Rev.  Dr. Jon Smoot  

 

As I begin my ministry with you I am acutely aware of the fact that you will be scoping me out, even as learn about what makes you tick (and ticked off!) as a congregation. This is as it should be – but it does create some anxiety on your part, as well as mine – you may have heard that pastors often have a recurrent nightmare – the pastor finds her or himself naked in the pulpit Sunday morning, and with no notes or sermon. I had a dream two weeks ago about my first sermon with you: I was preaching to you on the importance of the color yellow, and of all of the things in the world that are yellow. Freud would have a field day with that…  

 

One of the major developmental tasks an Interim pastor is to undertake while journeying with a church is to together discern a new congregational identity. I believe that this is especially important for you – You’ve had excellent leadership for a long time. However, this church is 51 years old, and is entering a form of mid-life. We are asking ourselves, “Who are we?” “Where are we going?” This is what we get to work on, together as we prepare you, the church for your next incarnation of work and worship. This means that at one level I get to affirm and/or challenge your behavioral and organizational self-understanding leading to greater vitality. But frankly, at a more profound and satisfying level it means that I get to explore with you your identity and my identity as followers of Jesus Christ. Today’s text from Luke signals a major transition point in the gospel, but mainly it points to our identity as followers of Jesus and what that looks like. All along the way in the gospel Jesus has been telling us that he can lead us to the life that we desperately want and need, but we keep losing it, because we invariably stop to secure it and nail it down. So often faith feels like a win or lose gig – as if we’re either complete bumbling failures, or we’re golden – Hard to know we’re doing…

 

I’ve often felt that it would be nice to have some spiritual progress chart. I’ve always wanted, but also strongly resisted the idea of levels or ranks, or badges in the Christian life – but it’s tempting – I mean, the Boy Scouts have a clear way to advance from Tenderfoot to Eagle Scout (I barely passed Tenderfoot; the Scoutmaster of our little “F Troop” breathed a sigh of relief when I found something else to do.) The Masons have something like 46 levels with a secret handshake and everything. There are pay scales and rankings at work – so why not Christianity? Wouldn’t that be so much easier – little golden stars on your cosmic chart for attendance, for playing well with others, keeping up your pledge, etc? Man, is that tempting.

 

To help explain this text, I’m going to risk using level imagery for the Christian Life – something I ordinarily resist because it may feed the sense of our being a club – and God knows the damage that occurs when religious traditions feel like a club; folk feeling in or out – if you’re the in-crowd, you get smug and dangerous – just look at the world today and all of its heartache. If you’re on the “outs,” well, we all know what that can feel like..

 

Let me suggest that the Christian life has really just two levels or intensities. I assume that most of us here today are Level One people. That happened when we, at some point, cried out to God in Christ that we couldn’t do this on our own anymore, and didn’t want to. That’s the beginning of trust – God, in Christ has ransomed us, and restored our broken relationship with God. Congratulations – put up THE gold star – your redemption is secured. It’s a done deal. Call Level One: “I belong to God” – and it’s true. In life and in death you belong to God. Period. Nothing and no one can ever, ever take that away from you.

 

Yet here’s this hardball text from Jesus – Jesus, who with a hopeful look on his face – slides a piece of paper across the desk for our signature. Uh oh. Thought it was a done deal. Well it is – if that’s as far as you want to go with it all. These Level One disciples in our text want to follow, and Jesus looks each one square in the heart and eye and spells out the conditions for moving from Level One to Level Two.  I’ll define Level Two for you in a moment, but first hear this: Following Jesus is not about some destination or goal. His journey and ours to death and resurrection is not a geographical journey – it’s a journey of the heart and the will. It’s not about arriving anywhere at all. The process of deepening trust and intimacy is the goal.

 

The common thread in the invitation to these Level One disciples is about letting go – to leave behind some crippling fear, or sense of duty, or feeling of control. Jesus knows that letting go is probably the hardest, yet most important lesson to learn as a human being. For the first disciple in our story, the fear is that of homelessness, of not belonging anywhere, to anyone. Jesus says to him, in effect, “you want to follow me? Don’t plan on digging yourself some foxhole.” “Don’t try to nail down securities for your self – chiefly expressed in relationships.” Jesus demands the priority over the best, not the worst of our relationships. Many of us are reluctant to break the habit of clutching onto others, be it our children leaving for college or military service, or grasping onto spouses and partners, or friends. And isn’t it true that when others do not respond as we would like to us or to our overtures, we get our backs up like James and John toward the unresponsive Samaritans and say, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them? – Hell hath no fury….”

 

But the most amazing thing is that those who choose to break the habit of holding onto others for identity and security have found the distance necessary to truly love and support those closest to us. To love them enough to let them go, and receive them back as a gift. The sense of home and belongingness that we crave from others is nested in the journey of intimacy with God, and not in the relational foxholes that we dig.

 

The second and third hopeful disciples have reasonable replies to Jesus’ invitation: “First let me go and bury my father.” And “First let me go home and say goodbye.” That’s just family values, right? Jesus speaks to their hearts and their delaying tactics. So many of us find it hard to follow because we can’t get past our grief – our sense of what or whom we’re leaving behind on the journey. It’s hard to follow when we can’t say goodbye to a place of the heart. And so we find it easier to grieve a potential loss than it is to hope. It is easier to look backwards on what we think we’re losing – than it is to set our face forward towards all that God has in store for us, and for those whom we love.

 

This is especially important and relevant as we together begin this interim journey. As a church there are many goodbyes to former places of the heart or understandings – but more importantly, now is also the opportunity to develop the joy and expectancy of what new and creative and fresh thing it is that God has in store for BHPC. 

 

You see, Jesus is saying to us in this text: “You who have come awake and alive to the love and reign of God should preoccupy yourselves with Life! Don’t look backwards to the dead relationships, the stale strategies and memories; don’t hold onto the lifeless corpse of traditions and prejudices and rubrics that cannot sustain you. In your heart, and sometimes with your feet, walk away from those things or people that steal life, and set your faces forward to engage and embrace Life in all of its fullness.”

 That’s tough enough! But now comes the potential deal-breaker: To the one who first wants to go back and settle affairs with family and friends, Jesus drops the bombshell: “No one who puts their hand to the plow and looks back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” We so want this to be hyperbole and over-statement. If not, we might as well pack it in and go home. What are we supposed to make of this? Let me offer to you my own translation of the text here – because I feel it makes more sense to us non-agrarian types: “No one who takes seriously the reign and claim of God, and is forever looking back, is yet ready for Level Two discipleship.”

 

If Level One is, “I belong to God,” Level Two logically follows. Level Two is “I am not my own. I am not my own deity, or compass, or GPS. I have been bought with an unimaginable  price: My heart and my choices, my dreams and failures and relationships now belong to and securely lodged with, God. God is God, and I am not. God is free to do with me and in me whatever it is God wants. God is free to open me up to fearlessly love others and God’s world.”

 

Level Two followers know that they don’t have all the right answers, but are developing right relationships to God and to others. Level Two followers understand how the world works; know about hospitality and inclusion, justice and compassion, patience and love, listening and grace, adoration and beauty; they know that other people to be respected and befriended; especially the ones I can’t get anything out of. Level Two followers know that the earth is a marvelously intricate gift to be cared for and enjoyed. And, above all, they know that God is the ever-present center, a never-diminishing reality, an all encompassing love.

 

So, when Jesus slides the paper over to you, and it feels like you are signing your life away, know that you have just secured it. God makes you God’s own child and becomes responsible for you. And God will move heaven and earth to guide and provide for you. So, as your interim pastor and your friend, I urge us all to keep it real with God and with others. To the degree that you can, assisted by the Holy Spirit, strip away the pretence and the pride before God your maker and before one another. To the degree that you can, assisted by the Holy Spirit, let go of your fears, and follow the voice of Jesus – and then watch with amazement where he leads you and this church: out of addiction and into grace; out of fear and into love; out of bondage to broken relationships and into freedom and reconciliation; out of missed chances and into right and good yearning for more.

 

My new friends, you are not your own – you have been bought by God with a price, and set free. Jesus says to us all: “Go and be the reign of God – Be a good news person.” Be the aroma of irrepressible life in the midst of political machinations, school board decisions, your workplace. Be the fragrance of grace in the midst of children, in the midst of the aged, in the midst of public policy decision-making, in the midst of health crises, in the midst of racial tensions or sexual orientation tensions. Be the fragrance of grace that you are!

 

And is there a Level Three? Nope – just an ever-deepening walk in God’s grace, God’s freedom, and God’s hope, as we more and more become the joyful community of spiritual friends.  I’m excited for you and grateful to be along with you for this ride.  

Amen.