June 29: Of Saint Peter, My 2010 Heart Attack, Malcolm Guite's Poem, and Following Jesus

On the calendar of the Lutheran movement, today is the Day of Saints Peter and Paul. 

We remember saints, people the Bible shows to be sinners saved by grace through faith in Christ, to remember how deep God's love is for human beings. 

Through the saints, we also remember how much God can do through sinners who turn to Jesus for forgiveness and new life.

I have experienced these undeserved gifts many times in the forty-four years since I began--imperfectly, often rebelliously--to follow Jesus. 

He called me to Himself even as I tried to dig in, a recalcitrant atheist who wanted my own way.

He called me to ordained ministry, I dug in resistantly to that, and He kept calling. 

And He has continued to call me, despite my sin, through my nearly thirty-six years of ordained ministry.

He called me and remained faithful to me even when I have been faithless or, by turns, heedless of His will or willfully intent on pursuing my own course. 

The God I know in Jesus has been gracious to me.

He has also stood by me. Moses said of Him to God's people, the Israelites, "he will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Deuteronomy 31:6). And Jesus, God in human flesh, tells all who believe in Him: "I am with you always." (Matthew 28:20)

I have found those promises of God to be true in my walk with Jesus Christ. 

Facebook Memories reminds me that it was ten years ago today that I returned from the hospital after receiving a stent in the left anterior descending artery leading from my heart. 

Two weeks earlier, I had the "widowmaker," a heart attack with a 100% blockage in that artery. 

I probably should have died. A year later, my heart significantly damaged, likely because a local hospital ER had failed to detect what was happening at the outset, I received a pacemaker/defibrillator. (I lost 40% of my heart muscle, something that medicine can't yet restore.) 

But I remember well what the cardiac care nurse told me the day I received the stent. "We don't see too many people who survive the heart attack you had. Almost never. God must have a reason for you to still be here."

Whether the nurse said that because she knew she was speaking with a pastor or she really meant it, I have always regarded it as a true statement...although I have not always lived as though it was true. 

Like Saint Peter, even after Jesus' resurrection, there have been days when I've talked big and lived small, jumped to conclusions, followed the crowd. But I pray that, like Saint Peter, I've known to return to Jesus each day in what Martin Luther called "daily repentance and renewal." 

What I have learned, especially over the past decade, is what I suppose Saint Peter learned. Peter is the one, of course, who tells us that "baptism saves you" and that through Christ, we are born again. But Peter also found that he could still get things wrong, still had to be corrected by others in the Church, even as he lived out his life as a faithful disciple and apostle. And he learned, as I am learning, that Christ is so patient that as I turn to Him, I am born again each day.

I identify with Peter. 

That's why I asked that the Roman Catholic priest who preached at my ordination in 1984, to focus on John's account of the risen Jesus meeting the disciples on the lakeshore. There, Jesus asked Peter three times if Peter loved Him, three painful and restorative questions that allowed Peter to repent and know God's forgiveness. 

It can be painful to follow Jesus. 

It's painful for us as proud human beings to own up to our sin and to our mortality, to confess our need of Savior and our need of God. At least it is for me. 

"Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other," God tells His ancient people in Isaiah 45:22. 

And at the first Christian Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit empowered Jesus' disciples to proclaim all of God's mighty deeds, including raising the dead Jesus to life, Peter cited words from the Old Testament to call people to turn to God in the flesh, Jesus, with the words, "And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." (Acts 2:21) 

The saint is the sinner who keeps turning to Jesus because He is where life is, along with the hope, the peace, and the only reliable true on Whom we can build our lives. 

As Peter himself would say to Jesus, after the Lord had asked the disciples if they wanted to abandon Him as others were doing, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:68-69)

All of this comes to mind because, on this day of Saints Peter and Paul and the anniversary of my coming home from the hospital ten years ago knowing that Jesus had, for His mysterious purposes, delivered me from death, the poet Malcolm Guite has reposted a poem about Saint Peter. 

As Guite reminds us, Peter shows us that while life with God is a gift freely given in Jesus, following Jesus on this side of our own death and resurrection isn't easy. 

For me always, as I suspect was the case for Peter, the greatest impediment to my following Jesus faithfully is me...always me: my sin, my preferences, my ambitions, my insecurities, my faulty judgments, my big mouth, my little faith. I always seem to be getting in the way of Jesus working in my life. 

And then there's the constant opposition Christians face as we seek to follow Jesus: the sin of a fallen world and the evil one, the devil, always on the prowl, as Peter well knew.

Yet, for all the impediments and struggles involved in following Jesus, there is no other way I want to follow. So, each day, when Jesus calls, I ask the Holy Spirit's power to do what I cannot do on my own, follow Jesus.

At my ordination nearly thirty-six years ago, we sang the haunting ahymn, They Cast Their Nets. I love the melody by Herbert G. Draesel, Jr. But the lyrics penetrate to the core of what it means to be one of Jesus' disciples, a sinner made a saint by His grace, a needy human being who keeps following Jesus even when it brings suffering or rejection or disappointment. It recalls the disciples Jesus called by the Sea of Galilee: Andrew, Peter, John, and James. In their experience of following Jesus, we see what it must be like for all who put their trust in Him:

They cast their nets in Galilee,

Just off the hills of brown;

Such happy, simple fisherfolk,

Before the Lord came down,

Before the Lord came down.

Contented, peaceful fishermen,

Before they ever knew

The peace of God that filled their hearts

Brimful, and broke them too,

Brimful, and broke them too.

Young John, who trimmed the flapping sail,

Homeless in Patmos died.

Peter, who hauled the teeming net,

Head-down was crucified,

Head-down was crucified.

The peace of God, it is no peace.

But strife closed within the sod.

Yet, let us pray for but one thing:

The marv'lous peace of God,

The marv'lous peace of God.

© William A. Percy, 1885-1942

Peter reminds me to embrace an enduring faith. Jesus says, "The one who stands firm to the end will be saved." (Matthew 24:13) Thank God!

Here is Malcolm Guite's beautiful poem for Saint Peter.

Nurturing the Baptized in the Faith

This is from the pastor's cutting room floor. This paragraph didn't make it into tomorrow's message on the role of family members in nurturing young ones in their lives as baptized children of God.

There are no guarantees that family members who are nurtured in the faith, taught the Word of God, and shown how to pray will come to believe in Jesus and have life in His name. Even people Jesus sets out to save will, like a drowning person, fight against Him, His love, His call to repent and believe. Even people who see good examples of imperfect people seeking to follow Jesus each day will turn away from Jesus. But I can guarantee this: If parents, grandparents, and other family members don’t seek to lovingly share the Word about Christ within their families, especially with young children, the chances of those family members coming to believe in Jesus are significantly diminished.

Where to Turn in the Crisis

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, earlier today.]

Luke 12:49-56
During the recent Lutheran Week in Indianapolis, I tried to eat a sandwich made with the kind of crumbly, disintegrating bread that used to give gluten-free a bad name. After lunch, Wayne asked me about the diet I had to keep in light of Celiac Disease and a heart attack I had nine years ago. As we rode down an escalator, I told him, “You know, some days I can’t wait to be with Jesus in eternity, partly because I’ll be able to eat whole wheat bread and run and play baseball again.” 

Some people near us on the escalator giggled when they heard me say that. And it is funny. I chuckled too. But don’t all Christians sometimes fantasize about the things we’ll do in eternity with Jesus once we’re free of the constraints of sin, death, and darkness that pervade this life?

But there’s a danger to our lives as Christians in focusing too much on eternity: It may cause us to ignore what Jesus calls the crisis of living each day in this world, in this life, as followers of Jesus Christ. 

We can get so accustomed to thinking that Jesus is on our sides, taking Him and the free gift of eternal life with God He gives to all who believe in Him, for granted, and thus, feeling free to do, say, and live any way we decide to. 

Listen: Jesus has not set us free from sin and death so that we can ignore His will. 

He has not set us free from sin and death so that we can ignore the needs of our neighbors or the injustice, bigotry, or hatred with which the world treats them. 

Jesus has not set us free from sin and death so that we can view our church membership as a get-out-of-hell pass while ignoring the need our neighbors have for Jesus’ salvation, ignoring that about a quarter or more of our neighbors have zero religious belief.

This means that every day a Christian lives on this earth faces a crisis. I’m using that word as Jesus does in John 12:31, where He says, “Now is the time for judgment on this world,” which is more literally translated from the Greek in which all the New Testament writers originally composed their books: “Now is the crisis [κρίσις] of this world.” 

Here, Jesus is saying that, in this life, in each moment of this life, you and I deal with a decision point, a moment when we must make a judgment. And the judgment we must make is this: 

Will we turn to Jesus or will we turn away from Him?  

Will we turn to the world, to what’s easy, to what’s socially acceptable, to what’s safe, to what’s advantageous to us if heedless of the needs of my neighbor, to go along to get along or will we turn in repentance and faith to Jesus?

Our gospel lesson for this morning, Luke 12:49-56, finds Jesus turning abruptly from answering questions about the end of earth’s days after which all who have trusted in Him will live in His fully perfected kingdom, to the crisis the confronts us each day: the judgment you and I must make as to whether in this moment--at work, in our relationships, at home, in the world--we will turn to Jesus and live or walk away from Jesus and experience death.

Take a look at our lesson, please. Jesus begins: “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” 

These words don’t fit with the world’s usual image of Jesus, the Jesus of the sentimentalists who think Jesus was a wonderful guy, but not someone they have to answer to. 

Fire, an image that Jesus and the early Church used in talking about the Holy Spirit, is a symbol of judgment and of cleansing. 

Jesus, to be sure, has come into the world to bring salvation and peace with God to all who believe in Him. 

But He has also come to singe us in the purifying flames of God’s judgment, to burn away all that’s evil, unwholesome, and unloving, in order to refine us like precious metals, separating us from sin and death. 

To truly trust in Jesus begins with truly understanding, daily, that we are sinners who need to confess our sin, divesting ourselves of our addiction to sin. Then, purged of death and darkness, we can rise to newness of life. 

This is what happens to us in Holy Baptism: first, our old selves are drowned, then our new selves, God’s brand new creatures, rise. 

Because the old self still lurks until the days of our physical deaths and resurrections, the Christian life is composed of returning each day to the Lord of the baptismal font for this same death and resurrection to happen again and again. 

Romans 6:4 reminds us, “We were therefore buried with [Jesus Christ] through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” This new life is what God wants to give to all people through faith in Jesus every single day!

Then Jesus says: “But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!” 

Jesus wants to bring each person who hears His name to the crisis point to which we all need to come in order to receive Him and the life that only He can give to us. 

But before that could happen, Jesus had to undergo the baptism of death on a cross. 

His mission on earth would only be fulfilled when He did this and could say, “It is finished.” 

On the cross, Jesus shares the death that belongs to every human being from the moment we are born: the death of separation from the One Who gives life. It was from this place of separation that Jesus cried from the cross, “My God! My God! Why have You forsaken me.” 

But because God the Father raised Jesus from the dead, in the waters of Baptism, we share in Jesus’ death so that the Father too, can raise those who trust themselves and their whole lives to Jesus. It was to accomplish this for you and me that Jesus couldn’t wait--He felt constrained to go to the cross, set His face for Jerusalem--that Jesus went to the cross.

Jesus then says: “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

In this life, anyone who dares to follow Jesus, who daily turns to Jesus to seek the death of their old selves and the creation of their new selves, who live in what we Lutherans call “daily repentance and renewal” can expect that even members of our own families will turn against us. 

Or that, at any rate, they won’t understand us. 

Likely, everyone here has taken shots for following Jesus from someone in their family: siblings, cousins, parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren. Or, they have experienced not being understood. I know that I have. It’s just part of following Jesus.

At this point in our lesson, Jesus addresses the end of this world when He will return to judge the living and the dead in light of how we address the crisis--the judgment points--we face every day. “He said to the crowd: ‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, “It’s going to rain,” and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, “It’s going to be hot,” and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?'”

Where Jesus lived in the first century AD, if people saw clouds in the west, they knew that rain was coming in from the Mediterranean and if they felt hot winds coming from the Negev to the south, they knew were in for a heatwave. People knew how to read those meteorological signs. 

But here is Jesus, God the Son, standing right in front of these people, His identity as God and Savior repeatedly confirmed by miracles, signs, and wonders, by His words, by His compassion, by His sinlessness, yet they ignore all these signs. 

They don’t see that they need to turn to Jesus now and believe in Him. 

It’s as though they’re holding out for more proof, which will soon come in His death and resurrection, though most of the crowds who thronged to Jesus during His life on earth would never believe in Him even after He rose from the dead. 

It’s as though too, the crowd is waiting for a better offer. “Maybe,” they seem to think, “we can follow Jesus, but from a distance, getting just enough of Him to get the blessings He offers, but not close enough to actually have to give up the old sins we love so much, not close enough to actually hear Him call us to a life of love of God and love of neighbor, of worship and prayer, of witness to others for Jesus. Maybe we can have Jesus without being changed by Him, without being His disciple.” 

Folks, it doesn’t work like that. As you’ve heard me say before (and as I need to be constantly reminded myself): We will either have all of Jesus or we will have none of Jesus at all.

I’m guessing that the hesitation of the crowd surrounding Jesus that day is no different from the hesitation felt by most people in most churches in North America. They don’t perceive the crisis of each moment, the need to turn to Jesus for life and forgiveness right now in every right now of life because life in this world can end in the blink of an eye and then there will be no more opportunity to turn to Jesus and live. 

It’s because of this hesitation in the churches of the US, Canada, and Europe that, 

Today, there are nearly as many Lutherans in Ethiopia as there are in the U.S. There are now more Baptists in Nagaland (an eastern state in India) than there are in [all of] the southern states of the U.S. There [are] more Christians worshipping in China [on this] Sunday than there [are doing so] here in the U.S. or in all of Europe! 

Christians in America have largely lost their sense of urgency about being and making disciples--about turning to Jesus and inviting others, despite the possibility of rejection, to turn to Jesus too. 

We have forgotten the moment to moment crisis that is the permanent state of being in this fallen world.

But Jesus’ call is still urgent, folks. He says: “The time has come...The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” 

There isn’t a better moment to follow Jesus than right now, in this moment in which God allows you to live on this earth. 

There isn’t a better moment to share Jesus with others than right now on this earth. 

Because Jesus saves us by grace through faith in Christ alone, may this always be our prayer: 

Jesus, what do you want me to do or say, who do you want me to listen to, pray for, or serve right now?

And then may we do what He calls us to. 

We don’t have to wait for a perfect time to live in the freedom Jesus gives to His disciples.

In the crisis moments--the decision points--of each day, may we always turn to Jesus. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Called Out of the Christian Ghetto

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Luke 10:1-20
As a pastor, I tend to spend most of my days in the Christian ghetto. Most of the people I see and interact with each day are Christians. 

That might seem wonderful to you. You're likely thinking, “If you knew some of the people I interact with each day, Pastor, you’d be thankful to be spending so much time with Christians.” Well, I do appreciate Christians. The Bible teaches that you and I need each other in the fellowship of Christ’s Church.

But I also think that it’s not a great thing that I spend the vast majority of my time each day with other Christians. How on earth are we going to share the good news of new life through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus with the whole world if we spend all or most of our time with just other Christians?

The Church is growing in other parts of the world, making Christianity the fastest growing religion by conversions on the planet. But the Church in our world--in North America--is shrinking, the number of people who follow Jesus for new and everlasting life is decreasing.

This is true even among people who are on church rosters. This past week, Dr. Leonard Sweet posted daunting facts on Facebook. “[Fifteen] years ago,” he wrote, “40% of church members attended four times a month. In 2018, only 10% attended four times/month, a 37% drop in worship attendance. So you could have the exact same membership church and on Sunday mornings it looks like you’ve lost over a third of your members.”

Christians might look at that data and think, “That’s a relief. At least those missing people are still members.” But there’s a difference between members and disciples. When people aren’t regularly in worship, they are at risk of growing out of touch with Christ altogether.

Acts 2:42 says of the early church, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” The early Christians worshiped together; they saw that as the first thing they needed to do in response to the free gifts of forgiveness and new life we have through Jesus. But they also gathered as often as they could just to pray and consider God’s Word together. Like a football team, they huddled before each play, coming together to get ready for whatever came next, for life outside the Christian ghetto.

Sweet’s data shows that many Christians are distancing themselves from all those annoying Christians, annoying because those other Christians are as imperfect and as in need of God’s grace in Christ as you and I are. We forget that, by the power of the Holy Spirit who comes to Christians in our baptisms, those other Christians might have things to teach us from God. We forget, in the words of Proverbs 27:17: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” We need the sharpening and the formation that only happens when a fellowship of imperfect Christians is forged together in the fire of the Holy Spirit.

But the number of people who consider themselves Christians here in our country and in our own neighborhoods is also shrinking. The 2010 census shows that in Montgomery County, the percentage of our neighbors who claimed no religious affiliation was 51.5%. It seems likely to me that that number will be bigger when the 2020 census is taken, that well over half of our neighbors will have no connection to life through Jesus Christ!

This state of affairs will not change if we follow the easy course of staying in our Christian ghetto. Even pastors, ministers of Word and Sacrament, will need to spend more time outside of the Christian ghetto if we’re to make a dent in the spiritually disconnected population. 

Simple compassion for those who are in danger of facing a Christ-less eternity should motivate us. “Salvation is found in no one else [but Jesus],” God’s Word tells us, “for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12) Love for God and love for others should fill us with a sense of urgency about sharing the gospel with our spiritually disconnected neighbors and friends.

Jesus had this sense of urgency for the lost. He said that He had come to seek and save the lost. And He wanted people to understand that the miracles He performed and the grace He showed to the most notorious of sinners pointed to Him as God and Savior of the world, the One Who offers eternity with God as a free gift to all who believe in Him. 

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus sends out seventy-two of His disciples to prepare towns and villages for His appearance among them. 

There were, Jesus says, lots of spiritually disconnected people to reach who were like crops ready to be gathered into the kingdom of God: “The harvest is plentiful [Jesus says] but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” (Luke 10:2) 

Jesus says that we Christians need to pray that God will send faithful disciples among the spiritually lost so that they can encounter Jesus and His saving grace. We need to be praying for disciples to go into the harvests in Centerville, Miamisburg, Springboro, West Carrollton, Beavercreek, and all the Dayton area.

But Jesus says that we also need to be prepared to be the ones He sends into the harvest, despite the possibility of rejection and other dangers: “Go! [Jesus says] I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.” (Luke 10:3) 

Jesus goes on to say that if people do reject us, we cannot be discouraged. When you know that you belong to Jesus Christ, discouragement is not a long-term option. 

We believe, as Martin Luther writes in The Small Catechism, that as we rely on Christ, He frees us from the temptation to “false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins.”

Jesus spends much of today’s gospel lesson telling disciples intent on following His call out into the world among non-Christians about the awful consequences of our refusing to prepare others to meet Jesus and of others refusing to hear us tell them about Jesus. He says that those who spurn Him, the Author of life, will go to Hades (Luke 10:15), the place set aside for those who choose death over Jesus. 

And He tells disciples who seek to faithfully share Him with others: “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me.” (Luke 10:16)

Our lesson ends with the seventy-two disciples exulting in all the lives that had been touched by God’s grace and mercy shared in the name of Jesus. Jesus shares their joy. “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” (Luke 10:18) 

When we share Jesus’ name in love with others and they receive Jesus in faith, the powers of sin, death, and hell, all those things that keep us living in the freedom, hope, and peace that Jesus brings, those dark powers are decimated! 

But, just in case we make the mistake of thinking that the good things that God does through us when we share Jesus has anything to do with us, Jesus warns us: “do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (Luke 10:20) 

There are people outside these doors and the doors of our homes who only have misinformation and disinformation or no information about Jesus. Jesus wants to use you and me to share the straight scoop about Him: that He is God’s one and only Son, given to us because of God’s love for everyone, Jesus Who died and rose for us and promises that all who turn from sin and turn to Him will live forever with God, starting right here and right now. 

Sharing that message is a big job! But here are four quick pointers on how to go about doing this mission to which Jesus has called us.

First: Make yourself available to share Christ with others. “Lord,” we might pray, “send workers into the harvest and make me willing to be one of them.” 

Second: Connect with the unchurched. Connect with others generally. Walk slowly through the grocery store and the neighborhood (when it’s not raining or too stinking hot). Initiate conversation with others. You don’t have to start by talking about Jesus. (People might think you were nuts if you did that anyway.) But it’s amazing how often God will open up chances for us to speak with others about Jesus when we take the time to show an interest in them. 

Third: Care about the physical needs of others. When we open our hearts to others with service in Jesus’ name, the hearts of some among those we serve will be opened to Jesus. 

Fourth: Ask God to cultivate a desire within you to tell others about Christ. I don’t know about you, but the closer I grow to Christ, the more my awareness of two things grows. First, I become more aware of the enormity of my sin. Second, I become more aware of the enormity of God's grace that covers my sin and fills me with everlasting life with God. The awareness of these two things alone should fill us with compassion for the spiritually disconnected. I always think, “If God has made me part of His kingdom, anyone can receive the gift of new life through faith in Jesus.” Anyone!

Jesus has saved us. Now Jesus sends us to reach others with the gospel...out beyond our Christian ghetto...so that Christ can reach them with the message of their salvation. As disciples, this is our calling from God. May the Holy Spirit empower you to follow that calling! Amen


[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Journey of Here and Now

[This was shared during worship this morning with the members and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Luke 9:51-62

Christian journalist and thinker Philip Yancey has advice for Christians. “We do well to remember that the Bible has far more to say about how to live during the journey [through this life] than about the ultimate destination [beyond this life].”

That’s good advice. Jesus sets those who believe in Him free from sin and death not so that they can wait smugly for the days they die and get to be with Him. He sets us free so that, having the assurance that we belong to God forever, we can live this life differently and so that, through our lives and witness, we can invite others to join us in our journey with Jesus through this life.

In Matthew 24:13, Jesus tells us that the destination of an eternity with God only belongs to those who start living in that eternity through faith in Him today. “[T]he one who stands firm to the end [that means to the end of this life] will be saved [for the next].”

And the apostle Peter makes it clear that we are saved by Jesus not just for eternity and not just for ourselves, but for now and for others. “[Y]ou are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession,” Peter tells disciples of Jesus, “that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” [1 Peter 2:9] Our call in this life, today, right now, is to be and to make disciples out of gratitude for the grace through which God has saved us from ourselves. That’s our path, the journey Christ has marked out for us.

Our gospel lesson for today finds Jesus beginning the decisive final leg on the path, the journey that God the Father has marked for Him. Take a look at it, please, Luke 9:51-62. It begins: “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.”

In the Greek in which Luke composed his gospel, that verse more literally says: “Then it came to pass, in the fulfillment of His ascension, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.” Ascension here doesn’t refer here to the day forty days after Jesus’ resurrection that He ascended to heaven. It refers instead to His overall mission of going to Jerusalem to suffer, be crucified, to rise, and then to ascend to heaven. 

Jesus has set His face to complete the journey that began with His birth at Christmas, to buy sinners out of our slavery to sin, death, and the devil through His death, resurrection, and ascension. 

Yesterday, we saw a re-run of an old Law and Order in which Detective Green, always a straight-shooter, faces a murder rap he doesn't deserve in order to spare someone else prison time. He turns to the prosecuting attorney who has unraveled what was going on and asks, “Why are you doing this?” “Because,” the prosecutor answers, “we thought you were worth saving.” 

You know, sometimes, on rare occasions, God graces us with clear pictures of ourselves. We see, when all self-justification and rationalization are cast aside, how we have marred ourselves and our characters with our sin and selfishness. We may see that we are, in many ways, damaged goods. 

But listen: The God Who made you and all that exists thinks you, along with every other human being without exception, are worth saving. You are worth saving. 

That’s why Jesus set His face to journey to Jerusalem. 

That’s why He calls us to journey with Him today.

But not everyone thinks they need saving. Or if they do think they need saving, they believe that they, or the gods of their choosing, or a particular way of life will save them. Verse 52: “And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.”

The Samaritan villagers didn’t welcome Jesus any more than had Jesus' fellow Jews in Jerusalem had at His birth or would in Holy Week, any more than the Romans would, any more than most people in the world today welcome Him for Who He is--God and King and Savior. Isaiah prophesied well of Jesus in the eighth-century BC: “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” [Isaiah 53:3]

But the Samaritan villagers who spurned Jesus weren’t the only ones who didn’t understand Who Jesus is or what the journey of Christian discipleship is about. Verse 54: “When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, ‘Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?’ But Jesus turned and rebuked them.”

Luke says much more than that Jesus rebuked James and John. In the original Greek, he quotes Jesus as telling the two that they’re spiritually confused: “Οὐκ οἴδατε οἵου πνεύματός ἐστε ὑμεῖς”: “You don’t know of what spirit you are!” In other words, Jesus was saying, “If you guys want to torch people I came to save, you’re following the spirits of hell rather than the Holy Spirit.” 

For the person who journeys with Jesus, hatred for or indifference to those who may disagree with us are not options. 

If we insist on hating Muslims or atheists, or those who disagree with the Bible’s teaching on things like sexuality, how can we possibly introduce them to Jesus Christ? How can a Christian being hateful introduce others to the loving God we know in Jesus? 

Our call isn’t to torch others, literally or figuratively, but to touch them with the gospel of Christ, through our prayers, our faithfulness, our love, our witness. 

Though by this time James and John have been with Jesus for some time, they still don’t understand what it means to journey with Him in this life.

They weren’t alone in their lack of understanding about being disciples of Jesus. 

Verse 57: “As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’” To follow Jesus means accepting uncertainty. It means accepting that He may be calling us to venture outside our comfort zones so that we may learn to rely on Him alone.

Forty years ago, the last thing I wanted to be was a pastor. I remember telling my boss at the United Way, at a time I was furtively beginning my journey out of atheism to life with Christ, “I have no use for pastors.” That’s what I’d been taught by my grandfather and it was what I still believed. Within three years, I was in seminary, no longer able to resist the path that God seemed to have in mind for me. 

Thank God, not everyone is called to be a pastor, but He calls every Christian to journey away from what makes them comfortable to do what points others to Christ. 

To what uncomfortable place is Jesus calling you today?

Verse 59: “[Jesus] said to another man, ‘Follow me.’ But [the man] replied, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ [In Jewish custom, there was no higher responsibility than taking care of a parent’s burial...preferably after they died.] Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’” The call to follow Jesus is to set our faces toward whatever He may call us to be and do. Sometimes families will understand. But only sometimes. 

Verse 61: “Still another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.’ Jesus replied, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.’” 

All farmers knew in the centuries before air conditioned tractor cabs outfitted with GPS guidance, that if you looked back while sowing or plowing, you’d either have crooked rows or torn up crops. To journey with Jesus is to look to where He’s leading us and not to torment ourselves over the sins and mistakes of our past and not to look back nostalgically on a lost past. 

When we turn to Jesus, we realize again, damaged or goods or not according to the world or our own dark imaginings, that we are children of the King. We belong to the One leading us through our individual journeys of discipleship, now and forever. 

Following Jesus can be uncomfortable and it would be impossible to do if following Jesus didn’t also mean journeying with Jesus by our sides, here and now, every day. 

To Christians on their journey of discipleship, the apostle Paul wrote, “...he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” [Philippians 4:6] Through all the days of this life, with their challenges and joys, tragedies and triumphs, may this be our one certainty as Jesus’ disciples: As we set our faces toward Jesus, He will bring the completion and fulfillment that He has in mind for us. 

And though I sometimes forget it, that’s all we really need to know. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]