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!
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