1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21
And the LORD said to him, "go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damscus" and when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael to be king over Syria. And Jehu the son of Nishmi you shall anoint to be king over Israel, and eLisha the son of Shaphat of Abel-me holly you shall anoint to be prophet in your place. ... So he departed from there and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen in front of him. Elijah passed by him and cast his cloak upon him. And he left the oxen and ran after Elijah and said, "let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you." And he said to him, "go back again, for what have I done to you?" And he returned from following him and took the yoke of oxen and sacrificed them and boils their flesh with the yokes of oxen and sacrificed them and boils their flesh with the yokes of oxen and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he arise and went after Elijah and assisted him.
Psalm 16
Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the LORD, 'you are my lord; I have no good apart from you.' As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom I take my delight. The sorrows of those who run after another God shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips. The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I have set the LORD also before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure. For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption. You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. For you were called to freedom, kindred. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: 'you shall love your neighbor as yourself.' But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
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 toward 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 him, “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, “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.”
********
Lord, how many times have I wished to be able to call down fire on somebody. One of my commenters on the Gospel this week said the disciples were trying to recreate the shock and awe of Soddom and Gomorrah, those cities burned for their inhospitality, no, their downright violence, toward strangers. Calling down fire is something we’ve got a history of, burning crosses in people’s yards, even as recently as three days ago burning the Pride flag outside of First Lutheran Church and the Damian Center in Albany. The church has often exercised control by threatening the fires of hell on anyone who does not adjust their lives to the dominant culture. Martin Luther had major issues with that one, by the way.
I remember being in Confirmation class way way back and reading that small catechism and getting hung up on the constant use of the phrase ‘fear and love God.’ I couldn’t wrap my head around that use of the ward ‘fear,’ because I’d sung “Jesus Loves Me” so many times it didn’t make sense to me to be afraid of someone who loved me. Now that I’ve met my own fears of disappointing my parents, now that I’ve met people who lived through abusive relationships, now I know many ways we take that fear to be normal, even when it isn’t. We feed a culture of fear when we threaten others with fire, be it physical or verbal or emotional fire. We feed a culture of fear when people who look like Freddy Gray are physically thrown around and thrown away and no one is held accountable for it. We feed a culture of fear when we speak more about people who are different than with those people.
It’s not the life we were meant for, this cycle of violence and threats and looking for excuses for violence against ourselves. But it is so easy to get trapped in that cycle, isn’t it? Answering threats with threats. Throwing jabs in self-defense until we have forgotten what we are fighting about and can’t even logically think about the issues at hand.
Even our churches have gotten stuck in this cycle. These places which are supposed to be full of grace and sanctuary have become afraid of getting it ‘wrong,’ or afraid of dying, trying to be more relevant and trying to grow by reminding ourselves that we have it ‘right’ and the world has it ‘wrong’ and at least in here we know we’re saved and safe. Everywhere we look we are raising the anxiety levels. It is amazing we haven’t all died of stress-induced heart attacks.
But calling down fire is a distraction. Trolling is a distraction. Telling people to go home or learn English is a distraction. It gets in the way. Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem, and calling down fire would have been a side project, not to mention completely contrary to his work and character up to this point in the story. Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem. And when somebody sets their face toward something, there are no side trips, there is no distraction, and there is no secret about their ultimate goal and purpose. Everything he does serves this one purpose and goal of getting to Jerusalem, being there in time to die for the Passover festival, making clear his mission to be the final sacrifice for the sake of the world.
Along the way, he calls others to join this vision, to live this kingdom way, to follow and witness and serve. Many have come to expect that following a well-known Rabbi might mean being welcomed in every town with a hot meal and the best room at the inn. But we who have followed the story from the start know that even in his birth Jesus didn’t have a place to lay his head. If you’re looking for a nice hotel, this is the wrong guy to follow, because at best he sleeps on a pile of hay in the barn out back. It’s part of belonging to the whole world, that he can live anywhere in it, but as we draw our lines of who’s in and who’s out, we often put him on the ‘out.’ It’s like the Levites, the tribe that became priests for the nation of Israel, the one brother out of the original twelve who wasn’t afforded land of his own because he would learn to rely on the hospitality of his eleven brothers. Levi was one of two of Joseph’s brothers who did not receive a blessing from his father Israel because of his violence, yet he was also known for being very pious, and his descendants took care of the Torah and the temple. But they had no official place to call their own, only the promise of a tithe from each other brother to support them. The religious were not ‘entitled’ to special treatment because they were religious.
This is where we get the heart of the problem Paul is talking about in his letter to the Galatians today. We’ve been called to freedom. But we have couched that freedom in fear for so long that we don’t know the roots of it any longer, and we use that freedom to bite and devour one another instead of feeding each other. It is as antithetical as if Sojourner Truth had gotten to the north and decided to become a slaveowner herself. Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem for the sake of the whole world, for the work of liberating all who are oppressed, returning sight to the blind, releasing the captives, proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.
And for each and every time we get distracted, for each and every time we would rather call down fire, God sends down grace, God raises up compassion. Not only for those we would want to see burn, but for our own hearts, as well. In some cases, that feels an awful lot like fire. I know I don't like the feeling of being called out, but either God agape-loves the whole world, from Clinton to Trump to Sanders, from Russia to Mexico to the U.K. to Venezuela to Australia to… either God loves us all, or God isn’t God. And this isn’t Hallmark love, either, not even close to that simple sort of soft and fluffy feeling. This is love that reaches through the centuries in all directions, that creates and sustains life, that is wrenched when we tear at one another, that bleeds and sweats and weeps and works. If God insists on the life and death work of loving the whole spectrum and beyond, God isn’t going to turn away from that mission when we decide to take the easy road of making enemies and threats out of each other.
Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem, knowing he was going to be killed there, knowing what that city meant to his people and to outsiders, knowing that not everyone would be able to swallow what he was doing. And he didn’t die so that the sanctuary would be full every Sabbath, so that every priest could sleep on a feather bed, so that we could know with certainty who deserved to burn and who deserved heaven. He died to set us free from the fear of condemnation that haunts and shames us. He died as he lived, so that community could be expanded and restored, so that the hungry would be fed and the outcast welcomed. He set his face toward Jerusalem, and no distractions could turn him aside from his mission to restore a fearful world with passionate love.
No comments:
Post a Comment