next year. No, Jesus makes it very clear that the New Community of God exists today, in the here and now. It has already begun. It is not something we can only look forward to someday because it is something that already exists in the here and now.
You and I can become productive citizens of the New Community of God today, in the here and now, or we can reject Christ’s invitation and thus reject becoming citizens of that New Community of God.
Things will be different in God’s New Community. Society, family and work obligations will change and in fact will become even more important and even more radical than they were before we became followers of Jesus.
Being a follower of Jesus will change the way you think, the way you act, the way you speak. Becoming a follower of Jesus means that you will never ever be the same again. Are you ready to answer Jesus’ invitation to follow him? If you are, then get ready for a radical and outrageous journey with Jesus as citizens of the New Community of God. Better put those seat belts on because it might be a bumpy ride!
When we begin to talk about discipleship, about following the way of Jesus Christ, we tend to fall back upon what we have learned in our religious training as youngsters and youth. That may be good, or that may be bad. We have this system of belief that tells us what a disciple of Christ is and what a disciple is suppose to be and do. The problem is that what we have been told and what we have come to believe might not be very consistent with what Christ was trying to explain to us through his teaching and his example about what a follower of Christ really is.
We tend to believe what we have been told by others even when the evidence of the scripture is otherwise. Perhaps we should begin our discussion today of what it means to be a follower of Jesus by looking at what Jesus said to his followers.
One of the mistakes we make in looking at Jesus and his followers is trying to separate historically false teachings and misunderstandings from what Christ appears to have actually said that is recorded in the four Gospels. Again, we think we know what it says, but when we in fact go back and read the text as it has been handed down to us, we may often find that there are differences between the words reported and the understandings we have developed.
In today’s passage Jesus has determined that he will go to Jerusalem and confront the political and religious and social injustices of his day. From now through October we focus our attention on a very unique collection of stories about the life of Jesus which include some of the most familiar parables and teachings he gives to his disciples as recorded by Luke. All of these teachings and stories focus on what it means to be a follower of Jesus. In this section of Luke, Jesus is preparing his followers for what they will face and what they will have to do after he is no longer with them. He is teaching them what it means to be his follower, his disciple, and he is also teaching them that there are attitudes and actions that they cannot take when they represent him to the world. As we move through these stories and parables you and I ourselves will be on a journey with Jesus to Jerusalem.
Jesus will leave Galilee and the surrounding territory which have up to now been the primary focus of his ministry and go to Judea and the capital city of Jerusalem. It is in Jerusalem that he will confront the political, social, and religious authorities of his day and attempt to further his revolutionary teachings. We understand this kind of thinking. The only way to truly change our society is through the political process. When elected officials agree upon something, things change, things get done. Jesus wants to take his movement to the next level and that means going to Jerusalem.
There is only one problem. To get to Jerusalem you have to go through Samaria. Samaria is part of the region that originally belonged to what Bible historians call the Northern Kingdom. This area was overwhelmed by the Assyrians and the people were forced to intermarry with their conquerors. Their offspring are half-breeds and therefore considered to be aliens, outsiders, not part of the promise God has given to Israel. The Samaritans do honor the Law, the five books of Moses called the Pentateuch. They believe that Moses was given the law and they had their own temple on a mountain in Samaria until the Jews destroyed it as a sacrilege against the God that they worshipped. God couldn’t possibly be the God of both Samaria and Israel. That kind of thinking was as impossible for them to wrap their minds around as it is for fundamentalist Christians to accept that you and I can be gay and Christian. Things haven’t changed so much in 2,000 years. You could tell this story and replace Samaritan and Jew with Palestinian and Jew, Indian and Pakistani, or American and Taliban. Both sides in the conflict were so suspicious of the other that peaceful existence wasn’t likely.
Jesus sends his disciples ahead of him to prepare the way. There weren’t hotels, motels, or bed and breakfast inns, restaurants, or convenience stores along the way. So Jesus sends some of his followers ahead of him to arrange for their accommodations along the way. I think he may have also wanted them to prepare the Samaritans to hear what he wanted to teach them.
Jesus knows that the job will be difficult for them, given the fact that they are hated Jews traveling through Samaria. So we shouldn’t be surprised that the disciples encounter some problems and are rejected. James and John, referring to and incident in which the ancient prophet Elijah’s encounters with the soldiers of the King of this same area, want to call down fire from heaven and destroy the offending villagers, just like Elijah called down fire from heaven to destroy the soldiers sent to confront him. But Jesus says that such violence is not his way.
Jesus is likened to Elijah the prophet throughout the book of Luke and we will see that comparison again in a few moments. That Jesus does things differently than Elijah did in similar situations is not to say that Jesus is superior to Elijah, just that the way Jesus works is vastly different from what his followers have come to understand about their faith and how their faith works according to their interpretation of their scriptures and the stories of how their ancestors encountered God.
On at least one occasion Jesus says, “You have heard it said, but now I say to you…” Jesus is saying to his followers, “I don’t care what you think is the right way to believe or act in this situation, I’ve got a different way of doing things. My way honors God and honors our relationships with others at the same time.”
That’s a lesson you and I need to take to heart. We need to think about it before we take actions or before we speak to others, especially when we are trying to be followers of Jesus, representatives of God to the people around us, the persons we are in relationship with. We need to do and say what Jesus would do and say and not what we have come to believe is the right thing to do because of what we have been taught or seen others do. We’ve got to do some thinking and reflecting on what it truly means to be a follower of Jesus and not act out of some rote memory routine.
The Samaritans wouldn’t share hospitality with Jesus and his followers because of what their history and their belief system told them about the Jews. They were wrong. The disciples wanted to return hostility for hostility because of what their own history and belief system told them about Samaritans. Hate for hate, hostility for hostility, violence for violence. That’s the way they had been taught and that’s the only way they knew to act. But that wasn’t the way Jesus would act. When you and I want to return hate for hate, hostility for hostility, and violence for violence we are wrong, too. There is a better way. There is the way of Jesus.
How do you feel about Fundamentalist Christians who tell you that your beliefs are wrong or that you are an abomination, that you are sinful because of who you love, or that God as they understand God rejects you and I for whatever reason they state? What should we do when we come into contact with such persons?
As I walked down the street last Sunday morning I noticed a woman standing close to the parade route. A pleasant looking woman in her forties standing there with a sign that said, “I love you, but I hate your sin.” I didn’t have to ask her what sin she was talking about. I knew. She was trying to tell me that she thought that she loved me, the person I was, but that she hated the fact that I was a gay man who loved another man. I have to tell you that you can’t separate the parts of me and accept some of me and reject the rest of me. I am a whole person. I am gay but I am also a proud Christian man. However, this woman couldn’t or wouldn’t accept me as a whole person and had to divide me into parts she could accept and parts she had to reject. But if you reject any part of me, then you are rejecting all of me.. To her being gay and Christian are an oxymoron, impossible words and concepts to put together in the same sentence.
I was surprised at my reaction. Years ago I would have wanted to take her statements and impaired logic to task; I would have wanted to confront her to explain to her how abhorrent to the Christ I know her thinking and behavior were. But I simply looked at her with compassion and love, yes, love, recognizing that she is trapped in teachings and thinking that she can’t escape from without some love and prayer. I waved at her and I held up one finger…not the one you are thinking…but this one, the sign of Christ, meaning Jesus is one way to a relationship with God. I was trying to indicate to her that I believe that I am a beloved child of God and not a sinner because of who I love. Oh, I know I am a sinner, that I fail God in many ways, and every one of those failures is a sin, meaning it is something that separates me from God’s love, but my loving Mark is not one of those failures. My loving Mark is one of God’s gifts to me, just like anyone else’s relationship with their spouse is, and I will celebrate my love for Mark boldly by walking in Pride parades no matter who wants to stand in judgment of me. And I will return their hatred with love and their rejection with acceptance. It is the Christ-like way. It is the only way for me to be a follower of Jesus.
In the journey to Jerusalem Jesus next encounters several persons who want to become his followers. Here, too, I believe we have often been wrong in our interpretation of these passages. In the first one Jesus responds to the request by saying that life on the road with him won’t be easy because there will not be a safe place to stay along the way, perhaps not even a permanent home to return to from time to time.
I can relate to this passage. Several times in my life I have given up house and home to journey to a distant place of to become the pastor of a congregation or to go to seminary where I wasn’t sure I’d have any place to house myself or my family, where I wasn’t sure that the I was going to have enough income to live on much less get a house to live in. My decisions to follow Jesus in those circumstances were not what I would call logical or based on any economic assurance that the rest of the world would call appropriate before deciding to move across the country. But those decisions were always exactly what I felt God wanted me to do at that moment and I could not delay my following Christ.
Mark and I had to give a lot of thought to coming to Seattle from Tennessee in early 2009. Much of that thought and prayer time was given over to thinking about accommodations. Miraculously God worked on our behalf and directed us to townhouse we now live in. However, I must say that the places I have ended up on such previous journeys weren’t always as nice or as comfortable as our current home, but they were always warm and dry and my family and I were glad to have those places to call home. Just so you know, there have also been times in my life when following Jesus left me homeless.
The journey with Jesus isn’t always easy and we aren’t promised that all of our problems will miraculously be solved if we put Jesus first. In fact, putting Jesus first in our lives may in fact create bigger problems for us than we would have had had we not followed Christ. There is only one thing sure about following Jesus; wherever we end up there we will be with Jesus. Jesus promises to always be with us and to never leave us alone. We have God’s power and presence in our lives if we will follow Jesus. And that gives me a lot of comfort and hope.
Jesus then calls another person to follow him, but the person gives a unique request: Let me first go home and bury my parents, then I will follow you.” Sounds very reasonable, doesn’t it. Why wouldn’t Jesus agree to such a request? Doesn’t Jesus teach us about family values and respecting our parents? As strange as it may sound to you, no, Jesus doesn’t teach about family values as we have come to think about them in our society, nor does he teach about respecting our parents like we might think he would.
Jesus bent the rules of his society and he bent them in favor of God and right relationships with others. He bent them when it was clear that keeping society’s expectations would result in something less than God being honored. Jesus always put God in first place in his life and he expected others to do the same. When his mother and brothers became concerned because he was acting and talking so strangely and came to take him home, he refused to see them and said, “My mother and brothers are those who obey my commands.” Now that wasn’t very family friendly. Sometimes to be true to Christ may mean that we have to do that which seems like dishonoring our own families. It’s difficult, but sometimes it must be done.
We don’t know the situation in this verse. But we do know much about the expectations of the society Jesus lived in. People were expected to care for their elderly parents and to provide for them until they died. The assumption in this verse, according to some scholars, is that this man’s parents are still alive and he is telling Jesus that he must go back and out of obligation to his parents provide a home for them until the day they die and he can bury them. Then he will be free to follow Jesus.
But Jesus rejects this obligation as a rejection of his call to follow him in the here and now. When Jesus calls us we don’t get to say when it will be a good time for us to respond. Jesus calls us in the here and now. Jesus expects us to answer him in the here and now. No matter what our social obligations might be, Jesus wants an answer today. There is urgency in his call to us. Jesus puts obligations to God and following him above any obligations to one’s family or society.
Let me queer this passage for you. Many in our Queer Community put off coming out of the closet with family and friends and co-workers for one reason or another. It isn’t uncommon for me to hear that someone plans to come out about his or her sexuality after his or her parents have died, or when his or her children are grown, or when he or she finally retires from their job. I fully understand what it means to put off doing something important for reasons of family or society. Such decisions can cause us a great deal of agony and distress, especially when our secrets get told before we want them to be told.
Living a life of honesty and integrity is, I believe, a part of being a follower of Christ. I can’t live my life completely if I have to live part of it in secrecy. I tried to come out slowly. I tried to tell just one person at a time in the way I wanted them to be told. It was a good plan, or so it seemed to me at the time, but the first person I told decided to not keep my secret and instead told several other family members, so my story was out there before I knew who had been told or what they had been told. Same thing happened at work. With that history I gave up trying to keep a secret and just came out all at once to family, friends, church, and work. When I meet someone new I get my sexual orientation out in the open as soon as possible. And my life has been a lot better for that kind of honesty with myself and with others. Not having to keep a secret is a so much easier way to live my life.
Jesus isn’t saying disregard your family or society entirely. But he is saying that following him takes precedence over family and friends and church and work and any other obligations we might have.
That said, I must say that if the man had said yes to following Jesus he may have found Jesus telling him to go back home and take care of his parents and fulfill his obligations to them. Or not! I can only imagine. But what I do know from the teachings of Jesus is that when we become followers of Christ we become responsible for building right relationships with other persons in our lives, including our families, friends, and co-workers, and supervisors at work.
Jesus says to the next person, “Follow me,” and the man asks for leave to go home and tell his family goodbye. Reasonable. Sure. But not to Jesus. In fact this calls up the story of the prophet Elijah calling his successor Elisha. Elisha asked to go and tell his family goodbye and Elijah told him, “Yes.” Luke is telling us again, that Jesus is like the great prophet Elijah, but different. Where Elijah said Elisha could go home and tell his family goodbye, Jesus says that following him in the here and now is more important than even telling family and friends goodbye. Nothing is more important than following Jesus.
What is most important in your life? Is it following Jesus and doing those things that Jesus is asking of you or will something else take greater importance in your life and delay your decision to follow Christ? Following Christ means total commitment of everything that you are and will become and that may mean that other obligations and relationships will have to diminish in order for you to fulfill your obligation to Jesus.
When I was studying this passage this week. I thought of the song entitled, “Torn between two lovers.” Following Jesus is a lot like being torn between two loves, the love of God and the love for everything else in our lives. It’s hard to live up to both loves at the same time, as hard as it is to please two human lovers at the same time…though some of you have certain fantasies about that kind of a situation. The fact is that Jesus is saying God must come first. As a follower of Jesus are you willing to put God first in your life above everything and everyone else?
I love to procrastinate. I love to put off until tomorrow what I don’t want to do today. But Jesus is telling us that to be his followers we have to give up procrastination, we have to give up obligations to society and family if those obligations interfere with following him. Why is this so important to him?
Neil Elliot's comment on this text in the People's Bible (Fortress Press, 2008) is instructive: "All that Jesus teaches about justice, about the right use of wealth, about prayer and steadfastness in his cause, he teaches as he leads his followers toward a final confrontation in Jerusalem."
Jesus did not believe that God’s New Community would come into existence someday in the future, or after we die and go to heaven, whatever heaven might be. Jesus wasn’t talking about pie in the sky by and by as my southern family would put it. If the promised New Community of God is only in the future then it makes no difference if we follow Jesus today or tomorrow or next year. No, Jesus makes it very clear that the New Community of God exists today, in the here and now. It has already begun. It is not something we can only look forward to someday because it is something that already exists in the here and now.
You and I can become productive citizens of the New Community of God today, in the here and now, or we can reject Christ’s invitation and thus reject becoming citizens of that New Community of God.
Things will be different in God’s New Community. Society, family and work obligations will change and in fact will become even more important and even more radical than they were before we became followers of Jesus.
Being a follower of Jesus will change the way you think, the way you act, the way you speak. Becoming a follower of Jesus means that you will never ever be the same again. Are you ready to answer Jesus’ invitation to follow him? If you are, then get ready for a radical and outrageous journey with Jesus as citizens of the New Community of God. Better put those seat belts on because it might be a bumpy ride!
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