Following Jesus

Preached from the Lectionary texts, The Message translation:

Galatians 5:1, 13-25 

Luke 9:51-62

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It’s an unfortunate reality that we don’t always get what we want.  This is often, especially, the case when it comes to how other people treat us.  I generally meander through life desiring that others treat me with the most basic degree of respect.  It’s certainly not unwelcome if they also happen to recognize my natural and radiant brilliance and defer to me in all matters in which I have both knowledge and experience – but while these latter two are desirable, I don’t actually expect them.  I have to tell you, I am rather often disappointed on all three fronts – particularly when engaging in everyone’s favorite pastime – social media. It seems the rules and norms around social engagement simply are not respected anymore.

Which, it appears from our gospel lesson today, isn’t all that new a phenomenon.  Let me give you a little context from Luke’s Gospel:

·     A couple of chapters back, Peter declared that Jesus is the Messiah

·     Jesus immediately predicts his own death

·     8 days after this dire prediction, Jesus is transfigured

·     Following this, in last week’s Gospel, Jesus heals a demon-possessed boy, killing a herd of swine in the process, and the locals chase him out of town

·     At which point, Jesus predicts (again) that he is going to die

It’s not terribly surprising, in context, that Jesus is headed for death.  He’s breaking a lot of rules – eating with sinners; hanging out with unclean folk; being declared the Messiah – who is believed to the one who will overthrow Roman oppression and free the Jews from an unjust, violent, oppressive, and dehumanizing government; causing trouble and threatening the livelihood of those he meets out in the countryside.

So, having been chased off by the locals, who want nothing to do with this swine-killing, demon-exorcising, itinerant healer and his band of unemployed fishermen, Jesus begins his journey south.  He leaves Capernaum, at the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee and likely walks along the Jordan River until reaches the southern border where it empties into the Dead Sea, before veering right and heading to Jerusalem.

Now this is approximately an 85 mile journey, done on foot, with a whole caravan of people with him.  And unlike ultra-marathon runners today who pack 100 mile journeys in 27 hours, Jesus didn’t have 2 liters of Coca-Cola and a backpack full of energy bars readily available to him.  However, like the 100 milers of today, there was an expectation of the spirit of community – the socio-cultural rules and norms of Jesus’s time included giving food, shelter, and care to strangers in their midst, regardless of where or not you agree with their reasons for being there.

It’s not just a cultural expectation – it’s biblical Law.  And Samaritans held to the same scriptures as the Jews.  The people of God are required to give food to the hungry, shelter the poor, welcome the stranger, protect the travelers in our midst.  It was customary in the first century to provide water for washing – a symbol of acceptance and an indication that the host bears no ill intentions.  So, it is quite the act not just of inhospitableness but also of hostility that the Samaritans, learning that Jesus is headed to Jerusalem, refuse him hospitality.

And it is perhaps this line, more than any other in the entire bible, that speaks to my heart of heart and tells me that I am at home within the Christian tradition:  “When the disciples James and John learned of it, they said, ‘Master, do you want us to call a bolt of lightning down out of the sky and incinerate them!?’”  Seriously, these are my people!  If only removing my opponents from the field of battle were so easy.  *sigh*

Jesus’s disciples want justice.  They want retribution.  They want to right the wrong done to them when they were rejected because of their destination.  “These Samaritans aren’t going to follow the Law?  Well, we’ll show them what happens to people who don’t do things the right way!” And perhaps, having been refused hospitality, they saw hostility instead.  “Let us protect ourselves from these enemies!  Strike first!  Jesus just told us that he is going to be delivered into the hands of men, that he must suffer, and that he will be killed.  This impending crisis is all theirfault!”

But Jesus rebukes them.  “That’s not how we treat people!” he declares.  Jesus wants a different kind of justice.  And he leads them to the next village.  Things only get better from here.

Continuing their journey, Jesus unveiling the kingdom of God everywhere he goes, and along the way, more people want to be his disciples, to join his movement, to follow him wherever he’s going to go.  And Jesus gets super real with them – you’re going to have to give up all your comforts if you want to follow me.  We’re roughing it and result of hanging out with me is that people are going to reject you and deny you aid when you need it.”  

And yet, Jesus is open to more people joining his mission.  “Follow me!” he cries.  But those invited have a few loose ends to tie up – one has a father to bury, another has a family to sort out.  Jesus calls the bluff of the man who needs a few days to arrange his father’s funeral – it was expected that burial would take place within a day of death – “Leave it all behind,” Jesus tells them.  “This is too important, and too urgent, to wait while you procrastinate and waver.  Now or never!”

Sounds like, fun, right?  A different kind of justice - give up all of your worldly possessions, leave your family behind, travel miles and miles and miles without food, water, shelter, or care, all the while knowing that if you make it to your destination, you’ll probably be rejected there as well – and if what Jesus has said is true, you’re also going to witness the death of the person to whom you’ve devoted your life.  Who’s with me!?

Listen, I just have to say, I’m kind of confused as to how this marketing campaign managed the kind of success it’s seen. This company has survived for 2,000 years and currently has two billion loyalists, including more than 70% of Americans.

Or does it?

When Adolf Hitler ascended to power in post-WWI Germany, he united the local and regional churches under a new national church.  In marrying the church and state, propaganda was used to install Nazi sympathizers at the highest levels of church governance – who in turn make systematic and systemic changes to disenfranchise particular groups of people – beginning with those of Jewish descent.  This was enacted through passing the “Aryan Paragraph” which reserved right of residency and participation in organizations, federations, parties, and public life exclusively for those of Aryan descent.

In response to this, several German clergypersons formed the “Confessing Church” which stood in opposition to the Nazi regime on moral and theological principals – the state could not have total and unchecked control over persons as ultimate sovereignty, according to Christian orthodoxy, belongs to God.  People are not slaves to the state – they are made free by God’s Spirit, through Christ’s sacrifice.  A different kind of justice.  This opposition included Dietrich Bonhoeffer, widely known for his modern classic The Cost of Discipleship, who declared that the church must not simply “bandage the victims under the wheel, but jam the spoke in the wheel itself.”  

Bonhoeffer’s opposition to injustice and his commitment to living out the Gospel resulted in his imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp and eventual execution.

Two thousand years later, Jesus’s dire warnings about the cost of following him continue to ring true.  We are at a crossroads in our own time and in this place – where one arm of the church has married itself to political power, leading credibility to claims that the government has the right to determine to what individuals can do to their own bodies, who qualifies for due process, which borders can be crossed by whom, who is at fault for allthat troubles our communities today, and just how high the body count has to grow before declare that profits are less important than people.

This doesn’t sound that far off from Paul’s charge that the root of sinful self-interest leads to “a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; the inability to love or be loved; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; ugly parodies of community.”

There is another option.  There is a different kind of justice – one based on the fair distribution of God’s resources.  There is the possibility of living within the kingdom of God today.  When we live into the free life given to us by God and motivated by God’s Spirit, we will demonstrate affection for the “other” in our midst; we’ll have an exuberance for life; serenity in our hearts; we will hold to the convictions of our faith – that everyone and everything is permeated by the divine; we’ll hold a sense of compassion deep within our hearts.  And these won’t be merely intellectual exercises that tease or torment us when faced with annoying coworkers and frustrating family members.  We will work out the implications of this freedom in every single detail of our lives!

The kingdom of God will be within us and all around us.  And it will bring us unwanted attention and make us unpopular and make us the targets of the vitriol and hatred of our contemporary culture.  And it is the only way to follow Jesus.  Only you can decide which church aligns with your own values. But know this:  the Kingdom of God cannot be put off until tomorrow.  If following Jesus is what you want to do, seize the day!