Given at Millbrook United Methodist Church on June 27, '10.
Luke 9:51-62
51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; 53but they did not receive him, because his face was set towards Jerusalem. 54When 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?’* 55But he turned and rebuked them. 56Then they went on to another village.
57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ 58And 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.’ 59To another he said, ‘Follow me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ 60But Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’ 61Another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’ 62Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.
The sun was just beginning to rise on April 9, 1945. It was a chilly morning; the morning dew was just beginning to dissipate. Perhaps even more icily bitter than the pre-dawn weather, though, were the events that had transpired and those that were imminent. It was the Flossenburg concentration camp in southeastern Germany, one of those horrific examples of humanity’s ability to inflict the most pernicious atrocities upon its own. I need not indulge in much detail about circumstances in Germany, and indeed the world in 1945; however, three weeks from April 9, the Soviets would capture Berlin, and in one month, Nazi Germany would completely capitulate. One of the darkest periods in humanity’s history would end. However, on this brisk morning in April, one man was led to the Flossenburg gallows. His crime? Involvement with the July 20 assassination plot against Hitler. His trial? Presided over by corrupt SS judge Otto Thorbeck; it lacked witnesses, records of proceedings or any sort of defense for the accused. Found guilty, he was sentenced to hang. His execution was especially demeaning and brutal; he was stripped naked, led around the Flossenburg camp, and hung with a thin wire for strangulation. After Dietrich Bonhoeffer had died, the camp doctor who witnessed the killing said the following: “at the place of execution, Bonhoeffer said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran pastor, theologian, and man dedicated to his country and devoted to seeing Nazism destroyed, died a martyr.
Jesus said ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”; “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God”; and “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” What does he mean? What’s this about not being able to say goodbye to your family, or hold a proper burial for your loved ones? And when Jesus says he has nowhere to lay his head, is he implying that homelessness is the way to go? As a clergyperson-in-training, I don’t like the sound of this at all. If this is truly the cost of following Jesus, I might be inclined to reevaluate my vocational choice! And if shunning family and neglecting other obligations is a necessary part of the Christian way, I might also be ethically disposed to discourage you from following the way of Jesus, too! Is a fate like Bonhoeffer’s likely, or even requisite, for the true disciple of Jesus? Perhaps we need to do a bit of examination of this text, and try to get at the real gist of it.
This is really a grim, rather awkward and difficult to understand passage from Luke; it is ominous and unsettling. Up until now, Jesus has been ministering in Galilee, in and around his home base of Capernaum. He received a little success and acceptance here. Though not everyone has received him, mind you. His first sermon wasn’t a great success – his home congregation chased him to the cliff and were pressing on him so as to push him off. Jesus had some successes chasing out demons, and he duly chastised Satan during his 40 days in the wilderness. Overall, though, things weren’t too bad in Galilee; they could certainly have been worse. However, verse 51 designates a clear change in Jesus’ journey: “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” And now that time was coming closer and Jesus could sense it. Jerusalem, the holy city of peace, that bastion of Jewish identity and worship, was also the killer of prophets. This passage begins the long Travel Narrative, a section detailing Jesus’ journey to Gethsemane and Golgotha, the place that is called the Skull, the place he would be murdered.
On Jesus’ journey, he and his companions pass by Samaria, and attempt to make a detour into the village, but the Samaritans refuse to be hospitable and don’t accept Jesus’ messengers. The text records that “they did not receive him, because his face was set towards Jerusalem.” What does this mean, this confusing piece of text? Perhaps Jesus’ reputation had preceded him, and the Samaritans wanted nothing to do with this man who frequently stirred up trouble. We will do well to note that Jesus’ famous encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well is not recorded in Luke; so, as far as we can tell in Luke’s account, the Samaritans have not had a favorable interaction with Jesus, a man of an ethnic group with which they were sworn enemies. Or, perhaps there was something about Jesus, that grim determination, that face set towards Jerusalem, that just seemed like trouble. Either way, the Samaritans didn’t want Jesus and his entourage around. Sure enough, those impetuous, always eager to please disciples James and John want to bring down a heavenly air strike on the town, maybe sensing and misinterpreting Jesus’ mood. Jesus rebukes them – one ancient manuscript of Luke has Jesus saying, “you do not know what spirit you are of, for the Son of Man has not come to destroy the lives of human beings but to save them.” Even in his dark night of the soul, along the road that he knew would surely lead to his death, Jesus is compassionate and loving.
Then, as they are traveling along, this bizarre, unsettling conversation ensues. What could this portion possibly mean? Allow me to offer this: I think that sometimes, we are tempted to look to the Bible as a set of timeless truths, rules to live by and when we do; we take it literally and at face value. However, when we do so, we are frequently disappointed. So we read today’s passage and ask, well, does this mean we shouldn’t bury our parents? Does this mean that we should leave and not say goodbye to our families? But that sort of reading, the one that looks for rules and literal instruction, misses the point altogether. This passage does not intend to answer questions about funeral etiquette or farewell practices. What this scripture does intend to tell us is that there will be times in all of our lives when we have to set our faces toward our own particular Jerusalem and at those times, we will want to do it with determination and resolve, with Jesus at our side, and perhaps with loving, caring, albeit fallible and sometimes misunderstanding companions, like James and John.
Just like Jesus on his way to Jerusalem, there are times when our lives come to a point. Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew this; his face was set towards his own Jerusalem on that day in April. For Bonhoeffer, his life came to a point when he stood up against the oppression of the state Church of Germany when it sided with Hitler’s regime, when he gave up a comfortable position at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan when Hitler began advancing across Europe in 1939. His life had come to a point, a sharp focus, and he was determined and focused. Has this happened to you? When everything comes down to a narrow focus, and you are faced with a choice, a harsh reality? If this has happened to you already, then perhaps you find some resonance here. If it hasn’t happened yet, then I have some good news for you. God will be there with you; God has been there before you. There are times that have to be met with determination and with purpose. When the diagnosis is cancer. When the phone rings, relaying news of a deadly accident. When a child hurt or injured. These are times that are deadly serious, where nothing else matters. When those times come, and they will, God will be there, God has been there, God is always there, and God’s face is, along with yours, set toward Jerusalem.
I would offer to you that this is the true cost of discipleship; to face those difficult times, and indeed all times in life, with purpose and resolve, a purpose and resolve that trusts in the all-encompassing goodness and love of God. However, there is one more aspect to this discipleship, this way of living: it means that one must not just be a visitor on this earth, in this lifetime, but one must embrace life and all its challenges, its joys, its ambiguities, its heartbreaks, its inexplicable wonder. This is indeed what God wants; John 10:10 tell us that Jesus came to give us life, and life more abundantly! But living an abundant life means having the resolve of a Bonhoeffer, of setting our face towards Jerusalem like Jesus. An abundant life doesn’t mean a fun and easy life. But it does mean its a life worth living. It means that when our lives end, we can look back on them without regrets. For some, walking through life with one’s face set towards Jerusalem can bring government sanctions and fines, jail time, and even death. The road to Jerusalem is paved with those who had not planned on making that journey, but set their face towards the city anyway. It is a road that one cannot approach without at least a little fear and trembling, and perhaps a healthy dose of admiration and pride for those who, like Bonhoeffer and Jesus, who stuck it out to the very end, and also a measure of faith that we, too, can see our journey to its conclusion.
The American poet Mary Oliver was experiencing her own moment of focus, a time when she had to face her own Jerusalem, when she wrote the following poem:
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me,
and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
This is the message of the Scripture this morning: being a disciple means living with no regrets, loving and serving God, loving life and loving each other and all creation, wondering at this mystery called life. It means when death comes, we will not have been just visitors to this world. Dietrich Bonhoeffer did this; the doctor attending to his death testified to it; he had made something particular and real of his life. The example of Jesus shows us this as well; Jesus embraced the brotherhood and sisterhood of all humanity, and lived his life with steadfastness and conviction, setting his face towards Jerusalem when the time came. May we all find strength and courage to put our hands to the plough, and not look back. Amen.
