- When the days drew near for Him to be taken up, He set His face to go to Jerusalem. And He sent His messengers ahead of Him. On their way, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for Him. But they did not receive Him because His face was set toward Jerusalem. When His disciples, James and John, saw it, they said, "Lord, do you want us to command "fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" But He turned and rebuked them. Then, He went on to another village. 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 first, let me say farewell to those at my home." Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow "and looks back, is fit for the Kingdom of God." This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. 

- Well, you've heard that in today's gospel, Jesus is on the way. He has, in Luke's words, set His face to Jerusalem. Which is a kind of a short-hand way of saying that He is now on His way to the cross. Just a little earlier, Luke has noted that great crowds were now following Jesus. Jesus is becoming popular. He's becoming well-received. But at this point, He sets His face to Jerusalem. And you can almost feel the crowds dissipate, particularly, with Jesus in the mood in which we find Him today. He begins to teach His disciples about the direction that He is walking. Do we want to walk with Him in that direction? Somebody comes up to Jesus and says, "I will follow You "wherever You going, only my father's recently died "and I've got to plan the funeral arrangements. "And then, we'll go." And Jesus, in not one of the more pastoral moments, says, "Let the dead bury the dead. "Come, follow Me." Someone else says, "I will follow You. "Let me just tell people at home where I'm going. "I won't be there anymore." And Jesus says, "Anybody that just for a moment, "having put hand to the plow, just looks back, "is not worthy to follow Me." And a text like this reminds you that following Jesus is not always that easy. Because if we're gonna follow Him, we're gonna have to follow someone who has set His face to Jerusalem. Someone who is walking a narrow way, the way of the cross. And if you've been in church very often, if you've been with Jesus that often, you know that He has a way of surprising us, of correcting us. And time and again, when you're with Jesus, you get reminded of just how odd, how very different, is this following than maybe we first imagined. On a number of occasions, Jesus impresses with how against the grain His way is with our way. Here are nice people and they're wanting to follow Jesus, but they have obligations. Doesn't the Bible say to honor your father and your mother? Certainly, by going to the funeral. Isn't family values a good thing? And here is Jesus, seeming to attack such values. What you've got here, and you have this often with Jesus I think, is a kind of clash between good and good. One good and another. Oh, it would be easy if the choice with Jesus was always, "Now, here's a good and here's a bad. "Now, you decide which one you're going to embrace." But here, as in so many occasions, the problem is you've got one good. Parents, family. Then you got another good. The way of the cross. The way of discipleship. And it is a narrow way, more narrow than we often appreciate. So one reason why we get together on a weekly basis, and you have to get dressed and come down here at an inconvenient hour of the week, is to hear these stories. To examine these texts, and let them examine us so that we might more clearly discern His way. And sometimes that means discerning the difference between His way and our way. Isn't family a good thing? Shouldn't we show respect to parents? So many times with Jesus, it's a clash between one good and another. Here you got these good things: Family, parents, money, good things. But sometimes with Jesus there's this clash of good. Just as it is difficult to mix oil with water, a lot of times it's difficult to mix our allegiances, our values, with those of Jesus. A former student of mine at the Divinity School, I saw her a month or so ago. I asked her how things were going at her new church. And she said, "Well, not all that well." I said, "Really? "I heard that you'd gotten off to a great start. "They were pleased with you." "Well, they got less pleased during December." I said, "What happened in December?" She said, "Well, I went head-to-head with Santa Claus." I said, "What?" She said, "At my new church, they told me in November, "they said, "By the way, on the second Sunday of December, "we have this wonderful thing where during the service, "right before the offering, "Santa Claus comes in and he walks down the aisle "and he has gifts for all the children. "Everybody just loves it. "Really gets people in the Christmas spirit." (congregation laughs) And she said, "You know, I remembered what you said "to do in class and all. "Go easy on these kind of things. "Just don't jump right in to trample on their traditions." But I said, "You know, "this bothers me." She said, "This is like the second Sunday of Advent. "We've got a lot of business to do in the church." "Well, ya," they said. "And Santa Claus, Christmas." And she said, "I'm a young parent. "And Christmas can be a hard time when you got children "and you're tryin' to teach your children "about what Christmas is really about, "but they're being just pumped with all this advertising "and commercialism. "And it's just hard for the church to make its point. "Particularly, when we mix all that up. "Santa Claus has got most of the airways tied up, "got a monopoly since early in October. "Church is where we kinda make our point." And she said, "I think they're gonna kill me for that." (congregation laughs) But you can see the young pastor's point. 'Cause one of the purposes of church is to get together, on a regular basis, and keep clarifying the Christian way. We are bombarded every day by thousands of messages, mostly in the form of advertising, that proclaim a different point of view, a different world, a different system of values from that of Christ. So, we have to get together in church and we do the best we can, just for an hour, to try to get things clear, focused. And it isn't easy. A few years ago, I had this conversation on campus, painful conversation, with a Jewish student. And he was, obviously, kinda nervous being this close to a Christian clergyman. And he was tryin' to make conversation. He said, "Say, you got the Easter thing coming up "in a week or so, right?" (congregation laughs) And I said, "Yeah, in a week or so, Easter, yeah." He said, "Well, tell me, "just what is Easter anyway? "What do the decorated eggs have to do with it? "Did Jesus decorate eggs? "Do you all do this at church? "Is it some kinda Christian ritual?" And I said, "No, eggs don't have anything to do with it." He said, "The bunny then, what about the bunny? (congregation laughs) "Did Jesus like bunnies?" I said, "No that doesn't have anything to do with it either. See, he put me in an embarrassing position of realizing how much stuff had gotten mixed in with our stuff. All these images, eggs, the bunny. All dearly beloved, widely-celebrated. What did they have, really, to do with the Easter thing? Of course, he is not of this faith. He's not supposed to know about these details. But as a preacher, I had to ask myself about the way we allow extraneous symbols to muddy the water of our faith, so to speak. It's hard for us to keep our stuff straight. Because, as Jesus reminds us today, the stuff can be tough. It's narrow. There's a big difference between our way and that narrow way of Jesus. Once He's set His face toward Jerusalem. Friend of mine says, when he stands up to preach on a Sunday morning, he looks out on a congregation of people who think they're Methodists. But in reality, a lot of them are really Shintos who are worshiping their ancestors, buried out in the adjacent church graveyard. Or some of them are Muslims, who believe God just wrote down every... Dictated every single word of Scripture. Or Buddhists who come to church in an effort to avoid getting in contact with the world. Or just good pagans who come to manipulate the gods to try to run errands and do good things for them. But, there are these moments when we get clarification. And we realize that Jesus' way does not easily mesh with every other way. As Paul says, we gotta test the spirits. Because every spirit, the Christmas spirit, the American spirit, not every spirit is the Holy Spirit. And so, that's why we dare to open the Scriptures, and we ask a preacher, "Is there any word from the Lord? "Now, we've heard a lot of words, "but is there any word from the Lord? "Because we've spent all week listening "to this cacophony of voices "that are not God's." A couple of summers ago, I was in a little church in suburban Berlin. And when I came up to the church, I noticed that Mercedes were pulling up, and people were pulling in, and they were unloading this lace bedecked baby. And I said, "Well, I guess we're gonna have a baptism "in the service today." And the minute the baby emerged from the car, the video camera's recording every move. Well, we went through the service. We had a sermon and we had some hymns, and the Creed. And all the adoring relatives endured this. And then, came time for the baptism. And this dour German pastor called the people for the baptism to come forward. And a large number of people got up and they were presenting the baby. And two or three video cameras began to whir. And then this German pastor just blurted out, as best I could translate him, "Stop!" (speaking in foreign language) "This isn't a theater! "This isn't a movie going on here, people! "This is church! "We're getting ready to do a baptism! "We're getting ready to take this child "and lay over his life, the cross of Jesus. "This could be painful. "Turn the cameras off! "This is hard, holy business!" And then, he said, "We don't want any distractions "that might confuse the parents or the church "about the solemn, holy, difficult thing "we're about to do here." Well, as a preacher, I wondered, "Now, would I have been that severe? "Would I have reacted in this way?" No, I probably wouldn't have and that's because I'm so nice. (congregation laughs) I'm a lot nicer than these German preachers. But then, I remembered, "Wait, wait, wait. "This is a German pastor." Four blocks away from that church, there's a huge house there in this elegant suburb where they had the Wannsee Conference, where a group of people, most of them worship in Christian churches, got together and had a discussion, and voted to exterminate the Jews. So forgive that German pastor for being a little picky. A little careful about what goes on in the church in Sunday morning. Look, he was part of a church, that when the time for the church came to say to the world, "No!" "Nein!" It lost the ability to say, "No." Had lost the ability even to know there was something to say, "No," to in the culture. So he's a little picky. This past Spring, I went up to Washington, DC, to speak at a pastor's conference. And after I spoke, we were to have a worship service. And Alan Storey, young pastor from South Africa, led us in worship. And Alan handed out the bulletins, was giving us some instructions about the worship. Alan Storey, some of you'd be interested, is the son of Bishop Peter Storey, who preaches from this pulpit frequently. Sometime professor at the Divinity School. Bishop from South Africa. Well, Alan stood up and, after giving us instructions, walking us through the service, before the service began, he said, "May I just say one more thing? "Could I just say, as a visitor to your country "from another place, "I wish you would consider removing the American flag "from your sanctuary. "I was shocked when I entered your church today "and saw that your country's flag was positioned "so prominently next to the altar. "That would not happen in my church. "'Cause my church forbids us to have flags "and other secular, political paraphernalia in our services. "I wish you would just think about how that flag "clashes with this cross." Then he said, "Of course, I'm from South Africa. "And we learned the hard way about the difference "between the ways of God and our ways." Well, we sat there in awkward silence. And then, we went on with the service. What do you think about that? Does the American flag have a place in a Christian sanctuary? What we're talking about here is a confusion of symbols. And we're Christians, and to us, symbols are a big deal. You sit here and the whole building is a symbol. And we're surrounded by these symbols of our faith. And we take these, we take all symbols, very seriously. Because we know from experience in this faith that symbols don't just express our deepest feelings, they form our feelings and our commitments. Now, I expect when we hear somebody like Alan Storey, we think to ourselves, "Now, wait, wait, wait. "You're talking about South Africa. "We're different, we're Americans. "We live in a democracy. "Our country is good, our country is innocent." I hope none of you would say such sentiments because they're not true. Our country has blood on its hands. The souls of countless African slaves, of slaughtered Native Americans, that would rise up to accuse us if we said such things about our country. Our nation, like any nation I know of, has got blood. Time and again in Scripture, the great competitor for our allegiance to God is allegiance to the nation. Much of the time, when Hebrew prophets are getting into trouble for what they say, and they're talking about idolatry, this is the idolatry they're talking about. The first lesson, this strange story about Elijah, Elisha. Prophets of God who always in trouble with the government. Always reminding us that we don't put our ultimate love and trust in armies, and violence, and nations, and kings, and mechanisms of the state. It's not enough to say, "Well, now, fortunately, "we live in a democracy. "We don't have a king. "Here, we're king, the people." But maybe for that very reason, democracy puts us in an even more spiritually demanding situation. Once, we went to war only when the king commanded us to go to war. But now, we go to war for ourselves. Once, only a king was brutal enough to cut off somebody's head for a crime. But a couple of weeks ago, we executed a murderer. The government has now become our protector from the cradle to the grave, our main source of meaning, that to which we look to for all solution to every human problem, and for our salvation. I think we just ask way too much of the government. And we sacrifice way too much for the nation. For instance, anybody who would die for his religion is considered a fanatic, an idiot. And yet, think of all the people who sacrifice their lives for the government. We call them heroes. So don't tell me we shouldn't be careful about what objects we bring into Christian sanctuaries. Jesus, I will follow You wherever you go. But first, let me be sure that I get my allegiances in order and I do this, and I do that. And let me give my pinch of incense to the altar of Caesar. In a couple of days, we're gonna celebrate the 4th of July, birth of a beloved nation. A nation that has been so good to so many. On the 4th of July, we're celebrating our declaration of independence. Just a little reminder, you won't find the word independence anywhere in the Bible. That's not a Bible word. Independence is what the government promises us. If we'll just pay our taxes, and offer our children, and serve the government. But as Christians, our Sunday morning goal is never independence. We don't wanna be free to do what we darn well please to do. Our goal is dependence, upon the will and the righteousness of God. And all of this reminds us that Christians are a lot more weird than we often admit. And maybe the best thing we can do for our country is to love it discreetly. De Tocqueville said, "Democracy is a form of government "that needs to be modestly loved." Think of the church in our country as a way that keeps helping us keep our loyalties modest. Well, I've told some of you this story. But every year, we come to this Sunday of the year. The Sunday before the 4th of July. I can't hep but remember a Sunday nearly 20 years ago, when I and my family visited at a church. I'm not gonna mention the name of the church. It's in California, has lots of glass. (congregation laughs) Have a lot more people watching on TV than we do. Anyway. We get to the service, and we find out that the preacher is spreading the gospel in Hawaii that Sunday and won't be there. They got a guest preacher. And the guest preacher is Charles Colson. Some of you are old enough to remember Charles Colson, Watergate fame, went to jail for his stuff with the state. My dear mother, sitting there, said, "I haven't come "to church to hear some jailbird preach." And I said, "Well, now, wait. "He's been born again, he's been converted." My mother said, "Yeah, they all do when they come before the parole board." And I said, "Look, it's Southern California, "just keep quiet." We went through the service. We got to the point in the service where the Associate Minister gave the children's sermon. And the children's sermon was delivered by this rat puppet. And the rat puppet had an American flag and talked about how good it was to be an American, and etc. And then, we got to the sermon. Charles Colson stood up. And Charles Colson said, "I just wish all of you "could see how good you look arrayed before me today. "The sun streaming in through the windows. "What a beautiful Southern California Sunday. "I just wish you could see how beautiful "this congregation looks. "Quite a contrast from where I was preaching yesterday "about this time. "I was preaching out at the Los Angeles Prison Camp. "And there, I did not preach in this beautiful cathedral. "I was preaching in a little cinder block chapel, "in the middle of the prison camp. "And there, my congregation were not you distinguished "people here, but were murderers, "and rapists, and thieves." He paused for a moment and he said, "And you do know "where Jesus would be more comfortable?" Man, and then, he started hammering on us. He hammered on us for the cars we were driving, the lives we were living. At one point, he said, "And these preachers that know "better how to use a blow dryer than a Bible." (congregation laughs) It was rough. After he finished preaching, my mother leaned over and said, "I hope he had a good time "because he won't be coming back." (congregation laughs) You wanna know the greatest service we could render this nation? Is to be the church. To be a critique. A visible reminder that God, not nations, rules the world. That we have a loyalty that qualifies every other loyalty. Jesus Christ is Lord. Let us and the nations of the world walk His narrow way. Amen. (congregation shuffling)