6-22-22 - Following Jesus

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here. 

Whether it is the Peggy March singing “I Will Follow Him,”or Bono and U2 (appallingly young here) doing “I Will Follow," we have a rich soundtrack for our gospel story. When our hearts are full of love for someone, it is natural to proclaim our everlasting allegiance and intention to be with them wherever they go. Ask Dead Heads, ParrotHeads, and other fanatical band-fans.

So it was one day as Jesus walked with his followers toward Jerusalem. Even strangers got caught up in it:  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.”

Jesus was saying, “You want to follow me, it comes at a cost. Things won’t be comfortable or predictable or stable. Wild creatures will have more security than you will.” We see in the gospels Jesus living a very peripatetic life, always on the move. We hear about his being “at home in Capernaum,” but he doesn’t seem to have spent much time there.

American Christianity has not followed this “I will follow you wherever” pattern. Other than traveling evangelists (often suspect characters in books and movies...), we prefer to do our following inwardly, quietly, spiritually, staying rooted to place and community. I am a staying put type myself (recent travels notwithstanding), and even when I move I seek security and stability. Does this compromise me as a disciple? Is it, “I will follow, as long as I know where I’m going to sleep?” Or is there a legitimate place for being rooted in community, in our neighborhoods?

Both/And, of course… God blesses us with homes and families and communities and work and all the richness of a web of relationships. And God invites us to hold these blessings lightly, to keep our focus more on the Giver than on the gifts – and to be prepared to let them go, trade them in, keep our hands open to new blessings. It can be a difficult balancing act, but it keeps us better connected to God, nimble and ready to pivot when the Spirit calls us to bring our gifts to some new thing God is doing. And God is always doing a new thing.

The lyrics to U2’s I Will Follow are in part about Bono’s loss of his mother at a young age, but there is also unmistakably religious language – “I was blind, I could not see…” “I was lost, I am found,” that suggests the band – deeply enmeshed in Christian life at the time – had broader themes in mind. Jesus invites us away from our sorrows and stucknesses, away from our self-saving strategies and sources of security to walk with him through this world, seeing it through his eyes. Sometimes that’s on the move, sometimes it’s still. Always it is being open to grace.

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8-26-20 - Following

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Western culture in is not high on self-denial, unless it’s in the service of health or beauty. Once upon a time in America, self-sacrifice and sharing one’s resources for the common good were high values. These days generosity is often sporadic, a reaction to emergencies and based on our perception of whether we have enough to share.

“Do we have enough?” stands in a stark contrast to Jesus’ core teachings – and one of his most hardcore teachings was this: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

Did Jesus mean “cross” in a general, “your-calling-from-God” way? Or did he mean a specific willingness to endure martyrdom? The executioner's cross was a literal eventuality for him, but not for every follower. Since I hope never to be in a position of having to choose my faith in Jesus over my physical life, I look at this teaching more figuratively. Our “cross” might be anything that represents the way we are called to participate in the mission of God to make all things whole. It may or may not involve suffering; often it will include inconvenience and even discomfort.

Maybe before we contend with the call to self-denial and taking up of crosses, we should look at the first part of Jesus’ sentence: “If any want to become my followers.” Why would anyone today who did not know about Jesus want to follow him? Where is he going that we want to be?

I have to ask myself, “Why am I a follower of Christ?” Partly, it’s habit and custom and a lifetime of choices. But why today? Because I believe he is Life and Truth as well as Way. Because following him gives meaning to what might otherwise appear a meandering path through life. Because I believe his power to heal is still real and still with us. And because he says he loves me. I don’t know what that means, fully, but I know I want to find out.

How do you answer that question? Why are you a follower of Christ? If you're not, do you want to be? However you answer those questions, you can talk to Jesus about it. If that feels impossible, talk to a person whose spiritual life you trust.

When we decide that we want to be Christ’s followers, we’re more ready to lay down our privileges and prerogatives and take up our crosses. And, as we allow ourselves to be transformed in that relationship, we may also discover a stronger desire to introduce others to this way of Jesus, cross, self-denial and all.

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