This past week Simone and I visited the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta.  One section that caught our attention was about the Freedom Riders.  There is a wall of mugshots of those Freedom Riders who were arrested.  We began talking about why white people were riding buses down to the South, especially noting how many of those pictured were white male priests.  Then came the question, “Would you have ridden down as a priest?”  I have been pondering that question ever since.  Echoing in my mind was the recording of a woman’s voice who said something like, “I was excited about the cause and rode down with the others.  But when I saw those beaten and almost burned to death, I realized I could die.  I was so afraid.”  As her words brought home the reality of those Riders, I looked at the words right in front of me from Martin Luther King, Jr., written on the back of a bus seat, “No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.” 

In our gospel lesson today, Luke tells us Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem.  These may seem like throw-away words, but they are at the crux of the entire tumultuous reading today.  In setting his face to Jerusalem, Jesus knows that he will die and, as brother Martin says, what he is dying for.  All the nonsense of everyday life fades away, and Jesus is alive, knowing he will die and why that death must come.  And so, when the Samaritans refuse to receive Jesus, Jesus turns and goes to another village – despite John and James thinking they should call down fire upon the offending Samaritans.  When others ask to follow him, Jesus tells them they will face rejection, the loss of a sense of home, even the privileges of tending to the sacred parts of life, like burying and caring for loved ones.  There is a cold-hearted laser focus that comes to knowing what you would die for.

Jesus’ followers are not to be blamed.  John and James are suddenly violent.  They have just seen Elijah on the mountain of the Transfiguration.  Elijah himself rained down fire upon those who rejected the Lord.  And the potential followers of Jesus are not off-base either.  That same Elijah, when asked in our Hebrew Scripture reading today if Elisha can kiss his father and mother goodbye, gives Elisha permission and waits for him to settle his affairs.[i]  Even without biblical precedence, these are normal human emotions.  When someone rejects me, my Savior, and everything I believe in, anger and even retaliation is a human reaction.  When I agree to sacrifice everything for Jesus, closure with family and a healthy parting is a normal human desire. 

But that’s the thing about following Jesus.  Jesus invites us out of the id part of our brain and into the super-ego.  The question becomes for us how we can manage to do that.  I go back to that quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.  “No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.”  Jesus knew what he would die for.  To phrase that differently, Jesus knew for whom he would die.  As scholar David Lose says, there is a “single-mindedness of purpose that is prompted by God’s profound love for humanity and all the world…This emphasis on God’s all-encompassing love is highlighted in these passages by the rejection of violence against the Samaritans:  it is not simply contrary to Jesus’ vision but incompatible with his very identity and mission…Everything,” Lose argues, “friendship, familial connections, piety, discipleship – looks different when viewed through the lens of God’s sacrificial love.”[ii]

This week our US Congress and our US Supreme Court released some decisions that had some dancing with glee in support, and some who are ready to rain down fire.  And those opposing views are likely both in this room, maybe sitting beside you, certainly watching with you online, and very soon to be kneeling at this very altar with you.  I can guarantee that each of you holding opposing opinions believe that your opinion is the right one.  We can either sit here, or watch this space virtually, and begin raining down fire upon one another until we burn up all of us.  Or, we can remember to turn our faces to Jerusalem, to take on the single-mindedness of purpose that is prompted by God’s profound love for humanity and all the world.  We need to do that in this space because unless we can figure out how to make a way through division while being rooted in the profound love that is in this place, we will never be able to go out into the world and navigate friendship, familial connections, piety, discipleship through the lens of God’s love. 

This is our space, right next to the people we may have been vilifying as “them” this week, where we can find the single-mindedness of purpose that is prompted by God’s profound love for humanity and all the world.  This is the place where we can come alive because we know what we’d be willing to die for.  This is the place where Jesus can prepare you to go back out into the world with new lenses, provided by the people sitting beside you, who will help you see how to live in the world through love.  Amen.

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[i] Amy-Jill Levin and Ben Witherington, III, The Gospel of Luke:  New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2018), 271.

[ii] David J. Lose, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 195.