Given at St. Stephen’s Church, Harrisburg, IL
“Swimming against the tide”….
“Out of sync with everybody else”….
Ever hear one of these phrases, or some of the many others like it?
How about this one (which the TV character Archie Bunker used to say to his wife, Edith) ”Stifle yourself”?
Today’s Gospel text asks us to “swim against the tide” of our normal human impulses. It asks us to “stifle” our desire to have control of situations, and to maintain normal human relationships and safety, all for the sake of the Gospel.
Today’s text slaps us across the face, its harsh words disturbing the comfortableness of our faith life.
As Jesus “sets his face toward Jerusalem”, a new chapter in Luke’s account now begins to unfold. For the next ten chapters, Luke will chronicle Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem.
As this journey begins, the harshness of Jesus’ sayings to His disciples, and to those who meet him along the way, set the tone for the events that will await Him once He has reached the Holy City.
The tempo of Luke’s account moves in “rapid fire” succession as Jesus encounters one person after another. Perhaps Luke intends for us to understand that the pace of God’s great plan for the redeeming of the human race through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross is gaining speed, rapidly.
As we look at today’s text, the first thing that strikes us is the nature of Jesus’ sayings….They fall into a class of expressions that an English teacher would classify as hyperboles. Webster’s dictionary defines a hyperbole as 1. an obvious and intentional exaggeration; 2. an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally.[1]
Hyperboles ask us to think outside our normal channels of thought. They ask us to consider another way to be or to believe. Or, using the phrases we began with, hyperboles ask us to “swim against the tide” of our normal ways of being. They ask us to “stifle” our need for safety, security, and control.
As I consider this text, one way of unpacking it is to consider what it might have meant to: 1. the original, first hearers who heard Jesus say them; 2. to the early Church to whom Luke was writing (sometime late in the first century); and 3. to us, as 21st century Christians, today.
As we proceed through Jesus’ sayings, we will consider each possibility, in turn.
There are four encounters which prompt Jesus’ responses:
- The Samaritan village’s rejection of Jesus: (verses 52 – 56) Jesus turns away from the village which had rejected Him and the emissaries He had sent ahead to prepare the way for Him.[2] But in so doing, Jesus explicitly rejects the normal human response (shown by the disciples), to “get back at” those who had rejected Him, or to “use force” to harm or destroy them.
For the early Church, and for us today, the temptation might be present to want to “do something” to those who don’t seem to “get it” where the Gospel is concerned. We might want to wake them up, somehow, using dramatic actions in the process. We might be tempted to want to lash out somehow, if only to show them how wrong they are.[3]
But that is not Jesus’ way (as we will see in more detail next week). For the truth (and the mystery) of the Gospel is that some persons will respond, and some will not….that is the point of the Parable of the Sower (Luke 8: 1 – 15)….some of the “seed” of the Gospel will fall on unresponsive hearts, while other “seed” bears good fruit, finding a home in the fertile soil of receptive human hearts.
Having set the tone with His disciples, Jesus now encounters three persons, two of whom (the first and the third) offer voluntarily to follow Him: - “Foxes have holes…but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head”: (verses 57 – 58) A man steps forward and says, “I will follow you wherever you go.” (I wonder, if the man had known where Jesus was going (Jerusalem) and what would happen there (be rejected, suffer, and die)[4], if he would have made such an open-ended offer.) But Jesus responds with words of homelessness, wandering, and rejection: “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.”
Just as the original band of Jesus’ disciples had forsaken families, jobs and security to be followers of this wandering preacher/prophet, Jesus, so is the invitation extended to this unnamed, would-be disciple of Jesus.
But Luke seems to be writing to a Church that’s gotten comfortable with its place in the world….After all (and as one of my seminary professors said), it may well be that the Church to whom Luke was writing was beginning to “settle in” for a long time in the world, if the expectation that Jesus would return again soon was beginning to wear away.
Jesus’ words slap us across our comfortable faces, reminding the early Church – and us – that to be a disciple of Christ is to be a wanderer, a pilgrim, in this world, even if we have a place to live and a stable environment in our lives.
And so we sing the hymn, “Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah, Pilgrim in this Barren Land” (Hymn #690), for we, too, can get too comfortable with our surroundings. And pretty soon, we begin to lose sight of the urgency that the Gospel demands of us, for we become too attached to our homes, possessions and place in this world, forgetting that our ultimate home awaits us once we enter into life eternal. - “Lord, first let me bury my father”: (verses 59 – 60) This time, Jesus issues the call to “follow me”, and the man seems eager, though not ready, to follow….”first”, he says, “let me bury my father”….
The point here seems to be – for first century believers – and, for us, to “be ready”. “Look beyond the security of today’s comforts to realize we might be asked to give them all up, and to ‘move out’ in service to the Lord” seems to be Jesus’ call to us. - “But first, let me go back and say good-bye to my family”: (verses 61 – 62) Now, another man steps forward, offering to follow Jesus. But, like the second man, something else is getting in the way: “but first (notice how this man’s words echo the second man’s), let me go and say good-bye to my family”.
Allegiance to Jesus Christ – in the first century – forced those early believers into some difficult and hard choices: they had to separate from their families, often because they had been disowned by the members of their families who did not become believers. (Remember our Gospel reading for the Feast of St. Alban – June 22nd – “do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” (Matthew 10: 34 – 36)) The early Church lived out those words, literally!
But our situation in the 21st century is a little different: though the faith still divides family member from family member, as some accept Christ and others reject Jesus’ call to “follow me”, in most situations the relationships aren’t entirely broken.
But the choice is still forced on us today as non-believer family members might call us to deny our allegiance to Christ – our highest allegiance. We might be tempted to “water down” our identity as a child of God, or to stifle God’s call to service in favor of other relationships.
What might we say then, in conclusion?
Jesus’ words arc across the span of time, as the sharpness of their demands stings and reddens our cheeks. They call us to consider anew our allegiance to Christ. They call us to check our baggage carefully: is there something hindering our ability to be willing, quick and agile followers of Christ? They urge us to remember “who we are, and whose we are” as Christian believers, modern-day followers who have “taken up our own cross daily”[5] to follow Him. In so doing, we “swim against the tide” that our normal human needs for comfort, security and power constantly urge us to consider.
AMEN.
[1] The word hyperbole derives from the Greek hyper+bole = “to throw beyond”.
[2] In next week’s Gospel reading , Luke 10: 1 – 12, 16 – 20, Jesus will again address the issue of those who have the opportunity to hear the Gospel, but who reject it.
[3] Sadly, the chapters of Church history are filled with examples of the Church using force against those who reject its precepts. Such actions are clearly not of God’s authority or mandate.
[4] Luke 9: 21 - 22
[5] Luke 9: 23
