3rd Sunday after Pentecost

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Three different people are interested in becoming followers of Jesus, and Jesus gives them rather puzzling responses.

“I will follow you wherever you go.” – “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

“I will follow you after burying my father.” – “Let the dead bury their own dead.”

“I will follow you after saying farewell to those in my house.” – “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

I imagine these persons, and the people listening to this conversation, going “Huh?!” What does this even mean? What is Jesus trying to say?

I don’t have a definitive answer to this. Sorry. Jesus’ responses are indeed a bit puzzling, confusing, strange. However, there is an overarching theme here: focus versus distraction.

This is highlighters by the opening line of our lesson this morning: “When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Up until now, Jesus had preached and healed and gathered disciples in and around Galilee. Now he changes direction. It is time for him to go to Jerusalem, where he will die and rise and ascend into heaven. This is getting serious now. He has only so much time left. He is focused on accomplishing his mission.

Because he is so focused, he can’t have any distracted followers. He can’t have disciples who say, “I’ll follow you, but first let me take care of some stuff.” He can’t have folks who look backwards all the time. You can’t plow a field successfully if you look back over your shoulder instead of forward to where you are going. One woman in another congregation described watching her teenaged daughter mowing the family lawn with the riding lawnmower. The girl was driving forwards but looking backwards and promptly drove the lawnmower into a tree.

Talking about driving, maybe distracted driving is a good illustration. We all know the dangers of distracted driving. Research has shown that trying to text while driving is just as bad as driving drunk. People who are distracted by their phones, by what the kids are doing in the backseat, by something at the side of the road that catches their attention, these people are much more likely to cause accidents. Being distracted makes them ineffective drivers.

Jesus’ mission is too serious for distracted disciples. He needs his followers focused and committed. Being focused disciples of Jesus Christ will affect the way we live and act.

I am now turning to our reading from the Letter to the Galatians. The Apostle Paul is stressing emphatically that we are free in Christ. “For Freedom Christ has set you free.” He goes on and on about this freedom.

The theologian Jim Nestingen once said that if you want to confuse an American, ask him or her what freedom is for. Americans love their freedom, celebrate their freedom, can tell you exactly what they are free from. We just celebrated freedom from slavery on Juneteenth. We will celebrate freedom from the British Empire on July 4th. We are proud that we are free from control over what we say and how we vote.

But what is freedom for? We aren’t always as clear on that.

This is how Paul answers this question: “Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.” Christ has set us free from the law, from anxiety about our salvation, from the penalty for sin, from eternal death and damnation; from all that Christ has set us free so that we can love one another. The purpose of our freedom is that we have the liberty to serve our neighbor.

If we abuse our freedom for selfish purposes, then we harm our community. Paul gives a long list of behavior that results when people abuse their freedoms: fornication, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, factions, envy, drunkenness, and more. These are all behaviors that tear relationships and communities apart.

Paul calls these ‘works of the flesh’. It is important to know that Paul is not body-bashing or body-hating here. With ‘flesh’, he means life under the influence of sin apart from faith. He also doesn’t list all these vices as a checklist, and if you tick too many of them you are done for. Rather, Paul is describing a general way of life. If you use your freedom to focus on your own desires, then this is how you will end up acting.

A much better, healthier, godlier use of your freedom is to love your neighbor. “Live by the Spirit”, Paul writes. Let the Spirit inform your actions. Let the Spirit help you focus on what you are called to do. This will bless you and your community with the fruit of the Spirit, with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Living according to the flesh tears communities apart. Living according to the Spirit brings communities together, communities where people can enjoy love and peace, where people treat one another with gentleness and kindness, where people support one another with generosity and self-control. Using our freedom in Christ to love our neighbor creates that kind of community.

Our new mission statement calls us to be intentional in becoming such a blessed community. It focuses us on what we believe to be our calling. We will ask each committee, team, and ministry group to look at their work and ask themselves: Can we tweak our efforts to focus them even more on being an inclusive and compassionate community where everyone is connected in relationship with God and each other to foster wholeness of mind and soul.

In our mission statement we state why we believe focusing on compassionate community is so important: because such a community fosters healing. Research has proven that people live longer, happier, and healthier when they enjoy meaningful relationships in their lives.

But we don’t need research to tell us that. We know that because we have experienced that. Being part of a caring community makes a huge difference in our well-being. A lot is going on in our lives. We carry many, many burdens. We worry about our health; we are concerned about people we love; we are anxious about our finances; we are torn about a career move; we are stressed about a relationship problem; we feel overwhelmed by our responsibilities; we are still on edge about COVID; we are exhausted.

Here among God’s compassionate people, we can share those burdens. We can talk about them. We are blessed with the fruit the Spirit has grown in this congregation: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I myself have been blessed by this. For example, I have been feeling rather overwhelmed lately, exhausted from COVID and worried about the future of the church. My birthday is on May 23rd; this year that fell on a Monday. When I entered Kimberlin Hall for our weekly Bible study group that morning, my classmates surprised me with a birthday party. Cake, chocolate, snacks, flowers, gifts, and more cards than I have ever received in one day.

I was moved to tears. The people of this compassionate community blessed me with the fruit of the Spirit, with love and joy and generosity and peace. It was balm for my soul.

As I was in the middle of pondering this sermon, I read an article about the opioid crisis in our nation. In it, the author described a research project where a rat was put in a cage with two levers. One dispensed drugs, the other food. Rat after rat put in the cage with the same choice kept pushing the drug lever until it either overdosed or starved to death. Everyone concluded that drugs are bad and automatically addictive.

But then Dr. Bruce Alexander redid the experiment with a twist. He again placed rats in a cage with the same two levers, but this time the cage included everything rats like and need for wellbeing, like tunnels, toys, and other rats. In that setting, few rats pushed the drug lever. The researchers concluded that it was not the availability of drugs that leads to addiction, but the lack of connection. The article stated: “The opposite of addiction is not just sobriety; it’s community.”

I was stunned by this finding. What brings healing, or what can prevent addiction in the first place, is community.

Today is a healing service. Today, we are open about the fact that not all is well in our lives, that we need compassion and a prayer. We have come here with our pain because here we are connected in relationship with God and each other, and those relationships foster wholeness in mind and soul.

When the man tells Jesus that he wants to follow him, Jesus responds that foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Elaine Heath writes in her commentary on this verse, “God incarnate is essentially homeless apart from the hospitality of others.” God in Jesus has no home, but finds sanctuary whenever we care for one another.

Focused disciples who use their freedom in Christ to grow fruit of the spirit create compassionate communities where God’s healing can touch lives. Let us be such a community, for our own healing and for the healing of all God’s people. Amen.