Luke 9:51-62
Were any of you camp kids? I was a camp kid, through and through; I spent every summer at camp. To say I loved camp, almost feels like an understatement, it was a part of who I was. And, I know I wasn’t the only one.
Many of my cabin mates, camp friends, and classmates who attended their own camps, had the same experiences and feelings. So, of course as kids we would all dream and fantasize of the day when we would get to become camp counselors.As if it was the ultimate completion of our formation as camp people, the final frontier.
But, in sharing these fantasies and dreams with our own counselors, they were often hesitant if not somewhat weary. Many of them cautioning that camp as a camper was one thing, but as a counselor was a totally other thing. Which, we as campers, both did not and really could not comprehend. Not really, not until we were on the other side of it, which I have now been, camper, counselor, and even supervisor.
My husband, Drew, also a camp kid and counselor, equates the camper to staff experience something akin to witnessing Mickey Mouse in the undergrounds of Disney World taking off his costume head and lighting up a smoke. It’s not what you would expect, and it’s certainly not what the park wants you to see, but it happens.
Because, while the counselors and directors of camp are trying to create a shiny, happy, perfectly magical and manicured experience, the truth is they are still doing it within a messy, imperfect, flawed world, all while using people who are, also messy, imperfect, and flawed, to do it.
I think that is why I really love Jesus’ responses to those who come alongside him and ask or those he comes alongside and asks to follow him. Because he doesn’t sugar coat anything, he doesn’t hide anything. In fact he may be a little too honest.
As the first person in our passage this morning comes alongside him and says, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus responds without hesitation, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
So come and join us but know that you will be giving up every creature comfort you have ever known. Or the second, whom Jesus calls “Follow me.”
But when the man responds, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus says, never mind, you don’t get what we’re doing here, “Let the dead bury their own dead;” we have work to do, and we have no time to spare.
Or the third who says, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” As Jesus now, wholly frustrated, states, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
It’s a good thing Jesus didn’t have a PR team, because they would have had one heck of a mess on their hands, I mean, nothing about this is appealing. How he got those first twelve to follow is beyond me. And, now how there are 2.38 billion of us is, well nothing short of a miracle, in my mind. At least considering that the original sales pitch was, well, wholly lacking, to say the least.
As a camper the camp experience was magical because we didn’t have to deal with any of the realities of what made the magic happen in the first place. We weren’t the ones staying up till all hours coming up with the next day’s art and crafts projects, or planning the carnival, or mapping out the talent show.
We didn’t have to worry about managing the shenanigans of teenagers who wanted to push boundaries and bend rules. Or children who couldn’t sleep at night because they were scared of the dark, or missed their mom and dad or found a spider on their pillow. We just had to show up and let the magic unfold before our eyes like a gift that was almost too good to be true.
Because, in reality it was, what appeared to us to be happy, shinny, perfectly manicured and magical experiences for us, were often held together, quite literally by copious amounts of duck tape, many more cups of coffee, and a well exhausted and worn out staff, who would now think twice before bringing children of their own into the world, at least anytime soon.
I think that is why I love Jesus’ responses, and statements regarding what it means to follow him. As he isn’t hiding anything, he tells it like it is, he is 100% authentic. Which is probably why this passage is nothing short of abrasive and off putting, because it is real and honest.
Following Jesus isn’t easy. It means choosing to stand behind a man who lives counter culturally, without a traditional home or family, without a stable or real income. Behind a man who makes it his life’s mission to serve and be among those who have been labeled as outcast and relegated to the margins. Behind a man who, as we are told at the beginning of our passage, “Has put his face towards Jerusalem,” not hiding or straying from or even denying the fact that what he is doing, how he is living, the entirety of his mission to bring the kingdom of heaven that much closer, that much more within reach, that much more into our reality, is not simply dangerous but quite literally fatal.
While becoming a camp counselor certainly revealed to me that the “magic” I knew as a kid was just that, a slight of hand. It more so revealed that the “magic” had nothing to do with punny bunk names, or perfectly orchestrated cabin skits, or even precisely planned out field games, but everything to do with the people who made it all happen, and the way they cared not only for our wellbeing, but for the wellbeing of everyone who made up our community.
I mean it is something like magic, especially now to me as a parent, that adults (like me) choose to leave their beloved children for a week or more with young people who refuse to wear deodorant and choose to spend their summers without AC or social media. It is something like magic that there is a place where kids can allow their clothes to grow mildew and mold, all while they live their best lives, without screens or internet access.
It is something like magic that young people separated by a decade and connected by nothing more than a pine lean to and rickety bunks care for one another for days on end, if not weeks.
Now, this is not an advertisement for camp (although I could easily make it one), and it’s certainly not an advertisement for Jesus, he already ruined that in verse 60, with the “Let the dead bury their dead” stuff.
This is all to say, I think a lot of times we romanticize things we hold dear. Things like camp, or like childhood, or like church, or even like Jesus. But, we need to be careful, because all of these things exist, as Jesus reminds us, in this real world, of real imperfection, and real flaws and real messes. And, maybe, too as Jesus suggests we need to be able to hold them lightly, because if we cling, too tightly, to what we thought we knew or had or even wanted, we may miss the greater good right in front of us, like the kingdom of God.
What would it mean for us to take seriously our own desire, or maybe even Jesus’ call, to follow him? Might it look something like being shown a new reality? One where the imperfections of this world, and life, and all that entails are truly shown, not in a way that discourages us, but in a way that pushes us forward. So that, as we put our hand to the plow we no longer desire to look back nostalgically or even bitterly but to look forward towards something like the work that will allow us to take part in the kingdom of God.
Where we make room for the Son of Man to find rest, and lay his head in our world, and our communities and even our lives. Where we no longer have to bury the dead, because we can keep their spirit alive in our work and our lives. Because, my friends, it is in the duck tape, and the copious cups of coffee, and the exhausted young people, and the cookies at coffee hour, and the ironing of linens each Sunday, and the folding of bulletins, and the discomfort of a wood pew on our behinds, and on and on and on that more and more bring us together, and allow us to glimpse the kingdom of God.
Not in shiny perfection, but in actual reality, here and now, today, and always, in and as much as we put our hand to the plow, in and as much as we keep those who have gone before us with us, in and as much as we follow the one who has nowhere to lay his head.
By Rector Kate Byrd, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Smithfield, NC
https://www.stpaulssmithfieldnc.org/podcast/keep-your-hand-on-the-plow/