Well, I hate to say it, but these passages are the type that makes a lot
of people say, “This is why I don’t read the Bible.” Consider the evidence. First, we have the story of Elijah being taken up into heaven with all of its mythological fanfare. Then we have Paul. He’s just told us that we are free… so that we can be slaves to one another. Then he gives us a laundry
list of things not to do. Some of these are easy to avoid, but some not so
much.
Of course, he assures us that there's no penalty for being a decent human being. There’s just not much of a reward beyond being a
decent human being. Love, joy, peace, gentleness, kindness, self-control, these
are kind of rewards in and of themselves, right?
Then there’s Jesus and his disciples. They get rejected by Samaritans. That makes
sense. I mean, what were they doing there anyway? Samaritans believed in the
Most High God. They just didn’t recognize Jerusalem as the seat of God.
They intermarried with foreigners. They were outsiders to the covenant of God’s grace.
What’s strange is the disciple’s response. They said, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire to consume them?” What?! Is this something they’ve done before? No, of course not. No, when Jesus sent them out into
surrounding towns and villages just a chapter
before he said, “If anyone refuses you, shake the dust of your sandals at the town in
protest as you leave.”
Now, this did take place after the transfiguration. James and
John had both seen him become dazzling white, and they saw him speaking with
Elijah and Moses. They knew the old stories of Sodom and Gomorra. They also
knew the story of Elijah calling down fire to consume the offerings of false
priests of foreign gods. Still, I can almost hear Jesus making the facepalm
sound. I can hear the parental anguish when he said, “No, no, no. How many times do I need to tell you that we are not
consuming anyone with holy fire?”
I get that, though. How many times do we hear the opposition say that
compassion is a luxury or that our disagreement proves our lack of
understanding? Don’t we all wish, maybe even secretly, for a little holy vengeance to be
at our disposal every now and then?
Yes, Jesus rebukes that, but then it gets weird. I don’t know if this is grumpy Jesus or hangry Jesus, but he says some
things that remind me of an old song. (I turned and addressed our
Organist/Choir Director.) Jake, can you help me out with this? It’s almost like Jesus is saying:
The way you're acting lately makes me doubt
Youse is still my baby, baby
Seems my flame in your heart's done gone out
It’s not that he’s accusing anyone of being unfaithful. It’s more than Jesus, at this point in the story, is totally focused on what many call the Missio Dei, the mission of God. What he wants his followers to know is that following him is not something you can do by degrees. You either
do it, or you don’t. I guess I could have sung the Hokey Pokey, but I kind of like Louis Armstrong.
Anyway, Jesus had his face set toward Jerusalem. No wonder he
got kicked out of a Samaritan village! It did, at least, give him the chance to
demonstrate compassion (assuming others saw the disciples as a credible
threat). We don’t know if it was because of his compassion or just his reputation, but
he still had people that wanted to follow him.
Yet Jesus seemed uncharacteristically cold and enigmatic to them. “I’ll follow you anywhere!” said one. “Where do you think I’m going?” he replied, “I’m homeless.” Then he called another to follow him. “Sure, but let me bury my father first,” that one replied. Obvious cop-out, right? “Let the dead bury the dead,” he said, “but you go proclaim the Kingdom of God!” Then the third said, “Let me just say bye to those in my house,” and Jesus replied, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the
kingdom of God.”
This is not a good sell for followers of the way of Christ. Maybe he
was trying to thin the ranks so that he didn’t have a bunch of Samaritans’ in tow when he came into Jerusalem. It’s tough to say. He clearly went there to proclaim the Kingdom of God on his way to Jerusalem.
What I think matters here is not his disregard for pastoral care or his
rejection of people who were drawn to his light, but instead it is his
focus on the mission, the project, of God. For Jesus, at that moment, that
meant letting nothing stand in his way of Jerusalem… and the cross… and the empty tomb.
He accomplished that mission, and we know that we are inheritors of his
Spirit. We know that he sent the Advocate, the Holy Spirit of God so that we would know
that we are not alone. He sent the Holy Spirit so that we would know that God
is active and present. Now we must tell others that the Kingdom has come near
and it includes me and you and all who hunger and
thirst and mourn and dance and sing and cry out like songbirds into the night!
What we have to decide is how to do that in a nation that is facing a
humanitarian crisis on our Southern borders while pretending that this is the
first time, we’ve ever done it. How do we do that in a nation where 43% are considered
poor, which includes 14 million children? How do we do it when decisions
about our physical wellbeing, who goes to jail, and how we educate our children
have become more relative to generating wealth through privatization than
actually about taking care of one another?
Maybe that doesn’t sound like the church’s problem to you. Sometimes I struggle with that myself. Yet, I can’t help but be convicted by the words of Dr. King who wrote in his Letter From A Birmingham Jail. After a critique of the church as the supporter of the
status quo, he wrote:
“But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the
church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church,
it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be
dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. I meet
young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to
outright disgust.”
That was in 1963. It was the beginning of the decline of the mainline
church. Now, I don’t mean to say that offering social services will save the church. Only
God can do that. Instead, I mean to say that the mantel has fallen to us, just as it did to Elisha. It was not his own power that divided the
Jordan on his return, it was the power of God.
It is not our own power that will give us the strength to pass through
our own times of trial, it is only through the power of God. That power is not
something we wield like lightning and holy fire coming from on high. It is
instead the power of self-offering. It is the strength and the resolve that moves us from Paul’s list of vices to his list of virtues.
Yes, we have been freed from sin and from the fear of death through our
faith and by the tender mercy of God! No, that
freedom does not mean that we can do whatever we want whenever we want without
consequences. It does not mean that opportunity equals permission. It does not
mean that forgiveness is easier to get than permission, or that acting as such is less costly to our relationships.
Being freed from sin and the fear of death means that we are governed by a higher law – the law of love. That love binds us in a way that still recognizes our
joy and our pain, but it sets us on a path that is unified by the mission of God.
Ok, I told you earlier that I was going to ask you about
that, so you tell me. What is the mission of God? What is God’s big project, as you understand it, right now?
[the answers given were: healing, restoration, that everyone is included to the kingdom]
These are all good answers! I would say that they are all a part of
moving us toward the Kingdom – or kin/dom – where all understand themselves as loved and all
are aware of God’s active presence in our midst. What we are a part of right now, is becoming (in the words
of scripture) fit for the kingdom.
Jesus reminds us not to look back, not to look to other things (not even our family) for salvation. That means that we
are always plowing ahead! We are always moving toward the Kingdom. Paul also
talks about “inheriting the kingdom” in his lists of vices and virtues.
The interesting thing about that is that the vices are all self-gratifying, and the virtues are all things that either
require relationships or they are made better by sharing with others. Friends,
that’s what we’re about it the church – moving toward the Kingdom of God!
It happens little by little in every joy we share, every conflict we
endure, and every time we stand up to name the things that exclude, dehumanize,
or otherwise, disconnect the creation from the
Creator. It starts right here, but it happens out there. In here we set the
example.
It’s kind of like I told the kids at Camp Agape this Summer. Camp is, for
me, a concrete example of what it’s like to live in the Kingdom of God. I need that, and I believe we all
do because it reminds us that God is still active and
present in other places, too.
Now, one of the many reasons that Camp Agape is such a clear example of living in the Spirit, or experiencing God’s Kingdom, is a boy named Will. Will has Down’s Syndrome. He’s grown up going to Camp every summer with his brother. Everybody knows
him and loves him. Even those who are first-time campers seem drawn to him. It’s not uncommon to find Will organizing a line dance during free time or
being cared for by others when he tries to do the things that everyone else
does. He’s always kept from harm, but he has a tender heart. What’s interesting is that Will is just one of several people who are
connected to Camp as volunteers or staff who have what others would call
disabilities, physical or otherwise. There’s nothing in the description of Camp that would make you think folks
with disabilities are included, they simply are. Camp Agape is simply a place where
divisions and disabilities are less important than the common goal of loving
and being loved.
Yes, Camp Agape was like that for me. Yes, my clergy family group
retreat was like that for me. Yes, you are like that for me, and we must
continue to be like that – a community grounded in love – so that those who think of the church as an ineffectual social club
will instead catch a glimpse of the Kingdom of God!
That means that we don’t just leave the doing and being of a church in this
building. It means that we are ever and always moving toward God’s Kingdom together. As to those who might be
moved to follow along, perhaps we can take the time to be a little kinder than
Jesus was in this story?
His mission was toward the cross, and the tomb, and the resurrection,
and the Spirit, yet ours is no less urgent. Brothers and sisters, kindred of
saints and sinners; of children who are separated from parents; of flora and
fauna on a warming planet, our mission is to proclaim the kingdom that is present and
yet to come. Ours is to stand and name the things that don’t match up to God’s grace and to be counted amongst those that submit to one another out of love and compassion.
That’s what we do. That’s who we are, and to God be the
glory, now and always. Amen!
Comments