Pentecost 5 (Proper 8)
The Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, Rector
2 Kings 2: 1-2, 6-14, Psalm 77: 1-2, 11-20. Galatians 5:1, 13-25, Luke 9: 51-62 (RCL)
Both the Old Testament and the Gospel today have a theme of "journey". Not just any journey, either. It is the journey of salvation.
In the passage from Second Kings there's the origin of a well-known phrase: "the mantle of leadership is passed" - here it is, quite literally.
And there's not just an echo but almost a repeat of the crossing of the Red/Reed sea - a reminder for the Israelites freedom somehow involves a journey through water - but only if God is involved! Later that language is adopted to describe baptism - freedom from slavery, freedom to breathe free.
And - lest we miss it - Paul underscores that theme - freedom in Christ.
In the Gospel it's another journey - Jesus has "set his face toward Jerusalem" - the beginning of another journey that will lead to freedom, to the saving of us all.
A couple of stories will help us explore some of the learnings present in these readings.
Yesterday the Diocesan Committee for the Environment used our undercroft and - later - the grass outside for a retreat. One of the presentations was by someone from St. Mark's Cathedral on an environmental topic, and she showed one of those famous pictures of the earth from space - a beautiful blue and white ball hung in the blackness of the heavens. And she said: "I call this my 'God's-eye view." We've all been taught that perspective - God's in his heaven and all's right with the world?
But we are an incarnational faith - which means it isn't enough to claim that God is "out there", somehow separate from us. God is also - and more importantly - "in here", in each other. The beauty of the view too easily allows us to be distracted from the deeper truth: God is right here among us.
When the disciples hear the Samaritan rejection of Jesus they get hopping mad. They start ranting! They want hellfire and destruction. And (we might say) with some justification. This is that pure anger that seems to be based on good reasons for being angry.
But they are - in Jesus' eyes - allowing themselves to be distracted from the more important thing - the journey of salvation that they share with him.
On your own journey be careful and particular about which view you will allow to distract you - stay focused on the task at hand! And (and I say this to myself as much as to you) hold in your heart the memory that God's eye view is looking at you from the other people you meet.
A few weeks ago a friend - Ernie - told me about one of his sharpest memories of childhood It had to do with Thanksgiving. He grew up in Florida in the suburbs in the 1940's and he's always remembered his father bringing home the Thanksgiving turkey alive and in a burlap sack. With that morbid curiosity that all children seem to have he was drawn to watch as his father got out the meat cleaver and quickly separated the turkey from its head. On occasion the headless bird would run around the yard before finally collapsing.
And Ernie said to me: "you know, I learned something from that." And I said, "what?" expecting him to say that it turned him off eating turkey at Thanksgiving.
But he said: "I learned that not all activity is intelligent!"
That's something else the disciples learned. Don't run around like a turkey with its head cut off - don't waste your energy when there are more important things to be doing.
And, lastly, a little vignette from the movie "Smoke Signals". It was directed by a Native American, and it's a very funny and quirky movie about contemporary life on the Reservation. One of the reappearing characters has huge old beat-up Cadillac - the sort with the big tail fins - that's lost all its forward gears. So she drives it backward everywhere as she goes about her life doing the same old things - still stuck on the Rez despite her obvious intelligence and gifts. The driving in reverse is, of course, a metaphor!
When confronted with Samaritan rejection Jesus walked away - and he told his disciples to do the same thing - just walk away. When you're on a journey you're not going to get anywhere if you try and correct everything you think is wrong, if spend all your time looking over your shoulder, traveling in reverse.
In an insight repeated in his words about what must be given up to follow him Jesus makes it clear to his followers that you can't move forward when you're constantly looking back. Learn from the experiences of life but let go of the recrimination, the second-guessing, the desire to change the past, and focus on where the journey is taking you and how you can make it better.
And the moral of the stories? God dwells in all of us and in all of the creation that surrounds us. God calls us to thoughtful discipleship. God invites us to use our gifts and talents in ways that are constructive not only for ourselves but for all.
In other words its about us, and how we journey, and that we always remember we journey together - its about each other. Amen.
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