Readings for Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 30, 2019
"Marching with Pride," Pastor Kinsey
"When the days drew near for [Jesus] to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him.”
The last time I went and marched with the Chicago Coalition of Welcoming Churches in the Pride Parade, I barely made it on time!
Rushing there after worship, I set my face to go on the Red Line. I had no messengers to go ahead of me, but I had advance knowledge, and street coordinates, as to where to join the line-up that would step off at 12noon. So I pushed my way through the joyous crowds, excitedly anticipating the parade’s start, and just made it before they closed-up the barricades!
I found the Chicago Coalition of Welcoming Churches pick-up truck, with all the Church signs, and I grabbed our Unity Lutheran one before he closed the tailgate. I greeted our ECT Pastors, Monte, Michael and Emily, Pastors from Broadway United Methodist, the Rabbi from Mishkan Chicago, and all the rest. And we set our faces forward, stepping off toward our prophetic goal of showing our radical welcome and inclusion of all people. Forward, was the way into a new future, where no one was ex-cluded. Where all were made free to live as God had created them!
This year’s ‘Honorary Pride Parade Marshall’ is newly elected Mayor Lori Lightfoot, herself a ‘visible sign’ of this inclusive movement. Lori is the product of so much hard work over the last 50 years, since Stonewall. From targeted community of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer, who were beaten and arrested by police in NY in 1969; through the AIDS crisis of the 80’s and 90’s, to greater acceptance and finally Marriage Equality in 2015, astounding progress has been made. Mayor Lightfoot, who has said, that when she was in her 20’s she was afraid to ‘come out,’ partly because she wasn’t sure her own parents would accept her, is now the first openly lesbian Mayor of Chicago, married to her wife Amy, who have a daughter Vivian (which you couildn’t help but know, if you saw her campaign commercials!).
!No time to look back, though, as transgender communities, and lgbtq people of color, have not yet found the same full inclusion! The road ahead will no doubt include yet more sacrifice and setbacks, death and resurrection, before all are welcome.
"When the days drew near for [Jesus] to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him.”
This concerted push to Jerusalem in Luke’s gospel, is the midpoint of the story, and a turning point for the mission of Jesus. Literally, the phrase means, Jesus ‘hardened his face to go to Jerusalem.’
The movement Jesus has been building in rural northern Galilee has grown to the point that he has messengers to send ahead of him. Jesus and the disciples travel within a network of friendship and hospitality. They often stay and rest with companions like Mary and Martha, or with welcoming relatives like Peter's mother-in-law and Zacchaeus the tax collector. They rely on a web of relationships, creating caring communities as they march toward Jerusalem.
The ‘messengers’ go into lots of towns to check out the lay of the land, but Jesus can’t go to all of them. And when he bypasses a certain village of Samaritans, the Disciples think he’s deliberately trying to send a message to their age-old cross-town rivals. For Samaritans only worship in the hill country, at Mt Gerizim, not in Jerusalem.
“Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” they asked Jesus? It’s not just a rhetorical question! This is exactly what the prophet Elijah did in 2 Kings chapter 1, when the foreign king refused to recognize Israel’s God as the true God – which was Elijah’s last act before being taken up to heaven by a whirlwind. Elijah had set his face to pass his mantle on to his protégé, Elisha, before going to God.
And this parallel to Elijah’s story is so strong, that some ancient Lukan texts add the phrase, “as Elijah did,” – so the whole verse would be, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them,” – “as Elijah did?”
Luke creates this elaborate parallel, not only to show how Jesus is like Elijah, but also to reveal that Jesus handles Divine Retribution in a totally different way. Jesus ‘turns toward the Disciples James and John, and rebukes them for this!’ And again, some ancient texts added another verse here, perhaps ‘the best verse Jesus never spoke’ – “you do not know, of what spirit you are, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy souls but to save them.” (http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper_8c/)
So this passage is about the Disciples failure, and their hatefulness. It can be seen as the failure of any, and all of us, whenever we try to divide the world up into ‘us and them’, ‘who’s in and who’s out.’ As bitter cross-town rivals, the Samaritans were the, “them.” And James and John embody this failure and hate in their violent attitude.
How often do we depend on the world bending to our desires of eliminating our enemies?! Do we set our faces toward our own narrow victory, to winning at the expense of others we’ve deemed expendable? Jesus rebukes that – and continues on toward Jerusalem, preaching love of enemies, and preparing to take on our sin – leaving us a legacy we’re still trying to live up to.
In the Pride Parade line-up, once you get in, you have to keep moving forward! Lots of people behind you are depending on it! The Parade keeps moving forward until it reaches its goal, its ‘Jerusalem.’ And you don’t stop, not even ‘to call down fire’ on the anti-gay protestors along the way!
At the conclusion of our Gospel reading, someone along the way to Jerusalem said to Jesus, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” “Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’”
‘Jesus has hardened his face to go to Jerusalem,’ and to be a follower, required an equal commitment. No looking back! It sounds harsh, “Let the dead bury their own dead,” but the bookend passages of this Reading are clear. Setting one’s face toward Jerusalem is the mission – and, don’t look back.
Temptations to abandon this journey will abound. For us, there is an endless list of things we plan and hope to do before doing the things that God has called us to. Phone calls to return, friends and relatives to see. Let me do this and this, and then I will get to that. Even Jesus prays in his hour of need, ‘let this Cup pass from me.’ (cf. https://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2016-06/more-intense-follow-me)
But the kingdom of God is ahead. It isn’t found in sentimental journeys of self-pity and perceived past greatness. Jesus is going on his Jerusalem journey because ‘the days drew near for him to be taken up,’ as Luke says. ‘Taken up,’ includes his suffering, his death, his resurrection and ascension. You can’t have one without the other.
We can’t afford to look back or divert our attention from the kingdom, God is calling us to. Midway on our life journeys’, we begin to realize our time is limited too. We’re all on journey’s – sometimes under pressure, other times in parades, some of us privileged, others, still excluded from the justice and love of the kingdom of God.
But it’s never too late to follow Jesus, who has ‘hardened his face to go to Jerusalem.’ Let us be ready to join in on that journey, that parade and march, focused on moving forward, toward Christ’s life-giving goal of sacrifice, love and inclusion for all – building communities of faith, today, and always!
"Marching with Pride," Pastor Kinsey
"When the days drew near for [Jesus] to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him.”
The last time I went and marched with the Chicago Coalition of Welcoming Churches in the Pride Parade, I barely made it on time!
Rushing there after worship, I set my face to go on the Red Line. I had no messengers to go ahead of me, but I had advance knowledge, and street coordinates, as to where to join the line-up that would step off at 12noon. So I pushed my way through the joyous crowds, excitedly anticipating the parade’s start, and just made it before they closed-up the barricades!
I found the Chicago Coalition of Welcoming Churches pick-up truck, with all the Church signs, and I grabbed our Unity Lutheran one before he closed the tailgate. I greeted our ECT Pastors, Monte, Michael and Emily, Pastors from Broadway United Methodist, the Rabbi from Mishkan Chicago, and all the rest. And we set our faces forward, stepping off toward our prophetic goal of showing our radical welcome and inclusion of all people. Forward, was the way into a new future, where no one was ex-cluded. Where all were made free to live as God had created them!
This year’s ‘Honorary Pride Parade Marshall’ is newly elected Mayor Lori Lightfoot, herself a ‘visible sign’ of this inclusive movement. Lori is the product of so much hard work over the last 50 years, since Stonewall. From targeted community of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer, who were beaten and arrested by police in NY in 1969; through the AIDS crisis of the 80’s and 90’s, to greater acceptance and finally Marriage Equality in 2015, astounding progress has been made. Mayor Lightfoot, who has said, that when she was in her 20’s she was afraid to ‘come out,’ partly because she wasn’t sure her own parents would accept her, is now the first openly lesbian Mayor of Chicago, married to her wife Amy, who have a daughter Vivian (which you couildn’t help but know, if you saw her campaign commercials!).
!No time to look back, though, as transgender communities, and lgbtq people of color, have not yet found the same full inclusion! The road ahead will no doubt include yet more sacrifice and setbacks, death and resurrection, before all are welcome.
"When the days drew near for [Jesus] to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him.”
This concerted push to Jerusalem in Luke’s gospel, is the midpoint of the story, and a turning point for the mission of Jesus. Literally, the phrase means, Jesus ‘hardened his face to go to Jerusalem.’
The movement Jesus has been building in rural northern Galilee has grown to the point that he has messengers to send ahead of him. Jesus and the disciples travel within a network of friendship and hospitality. They often stay and rest with companions like Mary and Martha, or with welcoming relatives like Peter's mother-in-law and Zacchaeus the tax collector. They rely on a web of relationships, creating caring communities as they march toward Jerusalem.
The ‘messengers’ go into lots of towns to check out the lay of the land, but Jesus can’t go to all of them. And when he bypasses a certain village of Samaritans, the Disciples think he’s deliberately trying to send a message to their age-old cross-town rivals. For Samaritans only worship in the hill country, at Mt Gerizim, not in Jerusalem.
“Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” they asked Jesus? It’s not just a rhetorical question! This is exactly what the prophet Elijah did in 2 Kings chapter 1, when the foreign king refused to recognize Israel’s God as the true God – which was Elijah’s last act before being taken up to heaven by a whirlwind. Elijah had set his face to pass his mantle on to his protégé, Elisha, before going to God.
And this parallel to Elijah’s story is so strong, that some ancient Lukan texts add the phrase, “as Elijah did,” – so the whole verse would be, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them,” – “as Elijah did?”
Luke creates this elaborate parallel, not only to show how Jesus is like Elijah, but also to reveal that Jesus handles Divine Retribution in a totally different way. Jesus ‘turns toward the Disciples James and John, and rebukes them for this!’ And again, some ancient texts added another verse here, perhaps ‘the best verse Jesus never spoke’ – “you do not know, of what spirit you are, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy souls but to save them.” (http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper_8c/)
So this passage is about the Disciples failure, and their hatefulness. It can be seen as the failure of any, and all of us, whenever we try to divide the world up into ‘us and them’, ‘who’s in and who’s out.’ As bitter cross-town rivals, the Samaritans were the, “them.” And James and John embody this failure and hate in their violent attitude.
How often do we depend on the world bending to our desires of eliminating our enemies?! Do we set our faces toward our own narrow victory, to winning at the expense of others we’ve deemed expendable? Jesus rebukes that – and continues on toward Jerusalem, preaching love of enemies, and preparing to take on our sin – leaving us a legacy we’re still trying to live up to.
In the Pride Parade line-up, once you get in, you have to keep moving forward! Lots of people behind you are depending on it! The Parade keeps moving forward until it reaches its goal, its ‘Jerusalem.’ And you don’t stop, not even ‘to call down fire’ on the anti-gay protestors along the way!
At the conclusion of our Gospel reading, someone along the way to Jerusalem said to Jesus, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” “Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’”
‘Jesus has hardened his face to go to Jerusalem,’ and to be a follower, required an equal commitment. No looking back! It sounds harsh, “Let the dead bury their own dead,” but the bookend passages of this Reading are clear. Setting one’s face toward Jerusalem is the mission – and, don’t look back.
Temptations to abandon this journey will abound. For us, there is an endless list of things we plan and hope to do before doing the things that God has called us to. Phone calls to return, friends and relatives to see. Let me do this and this, and then I will get to that. Even Jesus prays in his hour of need, ‘let this Cup pass from me.’ (cf. https://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2016-06/more-intense-follow-me)
But the kingdom of God is ahead. It isn’t found in sentimental journeys of self-pity and perceived past greatness. Jesus is going on his Jerusalem journey because ‘the days drew near for him to be taken up,’ as Luke says. ‘Taken up,’ includes his suffering, his death, his resurrection and ascension. You can’t have one without the other.
We can’t afford to look back or divert our attention from the kingdom, God is calling us to. Midway on our life journeys’, we begin to realize our time is limited too. We’re all on journey’s – sometimes under pressure, other times in parades, some of us privileged, others, still excluded from the justice and love of the kingdom of God.
But it’s never too late to follow Jesus, who has ‘hardened his face to go to Jerusalem.’ Let us be ready to join in on that journey, that parade and march, focused on moving forward, toward Christ’s life-giving goal of sacrifice, love and inclusion for all – building communities of faith, today, and always!
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