June 30, 2019 “Fire, Foxes, and Following Jesus” – Luke 9:51-62

Luke 9:51-62
“Fire, Foxes, and Following Jesus”
June 30, 2019 – Third Sunday after Pentecost

I love fireworks. Ask my wife. I especially love the ones I get to light myself, then watch sparks fly and hear the pops. Like many other guys—again, ask my wife—I also like movies with a nice portion of mayhem and explosions. There’s something about all that which stirs the blood and makes one glad to be alive. Unfortunately, or perhaps more truly, fortunately, there are times and places when fireworks are inappropriate and downright dangerous. Our neighborhood is one of those places, up on the hill, surrounded by trees.

In the first half of our text today from Luke we learn of another time and place where fireworks do not belong. They do not belong in our relationships with others, including our relationships with those who stand in opposition to our Lord. Jealous for Jesus, His disciples hotly wanted to rain down fireworks on a Samaritan town which gave Him a cold reception. But Jesus didn’t rebuke the town. He rebuked His own disciples for their vengeful spirit.

The scene is set by the first verse in our text, 51, “When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” That signals a major turning point in the life and ministry of Jesus. Up until the Mount of Transfiguration, earlier in this same chapter, Jesus had ministered like other traveling rabbis with their disciples. He went from place to place and offered teaching, healing and other miracles as He went along. But there on the mountain with Moses and Elijah, He talked about His “departure,” which was going to happen in Jerusalem.

That departure, of course, was for Him to be “taken up” on the Cross and then to rise and be “taken up” into heaven. For the first time in all His travels, Jesus was physically, literally headed for what He came to do. The problem was where that journey started from. Evidently, it took Him through Samaritan territory and, in particular, past a Samaritan village where they might have rested and Jesus perhaps have taught for a while.

Samaritans were a sort of half-Jewish people, intermarried with other ancient peoples and separated from Jews over centuries by geography, conflict, and ultimately religion. They came from the northern part of Israel, while Jews of Jesus’ time came from Judah in the south. They saw, and some still see, themselves as descended from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. Modern genetics seems to support that. Current Samaritans are genetically more similar to Jews than to Palestinian Arabs. Religiously, whereas Jews went up the mountain of Jerusalem to worship God in His temple there, Samaritans looked to Mt. Gerizim in Samaria as their holy place.

In general, Jews had nothing to do with Samaritans and vice versa. It was much like some of the ancient conflicts in the Middle East today. Jews did not ordinarily travel through Samaria like Jesus did. They took the long way around, crossed to the east side of the Jordan river, then went south or north, and finally crossed back to the west once they were past Samaria. But Jesus did not share those ancient prejudices. He went to Samaria.

When the Jewish disciples of Jesus the Jewish rabbi showed up in that Samaritan village, clearly headed for Jerusalem, it’s not surprising they got less than a warm welcome among the Samaritans. The disciples desire to call down heavenly fire on those unfriendly heads is not surprising either. They were just being like so many others in their own country, defensive and hostile in an ancient feud.

That apostolic desire for fire was in perfect keeping with the famous Old Testament prophet in our reading from I Kings today. Not long before God commissioned Elijah to call Elisha to be his assistant and protégé, Elijah confronted the northern Israelites of his time, possibly ancestors to the Samaritans, on another mountain. He called down fire from heaven which burned up an animal sacrifice. Then he had all the prophets of Baal the false god put to death. As some scribes tried to add explicitly to Luke’s text, the disciples in verse 54 just wanted to do like Elijah had done there in the same region long ago, call down some fire from heaven and fry those unfriendly, unholy Samaritans.

Verse 55 tells us very briefly, “But he turned and rebuked them.” Jesus rebuked His disciples, not the Samaritans in that town. That’s the first and maybe most important lesson for us here this morning, two days after our denomination has, in an historic moment, separated itself from one of its oldest congregations and two Covenant pastors. Please let me talk about that in relation to this text.

Some in our denomination, a wounded minority, would feel that the action of our annual meeting to dismiss that church and those pastors was something like the disciples wanting to bring down fire on those Samaritans. We found ourselves in opposition to what they did, so we burned them from our midst leaving scorched earth behind. I think that way of looking at it is a mistake.

Jesus rebuked the disciples for their desire to burn up those who opposed them, but what does verse 56 say? “Then they went on to another village.” Jesus rebuked their fiery, vengeful spirits, but He still went on to separate Himself and His followers from that particular village. He, in fact, did exactly what He told the disciples to do at the beginning of the chapter, verse 5, when they came to Jewish villages which did not welcome them, leave and “shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” No fire, no hateful words, no ugly confrontations, just a sad, final, complete separation.

Cyril of Alexandria in fact said that Jesus deliberately took His disciples through Samaria to teach them that lesson. When people oppose the followers of Jesus, the proper response is not to fight back, but to walk away, to separate. They were soon going to see Jesus unjustly arrested and condemned to death. Without that lesson in Samaria, they might have fought back, like Peter still wanted to do when he cut off a servant’s ear during the arrest.

Cyril—who was a father and doctor of the Church in the 5^th century and had no little experience himself dealing with opposition by people who opposed the true Gospel—went on to say that the lesson of that Samaritan village also applied to the whole apostolic mission after Jesus died and rose and ascended. Peter, John, Stephen, Paul, they all met plenty of opposition along the way as they shared the Good News about Jesus. But the answer to that opposition was not fire. It was simply sad separation.

It’s fairly easy to see that applies to church discipline as well. When Jesus talks about dealing with an erring church member in Matthew 18, the answer is first to attempt loving reconciliation. But if there’s no repentance, His followers are to separate the church from that person, and that person from the church. The same thing is to be going on in I Corinthians 5 in dealing with a person who was committing sexual immorality, which is particularly relevant to our Covenant situation.

So the lesson for the disciples in the face of opposition was not to do nothing. They still needed to leave, to put distance between themselves and that village. But they weren’t to do that in anger and especially not in hateful retribution. I think it applies to church discipline. Sometimes it’s necessary, but we don’t do it with fire. We do it with tears, with deep sadness for the people involved and for the break and division in our Lord’s church. That’s how I see what happened among Covenant people in Omaha on Friday. As I wrote to most of you in e-mail, it was a sad day for us all, regardless of the fact that we may be thankful that biblical standards were upheld.

I say all this fairly sure that some of you here now do not agree with at least part of what I’ve just said and very possibly do not agree with the denominational action I’m talking about. There may be a gay person, an LBGTQ person or persons whom you love and care about very deeply. So any action which seems to deny full acceptance of who they are and what they do feels unloving, cruel or even like burning fire on their heads. I don’t think that is so, but I get how you can feel like that, feel hurt and in pain.

So please hear me that I and Covenant people in general do not hate gay people. We are not those Christians who preach the horrible false idea that God hates LBGTQ people. That’s just wrong. God loves all people, and wants you and I to love like He loves. That’s the foundation of the Gospel. “For God so loved the world,” loved everyone, “that he sent his only Son.”

We are also all sinners, not just those who commit one particular sin. There are lots of sexual sins, heterosexual as well as homosexual. That list of works of the flesh in Galatians today began with fornication and impurity, any sex outside of marriage and stuff like pornography. As Scripture makes so clear, we all stand guilty before God.

There is plenty of guilt to go around, but God still loves everyone. We can’t possibly single out one sin and act as if it’s worse than others. That is, unless someone starts saying it’s not really sin after all, wants to believe and act in the church as if a sin is not really sin. That applies to heterosexual adultery, lying, greed, and plain meanness as much as it does to any same-sex behavior. There may need to be a separation. Church discipline may need to happen, like it did in Corinth and did in Omaha on Friday. But it all needs to happen, as Jesus taught His disciples in Samaria, with gentle weeping, wounded love and tears.

The rest of the text today seems to go in a different direction, take up a whole new topic. Yet Jesus is still in Samaria. He’s left behind some Samaritans who refused to welcome Him, but now He meets some Samaritans who want to follow Him. The first is a brave soul in verse 57 who declares to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Once again, Jesus response sounds hard, but it’s really a word of love. He wants that man to understand what he’s signing up for. “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

Jesus is not leading His disciples to some home base where they can settle down and set up a nice ministry or school. He is off to Jerusalem to die. There is going to be nowhere really to rest or hide until that’s all done. If that man really wants to follow him, then he is going to have to let go of his most basic needs for safety and security, for comfort and rest, and set out on a costly, difficult road.

The point of the next two encounters is also Jesus showing people what they might have to give up in order to follow Him. Our friend Cyril had something to say too about those foxes and birds Jesus mentioned. He saw them as allegories for demons of sin which figuratively hole up in our hearts and make nests in our hair. Following Jesus may not mean just giving up a comfy bed. It means we need to leave behind and have done with all our old sinful ways, all the behaviors and habits and even relationships in our lives that do not honor God.

With a second man in verse 59, Jesus actually invites him, “Follow me.” But this time the man has reservations, has family business to take care of first., “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus’ answer to him would seem incredible if we imagined anyone saying it to a grieving child who lost a parent today, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

In this encounter and the next one in verse 61 about a man who is willing to follow but first wants to go home and say goodbye is a lesson for us in all our Christian talk about family. God loves families. He created the first one in Adam and Eve. Families are His idea. Jesus Himself had a family and we see how He loved His mother even as He was dying. But as strange as it may sound, Jesus consistently and clearly taught that human family is not our first priority. The aim of human life is first and foremost to know and love God and to be part of the larger Family of His people.

Jesus was not teaching His followers that it’s wrong to mourn for family members who have died or wrong to want to show love and respect to our families at home. No, Jesus was simply saying in extreme and pointed terms that as beautiful and important as those relationships are, our first and most important relationship is with Him. And if those relationships get in the way of following Him, then we will need to go with Him first and then see if we can still be at peace with those we love at home.

There’s a quote from Barbara Brown Taylor going around on Facebook. She said, “when my religion gets in the way of loving my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor.” As much as I respect Barbara Brown Taylor as a thoughtful sister in Christ, our reading today shows there is something off about that statement. When not our religion but Jesus Himself strains our relationships with others, be they neighbors or family, we must choose Jesus.

I know what I’ve just said is a hard message, that this whole sermon has been a hard message. It was hard for me to write and hard for me to offer to you now. My heart aches with the fear that I’m going to hurt or anger some of you. Yet this is what Jesus said, this is what He taught. I don’t see any way around it.

Part of what this means for me in our denomination after Friday is that some relationships I hold dear may change. Some people I have known for thirty years as friends were on the other side of the decisions which were made. I hope and pray that our friendships will survive, but they may not. Some people are already leaving the denomination, like the rich young man who wanted to follow Jesus but could not give up his possessions. They can’t give up their position on sexuality. I in turn may have to give up some of those friendships. I’m seeing a really rocky path ahead for me and for many.

Yet to tie what Jesus says here about leaving stuff behind and not looking back to what we heard earlier as He rebuked the fiery spirit of His disciples, one of the things we definitely need to leave behind and give up is our all-too-human need to take revenge on those who oppose us. That’s the old way, the standard human way of doing relationships. Get hurt and then hurt back. You can see it so obviously in our current politics. But that’s not Jesus’ way. We need to leave that kind of vengeance behind. Let’s enjoy some visual fireworks on Thursday, but leave the fire in our relationships behind.

I think our denomination is modeling the new way of Jesus in its relationship with the church which was dismissed. First Covenant is keeping its building. The denomination doesn’t have to do that. Most Covenant church constitutions, including ours, say that in the event of church conflict, in the event of a departure from the Covenant, the building belongs to the denomination, not to local church members. So the Covenant has a legal claim to that beautiful old building in Minneapolis. But they are letting it go, leaving it behind, in order to be as much as they can in the Spirit of Jesus. Our denominational leaders and a large majority of our denomination choose to simply, gently walk away and leave friends and brothers and sisters behind in order to be faithful to Jesus.

I’m sorry. I said it was hard. It’s so hard that I have to admit now that I don’t completely understand what happened in Omaha, just as I don’t completely understand this text. It’s just too hard. I can’t tell you what it means for the future of our denomination or even for the future of our own church. I am hopeful but I am very sad. All I know is that Jesus said this in verse 62, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” I am praying now that God will help us all to keep steady on, to not look back, but keep aiming for the kingdom of God. And by the grace of Jesus Christ, may God make you and I fit for that kingdom. Amen.