Grace, mercy, and peace to you from the Holy Trinity. Amen.
I think that sometimes the people who wrote down the Gospels did not have Lutheran Preachers in mind when they did it. Because Lutherans like to preach law and gospel, that is, the law is stuff that convict us makes us understand our broken nature and the gospel is stuff that points us to the work of the crucified and risen Christ in our lives. And this story that we just read doesn't seem to have much gospel in it, or even law for that matter...it seems to just be a story of cranky pants Jesus who doesn't like anything that anyone says. People who want to follow him are shut down, people who don't want to follow him are shut down, people who have some reservations about the whole thing are shut down.
Which isn't that great to hear in a group of people who are gathered around and presumably want to try their best to follow Jesus.
Even the disciples, who are always around Jesus, and in Luke's gospel sort of understand who Jesus is, and do a pretty good job of following him get told off by Jesus. Though, that honestly was probably for the best, since the disciples figured the best option for getting back at the town that wouldn't host Jesus was to throw cosmic fireballs at the city and make it burn to the ground...which would have been the first in a long line of self righteous Christians making a mess of things.
At House, sometimes we talk about gospel stories having the 'Worst Good News Ever' when the good news means loving your enemies or praying for those who persecute you. and I'm tempted to say that about this story, but at first glance there appears to be no law, or gospel. So, instead of 'Worst Good News Ever', maybe this story about judgey Jesus should be labelled 'no good news ever'
Unless you want to consider it good news that Jesus was exactly like us...sort of cynical, prone to being pissed off at people for no reason, irritated that he couldn't find a last minute hotel room but really being mad because he just should have booked it on Priceline the week before...if that kind of Jesus is good news for you...the one that is exactly like us, then great.
But I always try to look for a little more in Jesus than just the ways in which he was human and acted like every other human in history. Because while Jesus was fully human, and experienced human emotions and reactions to situations he was put in, he was also God. Which is an important distinction between Jesus and myself...because try as I might, I just won't ever get to be divine.
And so as I was considering my place in the universe as someone who is Not God, I sort of stumbled across what I think this story is getting at, instead of it just being some sort of weirdly worded rant from Christ.
A couple weeks ago we had our very first theology pub of the summer at the Irish Snug where we talked about different ways to read the Bible...and how a Lutheran understanding of scripture is pretty radical compared to what most people here were taught to believe. And in that discussion, several people mentioned how in their past, the Bible had been used as something that would be like a prescription for how to get closer to God. In reading scripture and doing exactly what it says to do (or not do, as the case may be) these people were told that they would feel a deep personal connection to Jesus in their hearts. Worship was supposed to do the same thing, they said. Going to church meant you'd get on fire for The Lord and know that he was dwelling in your heart.
Except, as many people noted, that didn't always happen...and they would leave bible study or worship feeling like Jesus didn't love them because they couldn't feel him in their heart .
Church folks had given them a prescription for how to follow Jesus….a single right way to be a disciple, and when it didn't work, it hurt them.
It's pretty tempting to try to make our way God in any number of ways, and to try to be like Jesus in all we do so that we are more holy, or more righteous, or perhaps because we want to be better than those people around us. Maybe it looks like mining scripture verse by verse to figure out how to live. maybe it looks like a weekly morning hike to see God in the sunrise. maybe it looks like overcommitting at church and trying to do everything for everyone. And in an age where Choose your own adventure books were standard childhood reading, we want to be able to just pick and choose the things that will get us closer to God, and pick the timeline on which to do them.
The guys in the story that Jesus approaches and asks to follow him also want to pick the timeline on which they'll follow God. Of course they want to follow Jesus, but on their own terms. One wants to bury his father and then come follow Christ, the other wants to get his affairs in order before making such a large commitment. Both of which are noble causes, and pretty understandable.
I totally get this mindset of wanting to follow Jesus on my own terms. I wouldn't say that my first career choice was to be a pastor (it was actually to be a ranger for the National Park Service). And even once I settled down and realized that park rangers don't get a lot of air conditioning, and that people who paint theater sets, like I had studied to do in college, don't really have the best job security, I still wasn't running towards seminary with my arms out wide, ready to embrace the life of following Jesus for a living...and doing it publicly no less.
Instead I felt like a better use of my time would be to go to San Francisco and work in the visuals department of Gap's corporate headquarters, spending my days dressing bAby mannequins and flying across the country telling people who worked in stores how to dress inanimate toddlers more fashionably.
And I thought my cause was noble...seminary is expensive and I wanted to not have tons of debt when I was finished....at the time the ELCA didn't ordain gay people in relationships....I thought some life experience would make me a better pastor....
And yet here I am, right after graduation, I showed up in Chicago to study to be a pastor.
What I learned from my plans to follow Christ on my own terms is that, in spite of my plans, God stepped in and made something different happen.
Our plans for following Christ, our plans for being more spiritual, for being more holy, for being better Christians...be they trying to open our hearts so Jesus can come in during worship or be they marrying a man instead of a woman because that is what the church told you to do...be they trying to read the Bible in a year or be they secretly listening to KLove when your friends aren't around....our plans to follow Christ by volunteering at food pantries or being public defenders, helping the least among us because that is what Christ would do...our plans often seem noble to us.
Our plans seem noble even when our plan is to abandon the church completely and never look back.
Our plans are often worthy, or noble, or have solid reasons behind them, but in spite of all of our plans, God comes in to complete them because only God can do the work of. Only God can work Gods plans in our lives and God does so in spite of our own plans...plans to follow, or plans to leave.
In our plans to reach God, we end up being interrupted by Christ who came down from heaven so that God could reach us. When we try to choose our own adventure toward God we start to try to do the work that only God can do...which is why when we try to reach God, God works in spite of that and reaches toward us. God reaches toward us in a meal of bread and wine. God reaches toward us in the words of a stranger at church who makes us feel welcome instead of alienated. God reaches out toward us and pulls us closer to herself in a conversation that says its okay to come out of the closet or in a conversation that says its okay that you weren't able to be everything for everyone this week. God reaches out to us in amusement parks and coffee shops, in sunsets and mountains and the beautifully gritty sidewalks of Colfax, in cathedrals and office buildings, constantly interrupting our meager attempts to reach out and be like God. And in interrupting us and our plans, God is able to be God for us and with us, loving us unconditionally. Amen.
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