“Bound and Determined”
Luke 9:51-62
July 1, 2007

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Reverend John A. Fleming

Will Willimon, now the Bishop of the Alabama Annual Conference and former Dean of the chapel at Duke University, tells that in the last congregation he served in South Carolina. He and his church initiated a plan for evangelism, a way to reach out to the community near their church.

The plan was simple. A group of volunteers went out into the neighborhood surrounding the church. They knocked on doors and told people about Jesus Christ and their church. By the way, if this sounds familiar, it should, we used to do something like this here at St. Paul. I’d like to do it again! I believe they called the ministry Fishers of Men, perhaps. The church grew by leaps and bounds when your pastor, Rev. Charles Richards, knocked on the doors of new residents of our neighborhood.

Bishop Willimon tells that six months into their plan and their program of visitation and invitation, they had a meeting to see how things were going. They were there to evaluate the ministry. The group gathered on a weekday evening and talked about things.

By all accounts, things were going quite well. The church was growing. There were many first time visitors each and every week in their Sunday School and worship services. Attendance had grown and so had the membership of the church. Six months into it, the plan was working and they were working the plan. What more could they ask for? That question was asked by their pastor. It was phrased this way, “Could we ask for anything more?”

One of the members of the visitation team timidly raised her hand and then hesitantly said, “Something about all this bothers me.” She now had everyone’s attention, including the pastor. She continued, “Here we go, knocking on our neighbors’ doors, urging them to come to our church and to accept Jesus, but what are we inviting them into?” She said, “We tell them that we have a great youth program and we mention their retreats and mission trips. We tell them that our children’s ministry is top notch, the best in the city and that there are summer activities for their children. We tell them that we have a golf tournament in the fall and a picnic shortly thereafter. We tell them that our pastors are good preachers, that our counseling center has certified professionals. We tell them that our music program is top notch and that we have cantatas at Christmas and Easter, brass ensembles, too.” She said, “In other words, we tell them that we have all these things that will meet their needs, entertain them, and fix the things that are wrong with their lives.”

Everyone looked over at her. There was complete silence until one man asked, “What’s wrong with that? After all, isn’t the church supposed to be here to meet people’s needs?” Everyone shook their heads in agreement. Everyone, that is, except this woman who again timidly spoke up and said, “It seems like I remember that somewhere in the Bible its says, ‘Take up your cross and follow me.’

The bishop tells that everyone was quiet because they remembered that discipleship, Christian discipleship is something more than all that.

In some churches, there is a consumer mentality and attitude. No one would say the words, but they want to say, “Offer me something great here or I’m gone!” That reminds me of a story I just heard about a young woman who married an older and wealthy man. One day he asked her, “If I lost all my money somehow, would you still love me? I mean if I lost our cabin in the mountains, our home in France and our yacht, would you still love me?” She answered, “Of course I would still love you.” Then in the next breath she said, “And I would miss you, too.”

How in the world do we call people to Jesus, appealing to their selfishness and their needs and still end up with the kind of discipleship that is spoken of in our gospel lesson for this morning?

Jesus is on his way this morning and you know where he is headed. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and ultimately to his death. It is a journey that takes up ten chapters in Luke’s gospel. It is the journey we will spend most of the summer and part of the fall taking with Jesus. Along the way Jesus is saying, “If you want to be one of my disciples, if you really want to follow me then you need to know that it will cost you everything.”

So Luke begins with the words, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Jesus was bound and determined to go there, even though he knew what awaited him there, and evidently you could see it in his eyes and on his face.

The first stop of the journey was to a village in Samaria. Jews and Samaritans were not the best of friends. Jesus will address that later in this gospel. Here the Samaritan village rejects Jesus not because of his heritage, but because of his destination.

Then, while the disciples and Jesus were walking along, three different people came up to him and wanted to join the journey. To the first Jesus said, “You need to know that there aren’t comforts here. There is no house to rest in. There is no motel to stay in. There is no kitchen crew waiting for us to come home. We are worse that the birds of the air, they have nests. We are worse off that foxes; they have holes to return to. We have no where to lay our heads.”

A second person came up to him and said, “I will follow you wherever you go, only first let me give my father a decent burial. After all, honor your father and mother, isn’t that what the good book says?” Jesus replies, “Let the dead bury the dead!” This sounds a little harsh. In Jesus’ day it was the son’s responsibility to bury his father. But those who study the Bible quickly point out that there’s nothing here to indicate that the father was sick or near death. It seems that the son wanted to follow Jesus, but just not yet.

Then came along a third person on that road. He said, “I will follow you, just let me get things in order at home. Let me say farewell to those at the house. After all, we do believe in family values, don’t we?” This again seems pretty harsh of this Jesus. Hasn’t he been to a church growth seminar? Doesn’t Jesus know that you can’t say these kinds of things and grow the church?

Listen to what Jesus says, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” The challenge is to move forward, you see, to journey on with Jesus. I’m no farmer, I don’t work the land and so it’s hard for me to appreciate what happens if you’re trying to plough a straight line and then look back to see how you did. Even if you do see a straight line behind you, the act of looking back will mean that the next part of the line will become crooked. Pull that forward to today and don’t miss the lesson that if we keep looking back there may be things in our past that may be obstacles to following Jesus.

I heard of a church who had a sign in front of their building. It had the name of the church, the worship times, the pastors name, that sort of thing. It also had a saying at the bottom of it that was supposed to grab your attention and get you inside the door. It read, “If you’re tired of sinning, come inside.” To the preacher’s amazement one morning, he arrived at the church and found out that someone had added to the slogan. They used spray paint so now the line read, “If you’re tired of sinning, come inside. If not, call 445-1548.” Sometimes things in our past keep us from following Jesus. Sometimes we are not ready to follow him completely. To all of this Jesus says, “Follow me. Don’t look back!”

And so here we are on this pleasant summer Sunday and we’ve come to Jesus. We have come to follow him and he gives us these demanding words. The question is, “Are we really ready to follow this Jesus?” There is a cost involved. You have to stand up for what is right. You must speak the truth and have integrity. You must not follow the crowd.

To Luke, the gospel writer’s credit, he does not have Jesus sentimentalizing the role of a disciple. Luke says that following Jesus is costly. He says that following Jesus is not easy. He says that sometimes the choices we make are tough. It is important to love and support our families, to bury those we love, to take care of the ones living in our house. The choices are tough. Sometimes what we choose is small, like the choice of volunteering in a ministry one evening instead of being home with our spouses and kids. At other times, the cost is much higher than that.

And yet here we are this morning. We are the ones who have said to Jesus, “Yes, I will follow you.” And sometimes we have been faithful in that and sometimes we have not. Yet the good news is that at least we are following him. At least we are being instructed by him. At least we are looking at our lives and fixing the places where we have strayed and trying hard to study His word and to pray and to be more committed.

I know you. You will leave this worship service and go out there in the world with all sorts of tough choices and difficult demands. Following Jesus may not be easy for you this week, this month, this year. But let me leave you with a couple of questions to ponder this week. First, how far out in front of you is Jesus” Most of us have a little catching up to do. And second, “Are you ready to follow Jesus wherever he goes?” I hope you are. Let us pray.

(Special thanks to Bishop Will Willimon for the opening story of this sermon and for some of the thoughts and words in it).