He Set His Face

Luke 9:51-62

February 10, 2015 (Ash Wednesday) • Mount Pleasant UMC

Life is made up of moments, most of which seem rather mundane at the time and many of which later turn out to be hugely decisive. Turn this way or that and everything changes. I think sometimes about the moments in my life—for instance, the moment I made up my mind to attend Ball State. Had I not done that, I would not have met Cathy, and life would be very different. Or the moment when my parents decided to join the Methodist church instead of the Presbyterian church. I might not have been a United Methodist pastor. Or the moment when I bowed my head in the church basement and asked Jesus to come into my heart; I would be a very different person if it were not for Christ in my life. Life is made up of moments, and I bet you can look back and identify two or three decisive points in your own journey, moments when, had you made the opposite decision, life would look very different than it does now.

In our Gospel passage this evening, we come to one of those moments in the life of Jesus. In fact, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say we come to one of the most significant moments in Jesus’ earthly life. Jesus has been healing and teaching all throughout Galilee in the northern part of Israel. People are listening to him, bringing their sick to him, following him, but Jesus’ life has a purpose. Jesus’ life has always had a destination, and Luke says the time was drawing near when Jesus would be taken back into heaven, so Jesus “resolutely set out for Jerusalem” (9:51). Other translations are closer to the original text, because what Luke writes is that he “set his face toward Jerusalem.” He set his face—perhaps you know what that’s like, when you have a destination and you make up your mind that you’re going to arrive there no matter what. If Jesus had a chariot, it might have had a sign on the back that said, “Jerusalem or bust!” He set his face—this was Jesus’ moment. Everything from here on out, in Luke’s Gospel, is about Jesus getting to Jerusalem to do what he came to do.

Now, in Luke’s account, Jesus does not literally travel directly from Galilee to Jerusalem at this moment. That would have only taken a few days walking. In fact, Luke says very little from this point on about travel itself, because Jesus setting his face toward Jerusalem is not about physically arriving in Jerusalem, though that will happen. Rather, it’s about Jesus’ determination to carry out his father’s will, his father’s plan for saving the world. Jesus is headed to Jerusalem to die, and from this moment on, everything becomes about that journey (Wright, Luke for Everyone, pg. 117; Liefeld, “Luke,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pgs. 931-932).

Tonight, we begin our own journey, our Lenten journey, as we begin these 40 days of preparing for Jesus’ death and resurrection. This year, we’re going to walk very slowly through the last day of Jesus’ life. Sunday, we’ll begin with that final meal he shared with his disciples, and over the next few weeks, in worship and in small groups, we’re going to explore very carefully the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection, an event that took place in the 1st century, for us in the 21st century. What does his journey mean for ours? That’s the question we’ll be asking, the question we’ll keep coming back to. And more than that, we’ll be asking how we can follow him on his journey like those disciples of long ago. To be a disciple means to follow. No matter where the master goes, we go, too, if we want to be disciples. When Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem, there were people who wanted to follow him. Luke specifically mentions three people, but each of them had hesitations, reasons they couldn’t follow right now. So I wonder, as we approach this Lenten season, if there is anything that stands in the way of you being able to follow, to walk with Jesus to Jerusalem, to the garden, to the prison, to the cross. As Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem, what keeps us from following?

One man, as they are walking, calls out, “I will follow you wherever you go!” Really? Jesus looks at him and tells the man there are no hotels on the route Jesus is taking. Jesus doesn’t have a place to call his own, a “place to lay his head” (9:58). And, though Luke doesn’t say it specifically, we can assume the man did not follow. Jesus presented an obstacle he couldn’t get past, and we might call that obstacle the desire for security. What trips this man up is that there are no guarantees in following Jesus. No place to lay his head. Jesus, with what I imagine is a smile on his face, says foxes and birds have it better than he does. Discipleship offers no security, no guarantees. And we, with our IRAs and mortgages and bank accounts and possessions—we want guarantees. We want security. We want it in writing.

Agnes did, too. She was a woman from the country of Albania who, by age 12, had decided she wanted to follow Jesus. For her, that meant becoming a Roman Catholic nun and learning English so she could teach. And she did all that, and while she did not have a wealthy life, she had a comfortable and secure life…until she began to notice the poor. Her eyes began to be opened to the many in her city who were without hope, who were sick, who just needed someone to help them and tell them about Jesus. It was while she was on her way to a retreat in another city that she experienced what she termed “a call within a call.” Agnes heard God speak to her about ministering to the dying and the poor in her city of Calcutta, India. Agnes—or, as we better know her, Mother Teresa—gave up the security she had and set out on the road with Jesus. Are you like the man along the road? Will you only follow Jesus if he offers guarantees that you’ll have everything you need? Is needing or demanding a sense of security something that holds you back from following Jesus?

The next person is invited directly by Jesus to be a follower. “Follow me,” Jesus says, but the man hesitates. “Lord,” he says, “first let me go and bury my father” (9:59). Now, the man doesn’t say if his father has died or is even ill; it could very well be that his father is alive, and well, and planning to live several more years. But the man knows that burying your father was one of the most holy and binding duties of a son (Wright 118). It was a religious, social and family obligation (Liefeld 935); to not fulfill it could bring shame on the whole family. So the man is saying, “I have some everyday obligations that I need to take care of. When I’ve got everything done off my checklist, Jesus, then I’ll come and follow you.” Sometimes the press of everyday events holds us back from following the Savior.

I’ll be honest: this is where I struggle. At the place we are in our life right now, where events run at the speed of life and when I spend much of the week as a single Dad, there are days I run from here to there and back again. I get up, get Rachel and I moving, take her to school, come in to the office, I pick Rachel up from school and go home, fix supper, run Rachel to her activities or come back to the church for my meetings, go home, do what needs to be doing around the house, sit down, watch some television while sometimes continuing to work on my laptop, and somewhere around 10:30 or 11, completely exhausted, I head upstairs to bed and that’s when I realize what has happened. I open my iPad and see the Bible app. And at the end of one of those days, I suddenly have to ask myself if there was any room for Jesus in my day. Well, undoubtedly, I’ve talked about Jesus or studied about Jesus—I mean, that’s my life—which makes it even harder to find time to just spend with Jesus, to follow him where he’s going this day. The busy-ness of life, the obligations of home and work and family, the stress of each day—all of that can become a huge obstacle to following Jesus. “Follow me,” Jesus says. “But Lord, wait, I’ve got to run a few errands, and then I’ve got to go to work, and then I’ve got to go to this party, and then I’ve got to…” “Follow me,” Jesus says. “But, Lord, can’t you just wait until I get done with this thing I’m doing?” “Follow me,” Jesus says. I think that’s why, sometimes, God wakes me up at 4 in the morning, just so that he can get some time in! Are you like this man on the road? Will you only follow Jesus once you get everything else taken care of? If we wait, he’ll already be down the road and we’ll still be standing around waiting for the right time to follow. Does the busy-ness of the day keep you from following Jesus?

There’s a third person who wants to follow. This person says, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family” (9:61). Well, now, that doesn’t sound unreasonable, except that Jesus knows it’s an excuse. Jesus knows this person doesn’t have their attention focused on him—or probably on any one thing. This is a person who attempts to do one thing, but ends up trying to do ten. Jesus says, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God” (9:62). If you are a farmer, that’s a familiar image, but many of us have little idea what Jesus is talking about here. In ancient times, when fields were plowed with oxen, the plowman would keep an eye on the furrow, guiding the plow with one hand and the ox with the other. And to keep a straight line, you couldn’t keep looking back. You had to look ahead. You had to pick a fixed object on the horizon and head straight toward it. That’s still true of planting today, even with all the sophisticated machinery we have. Turning around, splitting your focus, can result in a crooked row and when you have crooked rows, you can’t plant as much in the field. If you can’t plant as much, you won’t have as much to sell and you won’t make as much income. You have to stay focused. Divide your focus, and you’ll be in trouble. Jesus tells this person by the road that they can’t worry about the past if they’re going to follow him into God’s new future. You have to stay focused.

We, however, live in an unfocused age. A recent report revealed that kids between ages 5 and 16 spend six and a half hours a day in front of a screen—television, computer, or smart phone, with teenage boys having the most “screen time.” This is up from just 3 hours twenty years ago. And a lot of that time is spent in front of multiple screen—for instance, watching television while sending text messages or Snapchats. One study factored the multiple screens in and concluded that American kids spend the equivalent of 11 hours a day tethered to electronic devices. Adults are not far behind. Even when we’re in a meeting or in a conversation, we are checking our e-mail or text messages, rarely fully concentrating on what’s happening. We’re unfocused, and Jesus says that makes us unfit for service in the kingdom of God. Jesus wants us to be with him, on mission, not looking back, focused on the goal. That’s why, for the last several months, we’ve been working hard around here to focus, to refocus, and to focus again—so that we all know what we’re about and the mission we are on with Jesus. To follow him requires focus—and our focus is clear: we’re called to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, and we do that through four actions: embrace, worship, grow and serve. Are you like this person on the road? Do you sometimes get out of focus, more concerned about other things than moving ahead with Jesus? Does a lack of focus keep you from following?

Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem, and in the next few weeks, we’re going to seek to fully experience what that means and better understand what he did for us. But in this moment, this night, he invites us to follow. Tonight can be your moment, to leave behind the need for absolute security, to leave behind the excuse of busy-ness, to leave behind a lack of focus and join Jesus on the road to Jerusalem. In just a few moments, we’re going to engage in a practice that dates back many centuries. You’ll be invited to come forward and receive the sign of the cross in ashes on your forehead, and we do that because ashes remind us of our mortality. The ancient invocation says, “Dust we are, and to dust we will return.” The ashes invite us to consider the meaning of life in ways we don’t when we’re worried about security, or our busy-ness, or our multitasking. And we make the sign of the cross to remember whose we are. We belong to Jesus. We are not our own. We have decided, the song says, to follow Jesus. The sign of the cross reminds us whose we are. But there’s nothing magical in what happens here tonight. We can leave here tonight simply with a dirty forehead, or we can choose to follow Jesus along the way as he sets his face toward Jerusalem. Are we willing to walk with him on the journey? Are we willing to allow him to set the agenda? Are we determined to stay with him in the days to come, no matter how hard it gets? Can we lay aside our demands for security, for busy-ness, for distractedness and simply set our face on following Jesus?

Several years ago, when Christopher was probably 2 or 3 at most, we were in our family room at the time and Christopher was playing in the middle of the floor, doing something that he wanted his mother to see. So he started saying, “Mama! Mama!” And Cathy was focused on other things, perhaps two or three things, and he kept calling her name. And finally, frustrated that she couldn’t hear him, he called out, “Cathy!” Now, that got her attention, and she quickly said, “You should call me Mama.” And I told her that he had been, but that incident has always made me think of the way Jesus calls to us and we fail to hear him. There are so many other things going on that pull us away, that take away us from the journey with Jesus. Tonight is a moment. It’s a chance for us, here at the beginning of this Lenten season, to get a right start on our journey and to follow Jesus all the way to the cross. Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem. Will you go with him?