Third Sunday after Pentecost (Fr. Guiliano)

Ploughing In Spring By Aksel Waldemar Johannessen

Jesus said, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Today’s Gospel reading is urgent. Jesus is heading for Jerusalem. His intention is fixed, and his disciples are clearly carried away by the mood. When the Samaritans would not receive Jesus, James and John asked him, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” The brothers imagine themselves as the prophets of old: as Elijah and Elisha, who called down fire and violence to consume those who threatened them. Jesus rebukes his disciples, but the driving force of his motivations continues to ratchet up the tension as he encounters three potential followers. 

You heard their stories. One of them seems more than willing to do anything necessary to follow Jesus. Christ turns him away. The second makes a reasonable request: to be allowed to bury his father before becoming a disciple; Jesus won’t have it; and, then, the third just wants to say good-bye: “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 

Christ’s response feels unduly harsh: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

I wonder what the apostles made of these moments. It’s true that James and John, Peter and Andrew, and all the rest seem to have had dramatic moments of conversion, where the call was issued, and they answered.

They even point to these moments themselves, and take pride in them. Peter says at one point in Matthew chapter 19: “Lord, we have left everything and followed you. What then is our reward?” 

Still, I can’t help feeling the apostles might have witnessed these episodes of rejection and thought, “Doesn’t Jesus want disciples? Isn’t he being a little rough?” 

I mean, Peter claimed to have left everything … but he did have a wife and mother-in-law. Did Jesus forbid him from going back to his house to say good-bye before setting out on the road as a disciple? No. In Mark 2:29-34 Jesus went with Peter to his home, healed Peter’s sick mother-in-law, and stayed overnight. In that story, the Son of Man had a place to lay his head – in the house of his disciple.

We might read all these passages superficially and view them as examples of double standards, unfair treatment: one for rule for Peter, another rule for everyone else. But there is something deeper going on here, isn’t there? 

There is something about this particular moment in Luke 9 that distinguishes it from others. The days had drawn “near for Jesus to be taken up,” and “he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” The time was short. He had in mind his final days. It was no longer the time for quiet work. It was not a time for patient teaching, for gathering disciples here and there. It was not a time for hospitality, for staying in the homes of his friends or followers. 

Everything was subordinated to his goal: to reach Jerusalem, to bring his life to its destined end, to accomplish his purposes, the Father’s will. 

The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

The Lord gave up all the ordinary trappings of human life; he was bringing in the kingdom of God; and his followers had to mold their lives around this urgency, this historic climax, the coming drama of his Passion.

There are moments in every human life, where the old ways of doing things are no longer enough. A baby is coming, a war is on, a life is in jeopardy. We drop everything to attend to what is in front of us, to resolve the crisis: to deliver, to end, to save. There are choices to be made, things to be done.

We’re not thinking about ordinary things in such moments: every thought is focused, every muscle and sinew strained; every ounce of our will is directed to the one thing that is necessary in such times.

Now just imagine, if you could, how it felt for Jesus in those final days of reckoning. And ask yourself: am I in such a moment? Do I need some of this urgency in my spiritual life? 

It is a funny passage. The Gospel reading portrays one moment in Christ’s ministry. The demands Jesus makes here do not apply evenly or easily across other stories of calling in the Gospels. They do not match other encounters. Sometimes Christ is so gracious and welcoming to those who approach him. And yet (and yet!) he is also so demanding. 

Even in the same story, he can be gracious and demanding or challenging. Think of the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4.  She was just going out to get her daily measure of water, when she came upon this strange man who asked for things and knew things he should not have known. And he brought about her spiritual healing by his questions and requests. She came to know him; she recognized him as the Messiah. 

Jesus gets to the heart of things.

Jesus calls us o’er the tumult 
of our life’s wild, restless sea, 
day by day his clear voice soundeth, 
saying, “Christian, follow me.”

We must be open to this call, open to the questions and commands of Jesus. He may question our whole way of life. He has that right. He is God. He knows us. He has always known us.

His word gets right at our hearts. We need that.

Think of the challenges in our readings. The story of Elisha is the story of a man giving up his wealth and status. There’s a challenge. And then, the people Jesus turned away in the Gospel were perhaps too focused on their comforts, too focused on their family, too focused on their homes to see how God was calling them to something greater. Wealth, family, comfort, home: these challenges might be enough for most of us, but then, there was our lesson from Galatians. 

“What the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh.” 

I am sure that we all heard something in Paul’s list of vices that we need to renounce: whether it be envy, anger, impurity, drunkenness, or something else. 

Similarly, who can listen to his account of the fruit of the Spirit and not feel that life might be bettered by greater “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”? Let the word you need sink in.

Jesus calls us! by thy mercies, 
Saviour, may we hear thy call. 
Give our hearts to thine obedience,
Serve and love thee best of all.