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Pentecost V June 26-27, 2010 Luke 9:51-62 When I was young, I used to take my transistor radio, and an atlas that my dad had used in college, and sit in my bedroom late at night. I would open the atlas to a map of the United States and I would constantly twist the radio dial, moving back and forth, listening for radio stations, and marking the location on the map whenever I heard a call sign and location. One thing I noticed early on, and that was how hard it was to precisely tune the radio dial so that I could get the signal with a minimum of amount of static. With automatic fine tuning features as standard equipment these days, many people don't know what it was like to try to listen to a distant station without a lot of static. So what is the point? Just this, as a radio dial must be 100% committed to the station it's tuned to, to do its job, so we must commit ourselves 100% to Jesus Christ. Yet many of us try to have it both ways, we want to tune into God, yet we also want the world, we want to walk in the truth, yet we do not want to entirely discourage temptation. As a result we get both the music and the static. Jesus said that "No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other" (Matthew 6:24). Jesus also told us that "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart..." (Deut 6:5). We can summarize our gospel today with two words: commitment and vision. Those two words are what it is all about. The center of our faith is a cross. Jesus knew this. We read a few moments ago that as his time drew near to be taken up, "he set his face to go to Jerusalem." So? Jesus set out for Jerusalem as the time of Passover neared because Passover was the time when the Jewish people commemorated the Passover event written about in the book of Exodus. Passover was when an unblemished lamb was sacrificed in remembrance of the freeing of the Israelites from Egypt. As the time of his sacrifice came close, Jesus was willing to lay down his life for you and me, to be crucified for our sins. Jesus, on his way to Jerusalem, on a mission of mercy for all of humanity, shows his commitment to mercy when he passes through a Samaritan village where the people refused to hear him, and James and John wanted to call down fire from heaven as a rebuke against the villagers. Instead, Jesus rebukes his disciples as he moves on to another village. Commitment, talk about commitment; Jesus is committed to the cross, he is committed to finishing his atoning labor, on our behalf, in Jerusalem, he is committed to mercy, he is committed to correcting the harsh attitudes of his disciples, and he is committed to spreading the good news as he moves on to the next village. This is the story of our Lord, he is committed to you and me, committed to acting in our best interest. Now hear what happens next, a man tells Jesus, "I will follow you wherever you go." Yes! The commitment of Christ elicits from us a commitment of our own. Unfortunately, our commitment to Jesus often seems to be one of getting him to bless our plans for health, bless our plans for wealth, bless our plans for fun, bless our plans for advancement at work, and so on. But, Jesus isn't interested in our plans. He wants to interest us in his plans. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his book "The Cost of Discipleship" that "When Christ calls a man (or a woman) he bids him come and die." In other words, we die to our plans, our dreams, our lives, that we might live to Jesus' plans and dreams for us. Many people here like to go camping. Real camping; tents, sleeping bags, the whole camping thing. My idea of camping, my idea of roughing it, is to stay at a Holiday Inn. To me, it is all about comfort... And interestingly enough, in our Gospel today, Jesus also mentions comforts; "follow me, will you? Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Jesus was not a nester, he did not stay holed up in some village, doing his ministry from one central location, instead he was on the move, village to village. One of our families is leaving next month for a year or maybe more in South Korea, a reasonably civilized country as far as most countries go, even comfortable in some respects, but I am not sure if it is up to the comforts of our country. I admire them for several reasons, among which is the fact that comforts or no comforts, they are going anyway. You can say they are going with Jesus to the next village. We are committed to the world and we are committed to worldly commitments. We each have our own entanglements, parents who care about us, who are sometimes sick needing care, spouses to please, mortgages to satisfy, jobs, children to put through college, and even more, and all these things can make us stay put, make us afraid to budge. Jesus said to a follower "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God." Homes, careers, parents, business, all are wonderful things, all gifts from God, but when Christ calls, they must be set aside. Notice I said set aside, not cast aside. Then we have our relationships, our comforts which can glue us to our seats, we have our commitments to the world, and all can cause us to stick, cementing us in place, as even families bid us stay. "I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go back and say good-by to my family." Jesus said to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God." My father-in-law farmed his entire life. I remember driving with him and as we drove past fields, his own as well as neighboring fields. I would notice whether the furrows were straight. Sometimes furrows were so straight, I could look down a row of corn and see to the end of the field, at least before the corn overgrew the rows. But before the ground is plowed, it is not ready for planting. Plowing buries everything--weeds, grass, thatch, fertilizer, other nutrients. It is all turned over and incorporated into the soil and, at the same time, the already good soil under the surface is uncovered and made ready for planting, made ready for growth. You have to pay a lot of attention when you are running a plow, not only back in Jesus' day but in our time as well, even with GPS. When you plow you are turning over the earth, you are turning over resistance to the coming seeds, burying the resistance and incorporating it into the soil, turning up fertile soil to receive the seed, and to do that you have to be totally focused on what is in front of you. You cannot be looking behind you at what the plow is doing, you are looking ahead, into the future, seeing a field fully plowed, in full growth, the harvest beginning. It is about looking into the future, God's future, the dream of the best harvest ever, seeing God's reign at work in our world, seeing God's reign overturn sin, seeing what this world would look like if it were to open itself up to God, seeing people touched by God's reign. Not only is this lesson today about commitment but it is about vision. Jesus and his vision. He kept his eyes forward, looking ahead into the future, God's future. He looked ahead and captured a vision of God's reign at work, overturning sin, and the destruction it brings to people. Jesus looked ahead and saw people becoming open to God, touched by his reign. Jesus was like a plowman. As the time approached for Jesus to be taken up, as his moment was at hand, Jesus left Galilee and journeyed to Jerusalem. It was time for Jesus, the Lamb of God, to be taken up on the cross, taken up in the resurrection, taken up in the ascension. As a farmer makes a trip across a field, so Jesus journeyed from God to us, he journeyed from God's future to our present. Jesus journeys to us and leads us back to God. As a farmer might set his sight on a distant tree to keep his plowing straight, so Jesus set his eyes on a tree at Golgotha, and plowed that first furrow straight from God's future to us today, so that "he who by a tree once overcame, might by a tree be overcome." Jesus overcame, and overturned evil, and resistance, by burying it in the tomb. The earth ripped itself open at his death, so as to be more receptive to God's reign. Jesus' resurrection and ascension produced the first fruits of the greater harvest yet to come, the resurrection of those who believe in him, a harvest that Jesus could already see that day in Galilee. Our Gospel today is about commitment and vision, keeping your eyes forward and looking ahead, looking into the future, into God's future. Seeing God's reign at work in our world, in our lives, seeing sin overturned, seeing what the world would look like, opened up to God, seeing people touched by God's reign. My friends, this morning I invite you to catch the vision, to take on the commitment, see what Jesus saw. Imagine hatred overturned. Imagine divisiveness overturned. Imagine hopelessness overturned. Imagine selfishness overturned. Imagine frustration overturned. Imagine guilt, shame, fear, all overturned. Just look around you and you will see much that needs to be plowed under. A daunting task if ever we have been called to one. But Jesus' vision is empowering and it guides us toward the most important things. Jesus' journey had sense of urgency and he asked his disciples to forsake comfort and security, to leave funeral arrangements to others, to leave families if necessary, without saying good-bye. Jesus does not ask this of everyone, and it is not an absolute standard, but his extreme demands underscore the importance of his trip to Jerusalem. God works through people who keep their eyes on his vision, the vision of his reign in the world, people who keep their eyes on the prize. God works through those who can place the vision of ahead of physical comfort, ahead of social customs, ahead even of family ties. As we, his people, set our eyes on the vision of God's reign in the world, that vision will become more and more of a reality. Many of us only want to be involved with Christ, not totally committed to him and to his vision, but the one who is totally committed to us, calls us for our full commitment to him. Amen Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa, Minnesota |
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