Luke 9:51-62
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 him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set towards 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.
As they were going along the road, someone said to Jesus, “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 to him, “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.”
Thanks to each of our seniors/freshmen for reminding me – as happens every year we do this – that you really are paying attention sometimes and that what we’re up to here matters for you … because that matters to most of us.
My hope and prayer, as each of our young people head on and out into the world, is that they will find a faith community where they can continue to experience these things, and to share there what has been shared with them here.
I know, from plenty of my own experience, that in the next handful of years they will be very much like the disciples in the Gospel we heard a minute ago. It might not happen for them right away. They may have great intentions of following Jesus – like so many of the rest of us do – or not. And they, like the rest of us, and like Jesus’ first followers, will find plenty of other things to do first. Like those first disciples, they’ll find that proclaiming the Kingdom of God’s unmitigated grace, can be hard, in this world. And like those first followers, they’ll find that there are plenty more and different and tempting endeavors begging for their attention.
But I hope each of them will find ways to do what all of us are trying to do, on our good, most faithful days. That they’ll experience more of what we’ve tried to give them a taste of here – a lot of which we just heard them acknowledge:
A community that feels like a second home…
A place with generous, wide-open arms where acceptance and forgiveness and grace are so abundant that hopelessness doesn’t last long…
That new ways of doing Church and finding faith will make them curious enough to want to know more…
That somewhere they’ll find a safe place, in the name of Jesus, to cry, to be angry, to know joy, and to let God see all of that and all of them along the way…
That as God’s children, we’re all a mess in our own kind of way, and special – not just in spite of that mess and the proverbial dirt that clings to us, but because of it, too…
That they (and we) will feel a sense of responsibility too all of this for the sake of the world…
And that no small part of it all is an invitation to be rebellious with this grace we receive and share. I’m glad that the most rebellious thing Abby has done so far happened at church, because that’s good practice for what God calls us all to do and to be … to take some chances with this grace we share every once in a while and trust that God can and will do something amazing through us and for us and on behalf of the world, when we do.
Amen
