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Pentecost 4, Proper 8C - June 27 2004
H o m i l y G r i t s
The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost Year C
Proper 8C - RC 13 th Sunday Ordinary Time
June 27, 2004
© Copyight 2004 Grant Gallup - permission given for free distribution in fair use or quotation )
Almighty God, you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
¶ Book of Common Prayer lectionary:
1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21 Elijah's mantle on Elisha cast
Psalm 16 Conserva me, Domine
Galatians 5:1, 13-25 You were called to freedom
Luke 9:51-62 To another he said, "Follow me."
Otro Mar
Tú has venido a la orilla,
no has buscado ni a sabios ni a ricos,
tan solo quieres que yo te siga.
You have come to the lakeside,
Seeking neither the wise nor the rich
You only want me to follow.
Señor, me has mirado a los ojos,
sonriendo has dicho mi nombre;
en la arena he dejado mi barca,
junto a Ti buscaré otro mar.
Lord, you have looked into my eyes,
smiling, you have spoken my name;
My boat I have left on the sand there,
And with you I will seek other seas.
Tú sabes bien lo que tengo,
en mi barca no hay oro ni espadas
tan sólo redes y mi trabajo.
You know very well what I have,
In my boat there's no money nor weapons,
But only my nets, and my labor.
Tú necesitas mis manos,
mi cansancio que a otros descanse;
amor que quiera seguir amando.
You need my hands,
My exhaustion that others might rest,
My love that wants to go on loving.
Tú pescador de otros lagos,
ansia eterna de hombre que esperan,
amigo bueno que así me llamas.
You, Fisher of other lakes,
Eternal eagerness of the ones who hope,
Good friend, who thus calls me.
+ + +
Jesus calls us, o'er the tumult
Of our life's wild, restless sea,
Day by day his clear voice soundeth,
Saying, "Christian, follow me."
We have sung both these songs a hundred times and shall sing them a
hundred more: "Junto a Ti buscaré otro mar"--Together with you I'll seek
another Sea." And: "As of old Saint Andrew heard it, by the Galilean lake,
turned from home, and toil, and kindred, leaving all for his dear sake."
Home. . . toil. . . kindred: at some point in our lives each of us has so
met Jesus, and each of us has said to him where we met him on the
lakeshore, "I will follow you wherever you go."
In his "The Quest for the Historical Jesus", Albert Schweitzer tells us
luminously that "He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old
by the lake-side He came to those who knew Him not. He speaks to us the
same word: 'Follow me', and sets us to the same task which He has to
fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they
be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the
sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and as an
ineffable mystery they shall learn in their own experience who He is."
We were all of us eager volunteers, as the one who met Jesus that day near
the Samaritan village on his way up to Jerusalem. Following Jesus was,
perhaps still is, the most enchanting option that life has ever offered
us. We eagerly went to him with resolve, as in the gospel song: "Where he
leads me I will follow", or perhaps we heard W.H. Auden's invitation, "He
is the Way. Follow Him through the land of unlikeness, you will see rare
beasts and have unique adventures." Or we prayed with Martin Luther King
Jr., "Lead me, guide me, guide me along the way. For if you lead me, I
cannot stray. Lord, let me walk this day with thee. Lead me, O Lord lead
me." Or we sang with Martin, "Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let
me stand, lead me on to the light, Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me
on." Our hymnals, like our young and loving hearts, were full of the
promises that we would follow Jesus wherever he leads us. We did not often
stop to listen to Jesus' reply. We were, perhaps still are, too full of
our promises and hopes to listen to his response. Jesus says, "Careful
about your promises, for I am a Wild One, I'm for the open road and the
open sky. Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, and even
all the wild creatures have their dens and hideouts, but this Child of God
is not domesticated, and my gospel is not house-broken. There's a Wildness
in God's Mercy, like the Wildness of the Sea. Now are you sure you want to
follow me after all?"
The hard fact of the matter is that most of us most of the time don't want
to follow Jesus, we want Him to follow us. We would like him to be
available to us as we go on our self-appointed rounds, to keep us safe,
well fed and tucked into warm beds at night, protected on Our way, our
travel maps and plans in our glove compartments, our credit cards at the
ready. We will get our "post it" notes off the refrigerator door and see
what it is we will do today, what we will buy, what we will sell, where we
will go. We will pray the Itinerarium, that God may follow us faithfully,
wherever we go, like Tobit's house dog in the Bible. My dear friend
Malcolm Boyd's prayer puts it the way we prefer: "Are YOU running with ME,
Jesus?" And of course Jesus always is trying to catch up with us, for we
prefer being the mentor and the guide; "Captain is a good travelling name,
and so I take it." We walk less risky perhaps than we did in our salad
days, but even now we respond to his call, as did Augustine in his youth,
"Yes, Lord, but not yet." Or "let me first tend to some housekeeping
details, let me first go and bury my father."
We think this means Jesus had a prospective disciple, whose father had
just died and he was perhaps on the way to the funeral when Jesus said,
"Not important, come along with me." But there's no indication Jesus was
interrupting a funeral here--although he was perfectly capable of it as we
remember from the funeral of the widow of Nain's son, when he cancelled
the undertaker's fee and sent the mourners home. Here Jesus is instead
asking the lad to make a lifestyle decision, not merely to change an
appointment for the afternoon. But the point of urgency is well taken, and
repeated to us in all Bible stories of the Call.
When the patriarch of a family died, the son would take over as the arche,
the ruler of the family, the new pater. So the system still needs
loyalties, cogs for its wheels, gears for the grinding, if it is to
survive, to stay on a roll. Jesus questions, even scoffs at. our
allegiance to the system. Our own investment in the status quo keeps us,
too, from the gospel adventure.
Oh, Martin of Memphis, don't you think you should go back to Atlanta, and
take care of Coretta and the kids? Jon Daniels, get out of Alabama and get
back to seminary in Cambridge! Dorothy Day, what are you doing on the
Lower East Side with that bunch of bums? Get back to the Church of Our
Saviour in Chicago, where you were baptized as a proper Episcopalian, and
join the altar guild there! And Theresa, get out of Calcutta and get back
to Yugoslavia and your family! (Oops, Sorry, Theresa, your homeland's not
there anymore.) And Peter and Paul, have you lost your minds? Paul, you
could have been the Grand Inquisitor, a proto Cardinal Ratzinger! and
Peter, what about your fishing business? Capernaum Catfish could become a
household word, like Starkist Tuna. What are you vagabonds up to? Jesus
says "Follow me." And wants his friends to commit themselves to the good
news for the poor. The eager volunteer, the reluctant draftee, the
apologetic procrastinator, the luxury loving lounge lizard: we are all
alike called to a revolution in our lifestyle, a seismic shift in our
attention, and "the Single Eye", in focus: straight ahead. "Don't look
back,"Satchel Paige used to say, "Something may be gaining on you."
No one who puts hand to the plow and gazes longingly backward is fit to
plant this field. The gospel plow has broken new earth, and opened new
ground ahead of us. There's a muddy field ahead, but "there's another
seasons's promise in the land."
Elisha was tilling his own field when Elijah came to him, and interrupted
the impressive enterprise he had going--twelve yoke of oxen indeed--when
the Man of God came to call and laid the mantle of the prophet across his
shoulders. "Get into politics AND religion, combine prophecy and
priesthood, set up some revolutionary governments, anoint rulers at home
and abroad, train leadership." But Elisha has an agenda of home and toil
and kindred, and says, "Let me first kiss them goodbye." And Elijah says,
"That's your option! The Call didn't come from me! Go back again, for what
have I done to you?"
God asked Elijah to "pull Elisha's coat". God has us preachers pulling
coats in every field, every day. But the Call is to radical discipleship,
not to a wise lateral career move (as Gore Vidal called it when Truman
Capote overdosed on drugs, for it got him back into the headlines). And so
Elisha acted with the Single Eye, and went to break new ground.
"Shall we bid fire from heaven to come down and consume them?"the
disciples ask Jesus when they pass through the territory of the
Samaritans--as alien to the Jersualem Temple as David Koresh and his
Branch Davidians were to Janet Reno and the Justice Department, who called
down fire from heaven upon the dissidents, in graphic apocalyptic images
which still alarm us when we watch the regular reruns, safe and snug in
our TV land as at a vestry meeting. The U.S. now rains down fire from
heaven on all who disagree with its terrorist theology, its preemptive
bullying of the world, its grand theft of the planet's resources.
But Jesus turned and rebuked them: "No fire from heaven! No vengeance! We
don't have time for recrimination. Keep your eye on the prize, Hold on!
Hold on!" Or that other freedom song, "Got my hand on the gospel plow! I
wouldn't take nothin' for my journey now! The only thing that we did
wrong: stayed in the wilderness a day too long! Haven't been to heaven but
I've been told Streets up there are paved with gold! Keep your eye on the
prize! Hold on!"
For Peter and Paul, so many things tried to keep them from leaving their
homes: the rules of Kosher tried to keep them from travel, from alien
homes and clothes and food and language, and culture and custom and even
their creed told them: Stay Home, Stay Safe, stay in Eretz Israel. But
they chose to follow Jesus, not only geographically, but theologically and
ethically, a voyage into outer space. Paul would write one day to the
Galatians what the trip had meant: following Jesus meant freedom. For
Freedom Christ has set us free. And following rules ain't following Jesus,
for freedom is to be of service, and discipleship means love, not lust;
joy, (not 'getting high'), peace (not 'a piece of the action'), patience
(not anxiety), kindness (not cherishing grudges), goodness (not being
quarrelsome), faithfulness (not jealousy), gentleness (not anger),
self-control (not self-ish-ness). And so Paul gives lists of alternatives:
each is a crossroads for decisions about the Call. The consumer mentality
of our society--drummed into us with endless advertising--means that our
youth can sing advertising jingles about owning, eating, or wearing, but
cannot sing the Our Father or the Creed, and certainly not "Solidarity
Forever" or "The Internationale".
"When the days drew near for Jesus to be received up, he set his face to
go to Jerusalem." One day a generation ago in Chicago I saw on the West
Side a beaten up old VW Van, painted bright blue, and emblazoned with the
hand-lettered destination, "Heaven or Bust!" Its passengers were bearded
and bra-less beatniks, barging heir way to glory. Jesus People, they
called themselves. They had the kind of resolution that Jesus had when
Humphrey-Bogarting his way through the Samaritan villages, which would
not, on good ideological grounds or sure sectarian principles, show him
hospitality. A different race, a different church, a different way of
worship. Jesus didn't let the differences keep him from trying--and sent
out disciples AHEAD of him. A vital point. He did not call them to FOLLOW,
but sent them to LEAD. Sometimes to follow Jesus means to be OUT FRONT.
The ecumenical organization of religious people called Witness for Peace
(in Spanish, Acción Permanente por la Paz) in the days of the Reagan War
against Nicaragua in the 1980's, sent hundreds of us into zones of
conflict, to preach peace to them that were afar off, as well as to them
that were nigh. It was a heady experience, and I remember that the
possibility of being killed by a grenade while sailing down the Rio
Escondido on a Contra-targeted river boat didn't frighten me at all,
indeed was exhilarating, but I really got annoyed at the young peacenik
who led us far from the board sidewalk in Bluefields and through a muddy
field, which ruined my shoeshine. We may be ready for heroics, but what
will more likely be asked of us is patience with inconvenience. Witness
for Peace still beckons us to follow Jesus, to Colombia now. And Christian
Peacemaker Teams invites us to the permanent team still waging peace in
Baghdad. .
John tells us Jesus carried his own cross-bar for the cross, from the
Gabbatha to the Golgotha, but the synoptics have another story, and for
them the last person called to follow the historical Jesus was Simon of
Cyrene, whom the cohort--the military unit assigned to crucify Jesus--met
"coming out of the country". Jesus did not "call" Simon to follow him, but
soldiers impressed him into discipleship, for Luke tells us the soldiers
"seized him and laid the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus."
Mark reminds us that we know him--he's "the father of Alexander and
Rufus", so apparently he went on to choose discipleship, too, along with
his sons. And a great many people followed this procession, which even
today continues down the winding streets of old Jerusalem. The
African-American poet, Countee Cullen, wrote of Simon's meeting with Jesus
on the Via Dolorosa:
"He never spoke a word to me,
And yet He called my name;
He never gave a sign to me,
And yet I knew he came.
At first I said, 'I will not bear
His cross upon my back;
He only seeks to place it there
Because my skin is black."
But He was dying for a dream,
And He was very meek.
And in His eyes there shone a gleam
Men journey far to seek.
It was Himself my pity bought,
I did for Christ alone
What all of Rome could not have wrought
With bruise or lash or stone."
Pity--compassion--chesed--steadfast love--the movement in a mother's
womb--is what the poet identifies as our first movement towards the
Crucified One. It is our Call to follow him. At the Church of the
Ascension in Chicago, there is a magnificent crucifix on the front of the
Church, which looks down upon a busy street, "where cross the crowded ways
of life", and under it is carved the appeal from the Lamentations: "Is it
nothing to you, all you who pass by?". The rebuke expressed there, to all
of us who so easily avert our eyes from suffering, whoavoid the crucifix
for its hideous ikon of capitalist punishment, still enthusiastically
practiced in America today--that rebuke of Jesus reverberates in every
death chamber we have furnished with our revenge. It reverberates in every
land where the Pax Americana has imposed terror and planted its crucifix
on Terre Haute--"high ground", the high ground of arrogance. Did we
connect to U.S. Christianity the obscenity of the terrorized prisoner at
Abu Gahrib hooded like a klansman, strung up to electricity, standing
cruciform on a box in the Golgotha we call liberated Iraq?.
Can we follow Jesus into a future where following him will mean that the
only crucifix we ever see again is his?
GRANT M. GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
gallup@tmx.com.ni
GRITS 3rd series now on-line: http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits