Fifth Pentecost

              July 1, 2007

     A husband and wife were driving down a country road on their way to visit some friends.  They came to a muddy patch in the middle of the unpaved lane and the car got stuck in the mud.  After a few minutes of spinning, trying to get out of the muck, they looked up to see a young farmer coming down the road driving a team of mules.

     The farmer stopped when he saw the couple in trouble and offered to pull the car out of the mud for $50.  The husband accepted the deal and in a few minutes the car was free.  The farmer turned to the husband and said, “You know, you’re the tenth car I’ve helped out of the mud today.”

     The husband looked around at the fields incredulously and asked the farmer, “When do you have time to plough and tend your land…at night?”

     “Nah,” the young farmer said seriously, “Night is when I put the water in the hole.”

     People who are committed to living off the land usually find a way to make ends meet.  As you know, farmers are a vanishing breed in our country.

     I haven’t really counted them but I’m always pleasantly surprised at the number of times the Lord of this life and the life that is to come used examples from farmers and farming to make a point about what God’s Kingdom is like and what it takes to strive to enter therein.  Today’s Gospel is yet another example. 

     The invitation is to follow him.  His voice is clear and strong.  He does not deceive or manipulate anyone into joining the caravan.  He tries, through these examples, to make sure that anyone who takes him up on his offer understands the nature and the cost of discipleship.  Nothing, absolutely nothing, can come before that radical demand.

     Sometimes, the route through which he leads the caravan goes into enemy territory.  The fastest route from Galilee to Jerusalem led through Samaria.  Most pious Jews and especially the rabbis avoided that route like the plague.  They went miles out of their way to avoid any contact with despised, unclean Samaritans.  That Jesus took that route says much about his mission and message and it places before those who would travel with him a clear challenge.  It has something to do with relationships, with enemies, with reconciliation, and with keeping the destination clearly in focus.  It has a lot to say to modern followers about tolerance, about quick judgments, and about assuming we know the mind of God.  It seems we live in a time of intolerance, when people make instantaneous judgments based on some external observation, and when charlatans from the right and left claim to be speaking for God.

     John Wesley, while being very clear about the need to take discipleship seriously, was also a model of religious tolerance.  He wrote, “I have no more right to object to a man for holding a different opinion from mine than I have to differ with a man because he wears a wig and I wear my own hair.”

When his nephew Samuel, the son of his brother Charles, entered the Roman Catholic Church, John Wesley wrote this to him, “Whether in this church or that one I care not.  You may be saved in either or damned in either.  In any case you must love the Lord and follow him at all cost.”

     Let me again make the claim!  God is as available and as present in the Episcopal Church as any you will find.  It may not look or feel the way you want it to but you need to remember that the Kingdom and the presence of God is never based on how you feel or on your own finite, flawed opinions.  I pray for the day when we can stop the backbiting and name-calling and get on with the work God in Christ calls us to do.

     If we travel with him, he asks that we do three things.  First, we are asked to count the cost.  We cannot place our own comfort, our social standing, or our material possessions as first priority in our lives.  We may well be allowed to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, but if that is the first thing we read each morning, it will be difficult to hear his clear, strong voice saying, “Follow me.”

     Spending some time in prayer, meditation, and reading the Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families every day just might enable us to hear and follow the one who said, “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 

     Secondly, we are asked to reorder our priorities.  Living the Spirit-filled life must be first priority.  The man who said, “I will follow you, but first let me go and bury my father,” was in jeopardy of missing a crucial moment in life.  What the man was asking was that he be allowed to postpone his discipleship until after his father had died and he had fulfilled his worldly duties.  The man to whom Jesus responded about letting the dead bury the dead had stirrings in his heart to get out of his spiritually dead surroundings.  If he missed that crucial moment, it might never come again.

     Thirdly, we are asked to keep our eye on our destination.  Having done some plowing behind a mule I can attest to the truth of never looking where you’ve been, but where you’re heading.  No plowman ever plowed a straight furrow by looking where he’s come from, but by looking at a landmark at the end of the field. 

     There are those who live in the past.  They walk forever looking backward, instead of allowing the past to inform and direct the present journey.  Thinking wistfully about some golden age usually means we miss the nuggets and gems that surround us in the here and now.  Some believe they had God in the proper box in 1928 or when only men could be priests and bishops.  It is as true in the life of the Body of Christ which we call the Church as it is in society in general that there is something in the human spirit that will never settle of partial legitimacy.  To say that one cannot serve in the leadership of the church because one happens to have been born a female is exactly the same thing as saying one cannot vote because they happen to have been born with black skin.  And if you attempt to justify either on the basis of scripture or human reason you will constantly be confounded and confronted and you will find human beings’ marching until total humanity is granted.

     If we travel with this one called Jesus the Christ, then we march toward the sunrise, not the sunset.  The watchword is not “retreat,” but “ultreaya,” onward and upward.

     Is it your desire to walk with him?  Then count the cost, reorder your priorities, and keep your eye on the destination.  That way we won’t have to keep putting water in the hole.  Amen.   

                                             ~The Rev. G. Thomas Mustard