Now

Luke 9:51-62

This journey doesn’t have an end. So abandon your dead father and your grieving family. Leave your business a mess and don’t even try to say goodbye.

Wow, Jesus is blunt, abrupt, maybe even mean today. Rejecting “family values” – both the liberal and conservative kinds – the relationships and rituals and connections that make us human, make us family, everything that eases the shock of transition and loss and change.

You could speculate that Jesus is under some stress when he says that.  He’s just been banned from a village where he was hoping to spend the night, and he’s had to talk his disciples down from smiting that town with lightning.

So you’d think it would be a nice change when someone on the road greets Jesus with enthusiasm:
“I’m with you! I will follow you anywhere you go!”

Great!

But Jesus responds, “Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, and the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

Huh??

It sounds like a brush off, and one that doesn’t even make a lot of sense.

It could be a cranky reference to having been rejected from the Samaritan inn.  But it’s almost certainly a warning that the journey of following Jesus won’t end, has no destination, and isn’t too comfortable on the way.

And then Jesus says – apparently to the next person he sees – “Follow me.”

A minute ago he didn’t seem to want a volunteer. Now he’s recruiting.
It's confusing, and gets more so.
"I'm in! I'm with you!" says the recruit, "I just have to finish my holy obligation of burying my father."

If I heard that from someone I was inviting to do church work, you know I'd instantly be asking if we could help.  Take all the time you need, my friend. I'm so sorry for your loss.  
You'd do that too, wouldn't you?
Not Jesus.

“Let the dead bury their own dead,” he says. “You go proclaim the kingdom of God.”

He seems to reject the next volunteer, too. Forget saying goodbye and letting folks know you’re leaving. “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Ouch.

We know that discipleship is hard that it’s supposed to take first priority, over everything else. But even over good, holy obligations? Yes. That’s the blunt, obvious truth of this story.

You want to follow Jesus?

No you don’t. So do it. NOW.

Following Jesus – being absolutely like Jesus, doing what Jesus does, would do – that’s difficult. Being Christians – “little Christs” – was never meant to be something to enjoy, to fill the tank for the week, to soothe and console us.  It was meant to change the world, to serve others, even enemies; to make God’s dream and joy for the world real among us.

The strength of being Christian is the strength of climbing another hill and another after you’re completely exhausted – or when you don’t have legs to climb with in the first place. It’s too hard for most of us to do when our attention is claimed by anything else – even the normal, natural, necessary care of our families and communities.

And Jesus is blunt and kind of merciless about that truth today.

But it might not be mean, and it might not be as impossible as it sounds.

Perhaps the problem in these encounters with potential disciples is not that they shouldn’t take care of their families, but the way they approach it: First, let me bury my father. First let me say farewell.

In the kingdom of God, there is no linear time, no progression.

There is only now and not-now.

Over and over, Jesus insists that the kingdom of God – the world the way God dreams it to be – the kingdom of God is here. Among you. Now.

The kingdom of God isn’t a future state of being, an afterlife, or a millennium to come when we get it right, but God’s will fully lived out immediately here and now, in spite of, in the midst of, all the messy, imperfect, unready clutter - and even evil - of the world as it is.

The difference for us is whether we live in the Kingdom of God now,

or not.

And when we say, “hang on a minute, I just have this one thing to do.

Let me do this one thing first,”

we’re saying “not now” to the kingdom.

And Jesus, the gospel, the kingdom, don’t have a later. Even a few minutes to wait.

It’s now.

Now.

Now.

Or not.

The kingdom of God is like my cat, it seems.

This cat is not shy about demands for love and attention. But, you know, I have things to do sometimes. I can’t cuddle right now. First, I have to go to the store and get you some kibble. I have to go to work first, so that you can have toys and treats and a house to play in. When I get back we’ll play.

It’s not that the cat doesn’t also want kibble and toys and treats and a safe place to call home. But as far as he is concerned, there’s no difference between “not now,” or “let me just do this first,” and “No.”

It’s not that Jesus doesn’t want us to love our families, have goals and destinations, fulfill our holy obligations, bury our parents.

It’s that the Kingdom of God happens now,

or not at all.

There’s an upside to this, though.

If the only time known to the Kingdom of God is now, then the only times we can’t live in the kingdom are the past and the future. Any now is the now of the kingdom.

The good news is that we don’t have to wait until we are ready, until we have our selves and our souls and our beliefs sorted out. You don’t have to wait until you’re holy enough, until you know what you’re doing, until you’re brave enough to pray or speak in front of people, or understand enough to explain it. Don’t have to wait until you have the money, the patience, for doing what Jesus would do.

Most of all, you don’t have to wait until you have time for God,

for prayer and service and love.

There is nothing to keep you and me, all of us, from living the kingdom of God right now. Nothing to keep us from living one hundred percent as Jesus would, now, no matter what else we’re doing.

I suspect that if that one man had said “Yes” to Jesus without hesitation,

he would have found himself supported and strengthened in his holy obligations, that he would indeed have buried his father, with Jesus, and found the strength and opportunity to restore himself and his family to wholeness, living the Kingdom of God, now.

I imagine that if a woman volunteered to follow Jesus without a pause to say goodbye to friends and family, she might have found those friends and family joining her on the way.

That if another leapt feet first into the journey without asking for the destination, or comfort, or assurance, the wonders encountered on the way would be enough, and more than enough.

It’s not easy to stay now with God.

We plan and pray for the future, work hard in the present, remember the past with regret or try to recreate the good old days.  My iPhone calendar and the calendars of sports and church and elections and doctors and work and family pulls me out of now, and into “soon,” or “later,” or careful scheduling, over and over again.

It’s not easy to be now, for Jesus.

But Jesus will never stop being now for us.

The Kingdom of God isn’t waiting.

And we don’t have to, either.

Ready or not, the time - God's only time - is now.