Luke 9:57-62
57 As they were going along the
road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." 58
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." 59 To another he said,
"Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my
father." 60 But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead;
but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." 61 Another said,
"I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my
home." 62 Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and
looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."
Tex Avery is probably best known for
creating characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, but in the late 1940s and
early 1950s he directed a trilogy of animated shorts satirizing the popular
live-action shorts of the day that predicted the technology of the future, and
in 1949, the first of those short films premiered in theatres across America.
The two following shorts were titled The
Television of Tomorrow (in 1953) and The
Farm of Tomorrow (in 1954).[1]
But in that first short in ’49, audiences were given a satirical glimpse one
hundred years into the future with a detailed tour of The House of Tomorrow.
It’s the year 2050, and the house of
tomorrow is a fully prefabricated home that can fit easily into one’s pocket or
purse when collapsed into nothing more than a small box, yet when it is
activated, it becomes a sprawling house with all the comforts and “bells and
whistles” one could ever want. There are separate entrances for every member of
the family: the dog, the son, the wife, the husband, and even the mother-in-law
(a running gag throughout the cartoon). The carpet in the house of tomorrow is
so plush and thick one sinks in neck-deep when walking across the room. There
are all kinds of buttons that control all kinds of things in the house of
tomorrow: there’s a button that regulates moisture in the home by releasing a
small rain cloud into the room; there’s a button that turns a luxurious home
into a rundown shack when the tax assessor comes knocking. There are several
automatic machines in the house of tomorrow too: there’s a machine that answers
all those questions your children tend to ask, an automatic sandwich maker that
shuffles and deals the parts of your sandwich like a deck of cards, an
automatic electric shaver that can get such a close shave it can take your
mouth and nose clean off your face! The house of tomorrow even has new kitchen
appliances like a pressure cooker that can prepare an entire meal and an oven
with a clear door, so the cook can see everything that’s going on (not all of
Tex Avery’s predictions were so hilariously wild).
It’s a funny little cartoon about
what folks in 1949 must have thought about the year 2050, a year that seemed to
be in some distant, space age a century down the road. But here we are, in
2013, just 37 years away from 2050, and while some of Tex Avery’s predictions
about 2050 may have missed the mark, there are some organizations today which
are making some educated and precise predictions about the year 2050. They’re
predictions that will have a direct effect on the future of our country, our
culture, and (perhaps most importantly) our church.
In the July-August 2010 issue of Smithsonian (the magazine published by
the Smithsonian institute), Joel Kotkin explores “The Changing Demographics of
America” by the year 2050.[2]
Here are some of the facts Kotkin lists based on available census data that I
find most interesting: by the year 2050 the population of the United States
will have exceeded 400 million people (that’s nearly 80-100 million more than
today); 13% of the population today is 65 or older, but by 2050 that number
will rise to 20%; the number of people 15-64 years old, however, will grow by
42%, while in other developed countries that number will actually shrink! Over
the next 40 years an estimated one million people will move from poor,
undeveloped countries to developed nations. Between 1990 and 2005 immigrants
started one out of every four venture-backed companies in this country, and in
2007, fifteen CEOs on the Forbes 100
list were immigrants or direct descendants of immigrants: that is a trend that
is expected to only go up. In 2050, it is predicted that whites will no longer
be the majority: today, minorities make up around 30% of the U.S. population,
but by 2050 minorities will make up over 50% of the population, with the Latino
and Asian populations more than tripling. While today, 25% of children under the
age of five are Hispanic, by the year 2050 that number will rise to 40%. Minorities
will become the driving force behind the continued development of suburbs,
particularly as the trend towards city centers cyclically reverses itself, and
more and more people (more of whom will be minorities) will move beyond the
city limits into suburbs and rural areas taking their businesses and
development with them. [3]
Needless to say, the year 2050 is
going to look very different from 2013, and we have to ask ourselves, “What are
we going to do here at the First Baptist Church of Williams to prepare
ourselves for ministry in such a world?” Church, while I can’t see 37 years
into the future to see what it’s going to take to “touch lives by sharing the
love of Jesus” in 2050, I do know one thing: to be a congregation that shares
the good news of God’s love in Christ Jesus in the future, we have to be a
congregation with the fearlessness to follow Christ here and now in the
present.
Take another look at the text we’ve
read this morning. Jesus encounters three individuals on the way with his disciples.
The first, volunteers to follow Jesus—to take upon himself the yoke of
discipleship, but Jesus makes sure he knows the deep, difficult reality that
faces those of us who truly seek to follow him. “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.’" If we are going to commit to following Jesus into the
future, we must have fearlessness in parting with what we have come to believe
we own. Following Jesus means that there may come times when all one has to
depend on is the kindness of strangers and the providence of God. Jesus tells
this man that the life of discipleship is one that may result in owning
nothing. And I want you to hear that for the real, earth-shattering truth it
is.
See, I know at first, most of think
this is already a difficult demand to expect to have nowhere to lay our heads,
but when we honestly reflect on all the things we “own” in our culture
today—not only as individuals, but—collectively as groups of people, well, the
truth is we have “owned” an awful lot. As Christians, we have “owned” a sense
of entitlement and influence in a culture initiated and shaped by the early
Puritans, Anglicans, and Congregationalists of this country, but as recent
studies and surveys have shown, more and more people are referring to
themselves as “religiously unaffiliated;” church growth is being outpaced by
population growth in every state but Hawaii; older, mid-sized churches (like
ours) are shrinking, while small and large churches are growing, and by 2050
(there’s that year again) the percentage of the U.S. population attending
church is predicted to be half of what it was in 1990.[4]
Frankly, these numbers result from a majority of Christians and their churches
feeling entitled to the influence of being in the majority and growing
complacent, while looking for easy, one-size-fits-all approaches to simply
increase the three “B’s”: Budgets,
Buildings, and Butts in the pews.
If we, Christ’s Church,
are going to prove such statistics wrong and reverse the trends that are
heading in those directions, we must commit ourselves to following Christ
fearlessly into the future. We are going to have to risk losing the sense of
influence and comfort we have had in this country for so long as Christians. We
are going to have to give up the outdated (and frankly sinful) idea that
churches are fortresses where people who share the same social ideals and only
people with the same color skin can gather one or two days a week and relive
“the good ole days” in some sort of fantastical respite from “the real world.” If
we are going to follow Christ into the future, we must have fearlessness in
parting with all of those social entitlements we’ve enjoyed for so long and
commit ourselves wholly and completely to Jesus.
That is essentially what Jesus tells the man who responds to his call in verse 59 by saying, “Lord,
first let me go and bury my father.” We should not try to gloss over
Jesus’ words here by trying to explain that maybe this man’s father was sick
and only close to death, or that the man’s request is to bury his father’s
bones after a year of decomposition in a tomb. The burial of a relative was an
extremely important cultural (and even religious) act: in fact, it was so
important that there are exceptions made to laws regarding uncleanness and
required religious practices just for the burial of a relative.[5]
Jesus tells this man that discipleship is a commitment to follow Jesus so
completely, with a fearlessness that breaks the expectations of culture and the
contrived obligations of the world.
But there’s something more here that
Jesus says in this passage from Luke’s gospel, something I think might hit
awful close to the bone. Hear once again
the words from this third person who crosses Jesus’ path in verses 61: “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my
home." It’s a simple request, one the prophet Elisha was granted
by his predecessor Elijah in 1 Kings 19:19-21[6]:
this man simply wants to return to his home and kiss his momma one last time,
shake his father’s hand, hug his siblings, and maybe even enjoy one last meal
with his family while reminiscing about childhood play-dates, family vacations,
and holidays at Grandma’s house. But Jesus’ words are hard: ‘No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks
back is fit for the kingdom of God.’ Following Jesus into the future
takes fearlessness to leave the past behind you.
In that old evangelistic sense, this
seems like something we’re all anxious and willing to do. We want to put our
sinful pasts behind us; all of us want to put those days when we lived lives
ignorant of God’s presence and God’s love for us. However, we seem to have
trouble leaving the past behind us when it comes to those times of pride and
triumph. Whether it’s the middle-aged Texan whose aged and fattened fingers
bulge around a gold ring on his right hand as he tells of that last second
touchdown that “won state back in ’74,” or the woman in her thirties who still
speaks with a slightly arrogant sense of authority on all things European just
because she spent one semester abroad in college, or that one church that still
clings to the notion that it’s going strong because back in the ‘80s they took
that one mission trip out West to help build that church, they all have a much
harder time not looking over their shoulder to check out how straight the plow
lines are.
I’m afraid that sometimes, we can
get so caught up in the fact that we once did something great that we forget
that Christ is calling us forward, ahead, on to something else, something more.
I’m afraid, church, that we can get so proud of ourselves and the things we’ve
done, that we might spend too much time looking behind us, checking out all
that we’ve plowed, that we forget to look forward to all the ground ahead of
us, ground God is calling us to break.
“No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the
kingdom of God.” Friends, I hope you know God has a lot up ahead for
us. There’s a lot of ground out there that Jesus is calling us to break, and
it’s far too much for us to simply look back and be content with only what
we’ve accomplished so far. We are called to follow Jesus with a fearlessness
for our future, a fearlessness in parting with all of the things we’ve come to
believe we own, a fearlessness in breaking with the expectations of our culture
and created requirements of this world, a fearlessness in leaving everything
behind so that we may focus our eyes, our hearts, our minds, and all that we
are on Christ as he goes ahead of us. That is what we are being asked to do
even now as you pray for God’s direction in how you will be good stewards of
your time and energy in the ministries of this congregation. That is what we
are being asked to do even now as we pray for bold faith in trusting God and
one another with our tithes and offerings as we seek to be good financial
stewards of all that God has given us. That is what we are being asked to do as
we gather in this place for worship and as we scatter from this place for
kingdom work.
May we be people who go boldly forward after Jesus. May we be people who
put our hands to the plow and never look back. May we be people who are found
fit for the kingdom of God as we seek to do with will of God with fearlessness
for our future.
Let us pray…
[1]
One can find videos of all three shorts with their release dates here at this
page from vimeo.com: http://vimeo.com/32889552
[2] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/40th-anniversary/The-Changing-Demographics-of-America.html?c=y&page=4
(accessed November 8, 2013).
[3]
Ibid.
[5]
Mark Strauss, “Luke,” Zondervan
Illustrated Bible Background Commentary. Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI (2002)
p.409.
[6]
Fred B. Craddock, Interpretation: Luke. Westminster
John Knox Press: Louisville, KY (2009) p.144.
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