Fifth Sunday after Pentecost Luke 9:51-62 June 27, 2010
Robert Frost once wrote a poem entitled, The Road Not Taken. In his poem he stands as a traveler who faces two choices, or two paths. One path is well worn and the other is as he says, "grassy and wanted wear." As he stands there he laments as he realizes that he can't take both, a choice has to be made. In the end he writes:
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. "
Has it made a difference in your own life? Perhaps I should back up a little and ask you first, have you ever been presented with a less traveled road in your life? Have you ever chosen that road less traveled? The one that is "grassy and in want of wear"? Or have you stuck close to the well-worn smooth paths of least resistance?
In our Gospel reading for today Jesus and his followers are going along on their road and apparently people have come up to him now and boldly proclaimed their desire to follow him wherever he goes.
One would think that Jesus would be thrilled to hear this sort of thing, but instead his responses are either cautionary or dismissive. In the first encounter Jesus says to one who desires to follow him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." This cautionary responses sounds like a kind of warning to the one who would follow that the road ahead isn't an easy one.
In a second encounter a man comes to Jesus and says, "I will follow you wherever you go." So, Jesus says, "Follow me." But then the man back peddles a bit and says: "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." Jesus responds somewhat off handedly, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."
In a third encounter someone says, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."
In each case the intention of the individual was good, and even the excuses they offer are good and reasonable excuses. And yet, in each case, Jesus comes across as somewhat critical of their lack of commitment or shared determination for what lies ahead.
In each case it is possible that we too might hear some of our good intentions being echoed when it comes to our desire to walk the path of discipleship, as well as some of our excuses and rationalization for failing to follow the path less taken.
Like the individuals in the story, we all have reasonable excuses for not living up to what we believe we ought to be doing is our Christian faith and life. We like many before, live with tensions and commitments that tug at and pull us away from the path God has set before us and has invited us to walk. Like the traveler in Robert Frost's poem, each one of us faces the choice of choosing the less traveled road—or the path of least resistance. And like the traveler, Jesus has chosen the road less traveled—Jesus takes the path that helps him to be the person God created him to be. And by doing so, he affirms his identity as a child of God and chooses the way of the Spirit, the way of grace and mercy, the path of compassion and forgiveness, and he turns away from the well-worn path even though that path leads to a cross.
In today's reading Jesus invites us to follow on that road less traveled when he says to us "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."
I can't help but wonder; what marketing genius did God have working on staff when that campaign was designed? "Follow me" on a path that leads to an agonizing death on a cross. It's no wonder; even with as many churches that we have in this community almost 50% of the population chooses not to affiliate with one them. And on any given Sunday we might have at best 1/3 of our membership in worship.
The truth is -- faithful discipleship is not easy—it can be demanding—it involves things like forgiving those who have hurt us, sharing our gifts with others and welcoming strangers. None of which comes easy to folks like us -- in a self-centered, fearful society like ours. While the cross does promise to save us, it certainly is not something we are automatically drawn to; it is not our first choice—when given a choice. And it is here that contemporary poet Robert Frost and Jesus of Nazareth say essentially the same thing. Life is a journey and on any journey we make choices about the path we take. Life continually presents us with choices. Some are seemingly small choices. Some are obvious life changing choices. Either way they are choices I think that's what Robert Frost is talking about in his poem. We come to a fork in the road and we have to make a choice. Frost says that you can't be a traveler and travel both roads.
That's also the clear implication in what Jesus says to me. We face choices and we can choose, we must choose, and sometimes we will have to choose before all the evidence is submitted. Sometimes we have to walk by faith—taking paths us yet untrodden, through perils unknown. We may have to choose on the basis of our intuition or our instinct, but we can't travel both roads.
As I have gotten older I have become an advocate for taking responsibility. I believe we create our destiny. I believe we shape our lives. I believe that we choose how to respond and how to relate to others and to ourselves.
Clearly there are some things over which we have no control. I did not choose to be born when I was born or where I was born. I did not choose the color of my skin or the color of my eyes. I did not choose the color of my hair. I did inherited certain physical assets and liabilities and while I can work at perfecting or improving them, there are certain limitations which I will never escape. I am never going to be any taller than I am right now at 5'11" and chances are that as I continue to age, I will most likely shrink a bit. We inherit not only physical traits we also inherit or acquire some emotional characteristics early in life. Some seem blessed with a more calm, quiet, sanguine temperament. Some have never had to contend with the violent passions and emotions that other people live with. We are all born with certain physical and emotional characteristics that we may take with us to the grave. There are some areas of life over which we have no control. There are certain given circumstances and characteristics that we inherit on the day of our birth. One person is born to wealth; another to poverty. One is born with a high capacity for learning; another may be born with a severely limited capacity. One is born in an age of progress and enlightenment; another may be born into a time of oppression or darkness. Those are not choices that we make; they are the circumstances that are arbitrarily imposed upon us.
But, as I consider the life and teachings of Jesus, I learn that regardless of who we are; everyone has alternatives in life. We have the option of choosing which road we are going to travel and how we will travel that road. It is that endowment that makes us human beings, and to the best of our knowledge sets us clearly apart from the rest of God's creation. We have something to say about our destiny. We are responsible for what we choose to make of the things that we have been given. That is what it means to be a human being: to make choices. We are not puppets, dancing when someone pulls the strings. We are not little toy soldiers marching around in a circle when someone winds us up. We are human beings and that means that we have the high privilege and the awesome responsibility of making significant choices in this life.
The problem is that when given the option -- we tend to make choices that involve the path of least resistance. And that's what Jesus is trying to protect us from when he invites us to deny yourself and take up your cross and follow him. Jesus knows that we tend to take the path of least resistance. We tend not to deny ourselves. We tend to take the easiest way. We avoid crosses. We live in a society that tells us that such behavior is foolish and unnecessary when we can have it all, right now.
I have to confess, I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to opting for the easy way, the path of least resistance. Such behavior is ingrained in us so deeply that we probably don't even notice it anymore. It is also tempting to simply wander along aimlessly.
It is always easier to drift than to go upstream. It is easier to meander along without thinking about the consequences than to confront the hard experiences of life.
Some of you might recall the movie Easy Rider that came out in the 1960's.My brother-in-law bought me a copy of the movie back when I started riding motorcycle. It's the story of two young men on low-slung motorcycles who set out on a cross-country trip across America with no particular destination in mind. Along the way they find themselves in danger now and then. They arrive in New Orleans where they go through a drug-filled nightmare. Then violent death overtakes them. In many ways it was a commentary on American life in that era. It also was a mirror of the uneasiness of many youth.
But the thing that strikes me most of all about it is that for young men out to enjoy themselves, those two were remarkably unsuccessful. In an effort to experience the freedom of living without commitments and responsibilities—they in turn discovered that they were stuck on a path that brought nothing but death and destruction.
As the Apostle Paul might suggest--the place to look for freedom and joy is not in vague and aimless wandering or in drug-induced euphoria, but in listening for where the Spirit is leading us. It is found in loving God and loving your neighbor. It is found by being obedient to that inner voice which is the voice of God --a voice that invites us to take the paths of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Once again, not exactly the well worn path of least resistance.
The Latin root of the word obedience is to "hear" or to "listen". All this begs the question: To whom will you listen? Who are you going to follow? Who will you serve? As Bob Dylan has sang, "You've got to serve somebody". Who are you going to serve? To whom or to what will you be obedient? We need to come to terms with that question if we are going to make meaningful choices in life. We may want to choose the path that looks convenient and seems comfortable, but that is often a snare and an illusion. It is, as Jesus says in the Gospels, a road that leads to disaster. We are tempted, not only as individuals, to take the easy well-traveled path, but we are even tempted collectively.
We have always been tempted to settle our disputes by force; that is the easy well-traveled path, and history is a vivid document of where that road leads. The way to peace and diplomacy is narrow and hard and there are few who travel that road. We have always been tempted to protect our possessions at the expense of others; that is a well-traveled road and there are many who travel it. It is much more difficult to confront the problem of universal human needs and how to solve them and there are few that travel that way. As individuals, communities of faith and as societies--the temptation which we all face is to take the path of least resistance.
But, deep within every one of us I believe that there is a call to be heroic - a call to take up the cross. There is a road less traveled, and there is something within us that pulls us down that path. I call that something the Spirit and I believe that it is the Spirit of God. It is the presence of Christ in our lives.
The road that takes Jesus from Bethlehem to the Place of the Skull - Golgotha, from the manger to the cross is the same road we are called to travel. We are called to travel from our family and place and circumstance of origin and birth to our full identity as human beings made in God's image. We are called to be the people God created us to be.
A while back I saw a bumper sticker on the back of a car that stated: "Well behaved women rarely make history." I suspect there is truth to that statement, but it is not limited to women, in that the greatest chapters of history have never been written by those who were content to take the easy road. Instead they have been written by women and men who went down the road less traveled with dedication and self-discipline, with honor and duty, and even with self-denial, taking up the cross and risking it all for something greater than themselves.
They are the people who have always known that there are things in life worth serving, no matter what the cost. There is a story that comes from our nation's past that illustrates this sentiment. There is a gravestone near Kearney, Nebraska, which has on it the name, Susan Hale. As a young bride, Susan and her husband were part of the gold rush on the Oregon Trail, but she drank some contaminated water, came down with a high fever, and died before they reached Fort Kearney. Her husband made a coffin for her body from their wagon, and buried her mortal remains on the highest knoll he could find, driving in a few wooden stakes so that he would be able to find the place again after he had gone on West and made his fortune. But he changed his mind and instead of going west, he retraced his steps eastward to St. Joe, Missouri, which was the closest outpost of European life.
There he found a stonecutter who cut into granite her name and the date of her death.
Then he tried to get someone to haul it westward, but no one would. They didn't have time or space; their wagons were loaded, and they were impatient to get to the gold fields. So he bought a wheelbarrow, put the stone on it, and pushed it all those miles to Kearney and set it up over her grave.
I don't know if he ever made it to California or if he ever found his fortune. When you think of it, it seems like a foolish thing, a sentimental gesture to walk all those miles to set up that granite monument to his beloved. So, why did he do it? I think he did it because deep down he knew that there are some things that we cannot easily and conveniently walk away from; he knew that there are some values in this life that are too important to neglect. The easy thing to do would have been to dig a shallow grave and leave the body there. He did the hard thing. He chose the road less traveled by. That is the road, Jesus said, that leads to life. I have no idea what choices you face today or what roads are before you in your life. As you consider them, which will you choose? Will you choose the well-traveled path or the path of least resistance? Will you choose that way which leads you in the footsteps of Christ? Whatever your choice, remember that God is with you in your choosing. God is with you as you travel and that God is continually calling you to life. Thanks be to God - Amen.
Pastor Stephen Blenkush
Zion Lutheran
Milaca, MN
www.ZionMilaca.org(Sermon Archive)
