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Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
If you found today’s readings a little unsettling you were probably paying attention! The readings were unsettling because they were all about leaving home and leaving home can be unsettling. I don’t mean the literal leaving home – like going off to college or moving out of the family home to be on your own, or across the country to take a new job. That kind of leaving home can be exciting. No, it’s the metaphorical leaving home that’s difficult and unsettling -- the leaving home that happens whenever we take a step beyond our comfort zone and risk something new. For example, we leave home when we choose to put an end to an unhealthy relationship, or to heal an old rift, or when we resolve to get serious about our faith, or decide to get married, or to start a family, or -- you fill in the blanks. If the truth be told, our lives are one story after another about leaving home. So are the scriptures. Think of some of those stories: Adam and Eve leaving the garden; Abraham and Sara leaving home and traveling to a strange land; the young Jeremiah answering, however hesitantly, the call to be prophet; the young Mary bravely saying her “be it done to me” to the angel; the apostles leaving behind their boats and nets. Each of those people left home to do something daunting or daring. So did the prophet Elisha in today’s reading from the Book of Kings. It is yet one more leaving home story. The great prophet Elijah had found a worthy successor – someone to take on his prophetic mantle -- in a young farmer and near namesake by the name of Elisha. It’s worth noting that Elisha had a lot to lose by following Elijah. He was well-to-do: he plowed his fields behind a yoke of twelve oxen. Most farmers were lucky to have one or two! As the story unfolds, Elijah, the great prophet, came upon the young Elisha and threw his mantle over him – the classic sign of God’s call. Elisha was generous in responding, but human, too. “I will follow you,” he told Elijah, “but first let me kiss my father and mother goodbye.” Elijah gave a rather halting permission but before long the young Elisha was slaughtering all twelve oxen and cooking their flesh on a fire made from the wood of his plow. Talk about leaving home! Elisha left himself nothing to fall back on in case the ‘prophecy business’ didn’t work out for him. He literally ‘burned his bridges’ by destroying his former way of making a living. The call of Elisha nicely sets the scene for today’s gospel. Notice how it opened with the words, “Jesus resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem.” That’s not just a casual geographical reference: the journey to Jerusalem is a major piece of the ‘geography’ of Luke’s gospel. The journey to Jerusalem stands for Jesus’ personal willingness to leave home definitively -- to embrace the destiny that awaited him in Jerusalem. It was during this journey to Jerusalem, his own leaving home, that Jesus talked to three people about their leaving home. One ran up to Jesus and rather recklessly claimed, “I will follow you wherever you go!” Jesus’ reply must have taken the wind out of his sails: “Foxes have their dens and birds have their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay my head.” Another way of saying, following me means not only leaving home, it means having no home at all! The second encounter wasn’t much different although Jesus initiated this one. To a would-be disciple he said those two simple – but, oh, so demanding words that once prompted fishermen to leave their boats and their nets on the shore: “Follow me,” he said. But this person wasn’t ready to follow. “Let me go first and bury my father.” Jesus’ response seems harsh and unfeeling: “Let the dead bury their dead,” he said. Are those words meant to be taken literally? No, but they are meant to be taken seriously. The third encounter was like Elijah’s encounter with Elisha. “I will follow you but first let me say farewell to my family at home.” And Jesus gives a nice twist to the Elisha story when he speaks of putting the hand to the plow and not looking back. Three encounters, none of which leave any room for wiggling or waffling. Leave home, Jesus says. You cannot follow me unless you leave home. And where is home, we ask? What does home mean -- for me? That’s a question each of us must answer. And there are many answers. Is home my comfortable, somewhat selfish, insular lifestyle? Is home my security or, perhaps, my things, my prized possessions, my drive to acquire more and more? Is home a stagnant or manipulative relationship that is going nowhere and likely to go nowhere, or is it, perhaps, a bunch of old grudges and resentments that rule my life? Or could home be some superstitions that look like faith but really aren’t, or a protective wall of comfortable, safe certitudes I’m hiding behind and am afraid to examine? There are so many possibilities, so many ‘homes’ we may need to leave behind before we can truly follow Jesus. My friends, the bottom line this Sunday is that if we would follow Jesus we must make the big decision to leave home. And, yes, I know – summer seems like a good time for putting the big decisions on hold, a good time for ‘kicking back’ and ‘chilling out.” And that’s fine, but it seems some decisions cannot wait. When Jesus says, “Follow me” he wants an answer. Not an alibi! Father Michael G. Ryan |
