Texts:
1 Kings 19:19-21
Luke 9:51-62
Galatians 5:1,13-25
I think that the last three verses of today's Epistle is one of the great passages in the Bible. I love the listing of the wonderful fruits of the Spirit; I would love to just luxuriate in them for a while and call it a sermon. But as I look at today's combination of lectionary passages, I don't think we can fully appreciate the Epistle without first looking at the Gospel passage and thinking about its implications for Paul's letter to the Galatians.
Today's Gospel passage includes an important milestone in Luke, as it chronicles the beginning of Christ's journey to Jerusalem. At this point, no one really understands the reason for or the end result of this journey. The close disciples are following Jesus as always--because that's what they do--but others aren't so sure. We hear of a Samaritan village that refuses to welcome Jesus, probably because he is yet another Jew focused on worshipping in Jerusalem. Jews' insistence on Jerusalem as the only place that God can be truly worshipped is one of the biggest areas of disagreement between Samaritans and Jews, as it was one of the reasons Samaria and the rest of the northern kingdom split from Judah. They probably weren't being inhospitable, just standing on principle by refusing to abet the pilgrimage with which they so strongly disagreed. Jesus knew his was far more than a typical pilgrimage; his reaction to the disciples' desire to destroy the village was probably both because of his grace towards all people as well as a desire not to be distracted on his journey by squabbles between ethnic groups.
This short passage also contains not one, but three responses to would-be disciples who want to follow Jesus. In the first instance, he makes clear to the disciple that following him means homelessness. Not only no bed of roses, but no bed, period. In the second, Jesus actually initiates the encounter, asking a man to follow him but then responding to the man's request to be allowed to go bury his father with the famous "let the dead bury the dead" line, communicating his expectation that the man follow Jesus with no delay. It isn't hard to imagine that man's reaction being something like: "Wait--you asked me to follow you, and then you put on preconditions? ..." The third vignette is the most challenging yet. Jesus responds to a man's offer to follow Jesus--after he has said goodbye to his family--with the strong statement that anyone who looks back after their initial commitment isn't fit for God's kingdom. Wow. I think about how much I love my family and wonder if I could ever commit to something so strongly that I would be willing to never see them again. That one brief line may be one of the clearest statements in the entire Bible of the type of radical commitment required to follow this Jesus Christ.
If we think about it, the idea of looking forward and not looking back is somewhat of a theme throughout the entire Bible. Early in the Hebrew Scriptures, we see Lot's wife pay the ultimate price for looking back. In today's Hebrew Scripture passage, Elijah makes it pretty clear that Elisha should immediately follow him rather than going back and saying goodbye to his family; Proverbs and Jeremiah also contain riffs on this theme. In the Gospel of Luke's account of Jesus's calling the first disciples, we read that "As soon as they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed Jesus". If Lot's wife is the greatest example of failing to heed the command to not look back, the Luke passage is the greatest example of heeding Christ's command and following him. Finally, we have Paul's encouraging statement in Philippians: "I forget about the things behind me and reach out for the things ahead of me".
I think this idea of looking forward and not looking back is very appealing to many of us; it is certainly appealing to me, as I have so many things on which I would rather not look back. But most of these examples are asking us to do more than look in a particular direction: They are asking us to DO something. Specifically, to follow Christ. As we work our way toward today's Epistle passage it is that action--that following Jesus--to which we need to pay particular attention. In fact, I wonder if the placement of the three "look forward and follow me" challenges at the beginning of Jesus's journey isn't to place special emphasis on the radical commitment required because of what lies ahead. This is a journey in which the light at the end is only reached by traveling through the great darkness of the cross. Without Jesus death on the cross and his resurrection, the Spirit of the Epistles doesn't exist.
When we do reach the Epistle and Paul's words to the Galatians, we read of freedom. We read of the choice between using that freedom to indulge in "looking back" behaviors and making the looking-forward, following-Jesus choice. We also read of how stark that choice is. Just like Jesus's admonition that those who look back can't enter the kingdom of God, if we want to enjoy the full fruits of the Holy Spirit sent to us after Christ's resurrection, we must choose to follow Jesus so completely that we are willing to kill our old self so that it is impossible to look back.
As we think about these choices, we also need to remember that Paul wasn't writing to an individual but to a community. Those choices of how we use our freedom--to look back or to look forward and follow Jesus irreversibly--to engage in any of our corporate behaviors that relate to that long list or to live in the Spirit and enjoy all its fruits. I think it's especially tempting to "look back" as a community. It's tempting because of our tendency to view the past with rose-colored glasses, and it's tempting because our tendency to look back at "community" in the context of the faults and issues of those other than ourselves. Both of those temptations can derail us from looking forward and single-mindedly following Jesus, which is also harder for a community than for us as individuals. It's harder because we not only must have "look-forward" faith in Christ, we must have it in each other as well. Cutting off our view to the past must include not only crucifying our own indulgence in the wrong side of freedom, it must also include crucifying our focus on what others may or may not be doing in that same regard.
But the great--the amazingly great--news is that, as a community, if we are able to crucify the past and if we are able to be "all in" in journeying with Christ through the cross and the resurrection, and "all in" in accepting the gift of freedom and of the Holy Spirit, we can truly experience those fruits we read about today. As an 8th Day Faith Community, we can truly experience love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. As we come to the close of our community's discernment process, let's keep that in mind. Let's keep in mind what our community can be like if we can be completely committed to looking forward and following the Risen Christ that the Spirit--and its fruits--will be with us continually. Amen.