Note: I have preached on this passage four times now; some things evolve, others do not. This message is a direct reworking of the message I preached at Warsaw EPC in October 2019.
The title of this message is Follow Me!; there are two reasons for that. One, that is everything in this passage. If you wanted to sum it up in one sentence, that would be it. Two, while it might seem to you that I’ve just said something boringly obvious, it actually means a lot more than you might realize on a surface reading. Indeed, it means everything, as I hope you will see. To that end, those of you who know me well will not be surprised—indeed, I’m sure many of you are confidently expecting—to hear me draw on the work of Dr. Kenneth Bailey more than once this morning. For those of you who don’t, feel free to ask me afterward.
The first thing we need to understand here is that this is the hinge of the gospel of Luke. To this point, Jesus has had a spectacular ministry career. He’s established himself as a teacher who speaks with authority, he’s done stunning miracles—everything is rolling along beautifully. And then, instead of capitalizing on his success as any smart preacher would, Jesus tossed it all aside and—as Rich Mullins put it—“set his face like a flint toward Jerusalem.” This begins the section of Luke commonly known as the Travel Narrative, which continues into chapter 19. In these chapters, every interaction and every incident happens on the way to the cross.
Jesus’ decision to turn toward Jerusalem immediately starts to clarify two things. One, it forces others to make their own decision for or against him. Huge crowds are following Jesus not because Jesus but because, hey, free food, free miracles—you can’t beat it. That’s not the kind of follower he wants. I’ve said one purpose of the Sermon on the Mount is to drive a wedge between those who are willing to follow him as Lord and those who aren’t, to force people to pick a lane. What Jesus does there with his teaching, he does here by his action.
Two, this helps us see what truly matters and what doesn’t, because Jesus will not bend to cultural expectations. Between him and his goal, between Jewish Galilee and the Jewish capital, lay Samaria. Jews despised the people of Samaria even more than the Samaritans despised them, to the point that Jews would commonly take the long way between Jerusalem and Galilee, a route which ran almost entirely through Gentile territory, to avoid passing through Samaria. Jesus has no such qualms. He is going to Jerusalem, and he will not turn aside to the right or the left. Not only does he not avoid Samaria, he reaches out to Samaritans for hospitality.
So, Jesus doesn’t defer to the cultural expectations of Jews—including those of his disciples, though if they offered any objection, it isn’t recorded. Does this mean he’s on the side of the Samaritans? Why, no. No, it doesn’t. He doesn’t reject the Samaritans, but that only gives them the opportunity to reject him. Why? “Because his face was set toward Jerusalem.” He wasn’t coming to them on their terms to support their agenda, so they wanted no part of him. Jesus doesn’t judge them, because this isn’t the time for judgment; he also doesn’t accommodate them or try to change their minds. He simply accepts their rejection and moves on. He lets them be and refuses to let their opposition deflect him from his purpose.
That said, while the expectations of those around Jesus clearly don’t matter a whit, the people themselves do. He won’t let the people he encounters on the way sidetrack him or slow him down, but he doesn’t see them as interruptions. Rather, they are part of the purpose of his journey; each person is the reason he is in that particular place at that particular time. As Brian Stelck put it in a chapel sermon during my time at Regent, Jesus understood that ministry is what happens when you’re on the way to somewhere else.
That doesn’t mean Jesus makes the encounter easy or comfortable for any of them. Far from it. Jesus is unreasonable, on our terms, and what he asks of us is unreasonable. He intends to leave each one who encounters him with only two choices: all or nothing. Either build your life entirely on Jesus or build somewhere else altogether. He makes this painfully clear in these three encounters in verses 57-62.
His message to the first man is that following Jesus means abandoning our minimum standards. This guy volunteers in grandiose terms: “I will follow you wherever you go.” No limits, no exceptions, no fine print. Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will follow. But remember, Jesus is the rising star; if he’s heading to Jerusalem, it must be to figure out where he wants to plant his megachurch, and this guy’s angling for a position on the staff. Would he have said “wherever you go” if he’d known Jesus had his GPS locked on Skull Hill? I doubt it.
Notably, so does Jesus. Instead of welcoming this guy aboard, he responds, “Foxes have their dens, and the birds of the air have roosts, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” It’s a powerful picture of poverty and rejection: even the animals and the birds have someplace to rest, but Jesus has nothing. This man would have to give up his social position and all assurance of comfort and safety for the uncomfortable, risky life of a vagabond.
This was inconceivable. People were saying this Jesus might be the long-awaited Messiah—the Messiah couldn’t be a homeless man, could he? But though no one saw it coming, he had to be. Rich Mullins put it clearly in his song “You Did Not Have a Home”:
The world can’t find what it thinks it wants on the back of an ass’s foal,
So I guess you had to get sold,
’Cause the world can’t stand what it cannot own
And it can’t own you ’cause you did not have a home.
If Jesus had had a home, a wife, a job, he would have been part of the system. The world would have owned a piece of him, and that would have given it leverage. Instead, he was outside the economic and political system, a free radical with no handles for anyone to grab. The only thing the authorities could take from him was his life, and that was part of his plan. Jesus’ powerlessness was necessary to his power.
Luke doesn’t tell us how this would-be volunteer responded. Instead the gospel dumps the question in our laps, leaving us to wrestle with it, and moves on to the next encounter. It’s easy to tell ourselves we aren’t that guy, but . . . really? This man had his expectations of God—what God should give him, what God could reasonably ask him to give up—and so do we. To tell Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go,” which is the commitment he asks of us, means committing to follow him even if that means giving up everything, and even if we get none of the rewards we want in return. It means letting go of our fallback plans and hanging on for dear life, accepting that we don’t get to decide where we end up. Or, for that matter, how we get there. Honestly, as stubborn and willfully obtuse as a lot of us are—I love you all, but I know you well enough to know I’m not the only one in the room—we should fall on our faces in gratitude every morning that God isn’t giving us the Jonah treatment and making us travel by fish.
Now, whatever his warts, whatever his naïveté, the first guy is at least a willing volunteer. The second one isn’t—he’s a recruit, and he’s none too keen on the recruiter. That’s easy for us to miss, because to our Western ears his response seems fair: “OK, Jesus, but my dad’s funeral is this afternoon. Once we’re done at the graveside, I’ll catch up with you.” Thing is, that’s not actually what he’s saying, as Bailey’s work makes clear. To give a ridiculously brief summary for those who haven’t heard this from me before, Dr. Kenneth E. Bailey was a Presbyterian missionary and New Testament scholar who spent decades writing about the Bible—primarily the gospels, particularly the parables—from inside a culture much like Jesus’ own.
Bailey quotes the 20th-century Egyptian Christian scholar Dr. Ibrāhīm Sa‘īd who writes, “If his father had really died, why then was he not at that very moment keeping vigil over the body of his father? In reality he intends to defer the matter of following Jesus to a distant future when his father dies as an old man.” Bailey adds, “The phrase ‘to bury one’s father’ is a traditional idiom that refers specifically to the duty of the son to remain at home and care for his parents until they are laid to rest.”
In other words, however sincerely, this man is speaking as a respectful son and a responsible member of society. Remember, back then, retirement plans weren’t called IRAs and 401(k)s, they were called “children.” If he defaults on his duty to care for his parents in their old age, what happens? Well, they die of neglect unless—what would actually happen—the village takes on the responsibility of supporting them, which makes every other family in town poorer. Jesus knows this, and his recruit knows Jesus knows it. He tells Jesus, “Be reasonable.”
Jesus says—I’m paraphrasing here—“No.” The message to this man is that following Jesus means setting aside all the claims society makes on us. It means denying the expectations our society lays on us, even knowing full well that’s really going to honk a lot of people off. This is part of the subtext of this guy’s response: if he goes off with Jesus, he’ll probably never be able to go home again, because everyone in his village is going to spit at the mention of his name. They’re going to loathe and despise him as selfish, irresponsible, and faithless, and if he ever shows his face there again, they’re probably going to throw things at him until he goes away. Jesus says, “If you follow me instead of them, people will hate you for it. People you care about will hate you for it, and they’ll call you a hater. They’ll do much worse than that to you. Let them. Follow me anyway.”
The third encounter builds on the themes of the first two. This man presents himself as a volunteer, but he’s a fraud. His request is usually translated as “Let me go say goodbye,” but what he actually says is, “Let me take leave,” and the difference is critical. In that culture, the one leaving would ask permission to go from those who were staying; this was “taking leave.” Those who were staying would say goodbye. Thus, for instance, a dinner guest who desired to go home would say, “With your permission?” The hosts would respond, “God go with you,” or, “May you go in peace,” or something else of that nature.
In other words, this guy says, “I’ll follow you, Lord—just as soon as I go home and get permission from my parents.” They of course will refuse to allow him to do any such crazy thing, so he can claim he wants to follow Jesus without actually having to, you know, follow Jesus. After all, his father’s authority over him was obviously higher than Jesus’ authority, so of course he would have to have his father’s permission to follow Jesus.
Jesus responds with a brief parable. Plowing was done with a light wooden plow worked with the left hand. The right hand held the goad to keep the oxen moving; with the left, one kept the plow upright, held it at the proper depth, lifted it over stones in the field, and kept it straight. This took careful attention and skill lest the plow catch on a rock, cut back into previously-plowed ground and destroy work already done, or veer the other way, making the next furrows more difficult. A mistake could damage the field’s drainage or leave seeds exposed for birds to eat. Plowing required intense focus to work in harmony with the oxen, with the work already done, and with the work that remained to be done. A distracted plowman could not maintain this harmony; in fact, he could easily destroy it, ruining an entire year’s work.
Jesus’ point is clear: following Jesus means following only Jesus. He calls for a single-minded, single-hearted commitment, with a single focus. He wants us to be all in, nothing less. As a lifelong Seattle sports fan, I can tell you the Seahawks have presented something of an acted parable on the importance of being all in. That was Pete Carroll’s rallying cry from the day he took over the franchise in 2010. By 2013 the team was all in, and they won the Super Bowl. As that commitment fractured and splintered, they went from Super Bowl champions to Super Bowl losers to out of the playoffs altogether, then dumped half their best players to try to make it possible to rebuild that commitment. It didn’t work, and eventually Pete was let go. If being single-minded and single-hearted matters in football, how much more in following Jesus?
The basis for that singular commitment is Jesus’ demand that we accept him as the only authority in our lives. In that culture, parental authority was absolute and family loyalty was of ultimate importance, so that’s where the challenge lay. Dr. Bailey recalls a class of Middle Eastern seminary students turning pale when they heard this passage preached and realized Jesus was claiming a higher authority than their fathers—the idea was that shocking and disturbing. Our society, of course, looks to other authorities. If it recognizes any as absolute, it would probably be desire, especially sexual desire, because our culture believes our desires define our identity. The authority of our political tribes, our Red Tribe and our Blue Tribe, is right up there, too. We could go on, but Jesus pulls rank on all of them. There’s no room for divided loyalties in the kingdom of God, and no other authorities for whom he will make allowances. Jesus’ call trumps everything, including Trump and all this world’s trumps, and that’s all there is to that.
If we say, “Jesus, I’ll follow you, but not that far—I’d lose my job and go broke,” he says, “The Son of Man has no place to lay his head. You follow me.” If we say, “Jesus, I’ll follow you, but you have to be reasonable! If you ask me to do that, my parents will never speak to me again, I’ll offend all my family and lose all my friends,” he says, “Let the dead bury their dead. You go proclaim the kingdom of God.” If we say, “Jesus, I’ll follow you, but I’m not going to let go of this desire, or this plan, or this relationship—you’ll just have to be OK with it,” he says, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
That’s hard. But remember Jesus calls himself the good shepherd, and think about what that means. We aren’t striking a bargain to follow him if [fill in the blank]. He calls us to follow him regardless, like sheep. Sheep are radical followers. They don’t try to navigate, or ask to take side trips. They don’t complain about what pasture they’re led to, or what water source. They don’t argue about what qualifies as food. Sheep trust that where and how the shepherd leads them is what’s best for them, even when that means going through narrow canyons black with shade. They trust the shepherd to want what’s best for them and to know what that is better than they do, and because of that, they follow wherever he leads. Jesus wants us to trust him like sheep. Is he good? Yes. Is it hard? Yes—but he is good. Will we suffer? Yes, sometimes—but he is good. Will the road be dark? Yes, for a while—but he is good. Will we get what we want out of life? Maybe not—but he is good. Will we face trials? Yes—but he is good. Will we have to walk the road alone? Never, because he is good. His call to follow him alone because he is God is, at bottom, an invitation to trust him above all others because he is good.
Photo © 2011 Joan Campderrós-i-Canas. License: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.