Sermon at St. Nicholas’s Parish
Church, Porton - Fifth Sunday after Trinity
Bourne Valley Team
Eucharist – Sunday 30 June 2013
Galatians
5:1; 13-25; Luke 9:51
May the words of my mouth
and the mediation of all our hearts be always acceptable to you, O Lord. Amen
Today is a very special day in the Salisbury Diocese of the
Church of England. Today is the day that a number of men and women will be
ordained Deacons by the Bishop of Salisbury in the Cathedral this morning – the
first of the Holy Orders set out in the Book of Common Prayer and the first
step to priesthood. Amongst those will
be Mark Phillips from our own Deanery parish of Pitton and our thoughts and
prayers must be with him, Claire and his family as he sets forth on God’s
ordained ministry. As with most
ministries, Mark’s would have started with a call from God – not always clear
but always persistent and compelling.
Our gospel reading this morning has, at its heart, the
difficulties and sacrifices which such a call from God has, to whatever
ministry he is asking us to; but also a hint at the rewards it can also
bring. Paul has much more to say about
the rewards in his letter to the Galatians, a portion of which formed our first
reading this morning.
I have heard the gospel reading from Luke umpteen times and I
have always found it slightly confusing and worrying – and in order to write
this sermon I read it again several times to see how it now spoke to me before
delving into any concordance to try and fathom it out. There seem to be two separate and distinct
parts to this passage – but to begin to understand them, we need have a bit of
an understanding of the historic and biblical background to the scene.
The first part concerns the Samaritan village – and it is
interesting that this part of the story only occurs in Luke – you will not find
a parallel account in any of the other four gospels. We read that this event occurred towards the
end of Jesus’s life on earth but this journeying to Jerusalem with his
disciples should not be confused with his final journey to his death and
resurrection. Like all good Jews, Jesus
would have frequently visited the Temple and it is believed that this
particular journey was much earlier in his ministry – it may very well have
been the trip to the Feast of the Tabernacles which John recounts in Chapter 7
of his gospel. When we know that Jesus
didn’t start his ministry until the age of 30 and was crucified, resurrected
and ascended at the age of 33 we can see that in terms of his earthly life it
was indeed “when the days drew near to be
taken up” as Luke puts it.
In order to go from Galilee to Jerusalem (which was in
Judaea) it would have been necessary for Jesus and his disciples to pass
through Samaria – a province whose inhabitants despised the Jews intensely –
hence the importance of the message in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Indeed, in order to avoid going through
Samaria, many Jewish travellers to Jerusalem would have crossed the Jordan high
up and then travelled along the east bank – a much longer but less troublesome
route. It is interesting, therefore,
that Jesus chose the more direct and difficult route on this occasion – almost
courting problems.
When I heard this story originally I really couldn’t
understand why the village did not welcome him “because he was heading for Jerusalem”. In fact when you understand
the hatred with which the Samaritans had for the Jews, the fact that Jesus and
his followers were on their way to a Jewish festival would have clearly marked
them out as people to be despised.
This clearly incensed John and James (the sons of Zebedee the
fisherman) whose response was to want to “nuke” the village or in more biblical
parlance call down fire to destroy them.
No doubt they had in mind the calling down of fire by Elijah on the
captains and their soldiers sent from the King of Samaria back in 2 Kings
(1:9-14). By this act, Elijah was able to demonstrate to the king that he was
indeed a man of God. As followers of
Jesus, and having seen many miracles, James and John no doubt thought that this
would be a good way to prove to the Samarians that Jesus was also a man of God
by reminding them of what had befallen earlier Samaritans.
No wonder James and John had been called the Sons of Thunder by Jesus when he had
first called them. It was also these
same two disciples who had asked to sit at the left and right hand of Jesus
when he ruled his kingdom. As on that
occasion, they were, we are told, rebuked by Jesus – not I think because Jesus
didn’t approve of what Elijah had done earlier but because they still “just didn’t get it” - that the actions
of the Samaritans towards Jesus and his disciples was far less of an issue than
the Baal-worshipping subjects of the earlier Samaritan king. Jesus’s response is simply to move on and
find a more accommodating village. There
is something here in this for us today too – when things don’t go our way, when
people do not offer us sympathy, hospitality or any of those loving gifts of
the spirit which Paul talks about in his letter to the Galatians, when instead
we are met with disdain, hatred, strife, enmities then we simply move on. God will deal with those issues himself in
the fullness of time. It is not for us to judge or call down judgment but for
God.
The second part of the reading, seems more confusing still in
the context of what we have just looked at.
As he continues his journey through Samaria, Jesus appears to be very
harsh on those who have felt called to follow him and he appears, at first
glance, to have put unfair and unnecessary conditions on those who would follow
him.
First we have the man who says he will follow Jesus
anywhere. Jesus makes it clear to him
that to follow him he will need to leave his home and become nomadic with no
one single place to call home. Foxes, he
says have holes and birds have nests but Jesus has nowhere to lay his head and,
by association, neither will any of his disciples. We do not know what the
young man’s response was. In the
parallel gospel of Matthew, we are told that the enquirer was a scribe and
therefore probably had a regular job and income and probably went home every
night and slept in the same bed. Jesus
is being brutally frank with him – following Jesus, being a disciple, will be
uncomfortable – he hints at the physical – but as we know it will also be
emotionally and spiritually challenging.
Secondly, we have the man who wants to bury his father
first. This is the bit that I’ve always
found rather cruel on a first, second and even third reading. However, an understanding of this lies in
Jesus’s reply – “Let the dead bury their
own dead”. In this response Jesus is talking about the spiritually
dead. He is saying “If you are called to follow me in your ministry then you are to be a
servant of the living” – in other words those who are spiritually dead can
bury the physically dead and the spiritually alive should be busy proclaiming
the Kingdom of God.
A further explanation could be, and probably is, that the
father was not dead. It was the duty,
under Jewish custom, for the eldest son to arrange the funeral of the father;
but had the father already have been dead then it is unlikely that the son
would have met Jesus as he would already be pre-occupied with the funeral
arrangements. It is more likely that the
son was saying that once his father had died (which could be some time in the
future) and he had fulfilled his filial duties then he would then follow Jesus.
The final example of a person being called was the man who
wanted to say goodbye to his family.
This one I find the most bizarre and difficult of all. It seems to be such a little thing to ask but
again the best way to understand this is to study Jesus’s answer – “No-one who puts his hand to a plough and
looks back is fit for service in the Kingdom of God”.
Having lived for most of my life in towns and cities I cannot
verify the agricultural accuracy of this statement from my own knowledge but my
understanding is that to plough a true and straight furrow you need to look
where you are going, not where you have come from. This I think is what Jesus is saying here –
look forward not back. Your call is to
minister in the future and not regret or dwell on the past. Jesus probably felt that if the man went back
home he would allow his call to be diluted and maybe overridden by the views of
his family. Saying goodbye to the family
would probably entail a long protracted farewell party too and Jesus wanted him
now.
In each of these examples, Jesus is testing the call of the
person concerned – to see if they really have been called and know what the
commitment is – but once called and once answered, then, as Paul says the
freedom of Christ has set us free from the yoke of the slavery of sin. Salvation looks easy – we seek Jesus, he
calls us and we join him. Our reluctance
therefore is down to us and the trappings of our earthly life which bind us up
and prevent us from moving.
I started this sermon by talking about the call to ordination
of the clergy. The term “call” applies to any form of ministry –
not just ordained ministry. It might be
to spread the gospel by our deeds, as St. Francis is reputed to have said,
using only words if you must, in the workplace, in the job we do, home, school,
community, football terraces, in the pub, club or street – anywhere. It might
be service for or in the church but not necessarily. God has a role for each and every one of
us. He has and will call us to his
service. We must listen for that call
and when it comes be prepared to move outside our comfort zone. God will never give us a task we cannot
fulfil. It is for us to meet that challenge in the knowledge that he loves us
and trusts us. He won’t “nuke” us if we
don’t; but better still let’s welcome
him and not let him pass on to another village.
Amen
