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.”

When was the last time you “set your face toward” something? It’s not a phrase we use or think of these days, but it still has some meaning for us. I think about an athlete getting ready to compete – the focus of a swimmer before climbing onto the blocks, the boxer before entering the ring, the team huddled in the locker room before they take the field. I think about a dancer or a singer or a performer of any kind ready to take the stage before the big show. You get the idea.

On Wednesday, I had just visited Ben Rice at St. Vincent’s Heart Hospital and left with my face set toward Sam’s Club. (It’s all relative, right?) My face was set toward Sam’s Club because Cross of Grace was running out of toilet paper and paper towels and the Camp at Church kids needed snacks, STAT, for the last two days of camp. And I was kind of in a hurry, because my face was also set toward getting my deck stained that afternoon, during a rare window of rainless days in Indiana. And all of that had to happen before a five o’clock meeting and the usual gamut of evening activities for the brothers Havel.

So, as I was pulling out of the parking lot at the Heart Hospital, with my face set toward Sam’s Club and all the rest, a panicked, frantically crying African-American woman drives by and, yelling from behind both of our mostly-closed car windows, asks if I can help her. Caught very much off-guard, I tell her to park her car. I pull over and park mine. And I run over to talk to her.

She’s lost and late for her first day of work. Assuming I know my way around that neck of the woods – which I do not – she asks if I can help her find 1183 Hamilton Crossing Boulevard. My trusty GPS tell us she’s just 6 minutes away so she asks me – visibly shaking she’s so upset – “Can I follow you there?”

So, even though my face is set toward Sam’s Club, I agree to lead her – which is no easy task – thanks to the myriad of handy-dandy traffic circles and round-abouts that are so popular with our friends in the northern suburbs.

Anyway, six minutes later, we get to what my GPS says is 1183 Hamilton Crossing Boulevard … only it’s not. I jump out to talk to my new friend, who is still frantic and panicky, and I confirm the address. We’re close, it seems, based on the signs and the numbers on and around the stacks and stacks and stacks of identical-looking office buildings on Hamilton Crossing Boulevard. She hugs me gratefully, saying she doesn’t have any money to pay me. I say, “It’s fine. Just follow me.”

And we take another lap around the area again – her behind me, dodging traffic and circling the round-abouts until we end up at that same pinpoint on my GPS for 1183 Hamilton Crossing Boulevard, only it’s still not there.

So I get out of my car – with my face still set toward Sam’s Club and the deck project and the evening meeting and the baseball games, remember – and with my phone in-hand I say, “Are you sure you have the right address? We’re looking for an eleven-hundred numbered building in an 11 THOUSAND numbered neck of the woods.” Just as I say it, she’s scrolling through her phone, apologizes – embarrassed – and says, “It’s 1-1-3-8-0 Hamilton Crossing Boulevard. I’m so sorry!”

Ultimately – and just the next parking lot over – we find where she needs to be. I lead here there. She parks, relieved. Hugs me again, and asks me what she can do to re-pay me. I hand her my card, find out her name is Jean, and tell her to send me an e-mail to let me know how her first day of work goes.

Please hear and understand that I’m making no quantitative, qualitative comparison between my drive through suburbia with Jean and Jesus’ road to Jerusalem with his disciples.

My point is that, aside from my time with Ben Rice at the Heart Hospital, I wonder if my little adventure with Jean wasn’t the most meaningful thing I accomplished on Wednesday. Sure, I made it to Sam’s Club for the toilet paper, paper towels, snacks and whatnot; I had my 5 o’clock meeting; I even got the deck stained and the boys got to where they needed to be. But the chance to help a lost person find her way to her first day of work – the chance to set aside my own plans and help a person in need – is what all the rest is all about, in the end, right?

And please hear and understand, if you think I’m bragging about my knack for faithfully following Jesus, I’ll be glad to confess my shame at losing my temper, good manners, and grace with the crew from the highway department Friday morning when we couldn’t access the church driveway. Sadly, it’s not rated PG, or I’d tell you about it here.

Anyway, I think what happened with me and Jean is a small version of what Jesus is getting at with all of this “follow me,” stuff – suggesting that we follow Jesus, even at the expense of all the other things and places and responsibilities toward which we can set our faces; set our agendas; and set our hearts’ desires, in this world.

When Jesus is approached by some would-be followers, each of them, well-intended as they could be, comes up with something they need to do first, before they get to the work of being disciples. One says he needs to first bury his father (no small fish to fry, for sure) and another says he’d first like to say goodbye to his family at home. Jesus, though, says to forget it – that there’s even more important, faithful work to be done. “Leave the rest behind and follow me, the kingdom of God is at hand,” is the gist of his invitation. The time is now. The jig is up. Let’s get on with it.

And that’s the call for us all, still. And Jesus knows this call isn’t always easy. This call isn’t always convenient. This call isn’t always going to fall in-line with every other thing we have going on in our lives.

And this is hard to hear for people who measure every investment of our time and energy and money against what its return will be for us in the end, because it’s hard to admit we make decisions about our willingness to follow Jesus in the same way.

Do we make plans to worship, on any given Sunday, with pure desire to celebrate and give thanks for the place of God’s blessings among us? If so, would we care so much about start time or style of music or the rest of our weekend’s plans when choosing whether to make it to church or not?

Do we give our offering to God sacrificially, generously, off the top, and with genuine thanksgiving for what has first been given to us? If so, would the math of figuring a tithe – a mere 10% of our income – even be necessary for disciples? Would we have need even for “commitment cards,” stewardship campaigns or spending plans?

Do we volunteer to serve through the Church or out there in the world out of a simple, sincere desire to be a blessing for others? Or do we commit most readily to what’s comfortable, easy, practical, safe, or convenient to everything else we have going on in our day-to-day lives?

There are people lost in this world in scarier, more dangerous and despairing ways than my friend Jean was on Wednesday, for sure. There are people starving – for actual food and spiritual sustenance, too. There are people dying of disease… of loneliness... of grief… of guilt. There are people suffering from war… from injustice…from bigotry…from sexism, and more. And too much of this is happening, too much of the time, because misguided followers of Jesus have lost focus and lost perspective and missed the point and forgotten what Jesus’ cross and crucifixion, death and resurrection are all about.

That’s why Jesus set his face to Jerusalem – and why we can, too. But, as Christian people on the other side of Jesus’ empty tomb, we set our faces toward Jerusalem knowing about the Cross, for sure; knowing about that suffering and that crucifixion and that sacrifice and that death – indeed having endured some of that ourselves along the way.

But we set our faces toward Jerusalem because there was a tomb there, too, and because it was empty, in the end. So, with our faces set toward Jerusalem, we are blessed with the perspective of resurrection, with the hope of new life, with the assurance of forgiveness, and with the promise of more grace than we deserve – and more work to do than can ever be done – without that same grace to inspire, to move and to lead us as we follow.

Amen

Luke 9:51-62

This is a little more academic than I like to be in worship on a Sunday in the summer, but I want you to forget about Luke, Chapter 9 for a moment, so we can talk a bit about that first reading from 1 Kings, chapter 19. I’m assuming some of you just zoned out at the sound of those names, Jehu, Hazael, Nimshi and Shaphat. And the names don’t matter so much, but it all may make more sense than you think, especially if I can connect it to what we just heard from Luke’s Gospel, with Jesus and his would-be followers, making their way around Galilee, about to head for Jerusalem.

In that reading from 1 Kings, the point for the prophet Elijah, who was looking for his anointed replacement at the direction of God, is the same point Jesus is trying teach his own disciples and for all those who were now watching and wondering and making commitments to follow in his footsteps with some amount of faithfulness.

For Elijah, who’d been given clear instructions about anointing Elisha as his successor, the struggle was similar: his young successor had business to tend to before answering his call and this invitation to follow in Elijah’s footsteps. What’s different in this Old Testament story, though, is that Elijah let’s Elisha have his way. After Elijah, respected prophet that he was, symbolically throws his mantle on the young man’s shoulders, the newly appointed prophet does return home to “kiss his father and his mother,” and has a little farewell party before beginning his new life. He leaves Elijah, slaughters his oxen and feeds his people – presumably his family and friends in a ceremonial kind of meal – and then sets out to follow Elijah as his servant and disciple.

What’s surprising about the parallel in Jesus’ version of the story, so many generations later, is Jesus leaves no room for that sort of thing. When Jesus is approached by some would-be followers, each of them comes up with something they need to do first, before they get to the work of being disciples. One says he needs to first bury his father – a rite and sacred responsibility of the highest order for Jewish men in his day. But Jesus tells him to forget about that. “Let the dead bury their own dead.” “You, go proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Another wannabe says he’ll follow Jesus, but only after he first says goodbye to his family at home. (Very much like Elisha wanted to do in that Old Testament reading.) Again, though, Jesus says to forget it. Apparently, as the farming metaphor goes, once you’ve started to plow a field, there’s no looking back, or else your tracks may be crooked. Again, the implication is there’s more important, faithful work to be done where Jesus is concerned – who was on his way to his crucifixion at Jerusalem, after all.

And the same is true for us, still. And the point Jesus makes over and over today is that this call isn’t always easy. The Christian life isn’t always convenient. This call isn’t always going to fall in-line with all the other things we have going on in our lives.

And that’s what he’s up to as he makes his way to Jerusalem, this morning. When we read that Jesus has “set his face” toward Jerusalem, we’re to read that he’s beginning the last leg of his journey to the Cross. We’re to understand that he knows what’s coming and that his crucifixion is looming in a more immediate way than it has until now. And, I imagine, with that suffering and death so imminently placed on his travel log, Jesus isn’t really in the mood for screw-ups, or wannabes, or half-hearted commitments to the life-and-death sacrifice he’s about to make. (Part of me wonders, too, if – with all of those harsh comebacks – Jesus isn’t trying to convince himself to keep on, keeping on… “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” “go, proclaim the kingdom,” “no one who sets his hand to the task and turns back is fit for the kingdom of God.”)

So yeah, in all of his responses to those who approach him on the road he may sound short, or harsh, or unforgiving, even. But Jesus knows this road he’s on isn’t for everyone. This road to crucifixion wasn’t for anyone else but him, really. And he wasn’t in the mood for jokers and he didn’t want people kidding themselves by pretending that to “follow Jesus” meant they could come and go; take it or leave it; squeeze their discipleship into their busy schedules whenever it was convenient or fun or worth whatever time or money or investment they felt compelled to offer at any given moment.

And this is hard to hear, I have to say. In a world that tells us to measure every investment of our time and energy and money against what it’s return will be for us in the end, it’s hard to admit that we make decisions about the investment of our call to discipleship in the same way.

But we do, don’t we?

We make choices to worship or not, based on whether it’s convenient. We give an offering, or not, based on what’s left or based on what we can do without, a lot of the time. We volunteer or serve, too much of the time, based on what’s comfortable, practical, or convenient to everything else we have going on in our day-to-day lives.

Later this morning we get to baptize little William Molinder, little Charlotte Nichols, and little Kinch Waldrep, and we will welcome them into this life of faith as “fellow workers with us in the body of Christ,” as the liturgy goes. And what I hope we’ll hear in this invitation to these children is the same thing we’re meant to hear in God’s invitation to every one of us. None of it is meant to be harsh words or hard questions. For us and for them – just as it was for Jesus’ followers so many generations ago on the road to Jerusalem – this is about perspective.

What we’re called to this morning, and every day of our lives, by virtue of our baptism, is to set our faces toward Jerusalem. And, as Christian people on the other side of Jesus’ empty tomb, we set our faces toward Jerusalem knowing about the Cross, for sure; knowing about that suffering and that crucifixion and that sacrifice and that death. But we set our faces toward Jerusalem and we baptize one another with that kind of perspective, too, because with our faces set toward Jerusalem, we are blessed, too, with promises of resurrection, new life, forgiveness, mercy and more grace than we deserve.

And with that kind of perspective, we are blessed to follow Jesus, to respond faithfully and sacrificially to the promises of it all, with joy, with gratitude, with humble hearts and with generosity – because we can, not because we have to – and because the reason Jesus asks this of us in the first place, is because God knows our lives and this world will be blessed and better because of it.

Amen

Leading Jean, Following Jesus

"Set Your Face Toward Grace" - Luke 9:51-62