2010.06.27:Dr. George A. Purnell

			Dr. George A. Purnell June 27, 2010 “Living in the Tension” Luke 9:51-62 My favorite professor at DePauw was an English professor named Bob Sedlack. I took four courses from him, even though I was not an English literature major. And while I do not have a poet’s soul, I took a course he taught on major American poets of the nineteenth century. I remember reading Dickinson, Longfellow, Poe and, my favorite, Walt Whitman. Whitman’s poem, “Song of Myself” – the first of 12 unnamed poems in his first edition of Leaves of Grass” – became a poem I obsessed over, because I wanted to make sense of how individuality could be celebrated at the same time that social order required submission of self to the larger good. These two values seemed in contradiction, at least to a 19 year old who was trying to balance a love for the freedom a citizen in the United States enjoyed with the seemingly contradictory requirement that I could be conscripted to go to Viet Nam to fight in a conflict that nobody seemed able to understand. One reviewer of this poem wrote: “How can the contradictions in an individual or a nation be accommodated and lead to wholeness rather than divisiveness? This question reverberates through Leaves of Grass and through much of American history.” This same reviewer wrote: “In the end, this same Whitman leaves us with the question he folds into perhaps the most-quoted lines of the entire poem (which says a lot, since Song of Myself contains 1,346 lines and is divided into 52 sections): ‘Do I contradict myself? Very well then…I contradict myself; I am large…I contain multitudes.’” Much of life is lived in the tension between apparently contradictory positions. How, for example, does one negotiate the tension between two views of God that seem irreconcilable: God viewed through the lens of wrath, vengeance and judgment versus God seen as accepting, forgiving, and loving? Recently a woman in her early 30’s stopped by and asked to see a pastor. I went out to the receptionist desk, introduced myself, and led her into my office, where she broke down and cried. Her body shook violently as she tried to gain control of herself. This woman was in a situation that no one should have to endure. She was being beaten physically, humiliated verbally, and enslaved emotionally. Because of what she considered unforgivable sins in her past, this woman believed she deserved what was happening to her. She wanted a person of God to tell God how sorry she was for her life, and to tell God she understood why God had sent her this suffering. I told her God loved her. I told her that God was not angry with her…that God was saddened and hurt by her pain…that God wanted her to be in a good place, a place where she would be safe from harm. I told her that God did not remember the things from her past that she believed God held against her. I told her that God admired her courage and adored her as God’s very own daughter. But this did not stack up with her experience of God. She had learned about God in the church her grandparents had taken her to as a child, where she was taught that God was angry and vindictive and would make her pay if she sinned. Her complaint embodied the theological chasm over time. How do we hold these two views together? As Christians, we can’t help but wrestle with competing claims on our lives. On one hand, Jesus taught us, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) And on the other hand, there is the reality that none of us can claim to have no other gods before the Lord our God. In another place in the gospels, we read that “a man ran up and knelt before” Jesus and asked him, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responded, “You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness.’” The man interrupts Jesus and says, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” We then read: “Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lackone thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’” (Mark 10:17-21) “When he heard this,” we read, the man “was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.” (10:22) Jesus’ disciples “were perplexed at these words,” and they “said to one another, ‘then who can be saved?’” (10:24, 26) And in our lesson today, Jesus makes demands of three would be followers that seem too hard. These words perplex us, and cause us to ask if compliance with Jesus’ demands is a human possibility. Jesus responds to people in two ways in today’s reading. In the first part of the passage, Jesus is accepting of those who resist him and his message. As they were traveling toward Jerusalem, we read, Jesus sent messengers ahead of him. These messengers “entered a village of the Samaritans; but they did not receive him because his face was set toward Jerusalem.” James and John, two of Jesus’ closest friends among the disciples, wanted to torch the village for this insult. But Jesus would have none of this. In the second half of the passage today, however, we find Jesus acting differently toward those who profess to want to follow him. Rather than take the gentle approach with them – saying ‘sure, come and follow me whenever you can’ – Jesus responds by saying, in affect, I don’t need volunteers. If you are going to follow when it is convenient, stay home. I need people who are completely devoted to come with me to Jerusalem, because the road we will travel is hard, and there will be no turning back. When we meet him today, Jesus is at the turning point of his ministry. Up to this point in the gospel, almost all Jesus’ life and ministry have taken place in Galilee. But in our opening verse today, “he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” From here – chapter 9:51, all the way to chapter 19:27, Jesus is headed toward his destiny. In chapter 19:28 he enters Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday to face the week that we call holy. He knew where he was going and why. He was single-minded in his determination. Nothing was going to stand in his way or distract him. Jesus’ response to the three who come up and claim to want to follow him demands that they be similarly single-minded in their determination. This is decision time. To followhim requires leaving their former lives behind. So it isn’t hard to understand why many people rejected his call to this life in his own day, and why we turn away today. Leaders need to be honest with followers about expectations. But sometimes leaders try to soft peddle the demands of following, for fear of people leaving before getting started. Jesus did not soft sell the demands of following him to Jerusalem. He let prospective followers know up front what would be expected of them. And many had other claims on their lives that took priority, so they did not follow him. Like the three in the lesson in Luke today, we have priorities in life that get in the way of complete surrender to Jesus too.In his response to these three “want to be” followers, Jesus confronts us with the truth that we are not as committed as we would like to believe. We have normal desires. We want a place we call home. A place of permanence. We value our families. We will risk harm to ourselves to protect these loved ones, and we will be caregivers for as long as they need us. We cherish friends, because their presence enriches our lives. We value planning and protection, and go to great lengths to make life secure and predictable. We buy insurance to protect our homes and our health and to provide for our heirs after we are dead. We save for our retirement so that we are not vulnerable in old age. We plan our trips, so that at the end of the day we will have a comfortable place to stay the night. We plan our days to balance work and leisure, and to leave time for exercise. We plan our meals. As I read this passage today, these questions surface for me: What does our almost obsessive need for security say about our ultimate values and priorities? If Jesus did not have the luxury of a rooted life, where did he find his security? We live in the tension between apparently contradictory positions: We want to follow Jesus, yet we cannot quite leave behind those things that anchor us in this world. We recognize the three in our lesson today. We wonder why we can’t actually live the faith we profess. And the answer is: we are large…we contain multitudes. We are not one person, but many. We are a man, or a woman. We are a son, or a daughter. We are a father, or a mother. We are a husband, or a wife. We are a friend…a partner…an employee…a Christian. We have many roles and many claims on our lives and many competitors for our allegiance. As we try to live in this tension and in the contradictions of life, there is overriding good news: Just as Jesus loved the rich man he looked upon, the one who could not surrender his possessions and follow Jesus – and just as Jesus took no retribution against the Samaritans who would not receive him – so the God whom we worship in Christ will love us and wait for us while we struggle to find freedom from those things that continue to keep us from following him without looking back. Amen.