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Luke 9:51-56
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. Hey.
Speaker 1:Well, welcome to commons, and welcome to Lent. That's why I'm wearing this purple stole today. It reminds us that we are on the way toward Easter together. Now my name is Jeremy. I'm part of the team here at Commons, and thank you for joining us here online.
Speaker 1:If you weren't able to join us this week, we experienced Ash Wednesday. Strange Ash Wednesday that was online. An Ash Wednesday where we pantomimed marking ourselves with ash to enter this Lenten season. Very few of us have ash ready at home for such purposes. But as sad as it was to miss that moment here in the room together, there's also just something kind of perfect about an Ash Wednesday that falls short.
Speaker 1:Am I right? Lent is the season where we remember our lack, where we remember our frailty, where we celebrate the fact that we will one day die. It's a strange season after all, but it's also a necessary season because it's the season that precedes Easter, the season that leads us toward resurrection. And so to have an Ash Wednesday full of missing pieces just kind of feels almost as right as it does wrong. But either way, here we are together at the beginning of Lent, at the beginning of our journey toward Easter.
Speaker 1:And this year, we've called our Lenten series travelogue. There's a lot going on in that title. Yes. It's it's about the movement toward Easter. And, yes, we're gonna frame this series with Jesus' movement toward Jerusalem, but it's also about our journey in this season.
Speaker 1:The last loss perhaps of travel in our lives are the lack of clear direction. It's about the stops and the starts and the backtracking and the January and everything that has made all of this just so confusing. And yet this is the season that leads us inevitably to Easter, to resurrection, and into new life. And that just kind of feels like Lent. And so for travelogue, we're going to follow Jesus as he travels toward Jerusalem and also, of course, toward Easter with us.
Speaker 1:Even if his path seems at times as winding as ours. But first, let's pray. God who draws near to us to journey with us. We pray that we would sense your nearness and presence in this season. If we have felt alone, isolated, certainly from each other, but perhaps also from you, We pray that your presence and spirit would be near to us reminding us that you are always closer than our breath.
Speaker 1:Walking with us, helping us, carrying us, embracing us, inviting us toward yourself. And as we move through this season toward the resurrection of Easter, we pray that you would guide us and walk with us so that when we reach that moment, we would experience it in all the joy and celebration it offers to us. And God, in that, as we sense your presence surrounding us, may we also, in some small way, offer that to each other. That we might know that we are none of us alone on this journey, and that you always walk with us. In the strong name, the risen Christ, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen. Okay. We've called this series travel log. And conveniently in the book of Luke, there's a section that we call the travel narratives. In terms of the narrative structure of Luke's gospel, the section from near the end of chapter nine through to the Easter stories structured as one long journey toward Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:And so today, we'll talk about Okotoks hard feelings being resolute and fire from heaven. But before all that, this is a story about a long walk, and I love a good long walk. Most of you know that I have a dog, a golden retriever named Cedar, and we walk twice a day every day the same loop. I love a good ritual. Shout out to our last series here.
Speaker 1:And I am very committed to closing the activity rings on my watch where my fitness plus nerds at. However, it has been very cold in Calgary this winter. How cold was it? It was so cold that my dog would forget how cold it was. He would stand by the door begging to go for our walk, and then as soon as I mustered up the courage to bundle up and go outside, we would walk to the back of our yard where he would realize that his feet were frozen, and he would refuse to walk any farther.
Speaker 1:Thankfully, things have warmed up considerably since then. And in the words of Luke, thankfully Jesus was more resolute than cedar. Because Luke's travel log begins in chapter nine verse 51, where we read that as the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And there's a lot going on in this opening sentence. For one, it it pretty clearly marks a new section of the story.
Speaker 1:Jesus, to this point, has been teaching in the Galilee and building a following. Now he heads for Jerusalem. And in the next section, we actually read that he sent messengers on ahead of him who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him, but the people there did not welcome him because he was heading for Jerusalem. That's verse fifty two and three. And we see a couple things here.
Speaker 1:First of all, Jesus heads for Jerusalem, which means he's not from Jerusalem, which reinforces the fact that he is from the Galilee. And again, this is like imagining a political leader that has never left Okotoks before. I mean, how important can she really be? Yet Luke is setting Jesus' humble blue collar background against everything that's ahead of him in this journey. And, again, I I just think this is so important for us to remember that when God chose to reveal God's self, God did so in the skin of an outsider.
Speaker 1:And so whatever your group is, whatever it is that I have become familiar with and conditioned to listen to, if if I'm not actively looking for the voices that come from outside those perspectives, I am missing something of the divine in my life. Good things, it appears, come from Okotoks as hard as that might be to believe. But we also see here that Jesus doesn't bother to avoid Samaria as Jewish people often did when they traveled to Jerusalem in that time. Now oftentimes, they would actually take a more route to avoid interacting with Samaritans on their way to Jerusalem. That was a a real thing, by the way.
Speaker 1:But here, Jesus sends his messengers ahead of him into Samaria. And there, they get turned away because they are heading for Jerusalem. And there's a couple of interesting things here. This this is actually the first mention of this Samaritan Jewish divide in Luke, and it becomes a recurring theme throughout the rest of Luke and into Acts. In fact, the story of the good Samaritan shows up in the very next chapter of Luke.
Speaker 1:So Luke is setting the stage here for things to come. This is just good storytelling. But take a look at this. Jesus seems pretty confident heading into Samaria, which may mean that he's traveled there before, which likely means he hasn't run into much trouble there before. And the fact that we see the Samaritans rejecting his friends specifically because of where they are going gives us a little more insight into this Jewish Samaritan relationship of the day.
Speaker 1:It's very possible that the rural, blue collar, poor Galileans like Jesus just didn't really care all that much about the Samaritan feud. And perhaps in the same way, maybe those Samaritans weren't all that excited about hating Jews that had nothing against them. Now even though we know that Galileans often avoided Samaria, when heading to religious events and festivals in Jerusalem, there's also some indication at least that when it came to normal everyday affairs like commerce and conversation, perhaps the divide wasn't nearly as strong as we imagine it to be. And if that's the case, then I think this Samaritan response kinda makes a lot of sense. I mean, you're cool with me as long as your cool friends aren't around, then I'm not cool with that.
Speaker 1:And so when the Samaritans hear about where this group is going, where they're heading, hard feelings rise up and they get shut down. Which makes it interesting to think about why Jesus decides in the very next chapter to tell a story about a good Samaritan after this encounter. Maybe he realizes they have a point. Maybe he wants his followers to be more aware of the ways that we often contribute to the tensions and the divisions that surround us even if it's unintentional. And maybe we could pay attention here to recognize that often deep seated animosity, hatred that feels like it's intractable.
Speaker 1:Often, that has more to do with the power structures that divide us than it does with our lived experience of other human beings on the ground. Please don't let someone tell you who to hate. Love your neighbor as yourself, I once heard someone say. It it was Jesus, by the way. But let's go back to Luke's opening line here.
Speaker 1:Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. So Jesus was not going to let misconceptions stop him. In fact, he was not going to let anything stop this journey. And Luke's word choice here is an interesting one. Because in Greek, it's it's the word and resolute or steadfast.
Speaker 1:Those are really good translations. But what's really going on here is that this is a Greek word that was used to translate a very common Hebraism or a Hebrew idiom that came from the Old Testament. And that idiom was the phrase to set your face against something. In Ezekiel six, God says, now son of man, set your face against the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them. And in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures that a lot of the Jews would have been reading at this time, it's the same word there as it is here, stereozo.
Speaker 1:So it absolutely means to be confident, ready, resolute. All of these ideas, just like our translation says, but it's also used here in a very Jewish way to talk about being called by God to do something both incredibly important and very difficult all at the same time. Think about Ezekiel. Set your face against the mountains of Israel and prophesy against them. In other words, speak hard truth to powerful friends.
Speaker 1:That is Sterezo. So this is very much a word about mission. And that's an interesting idea because it's such an animating concept for all of us, I think. It's a sense of purpose that pushes you through the hard part into the thing that you were meant for. And someone emailed me last week and asked about mission and calling and purpose and identity and all of these big ideas that we carry around with us about who we should be.
Speaker 1:It made me think about the work of Amy Rezniewski, who is a professor who studies calling. And, yes, that's a real job, I suppose. But in her research, what she found was that the common denominator between people who say they have found their calling is that they often say they found it on the other side of mastery. Now, what she means by this is that they weren't necessarily passionate about what they did until they got good at what they did. So the harder you work at something, the better you become at something, and the more passionate you become about that something.
Speaker 1:And I think that makes sense. I mean, it's hard to be passionate about playing guitar when you can't actually play very well. Although, to be honest, when I was learning guitar as a teenager, I spent a lot more time holding my guitar in front of the mirror than I actually did playing it, which might explain my mediocre playing today. But I was pretty passionate about that part. I had the hair.
Speaker 1:However, what this often means is that while we often put a lot of pressure on ourselves to discover our calling or to find our mission in the world or to uncover our purpose, oftentimes, all of that is, at least in some small sense, up to us. Now don't get me wrong. God has a calling on your life. It is to love your neighbor as yourself and to slowly discover what it means to love your God fully. But how you do that, what the specifics are in your life, what unique expression of love you will become passionate about, well often that comes after a lot of trial and error and effort and growth.
Speaker 1:And sometimes I think we put way too much pressure on ourselves to know what we're meant to be instead of putting in the work and the creativity to slowly become it. And I'll talk here from my own experience. That's all I've really got, but a big part of my job is preaching. And to be fair, nobody likes preaching for cameras. So let's just get that out of the way.
Speaker 1:But in general, the harder that I've worked at preaching, the better I've become at preaching and the more I've enjoyed preaching. The more passion for this calling on my life I have discovered through years of hard work. And the work that I put in to get better at what I do has made me love it that much more. And so when I think about Jesus resolutely setting out toward Jerusalem, this boy from the Galilee preparing to set his face against the power brokers of Israel to prophesy against them, knowing it would cost him everything and convinced that this was his mission to take. What I imagine is the hours upon hours of study and practice information that went into shaping his calling to this point where he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what came next.
Speaker 1:And sometimes, I think we look at Jesus and his resolute courage, and we admire that rightfully. But then we feel like we're supposed to ask God to make us fearless or more adventurous, more willing to risk when sometimes what we actually lack is that sense of mission that comes through sometimes years of searching and working and discovering and becoming who we are. Look, I I don't want to be fearless about the things I don't care about. That's not brave. That's foolish.
Speaker 1:I want to be resolute about the spaces I know I can contribute something to. That's where Jesus journey toward Jerusalem begins. With that sense of uncovered divine purpose within him. But there's one last reason I think Luke uses this term specifically to begin this section. See, Jesus is about to do the hardest thing.
Speaker 1:The thing he knows is right. The thing he knows will hurt, but here's the thing, he's about to do it at least in some sense on his own. See, in this section, we have Jesus of Nazareth, the country boy who's built a following. Lots of people are cheering him on and willing to be sent ahead of him to prepare his way, and that's great. But Jesus knows not everything is quite what it seems right now.
Speaker 1:See, if you roll back to verse 44, Jesus is talking to these same disciples who are cheering him on, and he's trying to prepare them for what's coming. And he says to them, listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you. Just in case they weren't really paying attention, he even says, listen up. This is important. The son of man is going to be delivered into the hands of men.
Speaker 1:This is not going to end well for any of us. But then Luke adds, they they did not understand what this meant, and they were too afraid to ask him about it. See, perhaps the reason that Jesus is so resolute is because Jesus knows he's going to have to be. And think about this one. In the moment that Jesus sets out on his mission, this sense of purpose that has been building and bubbling inside of him since the moment as a child he wandered into the temple and found himself captivated by the dialogue of faith.
Speaker 1:Well, here he is on the verge of taking his first steps toward that calling, and he knows that those with him cheering him on don't get it. So he sends them ahead of him into Samaria. He intentionally chooses a path that they would be expecting him to avoid, and yet when they get the response that they perhaps should have been allowed to illuminate the divide between the powerful and the marginal in their lives, the way that our religious segregation dismantles our neighborliness, this is the response they give back to Jesus. The disciples James and John saw this. They asked, Lord, do you want us now to call down fire from heaven to destroy them?
Speaker 1:Verse 54. Think about that. Hey Jesus, I know we're heading to Jerusalem, the capital of our oppressed nation that in turn ostracizes Samaritans that live near us, but they were mean to us a little. We should probably burn them to death with holy fire. Am I right?
Speaker 1:Jesus, whose teaching in life is entirely nonviolent, who is preparing to set his face against the powerful and pay the price for that, and his followers, his friends, his people want to call down fire from heaven. See, it's one thing to be resolute in the face of opposition. Sometimes it's another to be resolute when even the people who are cheering you on are pointing you in the wrong direction. And Luke moves through this pretty quickly here. In verse fifty five and six, we read that Jesus turned and rebuked them.
Speaker 1:And then he and the disciples went on to another village. Which by the way is also full of really good advice. Some fights are just not worth having. Now obviously, I think Jesus was not going to call down fire, but this also makes me think that maybe Jesus would have just ignored that Twitter comment and moved on to more productive conversations. Or maybe Jesus would have allowed a disagreement in a friendship to sit and have the space that it needed to breathe rather than push the argument in the moment.
Speaker 1:Maybe Jesus would have listened even when the story someone was telling challenged his views or wasn't completely objective if that meant that person could be heard and loved and honored in the midst of their story and their pain. Maybe Jesus understood that winning wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. At least not when compared to future possibilities. Because maybe taking a stand here against these Samaritans who were only reacting out of their own pain and rejection, maybe that would have sabotaged any future conversations he hoped he could one day have with them. Conversations like the one in chapter 10 where he uses a Samaritan as the image of divine and neighborly love.
Speaker 1:Or maybe the one in John four where he tells a Samaritan woman that the differences in their religious practices really don't matter all that much to God in the end. Or the one in Luke 17 where he heals 10 lepers and the only one who returns to speak with him and learn from him, to follow him and thank him is a Samaritan. See, here's what I think. I think Jesus has the long game in mind here and everywhere. And I think he is more interested in inviting you, enticing you, welcoming you, and then waiting for you.
Speaker 1:And he is in winning you over by beating you in a debate. Trust me, God is not trying to win you. God is trying to love you. And that feels like something that I could learn from at times. Because here's the thing, God knows I love a good fight, and God is slowly trying to free me from that.
Speaker 1:And my guess is that if you are completely honest with yourself, when you look back across your life, you can see all the times that Jesus came near to you with an invitation over and over again, a thousand times before you actually found the courage to set down old wounds and tired objections and actually choose to respond to that offer of grace. Because this is the way of the God of unending second chances and infinite invitations. The God who is so powerful, a God doesn't ever feel the need to overpower you. And you and I who claim to carry that name out into the world, maybe we would do well to learn what it means to model that kind of quiet, confident grace to those that surround us. To know when to walk away when we need to, so that maybe we can come back when we're invited to.
Speaker 1:But let's talk about this fire from heaven quickly here before we wrap up today. Because these disciples here, they're not pulling this out of nowhere. They're actually pulling this from the Hebrew scriptures. In in particular, it comes from a story in first Kings where the prophet Elijah is confronted by a foreign army. And Elijah says, if I am a man of God, may fire come down from Heaven and consume you and your 50 men.
Speaker 1:And then, fire fell from heaven and consumed the captain and his 50 men. In fact, in some of the early manuscripts of Luke, this verse actually reads, Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to destroy them just as Elijah did? And if we back up the story just a little bit to Mark eight, story where we looked at this fall in our strange exchange series, a story about the first time that any of the disciples confessed Jesus as the long awaited Messiah. There, Jesus asks his disciples what people are saying about him. And the disciples reply, well, some say you are John the Baptist returned, others say Elijah.
Speaker 1:So there were people, maybe even some of the disciples who at least early on actually thought that Jesus was Elijah come back or at least a prophet in the vein of Elijah. You know, the kind who might actually use a sky fire. In any case, what's going on here is that James and John are pulling from their scriptural memory. Jesus is a prophet like Elijah, And they're filtering that through their cultural baggage. We hate Samaritans.
Speaker 1:And they're creating in their minds a completely inappropriate interpretation of what Jesus is all about. One that for us sounds on its surface absurd. I mean, of course, Jesus isn't going to go rain a fire on his enemies. We'd never believe that and yet, if we're honest, we do see the ways that we close ranks around powerful men to protect them when credible accusations are made. Thinking that defending them is somehow defending Jesus.
Speaker 1:And then we call down fire from heaven to dig into every corner of a woman's life if she dares to tell her story openly. We see the ways that our LGBTQ siblings are derided and discarded for the audacity of being honest about their best understanding of the way of Jesus, and then we call down fire from heaven to explain God's love to them. We find a thousand ways to decide who's a real Christian and who's not, and often I know I would rather spend my time and energy explaining to you why I'm not like them instead of sitting with the pain that our religion has created for some people in this world, lamenting it properly so that I can actually be part of healing it next. Truth is sometimes I would rather burn the ground around me than do the hard work of planting and cultivating and growing something better. Because scorched earth is always easier than rebuilding broken relationships.
Speaker 1:And maybe that's why Jesus is so resolute here. But he sees our tendency toward violence, and he is confident that he can set us free from it. And so he begins the journey toward Jerusalem. He begins the journey toward Easter. He begins the journey of Lent with us again this year.
Speaker 1:And he sets his face against the mountain of instinct within us that leads us to look for our salvation in fire and retribution. Instead of what might begin to grow from the ashes of what we leave behind when we cultivate the way of Jesus in our lives. May your journey with Christ this Lenten season knowing that God is not, is never out to get you, always there waiting for your invitation to return and to begin all over again on this journey. Let's pray. God who is near to us in a thousand ways that often go unseen by us.
Speaker 1:If we have felt your distance from us, if we have felt our distance from each other, might we recognize that that is sometimes a fault of our perception and your spirit is near even now in this moment, inviting us, drawing us, telling us that we are embraced and loved in this moment. And, God, as we begin this journey toward death and into resurrection, Might you fill us with all the goodness and grace that sits at the center of the universe. All that love that calls us forward. To let old things die and turn to ash so that new life can begin to grow around us. In those moments where scorched earth feels easier, may we recommit ourselves resolutely to the work of planting and cultivating and growing goodness in our lives.
Speaker 1:And as that happens, may we see you everywhere surrounding us. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.