The second part of this morning’s gospel reading contains three
strange, widely misinterpreted, sayings.[1]
In
response to someone promising to follow Jesus wherever he goes, Jesus replies, "Foxes
have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to
lay his head." This saying is not a glorification of being houseless nor,
contrary to John Wesley, an argument for clergy to move frequently.
A
twelve-year-old boy’s father assigned him some yard work. The boy hired his six-year-old
brother to do the work for him. He told the six-year-old that his father had
paid him a dollar to do the work, and if the six-year-old would do the job, he
would let him hold the dollar until suppertime. The little kid worked hard all
afternoon and got the job done. The big brother, true to the bargain, gave him
the dollar, saying "You can hold this until suppertime; then you have to
give it back."
The
father, a wealthy banker who worked seven days a week, came home late that
afternoon. He spotted his youngest son with the dollar.
"Where
did you get that?" he asked.
"My
brother let me hold it since I did his work in the yard."
"You're
holding it?"
"Yes,
he said I have to give it back at suppertime."
"That's
crazy," the father said. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
You worked hard all afternoon and just get to hold your money?"
The boy
looked at his father and said, "But, isn't that what you're doing
too?"
The child
was right. All we get to do is hold our money and other possessions for a
while.[2]
We are temporarily God's stewards of our possessions; possessions are important
only for what we do with them.
Jesus
invited another person to follow him. The person replied, "Lord, first let
me go and bury my father." Jesus responded, "Let the dead bury their
own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."
Burying
the dead is a religious duty. After Jesus’ crucifixion, some of his followers hurriedly
buried his body and then they returned on Easter morning to finish their
ministrations. Jesus obviously is speaking metaphorically, not literally.
Benedictine
monasteries attach special importance to serving one another at mealtime:
"servers … bring the food … the monks are encouraged … not to ask for
anything they need, but always to look out for a neighbor’s needs. (… in a
famous story, a monk as he eats his soup notices that a mouse has dropped into
his bowl. What is he to do? He is to pay attention to his neighbors' needs, not
his own. So, he … [calls a] server and [says], 'My neighbor hasn't got a
mouse.')"[3]
Psychological
and biological research teaches us that self-love is inescapable. Yet healthy
relationships look to the well-being of the other person even as we love
ourselves; healthy relationships are future oriented rather than clinging to a
broken past or an impossibly romanticized version of the past. Let bygones be
bygones; let the dead bury the dead.
Another of
Jesus’ followers said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say goodbye
to my family." Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow
and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." Jesus is not anti-family;
he intends us to hear this saying, like the previous two, metaphorically rather
than literally.
Remember
Peter. He looked back, regretting his decision to follow Jesus. He denied Jesus
not once but three times.[4]
Yet, Matthew’s gospel reports Jesus had said to Peter – whose name means rock –
you are the rock on which I will build my church.[5]
Similarly, at the height of Roman persecution of Christians, the Church defined
apostasy – abandoning the faith – as the unforgivable sin. Roman ferocity,
however, caused apostasy to become so widespread that few Christians remained.
Those survivors eventually relented and allowed apostates, after an arduous
repentance, to return to the Church.
Eugene
Peterson, whose Bible translation The Message was a bestseller a couple
of decades ago, rightly and wisely described the Christian life as a long
obedience in the same direction Malcolm Gladwell in his bestseller, Outliers,
promoted the idea that ten thousand hours are required to master any art, skill
or discipline.[6] Thus,
for example, if you spend two hours a week on Sundays cultivating your
spiritual life, and another two hours during the week, you will require fifty
years to accumulate ten thousand hours of practice. Our spiritual lives suffer
because we rarely acknowledge our lack of commitment and practice; we live
superficially rather than delving deeply into the mystery of God.
A Persian
proverb first observes that a person comes into the world crying while all
around people are smiling, then encourages people to so live that they go out
of this world smiling while all around them people are crying. Be good stewards
of your possessions, holding them lightly in trust for their true owner, God;
love so deeply that your relationships fill others with life and hope; commit
yourself so completely to God that your death finds you smiling and others
crying. Amen.
Sermon preached in
the Parish of St. Clement, Honolulu, HI
Third Sunday after
Pentecost, June 30, 2019
[1] Vv.
57-62 of Luke 9:51-62.
[2] Jamie
Buckingham, Parables (Lake Mary, Florida: Creation House, 1991).
Adapted.
[3] David
Steindl-Rast, The Music of Silence: Entering the Sacred Space of Monastic Experience
(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), pp. 79-80.
[4] Matthew
26:69-75.
[5] Matthew
16:18.
[6] Malcolm
Gladwell, Outliers (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2008).
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