Luke 9:51-62
The Jesus we meet this morning has a difficult teaching for us, one that triggers disbelief, defensiveness, and disagreement in most hearers. He’s rebuking his friends for trying to stick up for him, he’s answering confessions of faith by comparing himself to wild animals, and he’s challenging those who give seemingly valid reasons for delaying their discipleship. Lord, let me first go and bury my father. Lord, let me say goodbye to my household. We encounter this morning one of our Lord’s more troubling sayings, one that continues to rub us the wrong way two thousand years later. Let the dead bury their own dead. Essentially, leave the work of death and what comes after to others; you will not need it where we are going. Jesus, the Son whose Father set the foundations of the earth and dictated the commandment to honor thy parents, is encouraging a son to leave his duties to his family behind in order to become a disciple. In a society that placed family obligations above all else, to a far greater extent than our own majority culture today, this is tantamount to blasphemy. If we take the relevant commandment into account, one could argue that Jesus is absolutely being blasphemous. Jesus is definitely being provocative here, and the lesson is less than obvious.
In C.S. Lewis’s work of fiction, The Great Divorce, a woman takes an opportunity to ride up to Heaven, where she encounters the soul of a loved one from her former life on Earth. She demands to see her son, her only child whom she obsessively controlled for his entire life, always demanding more of him and competing jealously with his wife for his time, attention, and energy. Her angelic loved one assures her that she can see her son, but not yet. First she has to let him go, release her need for control over him and offer up her love for him to God. The controlling mother is indignant, insistent that her love for her son is greater than any force, even the love of God. In the same breath, she idolizes her maternal love and demands that she be allowed to take her son back. The angelic loved one shakes their head, watching this maternal soul miss the point once again. What she asks, or demands rather, is to take her son away from heaven and back down to hell, where she can once again consume him with her expectations and possessiveness. She would rather see the child she claims to love in hell than give up her perceived control over him. She would rather steal the joy of heaven from her son than admit her faults and accept the mercies of God. As Jesus might put it, she is fixated on burying her own dead.
The corruption of human love into something like idolatry was a special fascination for Lewis, and he wrote a number of books and essays on the subject. It’s understandable, as this is a topic Jesus himself was very concerned about. Just as he encouraged those with wealth to divest from their worldly possessions, and expected his disciples to travel with only the clothes on their backs and rely only on the hospitality of others, Jesus pointed out more than once the dangers of identifying too closely with one’s family of origin. His own mother and brothers and sisters came to him early in his ministry, attempting to caution him away from preaching a message that threatened the powers and principalities of the world. Jesus responded that those who do the will of the Father are his family, regardless of birth or rank or nationality. It matters greatly to Jesus that his followers understand themselves not as children of their parents, but as children of God first and foremost. Thus, his sharp words to the various seekers who come to him on the road to Jerusalem.
“I will follow you wherever you go” the first seeker claims. Jesus responds by making it clear that creature comforts do not come with the gig- the Son of God himself is functionally homeless and itinerant and the same is expected of those who will proclaim his Good News.
To the second, Jesus extends an invitation. “Follow me.” “Sure” the seeker responds, “but first let me get my father’s affairs in order.” Leave it to others, Jesus tells him. I have called you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.
“I will follow you Lord” the third seeker proclaims, “but first let me say my goodbyes.” Look at your priorities, Jesus encourages. No one who puts their hand to the plow to begin sowing the seeds of salvation, but keeps one foot in their former life, is up to the task of proclaiming the Good News.
We are not given the satisfaction of a roll call, we do not know which –if any– of these seekers followed Jesus after all. We don’t know how they responded to Jesus’s challenging words, or if further teaching was involved. What we do know is that the next thing that happens is the Great Commission, when Jesus will sent seventy two disciples in pairs to preach the Good News and prepare the way for his ministry. These three mini lessons about what it takes to take on the Kingdom work precede the familiar words- “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” Perhaps these three seekers were not quite ready to be laborers for this particular harvest. Or perhaps, like the possessive mother in Lewis’s parable, they needed someone else to help them see the way they had let their priorities get out of order. Perhaps they just needed a firm word, a nudge from Jesus to realign themselves in a new way, a way that would free them to live a life of unconditional love.
The family of God is much more complicated, and more diverse, and infinitely bigger than any one family tree, after all. If one wants to be a follower of Jesus, he is a bit of a package deal. As the late great preacher Fred Craddock said it in his commentary on the Gospel of Luke- “The radicality of Jesus’ words lies in his claim to priority over the best, not the worst, of human relationships. Jesus never said to choose him over the devil but to choose him over the family. And the remarkable thing is that those who have done so have been freed from possession and worship of family and have found the distance necessary to love them.”1 To let go of our most dearly held idols, including our narrow view of what it means to be a family or even a church, is to leave our hands open to reach out in real love, the kind not bound by biology or background, the kind of love that saves us. By choosing to put Jesus first, we inevitably become better children, better parents, better partners and friends and neighbors. By choosing to follow Jesus and leave all else behind, we create infinite opportunities for the ones we love to choose to do the same. By choosing the family of God, we ultimately are given back to one another in Christ, in a way more real than life itself. Jesus has invited us to follow him. What family do you choose?
- Craddock, F. B. (1990). Luke (p 144). John Knox Press.
Mother A Writes 