Look Straight Ahead
Posted on Jun 26, 2016 by David Whetter
Grace and peace to you from God, our Creator, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who abides in each of us.
As we have been reading through this Gospel of Luke, we know Jesus had been busy teaching, healing, and sharing the story of God’s redeeming work in the world. His disciples have come to realize and proclaim him to be the Messiah. Three of his disciples have witnessed his Transfiguration, and he has revealed his impending death and resurrection to his disciples. But now something changes. Now Luke says, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (9:51). In other words, it was time to take the next critical and important step in his ministry, and to do this, everyone who claimed to be his followers had to be on board one hundred percent. As one scholar notes, “It is at this moment that Jesus put on his game face.” He was ready, and no one was going to stop him, not people who would choose to reject him, not people who would seek to stop him, and certainly not would-be followers who wanted to alter his mission.
In Jesus’ day, there were five roads leading in and out of Jerusalem. When Jesus made the decision that it was time for him to make his final trip to Jerusalem, as we know from our recent readings, he was in the area of the Sea of Galilee. The road he needed to take to Jerusalem took him directly through the land of the Samaritans, and so he sent word to those in the Samaritan villages that he would be coming. Now, this is a little odd since such actions were usually only done when a king was traveling, but after all, as the world would soon learn, Jesus was the King.
The rest of our story today is meant to help his disciples, and us today, to realize how difficult it is to follow Jesus. First, we hear how the Samaritans didn’t want Jesus to come. When the disciples get word of the Samaritans' lack of hospitality, two of Jesus’ closest disciples, James and John, got mad and wanted to ask God to destroy the village. But Jesus wasn’t upset with the Samaritans; Luke says he was upset with James and John and he rebuked them. Why, you ask? Because James and John wanted to alter Jesus’ mission and his message. Jesus had offered a message of love and tolerance, not of vengeance and violence. The disciples' job was to tell of Jesus' coming and presence in our lives, not to force others to receive Jesus and believe in him. In fact, that is still our job; we are not called to save people. Only God can do that. No, our only call is to share the Gospel and know that God will do the rest. We are to use the Gospel to neither condemn nor to judge. We are only to use the Gospel to share the good news. To do otherwise will keep us from fulfilling God’s mission for this world.
Okay, you say, I can buy that, but what about those last six verses? They seem a little harsh, don’t they? These verses are about people who are willing to follow Jesus. They are willing to go to Jerusalem with him where they know they will be rejected, and if what Jesus has told them comes true, then they will see Jesus die, so why is Jesus so harsh with them? Well, the message Jesus offers is this, “If you truly want to follow me, you need to know that most of time you won’t have anywhere to hang your hat. Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). “If you follow me,” Jesus says, “you may not be around when loved ones die or get to say good-bye to family. You will need to focus.”
As Yogi Berra once said, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” Today, we are invited to follow Jesus, but if we are going to keep the main thing the main thing, then we have to stay focused. We have to stop making excuses and remember that everything we do, everything we say, has to be about God’s mission for our lives, to “Encounter God, Grow in faith and Serve the World,” and to do this we have to stay focused. The world will try to distract us with issues that are not the main thing, like gay marriage, who should use what restrooms, whether or not we should increase or decrease taxes, and the list goes on. But none of these are about doing what we have been commanded to do, and that is to love as Jesus has loved. Oh, these are all important issues, but unless our decisions as to how to act on them are based on our call to serve and love the world, then they take us away from God and God’s mission.
And,when people refuse to be a part of God’s mission, then move on, Jesus says. Instead of attacking people who disagree with us, Jesus says, just move on. Instead of blasting the radical right or the liberal left, just move on. Instead of branding others as evil and calling for God to destroy them, just move on. Now, this doesn’t mean that we ought to be afraid of taking a stand. In fact, Jesus was perfectly willing to confront people with hard truths, but he spoke his toughest words to those who said they were his followers. He speaks his toughest words to you and me.
Jesus could easily let people reject him that did not know better, but for his followers, for those who knew who he was, he demanded more. For his followers, he insisted that they not get distracted. He insisted that they stop making excuses and stop looking back, and that they keep the main thing the main thing. That is, Jesus said: Your job, as my followers, is to love the world; your job is to serve those in need; your job is to feed the hungry; 6ur job is to not let excuses keep you from bringing about God’s kingdom now.
As I said last week, this is scary stuff, and today we are reminded how hard it is to be a follower of Jesus. “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (9:62). In other words, stop looking back, because if you look back, you will go off course and you will no longer be on God’s mission.
I thought about that a lot this week. Now, I have never literally put my hand to a plow, but I have driven a car. I realize I often like to look around when I am driving. I am always the one who will see the deer running, or the fox roaming in the fields on the side of road, or the eagle sitting in the tree. In fact, Jill will often say, how do you see them so quickly? Well, I confess, I often don’t look straight ahead, and when I realize it, I also realize that I am not going straight. Not a good thing for a driver; in fact, if you see me on the highway, you might want to get out of my way.
In all seriousness, though, this is true for us here at Salem, too. We can easily get caught up in doing a lot of little things that will make us feel good, or that will make us feel like we can check off a box on our to-do list, but that’s not our call. Today, we are challenged to make sure that whatever we do, whatever we say, wherever we go, that first and foremost we keep the main thing the main thing. Whatever we do, whatever we say, and wherever we say it, we need to keep looking straight ahead, and our actions and our words need to be about sharing the good news and building the kingdom of God. Amen.