Text: Luke 9:15-62
My son William just turned six three weeks ago and I guess he's a big boy now who can do big boy things. A week ago I got the mower out and he ran up to me saying, “I wanna mow. I wanna mow.” This would be his first time. Our yard is so small that I use an electric mower and we even got it done without hitting the cord. I had to walk along with him to help with the cord and a bit of the steering. I told him to follow the line where he had just cut and to keep whichever of the front wheels in the cut grass. Well, seeing that pushing the mower was for him a bigger task than steering he focused on that instead by staring at the mower and looking around to see who was watching him. He inevitably kept veering off a bit which met with me saying “We're getting off” and grabbing the mower to right it. You see, when you're mowing getting off course means you have to go back to where you left course and start over. All this backing up and starting over meant a lot of extra work for William in his single-minded task of pushing that mower which to him weighs a ton. Nevertheless, he mowed the whole yard. I was very much the proud daddy.
Mowing is not unlike ploughing. When ploughing you have to keep an eye on where you're going or your rows get off and you don't want that because your neighbour farmers will think you don't know how to farm because you're just a lazy city-dweller trying to have your own personal Green Acres. Actually, if your rows are off you waste soil and more importantly water does not course evenly through your fields especially if you are irrigating. Uneven rows leads to reduced crop yield. So, you keep not only your eye but just to be safe your face set on a target ahead that will keep you parallel to the row beside you. This is particularly true if you're ploughing behind a horse or an ox as in Bible times. They are sensitive to very subtle changes in steering commands and if the driver even glances off course a horse in particular will know it and head that way.
So, it should be no surprise to us that Jesus uses the analogy of ploughing to describe our relationship to him in this arduous task we call discipleship or living under the reign of God (kingdom of God) in this world which is more or less what the Bible means by the word faith. He says, "No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." The life of faith or living under the reign of God must have Jesus Christ and his mission and ministry as its aim or guide or focal point. If we are going to call ourselves Christians we must hone in on knowing him otherwise we are not fit for his work.
The Greek word that we translate there as “fit” is a bit of an obscure word. It is used in only three places in the Bible and all three very pointedly have to do with discipleship and faithfulness to Jesus. Luke uses it a chapter earlier. “Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 'If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” He then talks about building a tower and not counting the cost to see whether you have enough to complete it and he points out how shameful it would be if you laid the foundation and then couldn't complete it. He also talks about a king with 10,000 soldiers not counting the cost of going to war with a king who is coming to attack with an army of 20,000. He would fail to see that surrender and making peace is the better option. Jesus then continues, “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use (it is not fit) either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear." So, if we are claiming to be disciples of Jesus and yet have our faces set on something other than Jesus and knowing him and rather hold on to relationships and values that are not founded on him even if it is family and family values then we really are useless for the purposes of his kingdom.
Next the word shows up in the sixth chapter of Hebrews where Paul is addressing a situation where people who have been Christians for many years have begun to turn back to their former ways of life as pagan idol worshippers because Jesus had not yet returned to give them their reward for following and so they were not seeing the benefit of living non-indulgent lives patterned after his particularly as it brought persecution down upon them. They had built a foundation for the tower but weren't going ahead and completing it. Concerning these Paul writes, “For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then fall away, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful (there's our word) to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.” These folks had indeed put the hand to the plough knowing the new life that is ours in Christ Jesus by the gift of the Holy Spirit and instead of focusing on this new relationship to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and growing in it they were returning to being more concerned about immediate pleasures and pursuing the goals and the values of their culture which could not be separated from idol worship. They had taken their eyes off of Jesus and his mission and ministry and rather and probably under persecution set their faces towards the immediate concerns of their own lives. They were making themselves worthless in looking back.
Looking at our passage from Luke this morning, we find Jesus realizing that the time had come and so he sets his face towards Jerusalem and the cross. He was resolutely putting his hand to the plough and there was no turning back. He was surrounded by what was probably a sizable crowd and making their way towards Jerusalem this crowd needs to stop for the night. They are in Samaria. Samaritan Jews and Judean Jews didn't get along for matters of race, religion, and politics. The Samaritans saw that he was resolute on leading this crowd into Jerusalem to set up his kingdom which he was calling the Kingdom of God. I suspect the Samaritans wanted nothing to do with him because it looked like a revolt and they wanted nothing to do with that. Harbouring a band of revolutionaries would have had both the Jerusalem Jews and the Romans raining fire down upon them.
Along the way people were joining or should I say attempting to join the movement either by their own initiative or by Jesus summons, “Follow me”. We never learn whether these people actually get on board. We just learn of the radical cost of following Jesus. Unlike soldiers in a crusade who get promised the world, to a man who wants to follow him anywhere he goes we learn that in following Jesus in his ministry and mission there is no promise of material comfort and certainly not wealth. To those whom Jesus himself calls, there is nothing more important than leaving everything behind right there and then and proclaiming the Kingdom of God; not even burying your family or saying goodbye to friends and family.
Arguably wealth, comfort, and the roles we play in our families and communities are the most powerful distractions for us in following Jesus in his ministry and mission. We tend to set our faces towards these things and make Jesus and his kingdom subservient to our pursuit of them and call it being faithful. We believe that if we pursue these tasks honourably and morally he will bless us when in fact it is these very things that stand so prevalently in the way of our getting to know him. We forget that Jesus had no place to lay his head and that his own family and community thought he was crazy. We might do well to seek him among the disenfranchised.
Yet, Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life and our faith needs to be based on knowing him and that brings me back to the question I sent you home with last week. “Who are you, Lord?” I asked you to try praying that as a prayer and to try to do it without ceasing. I hope you gave it a shot. If not, there's always this week. Indeed, this day. You've got this day. Pray your way through it. Prayer and praying without ceasing is the first step in setting our faces towards Jesus and getting to know him and what his ministry and mission is. I can tell you right now that without prayer the plough don't move. The only way we can really trust this Jesus whom we follow is to get to know him. He came that we might have eternal life and if you remember from a sermon several weeks ago, Jesus said at John 17:3, “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Salvation is that by Jesus and his birth, living life, death, and resurrection and in the power of the Holy Spirit we have been adopted by the Father to be his children. Prayer is our participation now in our own salvation. Getting to know Jesus and the Father through him is foundational to the life of faith. So, keep on praying “Who are you, Lord” and he will answer. He wants us to know him. I have no doubt of that. Amen.
