Pentecost 3, Proper 8C
Rev Fanny Belanger
Luke 9: 51-62
We’re now in the season after Pentecost, also called “Ordinary season”. I rather call it “The season of discipleship”, because it’s this time between Pentecost and Advent when we read from the Gospel about Jesus’s ministry and especially about Jesus’s teaching, how the disciples were formed, how they learned from Jesus and also learned about Jesus, how they came to acknowledge him as the Son of God.
So we would have to start with the beginning, with the call of the disciples to follow Jesus, and yet if you have noticed we’re already in the middle of the Gospel. The passage we have just heard is taken from Ch 9, and what we read happens shortly after Jesus’s announce of the passion and his Transfiguration. This section marks actually the beginning of what we call “Luke’s travel narrative”: It describes what happened along the way as Jesus was heading to Jerusalem to face his death. And it is exactly where our text picks up, right? When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And then, if we look closer at our passage, we realize that it is not so much a story about Jesus calling people to follow him, rather it is about people who either downright rejects Jesus, like the people in the Samaritan village, or people who want to follow, but who may not have what it takes for the journey. In this, it is a difficult passage and we hear Jesus say harsh things, and yet, for those like us who have answered the first call to follow Jesus because we have been baptized, because we have been living the Christian life for a while, it is an important passage to hear to be reminded what it means to follow Jesus when we claim a crucified God and how costly it can be to us. We’re in a culture, including a Christian culture, that celebrates good will and good intentions, and yet in this passage we see religious people, people of good will who are going to miss out for reasons that are not so different than ours.
So let’s have a closer look at it.
– The first part of our passage is about how a village of Samaritans Jesus wanted to visit refuses to receive him. We have to realize that the Samaritans reject Jesus because, Luke tells us, “He had his face set on Jerusalem“. Jesus was a Jew and the Samaritans didn’t like the Jews and mainly they didn’t believe Jerusalem was the holy place where believers should worship. Instead they believed the Scriptures told them to worship on Mount Gerizim. Interestingly in John’s Gospel (Ch 4), Jesus will say to a Samaritan woman that if salvation comes from the Jews, his own people, soon it wouldn’t matter where people will worship, and we also know that Jesus predicted the destruction of the Temple. So this village really did miss out on what Jesus had to say, and that happened just because of their racial prejudices and narrow mindedness.
And it can still be true for us as well. We can miss out on a lot just because of our assumptions. We assume we know what the Gospel is all about, so we don’t listen carefully. We assume that people from other christian denominations or even of different faith don’t have a genuine experience of God, so we don’t talk with them. We assume foreigners, would it be only people from another part of the country, are here to take advantage, so we refuse our hospitality and we don’t open our hearts. But I heard once a latino preacher who said to his people: Maybe God allows immigration so the people in this country can learn about what we know about God. He said to them: Maybe we are here to work and make a living, but what about if we were here to evangelize the Anglos? I think it would be a great way for us to think about it, that the one who asks for our hospitality could in the end the one who will teach us about God.
– Then, and that’s the second part of our passage, we see three others reasons why people don’t have a deeper knowledge of Christ or end up being stuck in their following him. And I think it all comes down to the same reason: They don’t put Jesus first.
The first person we encounter is full of enthusiasm and good will “I will follow you wherever you go” he says, and maybe we can recognize this type of persons. They love Jesus and they want the good life with Jesus. But the thing is they don‘t like the sacrifices that come with following Jesus: “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head” says Jesus, and he certainly says that because he has just been denied a place to stay in the village. I read a book recently about “doing God’s will” and one of the things the author kept stressing is that most Christians want to follow Jesus, but they also want to make a nice life for themselves, and he says that is why in the end it does not work very well in their faith. It does not mean that they don’t have faith at all, but they remain lukewarm believers, they don’t grow a lot spiritually and they miss out on the best God has to offer.
The second person we meet is also going to miss out, but for different reasons. It is actually his sense of duty and responsibility that comes in the way. It seems very harsh that Jesus would say to him “Let the dead bury their own dead”, but we have to be aware that when the man asks about “burying his father first”, he does not mean his father has just passed and he must attend the ceremony. Rather, he wants to wait for when he will be done with his filial duties, after the passing of his parents, so he would be free to follow Jesus. But of course, there is no time, for all we know Jesus will be buried before the man’s father die. Does this man need to sit around and wait and let his life passes by out of a sense of obligation? Jesus does not think so. Rather, his life has to be given to God first. He says: For you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.
And it is hard for us to hear that because we realize that sometimes even our sense of duty can come in the way of the authentic christian life. We try to do our best at work, with our relatives and how could it be wrong? Well it’s certainly not wrong in itself, butit can become wrong if we don’t put God first, if we put our sense of obligation and responsibility before what God calls us to do, if we put this world before the Kingdom of God. You see, the problem is that we don‘t have to choose God over bad things only, but we also have to choose God above good things as well, important things.
– And then the last person we encounter is just plainly distracted, he wants to go out and throw a party and spend time with all the people he loves before he can make a commitment to Jesus. Again, we have to understand that the man does not want just to go back home to pack and hug his relatives, the assumption is that he would have a big meal, invite friends, and we know that in the Jewish culture of the time, celebrations could last for an entire week. Jesus had nothing against that, and we often see him attending joyful occasions, he certainly valued friendship, but yet again, when he calls us we shouldn’t prioritize our good time over our time with him.
The problem is that often we want the Christian life, but we also want to enjoy a good time with the people we love. And there is nothing wrong in loving people right? But if we don‘t prioritize time with God and service to God, our spiritual lives can become very shallow, and it is true about our churches too and actually that’s another way of reading this passage. We often hear about churches becoming like clubs where you go meet your friends, or museums where you keep things from the past, or even hospitals, and sometimes we mean it in a good way: We say the church is a hospital for sinners. But you know, if we put too much energy in saving our traditions, looking back at our past or even taking care of our own people, looking for comfort, then we’re going to miss out on the places and the ministries where God is calling us. I think that’s what Jesus means when he says: Let the dead bury their own dead. If we become a club, or a museum, or even a hospital, our rituals become dead, we practice an empty religion for the sake of performing and that does not bring us life anymore.
So Jesus comes today to wake us up. Out of his harsh sayings, we have to understand his desire for us to choose him over all and we see his suffering when we do not because he wants us and be with us and shares his very life with us. I think this passage reminds us also that there is little time. We know there is little time left to Jesus because “His face is set on Jerusalem” but it is also true for us of course. There is for all of us, believers and churches, a window of opportunities or rather a time when the Lord visits us and if we don’t say yes, well, the fire of heaven is not going to consume us like in the story, but certainly the fire of the Holy Spirit won’t be in us either, we will be left to our devices, our own resources and they may not be that many. We think there is always time, and then there is not time left. So we need to respond over and over to God’s call and rededicate ourselves to God and ask God that we may be able to recognize the time when God invites us to do something new, and be able to respond to this call readily and also sacrificially. Let’s choose again today to put God first.