FINDINGS II

Proper 8 - C - June 27, 2010
2d Kings 2: 1-2, 6-14 and Luke 9: 51-62





Harry T. CookBy Harry T. Cook
6/21/10


RUBRIC

The theme is following; the verb, "to follow." The idea is that an invitation of great consequence may come only once, at least with that first sunburst of new opportunity. Then it is not enough to say, "Not now. Later. I have other things to do." Or as Luke quotes Jesus saying to the interested but still reluctant, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the realm of God," i.e. for the rule of others above self, of unconditional love of enemy as well as neighbor, of permanent willingness to walk a second mile, to take off the shirt as well as the coat and give it away, of all that countercultural behavior that may mark one as an unredeemable eccentric otherwise known as a disciple of Jesus.
 
The ones who wanted to bury their dead got it. They knew they might not come back. Thus it was as well for those who wanted to bid farewell to family. That hesitation was the natural human desire to cling to important relationships and what must be done to maintain them in loving and accountable ways.
 
That is the crossroads at which would-be disciples ever stand: between the past and present that are known and comfortable, and the future that is unsure and therefore threatening. One either goes, or does not go. Robert Frost said he took the road less traveled by, and it made all the difference. Luke says Jesus "set his face to go to Jerusalem," and any way one looks at the story that unfolds from there, a great difference was made.



WORKSHOP

Chapter 9, verse 51 is the point of departure for Luke's Jesus as he begins what over the next almost 10 chapters (to 18:36) will be his second journey to Jerusalem, the first accounted for in Luke 2:22-51. Mark and Matthew more or less follow suit on the single Jerusalem trip of the adult Jesus. The Gospel of John deals with elapsed time in different framework in which Jesus makes not one but three trips to Jerusalem.
 
Luke's itinerary for Jesus will sometimes seem to illustrate Zeno's paradox because here and there it seems to stall and almost terminate. But here at 9:51, Luke makes certain that readers know how fateful the journey will turn out to be and how clearly Jesus seemed to know it. Of Jesus, Luke says in v. 51 that he (literally) "set his face stiffly" toward Jerusalem. Think here of a set jaw, a look of utter determination mixed with anxiety over what may await him there. The author of Luke was certainly not a witness to whatever Jesus' last days may have held, but it is captured here with what surely must have been the emotional content of them.
 
Ch. 9, vv. 51-56 are unique with no clear parallels in Mark or Matthew. For Luke, the way from Galilee would go through Samaria to which Jesus sent messengers (aggeloi) perhaps to set up camp for the night or to arrange lodging.
 
The running feud between North and South, with which Luke subsequently deals in 10: 30-37 (The Good Samaritan), intervenes to keep Jesus on the move (see 9:53). James and John evidently believed they had power similar to that which Elijah is depicted as using to embarrass the prophets of Baal (see 1st Kings 18). The two asked Jesus if they might torch the Samaritans' houses and them as well. Perhaps Luke depicts Jesus as rejecting such a course of action in order to distinguish Jesus from John the Baptist and Elijah, both of whom were fiery reformers.
 
Matthew and Luke share the next scene in which a person approaches Jesus in the course of the journey to volunteer discipleship (v. 57). For Matthew, it is a scribe; for Luke simply "someone." "I will follow you wherever you go," the person says.

In echoes of Luke 9: 21-26, Luke's Jesus says to the person that the thing to which he wishes to sign on comes with the assurance of serious deprivation, viz. no permanent bed of one's own. To yet another would-be disciple (in Matthew that other person is already a disciple), Jesus lays down the challenge: "Follow me." And as if to prove that discipleship will always cost more than most can bear, Luke has the prospective disciple ask to defer his commitment until a dead father can be buried.
 
In both Luke and Matthew, Jesus is made to say, "Let the dead bury their own dead." Much has been written about this proverb-like saying. It may have meant in Luke's time something like, "Those who have not answered the call are as good as dead. May as well bury them."
 
To the one who wants to follow but only after he goes home to say farewell, Jesus is made to say: "No one who first puts his hand to the plow and then looks back is fit material for the rule of God." In other words, the one doing the plowing must keep his eye fixed on the ground before him if he will plow a straight and usable furrow. Pushing a plow forward whilst looking backward would be a sign of ineptness and stupidity.
 
With that gauntlet laid down, Jesus, with a face set in determined lines, is off to Jerusalem and to whatever it has to offer. He has set his hand to the plow, and he will not look back, much less go back.



HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
 
The trouble with most of contemporary Christianity is that its path takes one down the road most frequently traveled. It is rutty and predictable from long and repeated use. It leads to nowhere in particular at low to no cost. One can take it or leave it, and there is not much difference either way. For that reason alone, there is not much hope that a study session or homily on this text will be more than an academic exercise, and probably a fairly low-wattage one at that.
 
That is because the prophetic lineaments of the Jewish-Christian stream of thought are frequently treated as a matter of history rather than a call to action in the present.
 
Beneath the pious veneer of the gospels lies the story of a first-century subversive movement not unlike what Mohandas Gandhi's would turn out to be in the first half of the 20th century: one of passive resistance that made the authorities crazy. The movement that grew up around the countercultural ethical wisdom attributed to a "Jesus of Nazareth" was not a military one and not, in ordinary terms, a political one. It was made up of people who were trying to live with each other and the world according to the terms of Hillel's and Jesus' Golden Rule of not treating others as one would not want to be treated, of people who were bound and determined to love their enemies into friends, of people geared up to turn the other cheek to the smiter. But the effect was a political one, and Rome tried to quash it and succeeded after a fashion.
 
One objects, saying, "The Christian church is alive and well today. So Rome did not succeed."

Really? It will have succeeded beyond its wildest dreams unless and until those who would be disciples of Jesus as he is depicted in the gospels set their faces en masse toward the seat of power, there to insist by example on peace instead of war and on distributive rather than retributive justice.
 
As a veteran of the civil rights and antiwar movements of the last half-century, I can tell you that passive insistence, like passive resistance, is carried out at a price. Those who are already essentially dead from their repetitive journeys down the well-known, spirit-numbing road oft taken need fear no more than a nominal cost for doing so -- save burial in the minutiae of routine. The road less traveled by takes one to his own Jerusalem where awaits the establishment that is sure to strike back at passive insistence.
 
There's one other reason why one, having first put his hand to the plow, should not look back. Often enough, he will find himself alone.
 
 


� Copyright 2010, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.

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