3rd Sunday after Pentecost Sermon

When I was in my late 20s, I had become a sincere follower of Jesus. I truly had adopted faith and the priorities of faith as the guiding principles of how I was seeking to live my life and the choices I was making. And I was still just a 20-something-year-old trying to make sense of who I was and my place in this world, just like all of us are always doing.

We’re all doing our best, and often stumbling along the way. How could it be otherwise?

And so, at that stage of my faith, one of my core, Kingdom of God values was reconciliation. That is how I saw (and still see) the power of God’s love at work in this world: where there is brokenness and pain and division and estrangement, God in Christ meets us with compassion and forgiveness and restoration. And so, as followers of Jesus, seeking to join in God’s restoring love, we, too, become a people of reconciliation. In families and marriages; in churches and with neighbors; between ethnic groups and nations … wherever sin divides, we now join with God – to become Christ’s gospel enfleshed – in this work of reconciliation. We see the humanity of the other; we repent of our divisiveness; we forgive when we have been harmed; we share in grace; we are restored as one. This is our good news on earth, as it is in heaven.

And so, with this conviction of God’s power to reconcile and our call to be a God’s reconciling agents in this world, I moved to Northern Ireland. This was the era of “The Troubles,” when Catholics and Protestants were killing each other for Jesus. Off I went to join the Christian Renewal Centre, a community of Catholics and Protestants who lived together, shared their meals together, worshiped together, and welcomed people from across the divide to come stay with them and join in this reconciling life.

My main job there was in the kitchen, providing three meals a day for the members of the community, as well as for our guests. It was a ministry of hospitality. Wherever people were coming from, my job was to feed them, to care for them, to make them at home with us.

That was the goal. And I was quite sincere in giving myself to this.

And… I was a 20-something-year-old, full of doubts and fears and confusions because I was human. And there was this girl named Bronaugh, who also belonged to the Christian Renewal Centre. She was very pretty and vivacious (about my age), and I wanted to impress her. Very much. Mind you, I wasn’t very good at it. My flirtation skills weren’t particularly intuitive, which (in retrospect) makes a lot of sense. But at the time, it was just confusing, and filled me with fear and a sense of inadequacy.

And one day a guest came to stay with us. He was a Protestant and (admittedly) rather annoying in his Protestantism. The evening he arrived – when he learned Bronaugh was Catholic – he started trying to convert her. As you can imagine, this wasn’t exactly appropriate behavior in a Christian community whose whole purpose for existence was to model a Christianity where Catholics and Protestants were equally at home, as one.

And so, I took it upon myself to pull this man aside and let him know – in no uncertain terms – that he was out of line, that “we don’t do that at the Christian Renewal Centre.” I was full of swagger, because – at that point – it was not the reconciling power of Christ that propelled me. I was showing off for Bronaugh. I wanted to be gallant and strong, her knight in shining armor. I was trying to be, for her, something more than I was. So out of my fear, fueled by shame and inadequacy, I was anything but the hospitable kitchen worker whose job was to nourish the guest who’d found his way to us.

He left us, early the next morning, before anyone was awake, without a word. Though he’d booked a room for several days, he stayed just the one night, and then was gone.

He was at fault. He had behaved inappropriately.

But the greater fault was mine. He was our guest. And in my fear, in the guise of chivalry and righteousness, I drove him away. I’ve always regretted that moment.

Now don’t worry. I’m not beating myself up unduly. I suspect my behavior is familiar to us all, because we’re all human. There is no way our faith can emerge as an unscarred thing – as some pure specimen of righteousness and truth. Our faith must always resemble ourselves, and our whole journey of becoming who we are, with all the mishaps along the way.

Just like it was for the disciples in today’s gospel reading.

They’re travelling south to Jerusalem, and arrive at a Samaritan village. I’m not sure why this village was inhospitable to Jesus and his friends. That part of the story is unclear. But I absolutely recognize the spirit of the disciples and their response:

Hey Jesus, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?

God, bless them. What on earth would make these Jesus-followers think Jesus would want that of them? When ever did Jesus behave in this way? He didn’t. So why would they think it? I think, like me – getting all uppity in the face of that evangelizing Protestant – they were driven by something other than pure religious zeal. They were, I think, functioning from a place of embarrassment and confusion and shame.

Just look at the whole sequence of events that led up to that moment:

This chapter in the gospel of Luke begins with Jesus sending his twelve disciples out on a mission trip. He gives them power and authority to drive out demons and heal the sick and proclaim the kingdom of God. And they do it. And it works. It had to have felt great. They come back feeling awesome about themselves.

Then Jesus took them away – presumably for a bit of a retreat – to have some down-time, to rest, to tell their stories, for Jesus to hear what amazing things they they’d done and to praise them for it. I get it. I’d want the same thing.

But it goes awry. There are crowds that followed them and crashed their private party. And rather than “setting healthy boundaries,” Jesus turned to the crowds and gave them his full attention – all day: teaching, healing, ministering. And at the end of the day, the disciples want Jesus to send them away. They’re exhausted; their adrenaline is spent. But instead, Jesus tells them, “Why don’t you give them something to eat.” And they’re all, “What are you talking about?” And so Jesus feeds them himself. This is his famous miracle, when 5,000 men are fed with just five loaves and two fish.

I can imagine that, thrilling though the miracle must have been, in a way, it stole their thunder. They’d just had their first whack at being miracle workers themselves, and now they weren’t. They came up empty-handed, and he took over, and shone.

And then everything started getting murky. This is the hinge-point of the gospel narrative. Whereas Jesus began his ministry as a sensation up north in Galilee, now he sets his face south to Jerusalem, and starts teaching his disciples that he must suffer and die (and rise again). And they don’t get. They don’t understand what he’s saying or what’s happening. The whole script is starting to change, and they’re left feeling confused and unstable.

Next, they come across a boy who’s possessed by a demon. The disciples try to heal him, but fail. They can’t do it. Then Jesus shows up, takes stock of the situation, and sounds grumpy and impatient: “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring me your son.” Ouch, Jesus. And he heals the boy.

Next, the disciples started arguing with one another about which of them was the greatest. They’re scrambling to find security by securing their importance. That’s the time Jesus brought a little child alongside him and taught the disciples, “The least among you will be the greatest.” They had to have received it as a rebuke.

Next, they tell Jesus about some stranger they saw casting out demons in Jesus’ name and how they tried to stop him. I’m sure, in telling Jesus this, what they wanted was his assurance, “Yes, you’re my special ones who I empowered to do this work.” But instead, this is where we get Jesus’ famous teaching: “Don’t stop him. Whoever is not against you is for you.”

And so their journey continues, south to Jerusalem. The disciples are tired and confused. Their egos are bruised. They don’t understand why Jesus is acting different. Every attempt to get his approval has failed and they end up feeling slapped.

And then they reach the Samaritan village. Samaritans were religious half-breeds, despised by the Jews as heretics. And it’s at this moment, when those heretics reject their Jesus, that the disciples lash out, “Should we call fire out of heaven, to burn ‘em up, Jesus?”

God, bless them. It was the exact wrong thing to say. And I get it. We all do.

It’s human nature to want everything to stay the same: for girls to remain girls and boys to remain boys; for the supreme court to stop reinterpreting laws we thought were stable; for ocean temperatures to stop rising; for the old version of the Lord’s Prayer on Sunday morning.

But it is the nature of creation, always, to be changing.

And when we’re at those junctures and the old solutions don’t work anymore, it can be scary. When we want assurance that we’re okay, and we look for approval – from our boss, our parents, our spouse, our God – but feel rejection instead… we panic. And we look for someone – anyone – to shift the focus on. They’re the problem. They’re the enemy, the vermin, the sinner.

I suspect much of the discord in our society is being fueled by such fear and shame. Everything’s changing! “Jesus, should we call fire out of heaven, to burn ‘em up?”

“No,” says Jesus. “And he turned and rebuked them.”

Oh! Those poor disciples.

Then Jesus went on, to show just how costly the way of Christ actually is. “Give up your life to follow me. Give up your comfort, your family, your security. And don’t look back.” They must have been miserable. Rebuked again.

But you know what? They were fine. They weren’t being rejected. They weren’t unloved. It was simply time to move forward and change. After all, following Jesus means following Jesus. His life was changing, and so must theirs. We can’t stay in one place. Ever.

Like Kae said last week, we’re now in the “Green Season” of the church year – like the preponderance of green all around the altar. This is the growing time. And there’s no way to grow up without growing through – week after week, year after year – one season bringing us to the next.

And one of the gifts of church is the stability it provides in pointing us afresh – week after week – to those elemental truths that will not change: that God is God; that reconciliation can restore all division; that the way of Christ is the way of life – for us and for the world.

And so we return each week, to set out hands to the plough and our eyes to the horizon, without looking back. “Jesus, I choose you, whatever the future may bring.”