Going along the road with Jesus – 28 June 2013

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” [Luke 9:57-62]

These sayings challenge us at the sensitive point of our readiness and willingness to let go of things.  Jesus is walking along the road.  Various people would rather like to go with him.  To understand this we really do need to suspend our literal compulsions for a while.  It pays to have a feeling for poetry and imagery.  To one seeker Jesus starkly says that foxes and birds have homes, however simple, but Jesus doesn’t.  Not even the Old Time Religion.  It’s a journey and the landscape changes.  There may not be a settled theology or belief any more, or a church you can call a home – or a clear notion of what it’s all about.  It may be that Jesus’s disciple on the road has had to let go of some of these expectations in order to move on. 

Another seeker seems to say that he will have more time for all this once he has got his elderly father off his hands.  Then he will be freer -- or maybe it’s that then he wouldn’t have to suffer the old man’s disapproval.  A third seeker wants merely to go home first and say goodbye.  Reasonable, one might think.   It reflects a culture such as ours, in which any suggestion that family, team or one’s mates, or whanau may not come first is incomprehensible.  Blood is thicker than water... whatever that means.  Mates do not split on mates.  Family closes ranks and withholds vital information from the police, because family of course outranks what is right or true.  We assume this kind of priority... until Jesus comes down the road and says there is a higher priority, something truer.

Walking with him is a pilgrimage of letting go, discovering and understanding how we can live more simply and with more integrity, and how we can travel lighter in various ways. We remember the landscape we have passed, but we are not there any more.  Certainly, possessions are among the first to come up for review, although we may still be surrounded by them and enjoy them – we discover that we are looking at them differently.  Family relationships come to be seen in context, in perspective, for what they are – and what they are of course includes gratitude for the past and all its lessons.  It is very much an increased ability and willingness to live in the present moment.