Luke 9:51-62
A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Dr. Howard W. Boswell, Jr.
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 27, 2010
Kenmore Presbyterian Church
Kenmore, New York
As I said last Sunday, my Dad grew up in the rural South, North Carolina, to be precise, during the Thirties and Forties. When Dad was only a child, his father died. After a while, his mother moved to Washington, D.C. to find work. Along with his sisters and brothers, he went to live on his grandparents’ farm, which I visited a few times on our way to Myrtle Beach as a child.
My dad and his brothers and sisters worked the farm and, as I found out, their grandfather hired them out to surrounding farms. In those days, when you plowed a field, you didn’t use a tractor. Instead, you used a mule, or a team of mules. Now, mules may be among the most ornery creatures ever made. A cross between a horse and a donkey, they are stupid and mean. To plow a straight furrow with a mule took strength of body to hold on to the plow, strength of will to steer the mule, and strength of mind to maintain focus on a point in the distance.
To the third would-be follower who came to him, Jesus said, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Those words reminded me what my father learned from plowing fields with mules. These lessons might teach us about how to follow Christ without being distracted from our destiny in him.
We learn the first lesson about how to live our lives as disciples in Luke 9:51, “When the days drew near for (Jesus) to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Luke frames everything from here until Jesus enters Jerusalem as a journey. While Jesus makes stops along the way, he remains focused on Jerusalem and what will happen there. He keeps the cross and the empty tomb before him every step of the way.
Now, I’ve never plowed a field, but I understand that in order to make straight furrows, one has to focus on a point of reference and never lose sight of it. As followers of Jesus, he is that point of reference for us. In Philippians 3: 12-14, Paul admits he has not yet reached the goal. Yet, he affirms:
I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Paul’s words remind me of an African-American Spiritual, “Eyes on the Prize.” One verse says:
I got my hand on the gospel plow
Won’t take nothing for my journey now
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on
Yet, all of us know how difficult it is to keep our eyes on the prize. Our hand keeps slipping of that gospel plow. We find it hard to hold on. Here’s where we can learn a lot from plowing a field with a mule!
The first lesson is: “Never get mad at the mule!” No matter how ornery a mule is, you gain absolutely nothing by getting angry at it, because it is, well, ornery! Remember what I said, mules are mean and stupid! They define dumb animal! The only thing likely to happen if you kick a mule is the mule will kick back. From what I gather, mules kick much harder than we do.
Sometimes, we encounter people who are like mules. You know, they’re just plain ornery, like the ones Jesus’ advance team encounter in that Samaritan village. A lot of painful history passed between Samaritans and Jews. They hated each other, so no wonder when the villagers rejected Jesus, James and John offered to give them the first century equivalent of a shock and awe campaign. These sons of thunder suggest in The Message: “Master, do you want us to call a bolt of lightning down out of the sky and incinerate them?” Instead, Jesus rebukes them and keeps on moving.
We need to remember while Jesus commanded people to come after him, he never coerced them. He invited men and women to follow him, but he never insisted they do. Instead, throughout his ministry, Jesus practiced what some call “detaching with love” from those who rejected him. He remained free to follow God’s call, to keep his face set toward Jerusalem, and left them free to follow their choice and experience its consequences.
I wish contemporary followers of Jesus could learn this from the Master. We gain nothing by giving people a hard time for rejecting the good news. It grieves me when I hear voices raised in anger to announce the good news by saying how our nation is in trouble, because we’ve rejected our Christian principles. Wouldn’t it make more sense to speak the truth in love? Wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on compassion for others rather than condemnation? Remember: Never get mad at the mule!
Plowing a field with a mule teaches us another important listen about discipleship. We should not take it lightly, like the first would-be follower who comes to Jesus, breathless, saying, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus reminds him of the costs of following him. While the New Revised Standard Version may sound more familiar, The Message startles us into awareness, saying, “Are you ready to rough it? We’re not staying in the best inns, you know.” Remember I said plowing a field takes “strength of body to hold on to the plow, strength of will to steer the mule, and strength of mind to maintain focus on a point in the distance.” To follow Jesus requires similar strength. He reminds us it takes everything we have when he says, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
On Tuesday night, I spoke with Elizabeth, an old friend from my Doctor of Ministry group at San Francisco. I told her about our recent Natural Church Development Survey and our limiting factor of Passionate Spirituality. Now, Elizabeth taught spirituality at the Southern Campus of San Francisco and she is a spiritual director. I listen when she speaks about spirituality. She said the problem is many people don’t understand how difficult it really is to live spiritual lives. I agree, because we live in a time when convenience comes before commitment in congregations, when people seek quick fixes, rather than long term healing.
One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors may be A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society by Eugene H. Peterson. He takes the title from an unlikely source, the atheist Frederick Nietzche, who wrote in Beyond Good and Evil, “The essential thing ‘in heaven and earth’… is that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.” Jesus knows following him requires such surrender for the long haul. Just as a field takes hours, even days of hard work to plow, life in Christ cannot be fruitful, if it’s only a passing fad.
The third lesson about plowing a field with a mule is keep moving forward. You can’t keep going over the same ground again. You have to leave the past behind you. Jesus comes across a person along the way and he invites him to follow him. Well, the man says, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Now, it appears to be a reasonable request. In that society, the duty to the dead was considered sacred. Yet, Jesus answers in a way that seems less than compassionate, maybe even a little cruel.
Yet, in The Message, Peterson pulls out the meaning in what Jesus said, “First things first. Your business is life, not death. And life is urgent: Announce God’s kingdom!” For many of us, we forget to keep first things first. We focus more on death than life. We keep going over past hurts until the pain prevents us from any forward movement. We put off Jesus’ call, because we still have guilt over what we did. No place do we find more truth in Peterson’s paraphrase than in the church of Jesus Christ. We forget how urgent life is; we forget our business is life, not death. We fail to recall our first chief end: “the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind.” Unless things change, they will list the cause of death for this church and others like it as “Forgot to live!”
I’ve already suggested the final lesson we can learn about following Christ from plowing a field with a mule near the beginning of this sermon. Remember I said, “in order to make straight furrows, one has to focus on a point of reference and never lose sight of it.” When one plows, one ought never look back, because one will lose sight of the point of reference. The same lesson applies when running a race. Many runners, riders, and drivers lose and even crash, when they pause to check what’s behind them.
The last would-be follower of Jesus is like the first, eager to follow him, except he has other things on his mind. Peterson really captures what we would say, if Jesus called us today, “I’m ready to follow you, Master, but first excuse me while I get things straightened out at home.” We have so many things we have to look after, so many people depending on us, Lord, really we’d love to follow you, but we have to take care of them, then we’ll get back to you. Yet, we know how Jesus answers in the New Revised Standard Version, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” Peterson puts it in plain language, “No procrastination. No backward looks. You can’t put God’s kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day.”
“Seize the day!” Carpe diem! The only time when we can follow Jesus is now. The only place to which he leads us is the kingdom of God. Listen, I know life happens. Sometimes, we can feel exhausted by the strength it takes to hold on to the plow, the strength it takes to steer the mule, and the strength it takes to focus on a point in the distance. So, let me suggest something. Let’s let go of the reins of our lives and let Jesus steer. Let’s seek God’s strength to help us hold on. You and I, all we have to do is to keep our hands on the gospel plow. Let’s take nothing for our journey now. Keep our eyes on the prize, hold on!
©2010 Howard W. Boswell, Jr.
