When Jesus Isn't Nice: June 26, 2022

Year  C, Pentecost 3                                             Luke 9:51-62                                                                                               

            I’m going to be honest with you.  These readings are not my favorite readings, especially for a baptism.  I could preach on the psalm.  It’s a nice one.  It has some very uplifting verses.  Or I could pull one line out of the Gospel or Galatians and take it totally out of context.  It’s tempting, but I am not going to do it.  Sometimes we have to talk about the uncomfortable passages in the Bible, even the ones where Jesus doesn’t act the way we think he should act.

            The Gospel starts out in a fairly standard way. Jesus had “set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  That means that Jesus was resolved to go to Jerusalem where he would be crucified.  We don’t like that he has to be crucified, but we are certainly used to hearing about it at this point and since we know how the story ends, we don’t get overly concerned with Jesus setting his face to Jerusalem.  He sent James and John (who he previously nicknamed the “sons of thunder.”) to Samaria to get things ready. 

            The Samaritans rejected them.  We don’t know why. It could have been anything.  But James and John were upset about it as they asked Jesus if he would like them to command fire to come down and consume the Samaritans.  Now before you label this as an overreaction on the part of James and John, it might be helpful to remember that there was precedent for this reaction.  There were a few times in the Old Testament when God rained fire on a city or a group of people. 

            Fortunately a cooler head prevailed.  Jesus rebuked them.  There would be no fire raining down on anyone. So far so good.  This is classic Jesus. He’s going to be crucified.  The disciples say something absurd. Jesus rebukes them and they move on. But this is where things get a little uncomfortable.  As Jesus walked along, three different people approached him and either asked to follow him or were asked to follow him.  When the first one offered to follow him, Jesus explained (using metaphoric language) that this was not an easy life as he was essentially a homeless man wandering from place to place.  He didn’t say no, but he wasn’t very encouraging.

The next person, Jesus asked. That person was willing but had one reasonable request: “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”  Jesus said no. You either bury the dead or you proclaim the kingdom.  Not a very pastoral or kind response.  

The third potential disciple told Jesus he wanted to follow him, but he needed to say goodbye to his family first.  Another reasonable request.  Jesus was even harsher in his rebuke “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”  When it comes to being Jesus’s disciple, there are no “but firsts.”  There is no looking back or saying goodbye.  You stop what you are doing and you follow.  You change your plan.  You change the course of your life.  This might be why Jesus didn’t have a large band of followers.  He had 12, maybe a few more that they didn’t count---but definitely not a large group.

            This is a disturbing story because we want Jesus to be kind, compassionate and loving.  A kind and loving person would be understanding if someone wanted to bury their father. He would say something like, “Take the time you need. I will be here when you are ready.” But here’s the thing. Jesus was a man on a mission.  His mission was to save humanity, to release people from the bondage of sin and death.  He was on his way to Jerusalem, which meant he was on his way to his death.  He didn’t have time to be patient with people.  They either followed him or they didn’t.  There was no “but first.”  There could be no other priority in their life, not even their family.  So no, he wasn’t very kind in these instances.  Nothing was more important than what he was doing.

            Ok.  Maybe we can accept that. We don’t necessarily like what Jesus had to say, but we can accept that was what was required of Jesus’ disciples when he was on his way to his crucifixion.  Here’s the tricky part---what does this passage mean for us now?  (Is it too late for me to preach on the psalm? I think it is.)  The thing is, it is highly unlikely that Jesus will return in the flesh, walk right by you and ask you to follow him.  Does that mean that we don’t have to worry about what is required of us as disciples?  Of course not.  We are still called to follow Jesus.  However, we are called to discipleship in more nuanced ways which makes it more challenging and easier at the same time. It is more challenging in that we don’t have Jesus in the flesh telling us exactly what to do. It is easier in the sense that the modern call to discipleship can be ignored or quickly forgotten.

            In the end, what Jesus was asking these potential disciples and what he asked all the disciples was, “Will you change your plans and your life for me?”  So we might each ask ourselves, would my life be any different if I wasn’t a Christian?  How has a relationship with God changed the way I live? Most people I know like to have some kind of plan for their life.  Then once that happens, they might try to fit God into that plan. But what Jesus asked his disciples 2000 years ago and what he still asks us now is to let our plans, our dreams, our goals, be secondary to his holy and life giving mission. I understand how hard to that is---how hard it is to follow God’s plan when it is far easier to fit God into a corner of our plan. 

            One of the final prayers in the baptismal liturgy is: “Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.”  We say that prayer for the baptismal candidate, but it’s a prayer that every baptized person shares.  And I wonder if it might help us to figure out how to be better disciples.  I would encourage us all to find this in the prayer book and read it every day.  But pray it for yourself, that you might have the courage to will and persevere and a spirit to know and to love God.  Because if you have those things, you will find a way to let God play a bigger part in your life, to lead you in the right direction.  It’s never too late to start following God’s plan for you.

                       

Diversity isn't a punishment: June 5, 2022

 Year C, Pentecost                                              Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts 2:1-21                                                                      

            Every once in a while, our lectionary gives us options on what readings we can use on a Sunday.  Typically we have a reading from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the New Testament and then a Gospel reading.   You might have noticed that in the season of Easter, we haven’t had an Old Testament reading.  Instead we have read from the Book of Acts.  On this Pentecost Sunday, we have the option of skipping the Old Testament reading again.  Often I do that on Pentecost, because it bothered me the way the story of the Tower of Babel was always set up against the story of Pentecost, as if Pentecost was a solution to the Tower of Babel.  It’s more complicated than that. 

            This year I found myself curious about the Tower of Babel. So often when we hear or tell the story, we tell the children’s Bible version of it. The people were bad and God punished them accordingly. If you read it that way, then one could conclude that diversity is God’s punishment to humanity and that just doesn’t ring true.

Photo by Ronan Furuta 

            When we tell or interpret the story of Babel, people often talk about the pride of the people.  It makes sense given what we hear from the people who are building the tower. “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”  They were trying to reach the heavens.  Why else would you try to reach the heavens unless you are competing with God? There probably was a bit of human pride going on.   However, I am not sure that was what was really bothering God.  If God punished humanity every time we demonstrated pride in an achievement, we would be in serious trouble.

            Instead, look at the actual reason they gave for building the tower.  “…otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”  They were looking to settle in one place.  It says that in the 2^nd verse of the chapter.  “And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.”  The word that is translated to settle is the same word as sit.  It literally means that the people stopped moving.  And who can blame them? They had been traveling, wandering perhaps. They were ready to settle down.  They didn’t want to live out of tents anymore.  It’s like how you hear people talk about moving into their “forever home.”  It’s usually when people are a little later in life, they realize they don’t want to move anymore. They are ready to settle in one place, the place.  So maybe these people are just ready for their forever home.  Is that so bad?

            Let’s consider where we are in the story of the people of God.  This is the book of Genesis. It’s actually pretty early in the Book of Genesis.  (Show where we are in the Bible)  We have a lot more to this story.  You don’t settle in your forever home at this point in the story, especially when the story is God’s story and the people are God’s people.  Of course you can’t really blame them. They might not have realized how important it was for them to continue to scatter and migrate. They were thinking of their own stories.  And you know what sounds great in our own stories?  Big accomplishments.  Big towers.  But God was carrying a much bigger vision.

            When we consider God’s response, we tend to focus on what he says.  He says, “Let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”  That just sounds kind of mean.  Instead, let’s focus on God’s action.  What did God do?  “God scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.”  God forced them to keep moving.  God would not allow them to get comfortable in their mammoth tower where they could protect themselves from outsiders.  No, God forced them to leave the confines of this walled city and scatter. 

            Was it a punishment?  Maybe, but it was an effective punishment in that it forced them to learn and to grow.  Sure, it started with some confusion.  But so much of our education and formation begins with a little confusion.  I feel like every time I have learned something really important, it started with me completely baffled.   Confusion is only a bad thing if we choose to dwell in the confusion and never find our way out.

            A lot of people say that the story of Pentecost in Acts was a solution to the confusion and scattering that happened in Genesis.  In Acts 2, everyone  was together.  But they weren’t living together on a commune. They had come together for a festival in Jerusalem.  When the Holy Spirit descended, the apostles were able to speak in different languages and the people present were able hear in their own language.  The Holy Spirit didn’t meld all the languages together or make Hebrew the official language.  The Holy Spirit simply allowed more people to hear the word of God in their own language.

            If Pentecost was the solution or the opposite of the Tower of Babel, the people would have all started speaking in the same language and subsequently stayed in Jerusalem.  But that was not what happened.  The people retained their native tongues and the apostles learned to speak in new languages. And after the sermons and the 1,000s of baptisms, then what?  Did they all decide to form a tight knit community and stay in Jerusalem? No!  The people who were visiting presumably went home. The disciples moved outside of the walls, far outside of their comfort zones. The Spirit descended on the disciples when they were in a locked room, but the Spirit also inspired them to break out, to break out of the locked room and scatter.

            God doesn’t want some kind of monoculture.  If that was what God wanted, we would all look the same, talk the same, think the same.  And perhaps we would be united in our sameness.  Maybe there would be less division.  But we would be boring.  And we would probably fight more.  Have you ever noticed that the people who are hardest to get along with are the people most like you?  We should thank God that he scattered the people who were building that tower. He gave us a beautiful gift in doing that.

             I think most of us are pretty capable of embracing diversity.  Once I heard the Mayor of Hampton point out that we started as the most diverse city in this nation.  We of course had the Native Americans, the first Africans and the colonists from Europe.  It took us a long time to figure out that was a good thing. We committed some grave errors at the beginning.  But now I think most of us can embrace the beauty of being in town with so many different kinds of people. The great thing about Hampton is you don’t have to go very far to meet the other.  You might only have to walk about 10 feet.  But you do have to leave your comfort zone…your safe place. 

            Our church is a safe place and it should be…but it shouldn’t be safe in a way that shields us from different people or different opinions.  It’s not a place we can cloister ourselves.  This cannot be our Tower of Babel.  We must scatter through the city, maybe even to Newport News and Norfolk.  We don’t have to move—just visit. We must scatter because we have received the gift of the Holy Spirit and it is God’s divine mandate that we scatter and share it.