Singleness of Heart

Luke 9:51-62 

I’ve been feeling crunched for time a lot recently. Anyone else?

There’s so much to do; so much that is important.

Like the planning that we are doing in our RenewalWorks process to create a culture of spiritual growth here at Trinity; related work I’m doing to help promote spiritual growth and discipleship in our diocese; working with the Vestry to start plans for a future capital campaign that will make our buildings stronger, safer, and hopefully more accessible;
nurturing friendships and family relationships; keeping up with the information and action needed to be a good citizen; worship; celebrating and grieving at need with all of you; the emails that move all that along;

and, of course managing healthy meals, clean clothes, and the vacuuming that never seems quite done….

Except for the vacuuming, I love most of it. But despite the longer sunlight, there just aren’t enough hours in the day or days in the week.

So I’ve spent some time over the last month or so trying to sort out priorities. Maybe if I can just decide what’s most important, it’ll make it easier to figure out how to manage my time, my energy.
And after a month or so of reflection, pro and con lists, consultations with friends, retreat, spiritual discernment…well, it all still seems important.

I know I’m not the only one who lives in a world where everything is important. Where too many things – many of them good, life-giving things, but not all! – demand our time and attention, energy and heart – more of each than we seem to have in a day. 

So I am not all that happy with Jesus, today. He seems to have no sympathy for all these important things that you and I have to do.
“Let the dead bury their dead” he says to someone who has to take care of their responsibilities to a dead or dying father.
Caring about your family shuts you out of the kingdom of God, he seems to say to another person. And to the enthusiastic volunteer who pledges to follow Jesus where ever he goes, Jesus says: “You’re not going to like camping.”

So much for the welcoming Jesus I go looking for in scripture.
This actual Jesus is tough.

Today, Jesus makes clear that wanting to follow him, to love like Jesus and be loved by him; longing to be close to God, to share in God’s healing, generous work, doesn’t remove all the barriers in our way.

We may still have trouble, like that village of Samaritans, with the fact that some of Jesus’ religious attitudes and priorities don’t fit with our own.

We may find it hard to share with anyone, even God, our hurts and scars, our failures and griefs.

We may have other holy obligations, like the person whose father needs burying, obligations we are called to by empathy and justice and what’s just right. We certainly still have to care for and about our families. And some of us (me), if not all of us, may struggle with abandoning the comfort of our predictable days and nights.

Today, Jesus seems to have no sympathy for multitaskers. Or for those of us who don’t have too much to do, but feel like we’re not ready to take on all that God may ask, or that God has to offer.  Jesus seems so inflexible about all the important relationships and the natural demands on our time that many of us are juggling, even as we try to follow Jesus.
In fact, Jesus wants all of us, not just the part of me that feels ready, the part of you that feels presentable, shareable, and not too busy right now. Jesus wants all the uncertain or ugly or busy or struggling bits of us; wants us whole.

Jesus is telling these folks on the road to Jerusalem – telling you and me – that you cannot be a part time disciple.
Can not have a relationship with Jesus or with God that is part-time, secondary, or even one among many priorities. Two thousand years ago, Jesus obviously already knew that thing I just learned this winter in our RenewalWorks workshops – that being busy is the single toughest barrier to growing in relationship with God.
So Jesus tries to show these disciples that relationship with God, following Jesus, has to be a twenty-four-seven, whole-self commitment. Like breathing.

I have had that realization more than once over the course of my life.

Some of those times, the realization that God is not a part-time relationship has inspired me: I’ve been energized to pray more, to throw my whole heart into this relationship, to improve my focus on God. (I’m not precisely competitive, but I do like to excel…)

And other times, I’ve immediately wanted to give up. To quit the whole Jesus business. I have enough full-time jobs already, thank you. How can I add one more thing??

How can I add one more full time thing to so much that I’m already trying to prioritize, to manage, to keep up with? When it’s already impossible to have that “balanced” life all the blogs and magazines tell me to have.

And Jesus doesn’t have any give to him. Not today, anyway. Today – most of the time, all of the time, actually – Jesus is all or nothing.

And that might really be good news.

Good news for an overscheduled, priority-juggling world. Because putting God first; committing ourselves full-time and full-self to what Jesus is up to here and now, in our hearts and lives and world, is one thing that will bring all the other things into balance.

We don’t have to stop loving our families, fulfilling our responsibilities, nurturing our friendships, answering emails, working out, calling our Congresspeople, putting dinner on the table, folding the socks or excelling in our jobs. We just have to stop doing those things instead of following Jesus. Stop letting those things crowd out the yearning for closeness with God, and the love of God that God has planted in our hearts.

The trouble with what those would-be disciples in today’s story say to Jesus is not that they have other things to do. It’s that they say, “let me just do this first.” Jesus is inviting us, calling us – no, insisting on dragging us – into that whole-life, whole-self closeness of God which he himself has. A closeness that makes it natural to say, “It is time to take up my family responsibilities, but first, as I do this, let me rest in the presence of God.” Or “It’s time to manage this mass of work tasks, but first, while I do this, let me recharge myself in the purpose of God.”

When I am in that God-first, whole-self place in my mind and heart, it is easier to balance all the opportunities and responsibilities of my life; it is easier to keep up and clearer to prioritize.
I’d like to live like that all the time, so I see why Jesus wants us to realize and rejoice that you can’t be a part-time disciple; or live in partial relationship with God.
I just, well, forget sometimes. Until Jesus, or someone like Jesus, reminds me.

Until Jesus reminds me how much God wants to give us what we pray for at the end of our Eucharist today: the strength and courage to love and serve God with gladness and singleness of heart.

Today, every day, Jesus is inviting us into that glad singleness of heart: demanding that we plunge into that focused, whole-hearted, relationship with God that can handle all the fears and hurts and failures we live through; that joyful, complete, relationship where we hold nothing back. Jesus is demanding that we plunge into the purpose of God now, before we’re ready, not as soon as we have time. Inviting us to dive completely into that purpose of God that can balance and clarify all the tasks and responsibilities and information and demands that fill our everydays.

Jesus wants all of us, all of each of us, so that Jesus can fill and strengthen us with that divine purpose; so that Jesus can heal and renew all of us with that holy love that fills his own heart.

And I know that no matter how busy I am, I’ll always want that.  Don’t you?