{"id":8496,"date":"2022-06-21T08:59:33","date_gmt":"2022-06-21T06:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theologie.whp.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/?p=8496"},"modified":"2022-06-21T08:59:33","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T06:59:33","slug":"luke-9-51-62","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/luke-9-51-62\/","title":{"rendered":"Luke 9.51-62"},"content":{"rendered":"

3rd<\/sup> Sunday after Pentecost | 26 June 2022 | Luke 9.51-62 | Richard Johnson |<\/h3>\n

W<\/em>hen the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, „Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?“ But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.<\/em><\/p>\n

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, „I will follow you wherever you go.“ And Jesus said to him, „Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.“ To another he said, „Follow me.“ But he said, „Lord, first let me go and bury my father.“ But Jesus said to him, „Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.“ Another said, „I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.“ Jesus said to him, „No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.“ (Luke 9.51-62)<\/em><\/p>\n

This very difficult gospel lesson this morning teaches us something of what it means to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus Christ. We see three different men, confronted with the challenge of discipleship, and each of them fails that challenge. Luke tells us their stories, it seems, as if to say, \u201cDiscipleship is not <\/em>like this\u2026\u201d But these negative examples are important, for they show us very starkly what it means to follow Jesus. Let\u2019s look at these three would-be disciples, one at a time.<\/p>\n

I cannot by my own understanding or effort<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAs they were going along the road, someone said to Jesus, \u2018I will follow you wherever you go.\u2019 And Jesus said to him, \u2018Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.\u2019\u201d Perhaps the first thing to notice here is that this would-be disciple approaches Jesus with an offer. He\u2019s willing to follow.\u00a0 This is one of only two times in the gospels where somebody comes up to Jesus on their own initiative and offers to follow him; most of the time, Jesus makes the first move. \u201cFollow me,\u201d he says to Simon and Andrew by the Sea of Galilee. Now if Jesus were like us, he\u2019d probably have the disciple membership application right there, ready to have this prospect sign on the dotted line! But what does he do instead? He talks about how difficult it is to be a disciple!<\/p>\n

I suspect that Jesus is telling us here that Christian discipleship isn\u2019t something that we<\/em> decide to do, but something to which we are called. It happens at the initiative of Jesus Christ, not ourselves. Remember the catechism? \u201cI believe that I cannot<\/em> by own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to him.\u00a0 But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now this is important. If I come to Christ at my own initiative, making my own offer to follow, then I\u2019m the one in control. If I decide later that this discipleship stuff is too difficult for me, or not fulfilling, then I am reserving the option to back out, to stop following Christ. But if Christ is the initiator, then he is the one in control! If I understand up front that I have been called<\/em> to follow, then when the following gets difficult and the road weary, I cannot be so quick to turn back. I understand that discipleship means not just that I am committed to Christ, but that Christ is committed to me.<\/p>\n

And so this man who offers voluntarily to follow Jesus gets a harsh reply. In Dietrich Bonhoeffer\u2019s words, Jesus tells him \u201che doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s doing.\u201d Following Christ is not something that we decide would be a nice addition to our life, rather like joining a health club or a taking a course in Chinese cooking. We don\u2019t just march in and sign up! Rather we are called by the one who has nowhere to lay his head, called to follow him to Jerusalem, where a cross is waiting.<\/p>\n

Let the dead bury their own dead<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a second man in the story. This one is<\/em> called by Jesus. \u201cFollow me,\u201d Jesus said. \u201cBut he said, \u2018Lord, first let me go and bury my father.\u2019 But Jesus said to him, \u2018Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.\u2019\u201d This man hears the call to discipleship, but he feels the tug of other obligations. We can understand those as the obligation of family, or the obligation of fulfilling the law; but the point here is that when you follow Christ, that supersedes all other obligations or responsibilities. Our commitment to Christ isn\u2019t one of a number of other commitments in life; no, it is the<\/em> commitment in life. Nothing<\/em> is more important. Nothing. <\/em>Christ demands all.<\/p>\n

Clarence Jordan was the founder of the Koinonia Farm near Americus, Georgia. Way back in the 1950\u2019s, when the South was still legally segregated, Koinonia Farm was set up by Jordan, who was white, to be an interracial community. By its very nature it was controversial, and from time to time it got into trouble with the law. Clarence Jordan approached his brother Robert, who was a successful lawyer, and asked him to defend Koinonia Farm.\u00a0 \u201cClarence,\u201d he replied, \u201cI can\u2019t do that. You know my political position. Why, if I represented you, I might lose my job, my house, everything I\u2019ve got.\u201d \u201cWe might lose everything, too, Bob,\u201d Clarence replied. \u201cWell, it\u2019s different for you.\u201d \u201cWhy is it different?\u00a0 I remember, it seems to me, that you and I joined the church the same Sunday, as boys. I expect when we came forward the preacher asked me about the same question he did you. He asked me, \u2018Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior.\u2019 And I said, \u2018Yes.\u2019 What did you say?\u201d \u201cI follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point.\u201d \u201cCould that point by any chance be\u2014the cross?\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s right. I follow him to the cross, but not on<\/em> the cross. I\u2019m not getting myself crucified.\u201d \u201cThen I don\u2019t believe you\u2019re a disciple. You\u2019re an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his. I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them you\u2019re an admirer, not a disciple.\u201d \u201cWell now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn\u2019t have<\/em> a church, would we?\u201d \u201cThe question,\u201d Clarence said, \u201cis, Do<\/em> you have a church?\u201d [Quoted in Gary W. Moon, Falling for God: Saying Yes to His Extravagant Proposal<\/em> (Shaw Books, 2004), 132]<\/p>\n

Do we have a church? Are we disciples, or are we admirers? Are we committed to following Christ, or are we only willing to do so when it is convenient, when other things don\u2019t get in the way?<\/p>\n

Hand to the plow<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a third man who comes to Jesus in this story.\u00a0 \u201cI will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.\u201d Jesus said to him, \u201cNo one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.\u201d In his reflection on this man, Bonhoeffer focuses on three words that the man says: \u201cLet me first . . .\u201d He is ready to follow, ready to be a disciple, but something comes first\u2014and for this man, as for most of us, I\u2019m afraid, what comes first is me. Me. <\/em>He has his own priorities, his own desires and wants, and they come first. And the trouble with that is that when that me <\/em>comes first, usually that\u2019s about as far as we get. Because there\u2019s always me<\/em>! If that me <\/em>comes first today, it will come first tomorrow and the next day and the next.<\/p>\n

To follow Jesus Christ is to place that me <\/em>under his control and direction. It is to put aside my own wants and desires, and to follow him on the road to Jerusalem, the road to the cross.<\/p>\n

Yield all things<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a wonderful prayer written by John Wesley which expresses this better than most anything I know. It goes like this: \u201cI am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt; put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me employed for thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee; let me be full, let me be empty; let me have all things, let me have nothing; I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo yield all things to his pleasure.\u201d You know, the tendency that we have when we read a passage like this is to soft pedal it somehow, to say that Jesus doesn\u2019t really mean it, to convince ourselves that he is saying these outrageous things in order to get our attention. Maybe he is.\u00a0 But I suspect that unless this passage leaves us feeling like there is some substantial growth still needed in our discipleship, then we haven\u2019t taken it seriously enough.<\/p>\n

Still he calls us, gently and insistently. He spreads a table before us, and invites us to follow. He bids us to leave that me <\/em>with him. It\u2019s too heavy for this journey, he says.\u00a0 But come along, he says, come eat and drink and be refreshed, and then follow thou me<\/em>.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Pastor Richard Johnson<\/p>\n

Webster, NY<\/p>\n

roj@nccn.net<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

3rd Sunday after Pentecost | 26 June 2022 | Luke 9.51-62 | Richard Johnson | When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,157,108,110,226,3,109,285],"tags":[],"beitragende":[],"predigtform":[],"predigtreihe":[],"bibelstelle":[],"class_list":["post-8496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lukas","category-beitragende","category-current","category-engl","category-kapitel-09-chapter-09","category-nt","category-predigten","category-richard-o-johnson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8501,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8496\/revisions\/8501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8496"},{"taxonomy":"beitragende","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/beitragende?post=8496"},{"taxonomy":"predigtform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtform?post=8496"},{"taxonomy":"predigtreihe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/predigtreihe?post=8496"},{"taxonomy":"bibelstelle","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologie.uzh.ch\/apps\/gpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bibelstelle?post=8496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}