a homily for Proper 8C
Text: Luke 9:51-62

Confused by Jesus

Everybody is confused. James and John are confused. These three seekers are confused. We are definitely confused. We are confused by Jesus. There is no other explanation for our behavior.

This part of the gospel we call Luke reveals a moment of true confusion. A deep and profound confusion. Confusion about the mission and ministry of Jesus, the very nature of Heaven, and the people’s role in it. And I’m not sure we even understand why this is so.

The story begins with that great opening line:

When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

He turns his attention from all that they were doing, and with a very physical moment of clarity, turns His face, turns His body, to Jerusalem. Now this is what we are doing.

This is an important moment in the story because we are able to see how everything changes from here. And as readers, this verbal cue has us turn and set our faces toward Jerusalem. Jerusalem: the holy city, the central city, the site of worship and execution. The place that reveals Jesus’s great glory and kills Him. For as much as we focus on the words and actions of Jesus, we are called to see the city, Jerusalem and also see destination. Our burden as Christians, to take up our crosses is revealed in Jesus’s march to His cross.

This march that takes Jesus through Samaria, past our impulses for vengeance and violence; past our impulses toward safety and contentment; and toward a place of danger and insecurity. A place that is, itself, confusing.

What Confusion Makes Us Do

Perhaps most troubling for us is the part of the story in which these three seekers are seemingly rebuffed by Jesus. One comes forward and Jesus tells him that he’ll have to be homeless. Jesus calls the second to Him and, in asking for a simple delay to bury his father, the man is rejected for not coming immediately. Then the third offers his service to Jesus, but only after saying goodbye to his family and Jesus all but calls him “unfit” for ministry.

The reading of this text makes us nervous. Not because we actually think Jesus is a jerk. But because we’re convinced He’s not and to see Him act like one is unsettling. We call this cognitive dissonance. When two opposing things are held as true at the same time and our brains don’t know how to process it.

We hear in these three rebuffed seekers the very definition of need and in Jesus the very definition of rejection. They want to follow Jesus and do this whole “Jesus thing” and Jesus gives them these hurdles that are just plain ridiculous. The dude can’t even bury his father?

So we are left with a horrible choice: that the text says what it says or it doesn’t: to believe Jesus is a jerk to these people or to explain it away cleverly.

Another Option

Perhaps there’s another option.

For the last 120 or so years, we have been stuck in this old debate in the church about the Bible. Around the turn of the last century, one group of Christians started reading the Bible in a way that said every word of the book must be taken literally. This was in response to fears about the modern world and what kids learned in school. Their descendents have those very same fears today.

Another group, led by archeological discovery and the pursuit of who Jesus may have been as an historical figure, attempted to reconcile the historical elements with the literary elements of the text. Much of mainline Protestantism has been shaped by this work.

These two groups created a strange way for all of us to engage our scripture: that it must all be read literally or it must be read metaphorically. What if we opt out of this paradigm? What if we read Jesus’s interaction with these three seekers with depth, rather than cynicism? That Jesus isn’t giving them an unrealistic standard, impossible to fulfill any more than He is commanding every one of His followers to literally abandon their homes and families and live on the street.

That we read this challenging bit of Scripture and we hear in it way more than tweak your life a smidge and you’re golden! Or just believe you’ll be rich and Jesus will hand you butt-loads of money. That we actually deal with the very fact that Jesus challenges us to become different than we are now.

Hear Jesus

In his commentary for this week, Scott Hoezee tells a story of William Willemon’s. While dean of the chapel at Duke University,

[Willemon] received any number of complaints from parents but many of those complaints all boiled down to just one complaint. His phone would ring and the parent on the other end of the line would say, “What did you all do over there at Duke? Our daughter went to school to become a research scientist but now she says she is going to become a medical missionary to Haiti. You ruined her life. Why did you do that!?”

If by ruin, the parent means “do GOD’s work” then he no doubt is happy to hear this bit of news.

The challenge Jesus gives us is to wrestle with what it actually means to do GOD’s work and what we are called to do in the midst of it.

And even more challenging is that sometimes we discover that good things aren’t actually good for us. Or that we might be good people, just not Spirit-led people. That we make smart decisions rather than Spirit-led ones. And if we discover this about ourselves, we can change it!

Today’s story is much less confusing when we loosen our grip and listen. When we hear in Jesus’s call for conviction and facing our challenges. When we hear in Jesus’s footsteps, a path through dangerous territory. When we hear in Jesus’s rebuke a simple idea: He trusts that we know, deep down, which way to go.