Victory

Preached at the Conclave of the Knights Templar

 Propers: The Third Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 13), AD 2022 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

“If you want to follow Me,” Jesus says this morning, “you’d best know what you’re in for. Because if you don’t have the stomach, y’all might as well go home.”

I have often sung the praises of where and how I was raised. I did not consider my parents overly religious, but they were certainly faithful. We said grace at dinner, made a big deal out of every holiday both secular and sacred, and attended church each Sunday, where my mother in particular was always quite involved. Yet this was not unusual. Back then that’s the way it was done.

I know that for a lot of people, growing up religious was a negative experience. Some suffered judgment, abuse, and a stifling of dissent. Others were just plain bored, and didn’t know why they were there. But my childhood church wasn’t like that. The congregation that raised me loved questions, loved liturgy, loved education. They still do. Church for me was a place where it was safe to ask most anything, the one place that seemed interested in the truly big questions of life.

I fit in better there than I ever did at school. Which is not to say that I never caused problems. I did. And because of my misbehavior I suffered the pastor’s perpetual curse: “You know,” the associate minister once said to me, when I was acting up in Sunday school, “it’s the loud ones who grow up to be preachers.” Needless to say, I was horrified. That shut me right up.

My school, too, was a good place to be religious. Large portions of the student body were Jewish and Hindu, people who took their faith traditions quite seriously because they could not take them for granted. Unlike my WASP background, theirs was not the twentieth-century American default. To go to temple or synagogue was a choice, a commitment, which they were proud to make.

They say that in polite company, one should never talk politics or religion. Well, I’m pretty sure that those were the only topics about which my friends and I ever truly spoke. That and Star Wars, which should at least half-count as a religion. Learning what they believed helped me to understand what I believed. To grow up talking about God at the lunch table, with Catholics and Baptists, and Reform and Conservative Jews, and northern and southern Indians, was a deep blessing.

Religion thrived where I grew up. And as I understand, it mostly still does. My home congregation’s doing great. The kids I grew up with, have kids getting bar-mitzvahed. I hadn’t planned on going into religion; I was a genetic engineer. But a calling is a calling, I suppose. And this one is mine. But even in seminary, coming from where I did, I didn’t really know what I was getting into. 20 years on, I’m still not sure I have much of a handle on it.

In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus has “set His face” toward Jerusalem, entering the Lukan travel narrative, a journey as much symbolic as geographic. Jesus, as a faithful, first-century Jewish man, has traveled to the holy city multiple times a year throughout His entire life, for the holidays of spring, summer, and autumn. Yet this time is different, because He knows what’s on the horizon. He knows His time is short. He knows that we have prepared a Cross for our Savior.

And on this slow, steady march toward death, Jesus meets many along the way who want to follow Him, who want to become disciples of this now fairly famous rabbi. And He’s basically warning them off. He’s letting them know what they’re in for. “I’ll follow you wherever you go,” says one, to which He replies: “Birds and foxes have their homes, but I on earth have none.” There will be neither comforts nor rest on this journey. It’s a one-way ticket; He ain’t comin’ back.

Another says, “I’ll follow you, Lord, but let me first bury my father,” to which Jesus replies, rather cryptically, “Let the dead bury their dead,” a response which has caused no lack of ruffled feathers amongst interpreters. Given the cultural context, it’s doubtful this man’s dad is dead. What he’s probably saying is that he will follow Jesus in a few years, after he’s taken care of his elderly parents—the ancient equivalent of saying, “I’ll get to that in retirement.”

And Christ has no time for that. His earthly ministry draws to its climax. But neither does He reject or rebuke this poor man. “As for you,” He says, “go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.” Don’t follow Me to Jerusalem, in other words. Preach the Good News where you are. He said the same thing to the Gerasene demoniac.

A third and final petitioner wants to follow Jesus, but asks time merely to say his farewells. That’s hardly unreasonable, now is it? The Old Testament lesson for today is Elisha making the same request of his master Elijah, to which Elijah says, “Yes, of course, by all means, say your goodbyes.” But Jesus says, “No-one who puts hand to plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God.” And yeah, that’s pretty harsh. It emphasizes the urgency, the primacy, of what Christ is about to do. But it also protects this man.

He has a family. He has people to whom to say goodbye. He’s not ready for a Cross, which in this circumstance I mean quite literally. Only a few will go to Gethsemane, to Calvary. And even these will scatter. All but the women.

Beware discipleship and its demands. You will suffer for it. You will struggle for it. Salvation may be free, but discipleship costs all. It demands the death of the ego, the drowning of the Old Adam within, that we might rise anew in Christ. Christian is not a cultural default. The word “Christian” literally means “little Christ,” and that’s what we’re becoming, every last one of us, little Christs for the world. And what does Christ do for the world? He dies. He dies and descends into hell.

In retrospect, one could see how our timing could not have been worse. My wife and I became professionally religious at precisely the moment when the United States collectively decided that we’re just all done with organized religion. Now no matter where you serve, at least within the West, issues of attendance, of involvement, of congregational viability—and for clergy also issues of employment and of housing—all hang like a sword of Damocles above our heads.

Christianity isn’t popular anymore. It cannot be assumed. Quite the contrary: the zeitgeist is against us. Yet this might not be all that bad a thing. Yes, we see decline. Yes, we see defeat. But isn’t that the whole purpose and the message of the Cross: that what the world regards as power, fame, success, and strength, are really just all nonsense; and that what the world regards as weakness, failure, unimportance, are really the glory of God? There must be more to life than the Holy River Amazon.

Real Christianity has never been popular here; by which I mean adherence to the code of Christ, to the strict yet compassionate demands not of the 10 Commandments but of the Beatitudes, and the New Commandment to love as Christ loves us. American Christianity has always been more American than Christian. And as it wanes, so it gains.

We have the opportunity now to be what we were always called to be: disciples bearing the Cross, and with it the Good News of God’s love for everything and everyone that He has ever made, in Jesus Christ our Lord. A smaller, weaker Church, one despised and ignored by the world, is Christlike—and therefore invincible. Hate us, and we forgive. Slap us, and we turn the cheek unbowed. Slay us, and we rise up immortal, for to us our death is gain.

Going forward, those who call themselves Christian can only do so by conviction, never by default. That doesn’t mean that we all have to be pastors or missionaries or knights bearing banners. Christians proclaim the Kingdom in every walk of life. But no longer shall it be some cushy affair into which one need put neither significant thought nor effort. We will have to work to be Christians. We will have to care, have to live what we believe. The Church will have to give a damn again.

And just so you know, that will not be easy. If ease is what you’re looking for, then by all means, sleep in and watch Netflix Sunday mornings. But if you’re going to call yourself a Christian, you will have to worship, and pray, and study, and read, and most of all love your neighbor with everything you’ve got, everything Christ gives to us. Know right now what you’re getting into, what discipleship demands. And if that’s all too much to ask—there’s the door.

I’m not talking about earning your salvation. Your salvation is assured, by the Body and Blood, the Spirit and Word, of Jesus Christ our King. I’m talking about bringing that salvation, that Kingdom of our God, out to others, down to earth; to be Christ for a world still in need of Resurrection.

And if you can square with that, O Christian, then victory is assured.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.