The Rev. Noah Van Niel
Christ and St. Luke’s
June 26th, 2022
Proper 8 (C): 1 Kings: 19:15-16, 19-21; Psalm 16; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62
(You can view the full service here. The sermon begins at 22:40)
It hit me around South Hill. Right where 58 breaks off from 85 and turns into a two-lane roller coaster and the speed limit drops frustratingly low. I’d made that drive a couple dozen times by now, as I was commuting while my kids were finishing out the school year in Chapel Hill, but yesterday, as I looked over my shoulder at a car stuffed with all the random extras that make up a life—things that couldn’t fit, or were too fragile, or we forgot to box—and two boys who were definitely not keeping their hands to themselves in the back seat, this time was different. “Well, I guess this is home now.” I said to myself. Moving day had finally come.
In all of our lives, there are moments after which we know nothing will ever be the same. Definitive breaks, changes, events, transitions, turns in the road. Sometimes they are only discernible in hindsight—“Oh, that was the moment everything changed.” But often there is a moment where it hits you as it’s happening, that from now on life will be different. You wake up one morning and you’re retired, no office to go to anymore or meetings to attend; you got into the hospital one day and come home with a whole new human to care for the next; you close the door after all the funeral guests have departed and realize suddenly, you’re alone. It’s not really the day of decision, that often happens long before. This is the day of departure, the day when there is a clear and definitive break. These are hard moments to pass through. Even a happy day of departure is still a moment of rupture that marks a clear point in time, a clear before and after. And such moments are often full of excitement but also fear. And they are times when the past can exert a surprisingly strong pull on you as you try to move forward to whatever comes next.
I was reminded of this truth, as we rolled on through those cotton fields and peanut farms, for the moment like foxes without a hole or birds without a nest, with my hand not on a plow but on the wheel, but still feeling all too keenly that pull to look back, to turn back, to go back. This had nothing to do with you all—y’all have been lovely and we are truly excited to be here, finally, fully. But it was a reminder of how the past works on us, tugs on us, tries to keep us where we are, when God is calling us onto something new.
Given that, I was glad to have for company this week, our Gospel passage, from the 9th chapter of Luke where it’s moving day for Jesus too. We hear at the outset of this passage that, after months of wandering the countryside preaching, teaching, collecting followers, he knew it was time to “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” This is a pivotal moment in his life. Everything now is working toward that end, an end we know, and he knows is not going to go well. His teachings take on new purpose, his steps have new urgency. And on the way he encounters a few new folks who profess a desire to be his disciples. Almost. My annotated Bible titles this section of scripture the “would-be disciples.” They want to follow Jesus, but…not quite yet. They have excuses—legitimate excuses—for delaying, but they are delays all the same. And so, in the day of departure they demur. The past has too strong a hold on them to let them step freely into the new life to which he is calling them. They are pulled back, held back, from following him. Normally, I imagine Jesus would have given them some time to warm up to the idea of moving to a whole new life, but this train is leaving the station, and if they don’t jump on now, they will miss it. Jesus is on the move. And he is asking for others to undergo a similar kind of move, make a similar level of commitment, take a similar kind of risk to step into the unknown and follow him.
This pull of the past on us, keeping us from change, thwarting the embrace of the new is notably present in key moments in our life, like moving house. But it strikes me that it is also a constant challenge for those of us who are trying to follow Jesus in throughout our lives. When we make the decision to follow Jesus there will be a day of departure, in fact there will be many days of departure, many moments that arise when your life needs to look different than it did before and in those moments the temptation will be to stay put, to hold tight, to stick to what is familiar and safe. To follow Jesus is risky. It’s scary. Because, unlike the past, the future is never fixed, never known. But to follow means to move. Not forget or deny but move on. You can’t stay where you are, as you are, and be a disciple. You have to get up and go—not necessarily literally—you don’t need to pack up and move house to follow Jesus (though surely some people have done that). But you need to be willing to change your life. And that requires a little bit of courage and whole lot of faith. That was certainly true for Jesus when he set out for Jerusalem. This change, this departure, was going to be difficult, and risky, and scary, and surely the pull of staying in the safety and familiarity of the countryside with his family and friends was alluring. But despite the difficulty of that decision and the consequences of that departure, he had faith in the promise that on the other side of that challenge there was something new, something glorious, something more than what he currently knew. For he believed that Jerusalem was not just going to be the place of his death; it was also going to be the place his resurrection. And he put his faith in—gave his life to—that promise.
And we are asked to do the same. For those of us who seek to follow Jesus, overcoming our propensity to stay put, to hold back, is one of our greatest challenges. But if we are going to “live in the power of the Resurrection” as our prayer books puts it, the willingness to change, to move, to follow, will necessarily be a part of our life. Thinking about Resurrection as simply something that happens when you die is too narrow a focus. The cycle of death and rebirth is the entire shape of the Christian life. To let go of, to move on from, to die to, in the hope, in the faith, in the promise, that the resulting transformation will lead you to something new. Sure, living in this way, allowing our discipleship to conform to this pattern, is preparing us for that ultimate and final moving day when we step out once and for all in faith and hope into a future that is very much unknown and unknowable. But just as important is how that faith in resurrection gives a particular character and shape to how we live now. Embracing the whole cycle of death and rebirth is the way we experience the fullness of life and discover the fullness of who can be. But that requires us to greet the inevitable changes and transitions in our life with the same courage and faith that Jesus did as he moved toward Jerusalem. That’s what it means to pick up our cross and follow him. It is to conform our lives to the pattern that marked his: life through death. It is hard. It is scary. It is risky, but it is also what allows God to do the work God always promises to do: to make you, and all things, new.
As we continued along route 58, from Brodnax, to Emporia, to Franklin, to Suffolk, the mood in the car started to change. The tears dried up, the nerves dissipated, and by the time we emerged from the darkness of the tunnel and rose up into the sunlight, crossing the bridge into downtown we were different than when we set out. That palpable pull of the past on our hearts, and trepidation for the unknown life that lay ahead was ebbing, and in its place started coming in little waves of hope, and courage and faith in the future that God was opening before us. For we hadn’t just moved, we had followed and that meant that soon, we would be home. Amen.