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Pentecost 3C/Proper 8C
June 26, 2022
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9:51-62
INTRODUCTION
Today’s texts will show us both the joys and the challenges of discipleship. In the Gospel, after rebuking his disciples for wanting to get vengeance on some Samaritans who don’t welcome them, Jesus tells three would-be disciples about how challenging it can be to follow him. In Galatians, we will hear about how tempting it can be to give in to our fleshly desires, like jealously, anger, drunkenness… quite a list. In contrast, Paul will offer, when we live by the Spirit, we will see the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. This is the life God wants for us!
The first reading from 1st Kings is pretty difficult to follow without any context. So here’s some: just before this, Elijah killed all the prophets of the false god, Ba-al, and Queen Jezebel is furious! She wants Elijah killed. Elijah runs off to the wilderness, where he finally lands, exhausted, depressed, and begging God just to kill him now. After giving Elijah rest and food, God tells him to go out and stand in a cave on Mount Sinai, where Elijah encounters wind, an earthquake, and fire, but God is found in the sound of sheer silence. And God asks him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah laments, “I’m the only faithful person left in Israel, and they’re trying to kill me!” What we will hear in a moment is God’s reply, which is basically, “I’m sending you to completely rearrange the political and spiritual order in and around Israel” (you know, no big deal), including anointing Elijah’s successor, Elisha. In the missing verses, God promises that there are still 7000 people in Israel who remain faithful. And then we will hear the part of the story in which Elijah passes the prophetic mantle on to Elisha, a call Elisha will in turn take very seriously, by basically eliminating his past life.
Yes, discipleship is difficult, and often requires some sacrifice! As you listen today, listen for some nugget that will help you in your own life of discipleship, that will give you strength for the journey ahead. Let’s listen.
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I took a class in college as a part of my religion major on theologies of the 20th century. It was an incredible class – our conversations were fascinating, and I never worked so hard in a class. (I've never been prouder of an A-!) One thing in particular that the professor said has really stuck with me. She said, “Lots of things are true: the sky is blue, I love my dog, Christ died so that we would have freedom from death. They are all true. But which of those will you stake your life on?”
Which of these will you stake your life on? The question has nagged at me through every crisis I have had since then – whether a crisis of faith, or a more tangible crisis, or a combination. What truth will you stake your life on? And of all those things, I bet you can guess which is the one that gets me through a crisis. I’ll give you a hint: it is not the color of the sky.
“You were called for freedom. Love each other as Christ has loved you. Guided by the Spirit, find joy, peace, and love.” This short song was written by Pastor Matthew Nickoloff, of the South Wedge Mission congregation. It’s based on today’s text from Galatians: “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” The text goes on to urge us to live not by desires of the flesh, but by the Spirit, describing the fruits of such a life as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and self-control. These fruits, or virtues, says the apostle Paul, are the ones we embrace when we live in a way that is guided by the Spirit, by Christ, by love for one another, and not by self-indulgence. In short, this is what it looks like to live in Christian freedom, to live a life that reflects the truth that Christ died to free us from sin and death.
It sounds like a pretty good life, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, self-control… these are all things that we want to teach our children, because we know that without those things, the world can be a pretty nasty place. Michael and I frequently tell our kids, “We want you to be successful, but most of all, we want you to be kind.” We want to instill in them a value of treating others with respect and love, so that they will indeed find delight in loving and treating people well. Who wouldn’t want to live a life like that?
And yet, we don’t always do it. We all, at some point, give in to self-indulgence, and do not do what is kind or loving or patient or generous, but rather what indulges our broken, human desires in that moment. At some point we are all like the disciples in today’s Gospel lesson. They encounter the Samaritans, whom they already despised for their different historical and racial background (see, prejudice based on race has long been an issue!). When they discover these Samaritans will not receive Jesus as he travels through their country, they are outraged. They likely think, “Oh, this is the last straw. Those people, those Samaritans, are no good. They worship wrong, their blood is tainted by the enemy, they do not belong to our kind. And now this! Of course they would be behave like this, rejecting Jesus. We already knew they were bad people, and this just confirms it.” With all of their past opinions, assumptions and prejudices as proof of the validity of their hatred, the disciples ask Jesus, “Do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven to consume them?” Their response is not to love, but to destroy! Granted, they offer this with the best of intentions – they are defending their Lord, after all! Surely, he would agree with them; after all, don’t we always assume that Jesus loves or rejects all the same people as we do?
Now, I’m going to assume that no one here has ever wished death and destruction on an entire town based on one action. But I’m also guessing everyone here has at some point, maybe even in the past few days, wished or spoken some sort of ill or punishment against someone who upset us, or who acted in a way that pushed against our deeply held values, or who said something offensive, or who treated someone we love cruelly. We see this behavior all the time: in politics, in our workplaces, in our families, in our friend groups, on both social media and traditional media. We see it in others, and yes, we see it in ourselves. And the worst thing is, sometimes it feels good to voice something nasty about someone else, even if it’s something we don’t really mean. And, we can convince ourselves that our anger is righteous, and justified. And frankly, it may well be!
But as good as it may feel in the moment, such a nasty response is not the way Christ intends for us to use our Christian freedom. The Constitution may grant us the freedom to say what we want and how, but Christ grants us a different sort of freedom – the freedom to love and serve our neighbor. That freedom may well compel us to speak strongly to someone, to speak up for the disenfranchised, to speak truth and justice to power. I’m not saying not to do that; indeed, that is more important now than it was even a week ago. I’m also not saying that engaging according to the fruits of the Spirit is easy – especially when we are feeling enraged, sad, or scared, as many are right now. Yet still, the manner in which we speak that truth, or listen to another’s story, is what makes our response rooted in the Spirit, or in our fleshly indulgence.
You were called for freedom: Love each other as Christ has loved you. Guided by the Spirit, find joy, peace, and love.
Of all the truths you know, which would you stake your life on?
Would you stake your life on the belief that someone who hurt you or someone else should be brought down and put in their place by words or actions?
Would you stake your life on the belief that when someone you dislike or disapprove of falls upon bad fortune, they deserved what was coming to them?
Would you stake your life on the need to tell some offender exactly what you think of them?
I admit those are all things I have felt viscerally in my bones at some point or another. But would I stake my life on them?
Or would you stake your life on God’s promise that God is stronger than death, stronger than sin, stronger than captivity; that if God is for us, nothing can defeat us?
Would you stake your life on the truth that because God has broken the bonds of death for us, that we can live lives of freedom – not the freedom to self-indulge and say and do whatever we want, as Paul writes, but the freedom to love one another, to live by the Spirit?
Would you stake your life on the truth that because God loves us bunch of sinners, God is capable of loving any bunch of sinners, and that to live in God’s Spirit means that we, too, strive to love all the sinners of the world – even if they sin differently from you?
Those are hard truths, very hard. They sometimes go very much against the grain of our human inclination, which says that people should get what they deserve. They are truths I sometimes find it difficult to apply to other people, even as I’m so grateful that they apply to me. But they are truths that I can, indeed that I must, stake my life on, because they are truths that bring us to life – life with God, and life with one another.
Let us pray… You called us for freedom, to love each other as Christ has loved us. Guide us by your Spirit, to find joy, peace, and love. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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