It’s going to happen anyway

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/100417.cfm
Nehemiah 2:1-8
Luke 9:57-62

Today’s Gospel tells us what walking in the Spirit looks like. What it means to be a disciple of Jesus. The context of the following challenges by Jesus to those who desired to follow him builds upon several consequences regarding the choice to be his disciple. This is a hard teaching.

Jesus’ challenges begin after these disciples have made the commitment to follow him. Their intentions are good. They tell Jesus, “Lord, I will follow you wherever you go.” These people have heard the Gospel, have been awakened by both miracles and the presence of Jesus among them. They know who he is, and have grasped the future of eternal life.

Just like many of us, they have been converted by the most amazing of ideas (Jesus is God made man), confirmed by an indisputable reality (Jesus conquered death, and gave us his Spirit). Jesus is the one these disciples have heard about. He is the Messiah. They know Jesus is telling the truth, and they want to be a part of his community and its mission. They are believers. 

And then, the consequences of this conversion take root. With courage, they want to set aside their previous lives in order to take the higher calling of belonging fully to Jesus. Jesus, however, knows that in doing so a disciple of his will discover common difficulties. Following Jesus is not a cakewalk. The common difficulties are still there.

“Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man (and those who follow him) has nowhere to rest his head.”

"Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God."

“No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”

New Testament authors repeat often that our life in this world is largely a journey of either walking in the flesh or walking in the Spirit. The difference of those two options refers to the alignment of our heart. We interpret this to mean that these are two separate walks. I believe they are either one walk (the flesh), or two walks in one (the flesh with the Spirit).

If we’re aligned to the flesh, our hearts yearn for love, approval, recognition, authority, and a whole bunch of other heart-based things according to the time we have here in the world. It’s an entirely logical development. Our family, friends, and general culture provide the relationships and expectations that raise us up. Our childhood is short, we are told. We need to learn everything we need — to speak, walk, and take care of ourselves — in just a few years. Our puberty and maturation is short. We need to discover relationships from family to friends in a very short number of years. 

Next, our peak years are really only a handful of decades. We build our own family, find a career, establish a home, participate as a citizen, and establish a financial nest egg to carry us through the final lap of our last years.

These forming years create a proper basis for life, and ultimately supply the structure for everything we do. Even our Church lives within the system of life and death that doesn’t just surround us, but requires our participation. In order to move on faithfully and successfully to the next life, we calculate our steps along a pattern of a good, healthy, and even lovely set of steps.

Our spiritual life takes its marching orders from the time we have as children, youth, adults, and seniors. We carefully readjust our worldly relationships according to what we believe God wants us to do. But we cannot forget our basic responsibilities as we journey through the sixty, eighty, or one hundred years allotted to us. Daily, we’re handed many tasks and duties.

What if we only get five years? Or fifteen? Or thirty?

What if our career craters? What if our family disintegrates? What if we fail as a citizen and become incarcerated? What if our financial decisions make us wards of the state? What if our final years are spent hovering loosely in our minds, disconnected by dementia?

These are the worries of this life.

Aligning our heart to the Spirit as Jesus defines it seems to ask us to ignore these worries. Luke chapter 9 intimates that Jesus even insults our worries. A discipled walk appears to ultimately condemn the person who checks that he’s performing his worldly duties with precision. Why is Jesus so harsh and dismissive about our worldly worries?

Jesus suggests that to follow him will make us homeless, that the deaths of our parents aren’t of importance, and that the work of a disciple requires blinders, cutting out the world. 

We don’t like the harshness of Jesus’ words.

No matter how many times I read this, and how many commentators I’ve read, rummaging for an opening here or there that will allow me consolation, the words pierce through. 

The worries that gnaw at us about lives cut short and dreams shattered all around us come from the real world. Our worries are not fabrications, or unfounded regarding the short years where failures and near misses have marked us for cautious lives. We step tentatively because the evidence is real.

I submit that Jesus is not saying the difficulties of being a disciple means we must forget the world. Quite the contrary. He knows, rather, that our worldly tendencies have formed us to react with fear from actual experiences. We cower under fear from failure, from gossip, and from imperfection. Fear stalls us, halts our progress, and delays our heart’s yearnings. Our fears have substantive impact, because substantial things have happened to us.

We have learned to take our walk in the flesh with tiny, careful steps, and mostly only proceeding when pushed, because we have fallen, been run over, crashed and burned. Jesus is not saying we should abandon our flesh, because that would mean suicide. Instead, he says that we should proceed with faith to help overcome our fear. In fact, we should proceed in haste before the next bad things happens to us. We need to be prepared for difficulty, certainly, because it is certain. With the Spirit we muster courage, knowing that the Spirit is with us at every disastrous step.

Jesus harsh words are to awaken us to what we already know. We walk in a dangerous world of constant fleshly consequences. We already experience diseases, and our worries mount every year that we near death. We fear that we might lose our homes, or our relatives, or that our finances will be inadequate. These things can very likely happen. We fret that folks gossip about us, and they most certainly do. We are frustrated that our efforts are imperfect, because they are. These worries will not go away when we follow Jesus. Our worries are correct assessments and Jesus wants to be included in each and every one of them. 

To paraphrase, "I'm the freaking Son of Man, and even I haven't had a regular place to lay my head! They're going to kill me, and it won't be quick. Getting on board with me isn't going to ease your way, remove life's difficulties, and make your lives perfect. Join me anyway, and with your eyes wide open."

Less than a month later, Jesus rose from the dead, and another set of scripture got added regarding our own resurrections, eternal life glories, and grasping hold of the Kingdom even in our lives today.

As disciples, it is time to walk in our fleshly selves with the Spirit, following Jesus, regardless of all these worrisome and inevitable outcomes. 

Regardless of what happens to you, walk with me, Jesus says. It’s going to happen to you anyway, so do it with me, Jesus says. 

All things will be made right and restored. God loves us through everything.