Text: Luke 9:51-62
Date: June 26, 2022
Event: Proper 8 (The Third Sunday After Pentecost), Year C
Luke 9:51–62 (EHV)
When the days were approaching for him to be taken up, Jesus was determined to go to Jerusalem. 52He sent messengers ahead of him. They went and entered a Samaritan village to make preparations for him. 53But the people did not welcome him, because he was determined to go to Jerusalem. 54When his disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?”
55But he turned and rebuked them. “You don’t know what kind of spirit is influencing you. 56For the Son of Man did not come to destroy people’s souls, but to save them.” Then they went to another village.
57As they went on the way, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”
58Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
59He said to another man, “Follow me!”
But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
60Jesus told him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
61Another man also said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say good-bye to those at my home.”
62Jesus told him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Following Jesus Is Total Commitment
I am baffled by the dedication many professional athletes have to their health and strength. Athletes who, in season are continually practicing and refining their skills, and in the off-season are working maybe even harder to get stronger, or leaner, or more accurate, or whatever their sport calls for. It is total dedication, total commitment to these small subset of physical tasks.
And while they’re committed to that they are in perhaps the best physical shape a human being can be in. But, what happens if they stop? Or what if they become only half as dedicated? Their performance in the sport and perhaps even their long-term health could suffer. Both are things the athlete wants to avoid at all costs.
Of course, I’m not here today to preach about the importance of dedication to physical fitness. Although, of course, it is important to take care ofd the bodies God has given to us, that’s not really our focus this morning. Instead, I want to think of that picture of the athlete training hard in the weight room or when they are getting ready to go onto the field or court in a sport, and see in their commitment to their physical performance as a picture of what our spiritual dedication to our Savior ought to be.
But before we think and talk about ourselves, we do well to think and talk about Jesus first. In our Gospel for this morning, we’re approaching the latter part of Jesus’ ministry. The time for him to die outside of Jerusalem had come. And yet, we don’t see him shrinking from this or running away from it. Instead we’re told Jesus was determined to go to Jerusalem. Literally Luke says that Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” He locked his gaze on what was ahead. And even though it meant horrendous suffering and death for him, he was determined to see it through. Nothing could veer him off this path. He was totally committed to this work.
But why? Why does Jesus have this total commitment to something that would be so brutally painful, that would bring such unimaginable suffering? In short, it is God’s love for us—love that we do not deserve. That love is what makes Jesus determined to go to Jerusalem. Our sins meant eternal ruin for us and God is totally committed to saving us. So from the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve first sinned, through Jesus’ death and resurrection and beyond even to our personal lives, everything God has done he has done with saving you as the end-goal.
And so as Jesus carries out his mission to save us from our sins, he preaches and he teaches. And that peaching and teaching naturally produced believers, those who trusted in what he said and promised, in the same way that God’s Word does that for us today. In our Gospel we have several rapid-fire examples of people who came to trust in Jesus, but also people who were not totally committed to him.
First, the village in Samaria let their prejudice against Jewish worship lead them to reject Jesus outright. They were not committed to Jesus at all. James and John, likewise, show an almost baffling response to this lack of commitment when they want to destroy the people in that village with fire from the sky. Could they have been any less focused on Jesus’ mission to save? Jesus’ response we have before us is clear and direct: “You don’t know what kind of spirit is influencing you. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy people’s souls, but to save them.”
Then we come to the man who professes what looks to be total commitment to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.” But it seems that Jesus knows that his commitment will not last when pressed by the troubles of being Jesus’ disciple: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” In other words, “Will you be so dedicated when you lose comforts for my sake?”
Next, Jesus calls a man to follow him and his response is that he first needs to bury his father. At first blush, it seems like a reasonable request. Would we fault anyone for taking time away from church, work, or even immediate gamily to attend the funeral of a family member? But Jesus’ response leads us to think that there’s more going on than we hear in the man’s request. Either the man is saying that he’ll follow Jesus when his father has died—at some undetermined point in the future—which begs the question, “When would you actually start following Jesus?” Or, more dishearteningly, perhaps the man’s father had already died but as an unbeliever, and Jesus is speaking spiritually—“Let the spiritually dead bury the other spiritually dead.” It was more important to tend to the living with the gospel of Jesus’ forgiveness than to go through the ritual of funeral observances for someone who was now beyond the reach of the gospel. Whatever the reason, Jesus is clearly seeing some cracks in this man’s commitment and feels the need to refocus him.
Lastly, the man who wants to say goodbye to the people at home—again, we would say this is another reasonable request. But Jesus’ response seems to be, “If you go back home, would you come back to me?”
The common thread in all of these people seems not to be total rejection of Jesus but a wavering commitment. Other things, to certain degrees, were taking priority over Jesus in their lives. And Jesus makes clear that he and his mission to save are too important to have anything less than total commitment to him.
How’s your commitment to following Jesus? Is it total and complete? Or does it have cracks? Are there things that, at times, are more important to you than Jesus? Jesus expects the same dedication to him that he has for me, but does he find it? Hardly. When my frustration with other things leaks out and negatively impacts my family, I’m committed to my frustration or anger, not Jesus. When my laziness leads me to prioritize leisure over responsibility, I’m committed to the recreation, not Jesus. When I let my focus and energy be on money, I’m committed to my greed, not Jesus.
We each have places where our commitment to Jesus can or does hit a brick wall. Maybe we identify with one of the people in our Gospel; maybe it’s something entirely different from what they were wrestling with. But our commitment is always going to be lacking in some way or another.
This morning, in just a few minutes, we’re going to hear Calvin make some amazing-sounding promises. He’s going to pledge his commitment to Jesus—total commitment even. He’ll read his essay to show what he’s learned and believes. Maybe we will find in his commitment to his Savior a renewal in our commitment to our Savior. We will undoubtedly let our prayers be filled with requests for strength for him, to face the challenges of this life with resolve and commitment to Jesus.
But Jesus calls on all of us to share Calvin’s commitment to him. To resolve to dedicate ourselves more fully to following him, to putting his Word into practice in our lives, to finding continual strength in his forgiveness.
And that last part is perhaps the most important takeaway. Jesus didn’t endorse letting James and John call down fire on the Samaritans because he came to save them, not destroy them. He doesn’t say it’s too late for the other men who show questionable commitment to him; he doesn’t say that they missed their chance. He encourages them all, calls them, wants them to follow him.
He does the same for you and me. When we face challenges to following Jesus, to living our lives as he wants, to prioritizing time with him in his Word, Jesus is there to forgive those stumbles as well. Yes, following Jesus calls on us to have total commitment to him. But for every time that we fall short of that total commitment, Jesus’ forgiveness removes those stumbles, and we face a new hour or day or week or year to follow our Savior with our whole life.
The athlete who fails his carefully regimented diet and spends a day eating garbage is not disqualified from his position. But he then needs to recommit himself to following the plan laid out before him. Likewise, you and I are not rejected by our Savior because we’ve had poor commitment today, this week, this month, this past year, or even the past decade. Our lack of commitment to Jesus is completely solved by Jesus’ total commitment to us. And then, in turn, his total commitment to us is what produces our total commitment to him.
So we don’t follow James’ and John’s example and seek to destroy those who disagree with us or who don’t share our faith. We pray for them and seek ways to share with them, showing a commitment to what Jesus has said and done, and a commitment to them by how we treat them and live our lives around them.
I won’t sugarcoat it—this is going to be tough for all of us all the days that we live here. We will have good days and bad, good weeks and bad, good years and bad. But there is no variance in Jesus’ commitment to us. He has given himself to forgive every sin. And when the time for the end our lives here comes, we will not find him on a day where he’s lukewarm toward us. That day he will be just as committed to us as he was the day he suffered hell on the cross to pay for our sins. Jesus’ commitment to us means we have eternal life with him. Until the day we receive that in full, may God give us the strength to throw off what trips us up and follow him. Amen.
