The Christian life is to be a follower of Jesus, which means listening to him, being like him, and doing what he did but in our own day and in our own lives.
In our passage today, we receive some very deep insight into what this means. This insight is, in fact, so deep that we can only touch on it briefly.
To summarise what we just heard, we begin with a Samaritan village rejecting Jesus and his message. The followers of Jesus are angry about this and they invoke the spirit of the prophet Elijah, who called down fire from heaven to consume the prophets of Baal. Jesus, however, rebuked them and led them on to another village.
In some manuscripts, a further saying of Jesus is recorded. These days, scholars believe that this further saying was probably not part of the original text, but it is nevertheless interesting. After rebuking the disciples, Jesus said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are; for the Son of Man came not to destroy people’s lives but to save them.”
Then, we have three encounters. The first person says he will follow Jesus, but Jesus reminds him that “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”. The second person is called to follow Jesus but he wants to bury his father. “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But, as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God,” says Jesus. Finally, someone else wants to follow but also wants to saw goodbye to the folks at home. “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God,” Jesus responds.
I think we can glean at least three insights from this text which speak powerfully to our modern predicament.
Dissociate from the Love of The World
The first is that we must dissociate from the love of the world. That is, we must not allow the opinion of others and of our message to distract us from God’s calling upon our lives.
When the disciples came to the Samaritan village, they may have been excited at the prospect of a successful evangelistic mission. Their hopes were clearly disappointed and they responded with anger, we might say murderously so.
Jesus’ response is very telling: Let’s move on to another village. We noted also that a further saying was attributed to Jesus to the effect that had not come to destroy but to save life.
The first principle here is that we must be prepared to be rejected and ignored as followers of Jesus. A pupil is not above his master. It’s a hard thing to recognise but God has not promised us success in evangelism or in church growth. In our world today, we experience widespread indifference to the Christian faith and rejection of it.
What we are told to do is find fertile ground for the Gospel and to sow the seed when we find it. I believe that this is what is behind Jesus’ saying in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not give to dogs what is holy, and so not throw your pearls before pigs” (or, more famously, “Do not cast your pearls before swine”). What Jesus means by this, I think, is that many simply will not receive the treasure of the kingdom and so we should expend our energy on sharing it with those who will.
In the first letter of Peter it says, ‘Always be prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect’ (1 Peter 3:15). The fact that not everyone will ask such questions because many have no interest in the answers. But, for those who do ask such questions, we must have some idea of what we are going to say.
Yet, whatever we do say, we must do it with gentleness and respect. That is, the way that our message is delivered must match the content of the message. We must do so with love, respect, gentleness and, very frequently, with courage.
So, if you are rejected and ignored for being a Christian, pray for those who do those things and move on to the next place, to the next person who may be willing to receive the treasure of the Kingdom.
Find Rest in God
The second principle I draw from these vignettes is to find rest in God. When a man comes to Christ and says he will follow him wherever he goes, Christ challenges him by pointing out that he is, in fact, homeless, wandering from place to place, without somewhere to lay his head. The implied question is: Are you prepared to do that also? Are you prepared to go without? Are you prepared to take up your cross and follow me?
These are all serious questions and it is indeed very easy to say that we are willing to commit ourselves to following Christ and yet to fail to match our words with our deeds.
But the deeper point I want to draw out here relates to following Jesus on the road of discipleship. Jesus had nowhere to lay his head. To the eyes of the world he must have looked like a crazy man: poor, homeless, possibly dishevelled and unappealing to those in higher society. His value system was inverted in their eyes. He was a man with different priorities.
The fact is, he prioritised the Kingdom of God and his relationship with his heavenly Father above everything else. And this gave him the peace and the joy and the rest that he needed which everybody else looks to the world to supply.
It is not just that we must give things up in order to follow Christ. This is frequently true. But we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that are called to give some things up so that we might gain the greatest thing, which is the presence of God himself.
Christ had no home but the home he possessed in his Father’s love. This is what we are called to also.
In the Late-Modern West, it is very easy to be completely dependent upon our vast material resources. Spiritual disciplines such as fasting and generous giving, teach us to detach ourselves from these dependencies. But they are very deeply rooted in us, so it takes a lot of time.
A crucial part of this process is not only to detach ourselves from the things of this world but to cleave to the presence of God. If we can find the presence of God for ourselves and know his peace and his joy in our lives, then we find that we naturally less dependent for our solace and our wholeness on the things of the world. Paradoxically, the things of the world become more enjoyable because they are placed in their proper contexts. We seek them not to make us whole in some kind of ultimate way but as gifts of God which lead us to thankfulness and further joy in him.
This is what Christ was inviting this person to. This is what he invites us to also.
Don’t Make Excuses…Even Good Ones
Finally, we are exhorted not to make excuses, even excuses which are good. We hear two examples: Let me bury my father. Let me say goodbye.
We must hold here in tension the fact that elsewhere Christ upholds the fifth commandment, which is to honour your father and your mother, in his dispute with the Pharisees (Matthew 15:4-6). He is not here preaching radical detachment from one’s family. Rather, he is seeing through the excuses that are being made to the real issue, which is truly an unwillingness to commit fully.
The first man says that he would like to bury his father. Jesus’ challenging reply indicates to us that sometimes we must put following him even above our own families. Indeed, there are sometimes instances in which our families may try and prevent us from following Jesus: are we willing to prioritise him?
The second man says he wants to say farewell to those at home. Christ tells him not to put his hand to the plough and look back. Again, it is very easy to look back to things in the past: our old way of life, the sinful habits that we have left (or are leaving) behind and to see in them something attractive, to feel wistful and nostalgic for what is past. We may look at past regrets, things which make us feel ashamed or guilt. But like St Paul said in the book of Philippians, to be a follower of Christ we must forget what lies behind, if it distracts or hinders us, and we must press on toward the goal of knowing Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:13-14). The fact is, friends, if you have come to know Christ and to be forgiven by him for your sin and given a new life in him, then you really don’t have to be preoccupied by the past anymore. Let it go. Allow it to become something irrelevant to you. You have a new life. You have a new mission. You have a new calling.
We can always make excuses. Those excuses can be very good excuses, but excuses nonetheless.
If you are rejected, move on to the next village. Find nowhere to lay your head. Let the dead bury their dead. Put your hand to the plough and don’t look back.
This is something at least of what it means to follow Jesus.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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