PEOPLE'S CHURCH OF DOVER

Luke 9:51-62                                                                                    “Following Jesus”
Sermon June 27, 2010:  People’s United Church of Christ, Dover, DE:  The Rev. Dan Griggs

            The UCC pastor and teacher at Oklahoma City University, Robin Meyers, has said that it doesn’t do much good to preach that Christians should “follow Jesus” unless we can explain how to do it.[1]  This passage from the Gospel of Luke that I just read seems very cryptic, but if we break the code here we may just have a part of the answer to how we follow Jesus. 

            Here are three would-be disciples:  Jesus calls one, the other two are volunteers.  They aren’t very different from us:  one lives in a house, one has an aging father, and one loves his family.  Oh, and right before this we have Jesus’ own disciples asking if they should call down fire from heaven to kill Samaritans who refused to provide hospitality to Jesus—they’re not so much like us as they are thinking about the ancient prophet Elijah who called down fire on the king’s messengers;[2] or maybe we feel anger sometimes, too.  In all four cases, people who say they want to follow Jesus don’t get it.  They don’t grasp what Jesus was calling them to do.

            Jesus himself had to struggle with a similar problem at the very beginning of his ministry.  If you look again at the story of the Temptations in Luke chapter 4, you get a surprise.  As background, Jesus left his home in Nazareth and went out into the empty quarter around the Jordan River where John the Baptist was preaching:  Jesus joined John’s ministry there.  He came to be baptized, and when he came up out of the river the Holy Spirit fell on him in the form of a dove, and he heard God’s words:  “You are my beloved son; with you I am well-pleased.”[3]  Now Jesus had a question:  What does it mean to be “the son of God”?  Some obvious answers presented themselves, but Jesus had to know; so he went on retreat into the desert for forty days, where he fasted and prayed for the answer to his question, “What does it mean to be ‘the son of God’?” 

            First answer:  “Son of God” means everything is yours, and you can do whatever you need to do to live richly—this was probably the hunger talking.  Luke says that the Devil whispered into his ear, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.”  The implication is, bread today, a palace tomorrow with dancing girls and an army, great wealth, whatever he wants.  Henri J. M. Nouwen called this “upward mobility.”[4]  Well, that’s the wrong answer to Jesus’ question—you don’t live like the son of God by conspicuous consumption or looking to everybody else like you’ve got it made.  “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”[5]

            But what does it mean to be the son of God?  Second answer:  Well if upward mobility isn’t enough, how about being Caesar?  “To you I will give glory and authority over all the kingdoms of the earth, if you serve me.”  Look how much good you could do, Jesus!  If you were Caesar you could help everybody:  you could make laws that all the poor must be fed, all the widows must be cared for, every child could get a good education, you could convert a world full of pagans into believers in God—if you were Caesar!  Take public office and do the good things you see need to be done.  Use the power to make this a Christian empire!  But there was a problem with this answer, too:  “if you serve the Devil.”  Power corrupts.  Idealism easily turns into dictatorship.  Wrong answer:  “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only God.’”[6] 

            Okay, if this “son of God” thing is about religion, let’s go to the very heart of religion—the temple in Jerusalem.  Third answer:  “If you really are the Son of God, Jesus, jump.  Don’t you believe the scripture that says God’s angels will catch you lest you dash your foot against a stone?”[7]  Just think how convincing such a demonstration of God’s power in you would be!  The people would see you and everybody would immediately turn and follow you, and you could transform the temple into what it ought to be—a house of prayer.  This answer looks good.  Jesus Christ, Superstar!  They might even write a rock opera about me!  All I have to do is tell God what to do—carry out this stupid jump and make God act to do my will.  And that’s a problem.  That’s a big problem—making God jump through my hoops.  “The Book says, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”[8]  Nothing spectacular—no spectacle. 

Three up, three down: and what does it mean, then, to be the son of God?  It means obedience, a wise strong free person humbling yourself in service to God’s purposes.  And so Jesus returned from the desert with a much better understanding of what it means to be God’s son in this world. 

Now watch.  “Lord, do you want us, your loyal court, ready to support your revolution—do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume these Samaritans?”  What a show of power!  Luke says that Jesus turned and rebuked his disciples for such an intention.  “You don’t know what kind of spirit you are displaying:  for the son of man didn’t come to destroy people’s lives but to save.”[9]  So what does it mean to “follow Jesus”? 

            Here comes somebody to volunteer:  “Jesus, I will follow you wherever you go.”  He was going to Jerusalem, and both his disciples and the Samaritans thought he was going to seize power and rule.  He would live in a palace, and all his lieutenants would have immediate upward mobility.  This volunteer knew there was a fight ahead, but he wanted in on the spoils of victory.  Jesus answered, “I travel light.”  He had already turned down upward mobility himself.  Anybody who would be his follower ought to be able to see through consumerism and figure out the meaning of SIMPLICITY—of living simply.  You know, back fifty years ago America’s economy ran on money, but it doesn’t run on money anymore:  it runs on debt.  The housing bubble was all about selling debt.  The federal bailout of the banks and the auto companies is about debt.  Who’s to blame?  We are the ones who want more to eat, two and three cars, and so many possessions that we need houses with 6,000 square feet of space to hold it all.  (I’m thinking about my own garage as I say that!)   Look:  this is more subtle than greed.  Greed is easy to spot, but we’ve allowed ourselves to be convinced that a person’s life consists in the things we own, and that’s a lie.  The follower of Jesus in this world needs to think about how to live more simply, more humanly.  Maybe a little “downward mobility” is in order.  Oh, we aren’t called to the kind of poverty that medieval monastics reveled in—although, as a matter of fact, many medieval monasteries were full of luxury, it just didn’t belong to the monks and nuns.  Not “poverty” but simplicity.  Get out of debt.  Help other people.  Serve, don’t expect to be served. 

            As Jesus was going along he said to a simple man, “Follow me.”  The man really wanted to, but we have certain duties to our parents, our jobs, our health, our children’s education; so he answered Jesus, “Okay, I’ll be right there; but my father is dying and I need to fulfill my responsibilities as a son first.”  That makes sense.  Jesus even told some parables about sons’ responsibilities to their parents.  But this time Jesus sees something else:  he turns this conversation into a symbol—or the writer of Luke does.  Jesus says, “Let the dead bury the dead, you go announce that the new age has come.”  So following Jesus is about “announcing” something.  We are following Jesus when we live our lives according to the values of God’s future, what Jesus calls “the kingdom of God”—to act with justice, to forgive, to withhold condemnation, to act as if we’re already saved—because we are.  The kingdom is already here—in you:  go announce it by the way you live.  Train yourself to think and act like God is already in charge.  Apocalyptic right-wing Protestantism has everybody thinking about the End of Time, the Great Tribulation, the coming of the Anti-Christ, the shattering of civilizations, and then Judgment Day for us.  If we take Jesus’ words here for what they really mean, we ought to just forget all that scary ballyhoo:  God’s rule has already begun, and we simply need to embrace it and live it in faith hope and love, love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and while we’re at it love God’s beautiful environment, too.  That is what it means to follow Jesus.

            And here comes a third volunteer:  “I want to follow you, sir, but first let me go say goodbye to my family.”  That doesn’t sound unreasonable, except for this:  Jesus won’t stick around in the same place for a couple of days until he gets back—Jesus is under orders; and anybody who really wants to follow Jesus is also under orders.  It’s so easy to live conventionally—to be just a regular person.  Can we maybe hide among regular people and be secret followers of Jesus?  Here is the wisdom of a serpent:  if you’re really following Jesus, you’re going to stick out.  You don’t have to jump off the temple to stick out:  people will see for themselves that your citizenship is in God’s realm. 

            Just as Jesus had to work through the false understandings of his being the son of God, so every disciple of Jesus must work through our own misunderstandings of what it means to “follow him.”  It doesn’t apply just to those twelve disciples and those three volunteers.  The Gospel of Luke was written to a wealthy citizen of the Roman Empire, who was trying to live with one foot in the world of common sense Roman-style and one foot on the pilgrim’s path.  The Gospel of Luke was written to somebody very much like us.  He had some money.  He owned some things.  He was a citizen, which protected him from corporal punishment except for the worst offenses.  He had family responsibilities, maybe a government job—maybe not, but he had friends with government jobs.  And he was asking the writer of Luke how to understand his new Christian faith, and how to live it.  That’s our question, too:  how to be followers of Jesus. 

The answer is not systematic:  it comes piece by piece as we each  live, and work, and love, and retire, and travel, and buy, and eat and interact with other people, and use energy.  Jesus has said to you, “Follow me.”  Now we’re going to have to use our minds, and our hearts—as Jesus did—and discover each new day what God calls us to do today. 

AMEN