Jesus has “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” In that simple statement, we hear that he has accepted the ultimate end of his journey, his death on the cross. Even so, his ministry and mission continue. As today’s collect suggests, the Lord’s mission is nothing less than the foundation of the Church. For Jesus, there is now no turning back. With his disciples, he has endured the life of a homeless person, traveling from place to place to preach his message of lovingkindness and hoping for the hospitality of strangers. When shelter and food are hard to come by, Jesus sleeps outdoors and gleans for food in the fields and orchards.
As a child, when I heard the words of Jesus in today’s gospel lesson from Luke, I thought what he said to those who wanted to follow him was pretty harsh. I heard anger in the words, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Yes, there is a warning in this response to a man who says, “I will follow you wherever you go,” but now I hear more sadness than anger. It is as if he is saying, “Son, you don’t have any idea what you are getting yourself in for.” Now I think the tone of sadness I hear when I read these words rises from a sense that Jesus knows he will be misunderstood and undervalued by many who hear of him; yet he persists in his message. His face is set towards Jerusalem.
Later, another man says to him, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at home.” Jesus responds, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of heaven.” Being a follower of Jesus will require sacrifice. When he began his ministry, Jesus left Nazareth, his home of thirty years, and left behind his family and friends. He asks the same commitment from those who say they wish to follow him. With his face turned toward Jerusalem, Jesus needs to trust that he can count on his disciples to carry his message and perpetuate the Church into the future, whatever the personal cost may be. There will be no turning back, and not just because the task is so demanding. As Jesus learned on his one recorded return home to Nazareth after he had begun his ministry, someone who speaks a prophetic message, a message that not all people wish to hear, is often not accepted by the ones who should know him best. “Who does he think he is—that carpenter’s son!” The authority figures of Nazareth ran Jesus out of town. There will be nothing easy or casual about being a disciple of this Lord. There will be nothing easy about founding the Church.
So, Jesus says to the not-quite-ready-to-commit potential follower, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and turns back is fit for the kingdom of God.” A determined steadiness is required of those who hope to accomplish a difficult challenge, the focused concentration of a farmer attempting to plow a straight furrow with a heavy and unwieldy plow. Jesus has mastered that steady determination, and surely his quiet confidence is part of what attracts his followers. Still, he can say some things that sound harsh and are hard to comprehend. To the man who puts off following him so that he can go and bury his father, Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
How is it possible for the “dead to bury the dead”? Since he speaks of proclaiming the kingdom of God in the same breath, maybe it would help us to consider what Jesus means by that term. When he taught his followers the prayer that we have come to call “the Lord’s prayer,” Jesus instructed them to ask of God, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.” Even so, we Christians have come to think of God’s kingdom as some distant place, a place where people go after they die to live with God. The Lord’s prayer says something very different: that kingdom comes here with us on earth, in every place where God is welcomed. The kingdom is evident in the communities of belief we call the Church. The kingdom is within each of us, within our hearts, when we pray to the Lord. Jesus promised his disciples that he would always be with them, within them. How is this possible? In overcoming death by his resurrection, Jesus changed forever our understanding of death and heaven. Death cannot be final if we believe in a kingdom that is always made present to us by the indwelling Spirit of the Lord. Jesus arose and Jesus lives! Only the ones who believe that death is a final closing of a door are truly dead. They are dead to the potential of eternal life that lives within them.
Now ponder with me for a moment the fact that the Church Christ and his followers founded has lasted for 2000 years. Consider the way the apostles, understandably, scattered in fear after the Crucifixion. Consider how Jesus appeared to Saul, at that time an arch-enemy of Church-foundation, on the road to Damascus, and transformed him into Paul, someone who spread the Church throughout the Roman Empire. Consider how each of us, in a personal way, has had an experience of the living Lord in our lives, an experience that has convinced us to become faithful followers. Today there are an estimated 2 billion Christians in the world. In spite of all the odds against them, Jesus’s followers have accomplished their task. Jesus arose and Jesus lives on!
In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, we find a statement about “the fruits of the Spirit.” When we learn to trust in the Spirit’s presence with and within us, as the Lord promised, we can find true peace, true love. Our outward behavior will be evidence of the Spirit within us. Paul lists these “fruits of the Spirit” as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” If we have been fortunate enough to have had people in our lives who exhibited these fruits of the Spirit, then we have experienced God’s Kingdom come among us. When we share any of these fruits with others, we welcome them to join us in the Kingdom.
This is a Kingdom of love, earned and bequeathed to us by our Lord and Saviour. May our hearts find peace in it today and every day. Amen.
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