Keep your hand on the Plow (Proper 8C)

 

Put Your Hand To The Plow And Don't Look Back, painting by Dana Vacca 

Keep your Hand on the Plow 

Homily delivered Sixth Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 8; Year C RCL)
26 June 2016; 8:00 a.m. Said, 10:00 Sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity Ashland

1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21; Psalm 16; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62

God, take away our hearts of stone

 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen. 

It is hard to be kingdom people, followers of Jesus who see that the Reign of God is all around us, bursting in at the seams. If we are honest and clear eyed we have to admit that evil remains in us and in the world.  It can make us doubt the Kingdom’s presence.   But it can also make us try to pretend the evil is not there, or at least not bad enough to keep trying to do anything about it.   Or it can make us angry, and blame others, label them wicked, and want to call down fire on them. 

That happens to the disciples in today’s Gospel.  Jesus has hardened his face, set his jaw, and started on the final trip—the one to Jerusalem, where he knows he will die.  He goes through Samaria.   Local Samaritans, hearing that Jesus is headed for Jerusalem, the capital of their enemies, refuse to welcome him to stay overnight. The disciples are angry.  Jesus, after all, has been more welcoming and tolerant of the Samaritans than anyone else around. “Can we call down fire from heaven upon them?” they ask Jesus eagerly. 

They are thinking of the prophet Elijah, the star of today’s lectionary reading from the Hebrew Scriptures.   Elijah not only stopped the rain for three years to bring people back to God, he also called down fire from heaven on the soldiers of Ahaziah, King of—where else?—Samaria, when he turned Elijah away and sought Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, instead (2 Kings 1).

Elijah overshadows much of Jesus’ life.  When people in his hometown question him because he works wonders for strangers but not for them, he says, “No prophet is honored in his home town… There were many widows in Israel then, but Elijah was sent only to the widow in Zarephath in Sidon.  There were many lepers in the time of Elisha, but none was cleansed  except Naaman the Syrian” (Luke 4:24-27).   Luke introduces John the Baptist as a forerunner of Jesus by saying that “he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ..to make a people ready for the Lord” (Luke 1:17).   Herod reacts to stories about Jesus’ mighty acts by thinking Jesus is either John the Baptist or Elijah come back to life (Luke 9:7-8).  On the Mount of Transfiguration, it is Elijah, along with Moses, who appears and tells Jesus of his need to go Jerusalem to accomplish his “departure” (his “Exodus”) (Luke 9:31).   

But, now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus departs from the example of Elijah.   He scolds the disciples for wanting to burn down the Samaritans.   His calling is to proclaim God’s liberation, not to punish those who reject him.   Earlier, sending his disciples out, he tells them to react to rejection by simply moving on: “dust off your shoes and be on your way” (Luke 9:5).  Then when a disciple wants Jesus to silence a healer who uses Jesus’ name in exorcisms but is not one of his followers, Jesus says simply, “Let him do as he wishes.  If he’s not against us, he’s with us” (Luke 9:50).   No fire from heaven for Jesus. 

 

For him, the model prophet is not Elijah or even Moses.  It’s Jonah.  The Book of Jonah is read in its entirety in synagogue on the Day of Atonement, and was clearly important for Jesus.  Though the prophet at first runs away because he just can’t bear bringing repentance and salvation to a people he hates, and is brought to accept his call only by miraculously surviving being swallowed by a great fish, though even near the end of the story whines about the burning sun, the dead gourd bush, and having to preach at great personal risk in the great city, in the end Jonah finds compassion for its inhabitants and follows through.   He offers with boldness the possibility of God’s grace to the people of Nineveh, and they turn to God.   Later in the Gospel of Luke, when people ask Jesus for a sign, he says he can give no sign to them at all, other than the sign of Jonah.    Suffering in love even for those who despise him, Jonah brings them to God.  He is a sign of hope:  after three days in the belly of the Great Fish, he comes to life again. 

Jesus does not, like Elijah, call fire from heaven.  He does not, like Elisha, send the she-bears to kill rude teenagers for having mocked his bald pate (2 Kings 2:15, 23-4).   Like Jonah, he proclaims the gracious forgiveness and love of God, even if it means death.  He proclaims it to those who reject him:  the sign of Jonah indeed. 

Jesus calls his followers to follow this way of self-sacrificing compassion as well.   Earlier in this same chapter of Luke, after Peter affirms his faith that Jesus is Messiah, Jesus tells him that being Messiah means suffering and dying.   And he says that all who follow him must also take up their own cross of suffering as well.  

That’s why in today’s reading, Jesus seems so harsh to the man who wants to follow him, but begs for a day or so to bury his father.  That’s why he won’t let another even say farewell to his loved ones.  In today’s Old Testament lesson Elijah gives Elisha time to say farewell and settle things,  But Jesus knows the way of suffering and compassion is so hard that you must set your face toward your goal, and not look back. He says “let the dead bury their dead” and “keep your hand on the plow.” 

This is a sharp contrast from the scene last week, when Jesus tells the Gerasene demoniac whom he has healed “You’ve suffered enough.  Go back to your loved ones and family and share with them the grace God has shown you.”  Jesus has hardened his face.  He is on the way to Jerusalem.  And he expects us to be on the way with him. 

That’s why he says, “Keep your eyes forward, and your hand on the plow. No turning back and no regrets!”

It is hard to be kingdom people, followers of Jesus who see that the Reign of God is all around us, yet know that the world is still screwed up and needs fixing.  The problems we face are intractable, long-lived, and seemingly part of the way things are.  It’s depressing.  We may want to call down fire from heaven, or we simply may just give up.  We may simply become deadened to injustice and not see the world’s flaws.  This is all the easier if we are not the ones suffering injustice.   Feminist theologian Sharon Welch writes: 

“…The despair of the affluent, the middle class, … is … cushioned by privilege and grounded in privilege. It is easier to give up on long-term social change when one is comfortable in the present—when it is possible to have challenging work, excellent health care and housing, and access to the fine arts. When the good life is present or within reach, it is tempting to despair of its ever being in reach for others and resort to merely enjoying it for oneself and one’s family... Becoming so easily discouraged is the privilege of those … accustomed to having a political and economic system that responds to their needs” (Sharon Welch, A Feminist Ethic of Risk, 15).

Even if we avoid the urge to call down fire from heaven, and the siren call to say things are not all that bad and don’t need fixing, we inevitably run into compassion fatigue.  And it is here, I think, that all of us, at one time or another, have put our hand to the plow and looked back.   Jesus in Gethsemane certainly had second thoughts and doubts.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did too.  

In the middle of the Montgomery Alabama bus boycott in early 1956, he lost hope.  The boycott was not working, and seemed to be falling apart.  Early in the evening, an anonymous caller had growled out, “If you aren’t out of this town in three days, we’re going to blow your brains out and blow up your house.”  King couldn’t sleep, and drank coffee most of the night.  This is what he later said happened:

“. . . I bowed down over that cup of coffee . . . I prayed a prayer and I prayed out loud that night. I said, ‘Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. I think I’m right. I think the cause we represent is right. But Lord I must confess that I’m weak now. I’m faltering. I’m losing my courage. And I can’t let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak.’”  (Samuel Freeman, Upon This Rock, 143).    

The words of the African American spiritual, based on today’s gospel, came to him, “Keep your hand on the plow, hold on, hold on.”  And things turned around. 
Sisters and brothers, it is hard to be kingdom people.  It is hard to follow Jesus on the way of suffering compassion to Jerusalem. But we must not lose hope.  We must not lose our conscience and sense of what is wrong in the world.  We must not tire in working for justice.  We must not let anger overwhelm us.  We must not regret the past.  
 
Keep your hands on the plow.  Hold on, Hold on.