Third Sunday after Pentecost

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

Luke 9: 51-62 and Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Grace and peace to you all in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.

It seems like we hear that Jesus is quite the demanding savior today! He seems to be upfront about that in the second half of our Gospel reading as he encounters some would-be disciples on his journey away from the land of the Gerasene’s toward his final days in Jerusalem.

It’s harsh to hear Jesus say things like, “Let the dead bury their own dead!” and “Those who put their hand to a plow and look back aren’t fit for the Kingdom of God.”

These statements made by Jesus in response to these would-be disciples seem unreasonable to me. For goodness’s sake, one of them just wants to say goodbye to his family and the other wants to bury his dead father! Aren’t these totally reasonable things to do before setting out on a journey?

This week, my ears received this story within a particularly hard pastoral context. I visited two grieving families at the death of fathers.

One visit was to a family from my internship congregation in Manchester. This father was a man who I came to know well along with his middle-school aged son and his caring wife. He died this week after a long battle with chronic pain caused by several compounding health issues. He was young, with a middle school aged son. That visit is of the kind that will continually break my heart.

The other family I visited is one we will all pray for in a little while. The Hartje family. I sat with Shirley Hartje as she grieved the loss of her son Bob, and I spoke on the phone with Michelle, Bob’s wife, as she grieved the loss of her best friend who helped her raise their two boys who are now both young men. Again, this kind of visit will continually break my heart as I too grieve alongside these people.

The Church will honor these two men with funerals and burial in the next few weeks.  My ears heard Jesus’s reply, particularly, to the man who just wanted to bury his own dead father as harsh. I’ve honestly been praying all week this little prayer: “Lord, I’ve heard your Word, and I don’t like it!”[1]

I come to you today as a fellow Christian, a part of this community, as one who is exploring faith and has now been tasked with frequently standing up at this microphone to say something inspiring - or at least a bit hopeful. It’s sometimes a hard job. I admit that sometimes the prayer “Lord, I’ve heard your Word and I don’t like it!” is my honest reply to my own encounters with scripture. This week it was my honest first reaction as I began exploring this text deeper.  

I first read this Gospel text while on the airplane flying home from Minneapolis last weekend. While I was in Minneapolis visiting family, I had the opportunity to attend the Aus Lecture Series at Luther Seminary and theologian, professor, and Methodist Pastor Will Willimon was the invited guest. Willimon has served as chaplain at Duke University and as a Bishop in the United Methodist Church. During his lecture, he shared a story about a woman he had in one of his churches who came up to him after worship one Sunday to talk.[2] Willimon’s sermon that day was on how Jesus calls us to forgive our enemies.

The woman came up to him and said, “Pastor, are you telling me that I’m supposed to forgive my abusive husband who I finally got the courage to leave?” And Willimon said he was taken aback by that, but he haltingly said to her, “Well, I, I, guess I do know that Jesus said forgive 77x7 and that means a lot of forgiveness, and, but I know that spouse abuse is absolutely wicked and evil, but, but, I think Jesus would probably say that forgiveness is the way...?” After his bumbling response, the woman replied: “Thank you. Just checking.” [3]

Willimon said that at that moment he had a revelation from God.  He very clearly heard the voice of Jesus say to him, “Now you see, my Word does hard work in people, work you’d never believe! So, if you preachers just get out of the way I can accomplish something!”

Willimon’s revelation has stuck with me this week with the scripture text that seems to reveal a very demanding Jesus. This is a side of Jesus we don’t often acknowledge in our Lutheran tradition. We tend to hyper-focus on the abundant grace poured out for all people through Jesus Christ – which is true. And we have a complex and mysterious God who speaks strangely, today, to us through Jesus’s hard words.  

So, I wonder how to get out of the way and just let Jesus’s challenging Word speak to us in the confidence of the Holy Spirit’s movement with us?

We hear these words from Jesus as he’s walking some distance away from the entrance to a Samaritan town that refused him entry. It says they refused him because “his face was set towards Jerusalem.” It’s an interesting detail.

This detail echoes an Old Testament line often used to describe the prophet, Elijah. The phrase indicates a resolute focus, laser-like – “he set his face” it’s like Jesus is a granite statue. So, this echo of Elijah then reminds us of a similar story to this one: Elijah called Elisha to come and follow him. The key difference though between Jesus’s calling of the would-be disciples in our Gospel today, and Elisha’s call is that Elisha was granted his request to say goodbye to his family. So, perhaps the Gospel of Luke, in recording Jesus’s demanding words, is highlighting Jesus’s absolute, laser-like, unflinching commitment to his journey toward Jerusalem. It’s urgent! It’s uncontrollably compelling Jesus to go. There is absolutely nothing that can or will get in the way of Jesus going to Jerusalem, he has “set his face.” There is absolutely nothing that can get in the way of Jesus going straight to the cross.

Within this Gospel’s context, I started to hear Jesus’s saying, “let the dead bury their dead” in another way. I now hear Jesus’s words as a hasty way of saying something very promising. I think he’s saying: “I don’t have time to wait because I’ve got to get to that Cross! God’s got something that needs to happen now at that place. And the thing that needs to happen now will impact your dead father, too! I’ve set my face to that place. So, let’s go!”

Although I can now hear a new meaning in Jesus’s harsh words. It still asks so much of these would-be disciples to just drop all the commitments they have at home to go with Jesus. To be willing to do that is an unnatural feeling for us, it’s against our human instinct. To hear Jesus’s words just feels like too high a demand!

And I think it is in that very place where we acknowledge that it’s too hard, that’s exactly where Jesus’s words speak something new. Joining Jesus to set one’s face to Jerusalem to go to the cross with him is most certainly the highest of all demands! It’s true it’s too hard for those would-be disciples to do that.

It’s too hard for them for a reason. Because what happens on the cross is a divine thing. Something only God can do.

Jesus on the cross sets all of creation free! Freed from bondage to the kinds of sins that are listed in the reading from Galatians. Jesus on the Cross means we are forgiven by the love of God who gives his only Son to give us eternal life. Jesus on the cross opens all of creation to the reality of the resurrection! Life. Eternal life where the fruits of the spirit, as Paul calls them this morning, reign supreme like love, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and gentleness. Jesus has a God-given singlemindedness of purpose that flows directly from God’s deep and everlasting love for all of creation and absolutely nothing can or will get in the way of that. What a promise to hold on to today! Nothing will get in the way of that flow of God-given love. 

Perhaps what Jesus is saying when he says, “let the dead bury their dead” is that the kind of love that he is so single mindedly focused on – the kind of love that brings all of creation into relationship God, the kind of love that starts the unfolding of God’s Kingdom here on earth, the kind of love that sets us free and opens us all up to the reality of everlasting life - is unstoppable – Not even death can stop it.

What a promise to cling to in this day when wars rage, hatred between our brothers and sisters is rampant and enflamed by the world’s politics, and death and disease permeate throughout creation.

Jesus’s face is set toward Jerusalem, toward the cross because nothing can or will hinder him from doing God’s work of healing our human wounds that that are created day after day. We are in desperate need of our Savior who sets his face toward Jerusalem, where we can hang our wounds, our sins and our pain at the loss of dear friends and family members on the cross where we watch them die.    

We are in desperate need of a resurrection world, one where those sins, wounds and pain well and truly died on the cross, but Jesus Christ rose again showing us the New Creation – Resurrection Life – Life rising out of the ashes.

It's because of Jesus’s singular focus that we cling to the promise that we are embraced by Resurrection Life.

The woman who Will Willimon spoke about was encountered by Jesus’s hard Word that revealed the Kingdom of God to her. Jesus’s Word helped her to understand that, as hard as it is to believe, God forgives her abusive husband, God forgives all. Jesus’s words worked on her when they were allowed to wash over her.

I commit to you to do my best at getting out of the way of Jesus’s own words to let them work on all of us so we might see him bringing about the unstoppable love of God for all of creation.

Amen.

Rev. Ryan Heckman | Third Sunday after Pentecost | June 29, 2025

[1] A little prayer I learned from Will Willimon who will also feature more in this sermon.

[2] Aus Lecture Series at Luther Seminary, June 17, 2025. https://www.luthersem.edu/story/2025/05/27/will-willimon-to-deliver-the-2025-aus-lecture/

[3] You can listen to Will Willimon tell this story and the whole Aus Lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/live/PtieN9fNgLs Go to about 1:26:00.