Here we are in the second week of Lent. I wonder if some of you have either given things up or taken things up for this time. I wonder how you are going with that? Perhaps that would be a good thing to talk about together over morning tea.
We began Lent last week with the story of Jesus 40 days in the wilderness where he was famously tempted but the Satan. Benj had us reflecting on our own wilderness experiences.
Like Jesus we usually do not choose to enter these wilderness experiences. But the wilderness happens. It happens to us and it happened to Jesus. The gospel tells us that it was the Spirit who drove him there but He chose to stay, to do the work of the wilderness.
This is what Lent is about. It is not about doing penance for being human, it about embracing all that it means to be human – both the times of joy and celebration along with the times of temptation and struggle. For whatever reason we know that these times form us.
After the temptation Jesus begins his ministry in Galilee and we reflected on that time in Epiphany. It was mostly a good time for Jesus. He was teaching, healing, working miracles in people’s lives and getting on with his mission of bringing the Kingdom of God to the poor, the prisoners and the oppressed. He upset some people but he also gathered a large following.
In the last week of Epiphany we reflected on the Transfiguration. That wild story when Jesus’s face changes, his clothes become a dazzling white and his glory shines around. Moses and Elijah appear out of time and space and talk to Jesus about his departure. And then a voice from elsewhere that again says, “This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to Him.
These words of course mirror the words spoken in the waters of Galilee at Jesus Baptism just before Jesus he heads into the wilderness to meet the devil himself.
And then they are spoken again. Just before Jesus “sets his face to go to Jerusalem” as our reading today described.
After a time of relative peace for Jesus following the challenge of the wilderness it is time for Jesus to begin to make his way to Jerusalem, towards a much greater challenge, that of the cross. Again it begins with a reminder of who he is – God’s beloved and chosen Son.
This journey, that ends when Jesus enters Jerusalem, takes up 10 chapters of Luke and these are the chapters we will be in during Lent. Obviously, we do not have time to read all of it here so perhaps that is something you may wish to take up during this time – reading Luke 9 – 19.
Jesus heads first to Samaria. There is a map you can have a look at.
You can see the sea of Galilee in the North there and Jerusalem in the South and Samaria is on the way.
As we know from the parable of the good Samaritan and of Jesus encounter in John with a Samaritan woman (which gives a different account of Jesus route and experience in Samaria), the Samaritans and the Jews are enemies. They were once, one people but the hostility began approx. 1000 years earlier and is rooted in the history of the divided Kingdoms of Judah with its capital Jerusalem and Israel with its capital Samaria.
While, most Jews of the time would have taken a longer route to the east that did not pass through Samaria, Jesus chooses to go there. But Luke tells us the Samaritans would not receive him because his face was toward Jerusalem. One of their core disagreements was about where God should be worshipped. For the Samaritans Mount Gerizim was their sacred site for worship but for the Jews it is the temple in Jerusalem.
James and John suggest they could command fire to come down from heaven to consume them. They have clearly forgotten Jesus instructions to them when he sends them out, to respond to inevitable rejection by shaking the dust off their feet and moving on.
Jesus invites everyone into the Kingdom but he does not seek to force it on people or coerce and manipulate them. He does not feel the need to rain down violence or seek retribution on those who reject the invitation. We could learn a lot from this.
Jesus moves on to another village and this leads to second part of this reading. Along the road Jesus encounters three people who do express a desire to follow him but are not quite ready. There is something holding them back. And on the surface these seem quite reasonable, even good, and so it hard to understand why each receive what appears to be a relatively hard reaction from Jesus. The truth is I do not know exactly what Jesus was saying but here are some things I have been pondering.
The context matters. It does not seem to me that Jesus demanding that all his followers in every time and every place be homeless, never attend funerals or farewell those they love. But Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem to die a gruesome death. It is going to be hard. Jesus as said is not manipulative. He is not trying to sell something otherwise to those who might come with him. He is being brutally honest about what following Him to Jerusalem requires.
He needs those that go with him to be with Him. To not try, as Peter had already, to tempt him away from it. Jesus did attend funerals and weddings, there were times when he allowed himself to be pulled in another direction by the needs of those around him. But this was not one of those times.
I think it may be the same in our lives of faith. Sometimes what is needed is to be responsive to those around us, to allow them and their needs to guide our discipleship. And at other times we may be called to something that requires a single mindedness of purpose that we must endeavour to not be pulled away from even if the thing pulling us away is good.
Like many of you there have been a number of times when Martin and I have found ourselves trying to discern the next step in life. What God might be calling us to. Rarely is the decision between something clearly good and something clearly not. It is often between two things that both seem like things God would have us do. As I have said a number of times of late – the Bible does not get us out of the work of discernment.
That all said this story is calling us to consider our priorities. Where does Jesus come in the list that usually goes something like: family, work, friends, holidays, and social events, sports and other extracurricular activities, and then church and church activities and commitments.
Now of course serving Jesus can and is done in all these places. For many of us the work we do in our homes, workplaces and in the community is a calling. Our commitments to our families and friends are deeply rooted in our faith. Activities that are restful and rejuvenating help us be present to God.
But is that something we even ask, are we seeking Jesus or do we just unthinkingly go down that list?
And I do feel a bit nervous asking this because of course attendance at church and other church activities is not the sole measure of our faith. Sometimes missing them will be the most faithful thing you can do. But while we are talking about priorities, as a minister, I probably do need to take the opportunity to ask, if gathering together with other Christians, to worship, to read and reflect on the bible, to pray, to share in communion always comes last, is that telling you something? It might not be, but I hope you find it worth pondering.
If our faith matters, we do need to make sure that time with God and time serving him and his people and his world – be that coming here to church or however you do it – is not always last. In fact Jesus would say make sure it’s first.
And Debie Thomas (coming in a close second to Jesus, HA!!) would say, “Discipleship does call into question all our loyalties. It does require a degree of detachment from every other commitment we have — to family, to tradition, to culture, to reputation, to social norms and expectations. These have their place, but they are not primary. Jesus is primary. Or, he should be.
His harsh-sounding words suggest that there will be times when our faith requires us to violate cultural norms, or disappoint our families, or move against the grain of the broader society we live in. If we have a burning need to fit in, to be popular, and to conform at all times to our peers’ expectations, then we cannot follow Jesus. Discipleship will disorient and disrupt us. It will make us the neighbourhood weirdos. It will shake things up in our families and friendship circles. It will challenge the status quo.”
The cost of following Jesus is high. But I would dare to suggest that the cost of not following is also high. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about this cost 80 years ago at a time of rising fascism, of rising war, a time that might just turn out to be not that dissimilar to own. Our world will need true disciples, people like Bonhoeffer and others who did the work of discernment, who were willing to risk it all to do what they believed Jesus was saying (and history proved right) in the face of a Christian Church who were full of people saying, “I will follow Jesus but. . .”
This is all a bit uncomfortable, confrontational, demanding, perhaps even offensive to some. Jesus is asking those who would follow him to the cross to surrender absolutely everything, and he does so without apology. In fact, he gives the people around him every possible reason to say no.
So why would we say yes? Why we would anyone in fact say yes to Jesus on such appalling terms?
Perhaps because these are the terms we were created for, and Jesus knows it. Jesus despite being a rotton salesman knows the cure for our anxiety, our boredom, our hunger, our angst. He knows how deep calls to deep within our restless souls, how something unrelenting in us aches for a life of purpose, a life of meaning, a life we can pour out in love until we are spent and reborn. This is the life of the Holy Spirit within us. And God knows our world needs this.
Jesus is hard on us because he knows that our hearts cry out for transformation. For renewal. For resurrection. Nothing else we buy will suffice. Nothing else the world sells can compare. So Jesus bids us to come and die. So that we can really live.
