Luke 9:51-62
June 27, 2004
4 Pentecost C
Luke
9:51-62
June 27, 2004
"Hard Sayings”
Imagine this: I ask for your help on
a project that is essential for the future of our church. We have to start
right now. You say to me, “Pastor, I’d like to help you, but my father
just died. Let me go and bury him first.” Instead of offering to do the
funeral, or even offering you any sympathy, I say instead, “Let the dead bury their own
dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
Or how about this:
We have a sudden opening on our Mexico Mission Trip, and we’re leaving today. I
ask you to come along. You say to me. “I will follow you, but first let me say
farewell to those at my home.” I answer, “No one who puts a hand to the
plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
If I were so speak
to you that harshly, you probably wouldn’t think I was a very good pastor. That’s
why Jesus, from whom these sayings come, would not have made a very good parish
pastor. From time to time, he said some things that were pretty hard to hear.
Those of us in the
parish ministry are trained to take a gentler approach. We are always trying to
make this thing called faith appealing. We are encouraged to make the church
open and accessible to seekers. The church growth experts tell us that we are
to proceed along the same lines as politicians preparing for a campaign—find
out what people want by identifying what they care about.
The church that
prospers is the one that both makes it easy for people to get in the door, and
then makes them want to stay. So the effective church and its pastor will offer
worship that is meaningful and interesting. There will be plenty of
opportunities for fellowship and growth. Children and youth will find programs
that are not boring. There will be plenty of ways to be engaged in meaningful
service that will fit into people’s busy schedules without inconvenience.
It’s not that any
of this is bad. It’s just that what Jesus says in the hard sayings in today’s
gospel is so different, so strange, so unreasonable. Instead of making
discipleship easy, he seems to be making it hard. Instead of making his way fit
in with our other commitments and loyalties, he sets his way over against them.
Instead of asking us to give up bad habits or loyalties, he asks us to choose
him over home and security, over family obligations. Jesus doesn’t ask us to
choose him over the worst, but over the best.
Hard sayings,
indeed. Why does Jesus make discipleship so difficult? Doesn’t he care
about us? If he did, he’d make it easy, right? Wrong. Jesus cares about
us so much that he wants us to know how important it is to give ourselves in
such a way that nothing is left over. He wants us to know how alive we can feel
when we are walking with him. He wants us to know how it can breathe life into
our weary souls not to be chopped up little pieces between different
commitments and priorities. He wants us to be very clear about the one thing
that is truly necessary and needful, so that all our other commitments and
priorities in life line up behind. He makes discipleship difficult because he
wants us to know what it is like to get a hold of our one true necessity.
Jesus said these
hard things to his would-be disciples not because he was uncaring, but because
he cared enough to be honest, to be demanding, to say upfront that following
him would cost us everything that we hold dear.
That truth grates
hard on the ears of a society shaped by an ethic of self-fulfillment, of
independence, of individual freedom. It comes hard to a society where the
holiest trinity of all may be the trinity of me, myself, and mine.
Jesus cares enough
about us that he wants us to know what following him will cost us. He wants us
to know, as Barbara Brown Taylor observes, that it isn’t about creating a safe,
caring environment where people’s needs will be met so much as it is about
living such a different way of life that those in authority may get mad enough
to want to kill us. “Discipleship” she writes, “costs all that we have, all that we love,
all that we are. And Jesus does not want us to be fooled about that.”
That doesn’t mean that we in the church will
stop trying to create a safe caring environment. We will still bury your dead,
offer you sympathy, and help you with your family problems. We will still keep
trying to meet people’s needs. But we should never forget that our deepest need
is to give ourselves wholly, to commit ourselves fully, to give ourselves so
completely that nothing is left over, in order that we might get a hold of our
one true necessity.
Jesus reminds us of
that with some hard sayings;
“Those who want to save their
life will loose it.”
“Let the dead bury their own
dead.”
“No one who puts a hand to the
plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God”
But then,
discipleship has never been for everyone, has it? The words of Jesus, and for
that matter, Jesus himself, were never welcomed by the world. But they are
words of truth for those who know that true freedom lies in deep commitment,
and that abundant life is found in giving ourselves wholly to God. AMEN