Proper 8 C
Transcribed from a
sermon given
On June 27, 2010
By Rev. Valerie Ann
Hart
At St. Barnabas
Episcopal Church
Arroyo Grande, CA
Luke 9:51-62
(The following is spoken while
walking around the sanctuary.)
Chris, follow me.
Ted, follow me.
Maryanne, follow me.
Nate, follow me.
You can sit there.
Fred, follow me.
All right, all you brave souls,
thank you for following. You can go back
and sit down again. What I want you all to think about is what was going
through your mind as I was doing that?
Was it, “What am I supposed to do?”
“Am I supposed to follow her?” “Are we both supposed to follow her, or
is just she supposed to follow her?” or “What’s going on?”
Did you think, “Gee, I hope she
asks me.” Or were you thinking, “Oh my gosh, I hope she doesn’t ask me because
I don’t want to get up.” Or were you thinking, “What are we going to have to do
after we follow her because I know she’s got something planned that’s going to
be really difficult and humiliating, and I don’t want to have to do that,” or
were you thinking, “Ah, gee, I didn’t get a chance to do anything great”? All those thoughts in your mind as I walked
around, maybe other ones, I don’t know.
Jesus was a rabbi, walking down a
Roman road, telling people, “Follow me.”
I wonder how they felt? I wonder
what went through their minds? We have
the story in the gospel today of three of them.
We have one who approaches Jesus and says, “I’ll follow you
anywhere.” Now, you have to realize that
Jesus is on his way to the cross at this point. So what Jesus is telling him when
he says, “Foxes have holes, birds have nests,” is basically, “You don’t know
what you’re asking. Do your really want
to follow me? There’s nothing in it for
you to follow me.” Sometimes it seems
that people might say, “I want to follow Christ because it will satisfy them in
some way, that they’ll get something out of it. Maybe that person thought he
would get publicity, or maybe he thought, “Here is the new messiah, and he’s
gonna become king, and I want to be on the ins with this one.” Maybe he wanted to have some authority. We don’t know, but we do know that Jesus
warned him, “If you follow me, it’s not about you. It’s not about what you want to do.”
Then he says to another one, “Follow
me.” And he says, “Well, let me bury my father first.” Now, in a Jewish tradition, for a son to bury
his father was probably the most important responsibility a man could have, and
this sounds incredibly cruel when Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their
dead.” But Jesus is making the point
that if you’re going to follow him, everything else is less important,
including the traditions of the culture.
He was also saying to them, “If you follow me, if you follow me today,
right now at this moment you will be fully alive. You will have life that you have never known
before. You won’t be like most people
who are walking around half dead.”
Now, we don’t know what the story
was. We don’t know whether this man’s
father had just died and he was getting ready for the burial, or he might have
been saying, “You know, my father’s getting up there, and sometime in the next
five to ten years he is going to die, and I need to be here to bury him.” We don’t know, but we do know that Jesus was
offering this man life, and suggesting that following all the old rules of the
culture was part of being half dead.
Then the next one said something
simple, “Sure, I’ll follow you. I just
want to say goodbye to my family.” Jesus
responds, “Nope, you’ve got to come now.
It’s now or never.” Then he uses
the images of when you’re plowing. If you are plowing and you have an animal in
front of you, which is what they would have done, you really have to focus and
work very hard to keep the plow going straight ahead because there are rocks
and chunks of dirt that it runs into. If
you let go with one hand and look around behind you, it’s just going to go off
in who knows what direction. That’s the image he’s using. You can't say, “I’m going to follow Christ,”
and then look back and go, “Well, gee, it was really nice back there.” It is like the Israelites having left Egypt and
saying, “Gee, the leaks were so good when we were in Egypt. I’m tired of this manna.” Once you make the choice, you make the
choice, and when Jesus calls, Jesus calls.
When I was in the holy land, I was
reflecting a lot on what I call the theology of yes. One of the places we went to early on was the
Church of the Annunciation, which is built over the place that is supposedly
where Mary received the greeting from the angel. Now, if you ever go to Israel, to the holy
land, you will discover that there is a church built over the place where such
and such supposedly happened, for everything that ever happened in the
bible. In fact, for some things that
happened, there are two or three churches built in different places that are supposedly
where this happened. That’s the way they do it because you don’t know for sure
whether that was the actual location, but it’s the place where it has been
remembered.
When I was there I was thinking
about Mary and how she said, “Yes,” to God.
The angel came to her and asked of her something that was not only
outrageous but that she knew was not going to be easy. And she said, “I’m the
handmade of the Lord.” She said,
“Yes.” She didn’t say, “Well, sure, I’ll
be happy to do that, but can we wait until after the marriage so it doesn’t
look so odd.” She didn’t say, “Well, let
me talk to my mother about it first to make sure she’s on board.” And she
didn’t say, “Let me talk to Joseph. I
think this is something he should know about. I don’t want to shock him.” She just said, “Yes.” And the fact that she
said yes has made all the difference in the world. If she had not said yes, all of history would
be different, but she said “yes.”
The next place we visited, which
is just down the street, was the church where, supposedly, Joseph’s house was.
As I was reflecting there, I was thinking about Joseph’s yes. Joseph didn’t get a direct call from God, but
what he said yes to was Mary’s call. He
said yes to supporting the one whom he loved.
He said yes to trusting her in her discernment. He said yes to being supportive of what she
chose.
Then we went to Jerusalem, and the
spot in Jerusalem that is the most powerful place for me is in the Garden of
Gethsemane, on the rock where Jesus is supposed to have asked the Father to
take this cup from him. It’s the place
where Jesus said “yes,” “not my will but thy will.” To me, that is the most important spot
because that’s where I think I was saved.
Jesus had a choice there. He
could have run away. He could have
left. He knew that what was ahead was
going to be suffering, and pain, and death, and humiliation, and yet, in the midst
of knowing that he said yes to God. And
his yes, at that moment, led to our salvation.
From that moment on, it all unfolded the way it unfolded. The choice point was there, and Jesus said
yes, and that’s made all the difference in the world.
We all experience a call from God
in some way or another. You all have
been called by God because you would not be sitting here right now if there
hadn’t been something in your life that had nudged you to come to church
today. You might think you came for
other reasons, but you are here. God touched
you. God calls to you. The question is whether you say “yes”. There
are lots of ways to say yes.
Often when we think of people
being called by God we assume that it has to do with ordination. I was at an
ordination Friday evening, and it was wonderful. And I saw this person who was on the trip
with me, being ordained to the priesthood. This is something that she was
called to, and her spouse had supported her, and her community had supported
her, and she had worked very hard to get to that moment. But usually God doesn’t call us to such
dramatic commitments. There are lots of
other ways that we can say “yes” to God.
I was talking to another friend
this week, and she was telling me the story of something that happened a number
of years ago. She is a tax account. She prepares people’s taxes and does
financial support for businesses so she knows a lot of people in the
community. There was a tragedy a while
back where a young man stepped in front of a train and was killed. She found, in the process of her work, that
she was interacting with the engineer of the train, who was devastated. That’s
the thing that engineers of trains fear the most – having something like that
happen. Then not too long afterwards she
felt she was getting a call from God because she had an appointment with the
woman who was the mother of the young man who had died. She finds that her tax
work is also a ministry because she does a lot of listening to people.
This woman of course also was very
devastated. She knew that her son had
been disturbed and that it was suicide. Something in my friend put together the idea
of the engineer and this woman, and she said to the woman, “Would you like to
speak to the engineer of the train?” And
she said, “Oh, yes, that would be very helpful.” So she called the engineer and said, “Would
you like to meet with the mother?” And
he said, “Oh, that would be wonderful.”
And she brought them together. They talked with one another, and they
grieved with one another, and it was healing for both of them. That to my friend was a call from God. That was as clearly a call from God as
anything else in the church because God was nudging her, “Here you are in a
unique situation, a unique opportunity to bring healing to several lives.”
I know people in this congregation
who have responded to a call. Not too
long ago I had somebody come up to me and say, “I feel called to help with
stewardship,” and I went, “Yes!” And I
had somebody else come to me and say, “I want to do something with marketing in
the church.” I had someone else come and say, “I want to do something with the
kids this summer.” God nudges us. Sometimes the calls are big and dramatic, but
most of the time it’s that still small voice that we talked about last week,
that kind of nudging by God, that thought that won’t go away. And sometimes the
call is clearer to other people than it is to ourselves. Maybe you’ve met someone who’s new to the
church, and when you see them, you see them at the thrift shop, so you say,
“Hey, I want to show you our thrift shop.
I think you would really enjoy volunteering there.” It’s about discernment of what God’s calling
us to and of saying yes.
So I ask you today, are you ready
to say “yes”? Are you ready to say yes
to God, to open your heart and mind to hear His call? Are you ready to say yes to that? Are you ready to say yes to discerning where
other people might be being called by God? Are you ready to tell other people what you
see and to listen to what other people say to you as a community? And so today I ask you, are you ready to say
yes to God? Amen.
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