Nesting
This week's verses are Luke 9:57-62:
These verses are a kick in the teeth to the promise of a comfortable Christian life. We dream of finding a nice church, getting married, having a nice family, good schools, in a good community full of good examples for the kids, low crime, surrounded by like-minded people, for the rest of our lives. Lots of people throughout history have worked really hard to try to make this sort of heaven on earth, but nobody has succeeded.
The first person in these verses says "I will follow you wherever you go." It sounds like the lyrics to countless worship songs and hymns. The words sound really nice. The thought is a really nice thought. Of course we want to follow Jesus, wherever he finally ends up. We just don't necessarily want to do it today. Or to do it continually, indefinitely, for the rest of our lives.
In the middle ages, people used to delay getting baptized as long as they could. They would wait until they were on their death bed before committing to Christ because they wanted to leave an option open in case they had to kill someone, swindle someone in the market, or whatever. They didn't want to make that open-ended promise. They wanted to sign on when the destination was clear, when they could just follow Jesus directly to the hereafter. When we say "I'll go wherever you go" sometimes we mean it that way, instead of "Hey I'm ready to go now if you are."
The next guys in the verses have what seem to be really good excuses for not starting the journey. They have to make family arrangements. They have to tie up loose ends. We see the same thing later on in the parable about the banquet (Luke 14:16-24) where people have more excuses. They have to take care of some stuff for their job. They're expecting a delivery. They need to fix something around the house. Their wife wants to do something. They say nice words, but then come the excuses when they go in a different direction.
In a lot of churches, we say all kinds of nice words during the service. We promise to follow God, to do anything he needs, telling him he's number one in our lives. But when the service is over, people scatter like cockroaches to return back to the lives they left right before saying their nice words. We always have something that calls us away. (My thing is wanting to go eat as soon as possible.)
Not every church is exactly like that, but I'll bet that most have some variant of that behavior. Churches are always made up of people. But then we wonder after five, ten, twenty years why we haven't got the deep relationship we wanted with God, or why we don't have the kind of devoted, loving Christian community we read about in the Bible. But we already know the answer to that. The game was on. You had a powerpoint presentation you had to get ready. Your spouse just wanted to stay in. There was a free yoga class. You needed some me time after a long work week. You just got back from the vacation on Friday and needed some time to catch up on sleep. There's always something.
We have this natural tendency to want to build nests for ourselves. A nice family. A good career. One more degree. Entertainment. Politics. Weekend projects. We just want to crawl into that nice warm hole in the ground and wait there until we're taken up to heaven. But Jesus says he's not talking about nesting. He's talking about actions, movement in a yet-to-be-specified direction. He's asking us to be responsive and aware. Alert, not asleep. Now, not later.
That's not to say we should be spending all of our waking hours in prayer and monastic study. We obviously have to pay the bills and take care of ourselves and our loved ones. But if you find that every time you want to pray or read the Bible, you can't because you've got to text your friends, or wash the dishes, or study, or look up something on the Internet, ask yourself if maybe you're more interested in nesting than in following.
The same with living the stuff you read about in the Bible and talk about in prayer. If you find that you almost never hang out with other Christians, or help people in need, or share the gospel with people, because you've got too tight of a schedule, or your friends want to do something different, or you and your girlfriend wanted to have some alone time, or there's a YouTube video you've got to see, or you're just plain tired, maybe you're in your nest already.
So how do you fix it? If the time for following God always seems to be in the future, make time in the present. If something or someone else always seems to be more important than what you're saying in the nice words you say every Sunday, make some adjustments. You can't plow forward if you're always looking back at whatever keeps calling you away. Let the world run itself for a bit while you look after the things of heaven. You have to leave the nest if you want to learn to fly.
As they were walking along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus said to him, “Foxes have dens and the birds in the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Jesus said to another, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say goodbye to my family.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
These verses are a kick in the teeth to the promise of a comfortable Christian life. We dream of finding a nice church, getting married, having a nice family, good schools, in a good community full of good examples for the kids, low crime, surrounded by like-minded people, for the rest of our lives. Lots of people throughout history have worked really hard to try to make this sort of heaven on earth, but nobody has succeeded.
The first person in these verses says "I will follow you wherever you go." It sounds like the lyrics to countless worship songs and hymns. The words sound really nice. The thought is a really nice thought. Of course we want to follow Jesus, wherever he finally ends up. We just don't necessarily want to do it today. Or to do it continually, indefinitely, for the rest of our lives.
In the middle ages, people used to delay getting baptized as long as they could. They would wait until they were on their death bed before committing to Christ because they wanted to leave an option open in case they had to kill someone, swindle someone in the market, or whatever. They didn't want to make that open-ended promise. They wanted to sign on when the destination was clear, when they could just follow Jesus directly to the hereafter. When we say "I'll go wherever you go" sometimes we mean it that way, instead of "Hey I'm ready to go now if you are."
The next guys in the verses have what seem to be really good excuses for not starting the journey. They have to make family arrangements. They have to tie up loose ends. We see the same thing later on in the parable about the banquet (Luke 14:16-24) where people have more excuses. They have to take care of some stuff for their job. They're expecting a delivery. They need to fix something around the house. Their wife wants to do something. They say nice words, but then come the excuses when they go in a different direction.
In a lot of churches, we say all kinds of nice words during the service. We promise to follow God, to do anything he needs, telling him he's number one in our lives. But when the service is over, people scatter like cockroaches to return back to the lives they left right before saying their nice words. We always have something that calls us away. (My thing is wanting to go eat as soon as possible.)
Not every church is exactly like that, but I'll bet that most have some variant of that behavior. Churches are always made up of people. But then we wonder after five, ten, twenty years why we haven't got the deep relationship we wanted with God, or why we don't have the kind of devoted, loving Christian community we read about in the Bible. But we already know the answer to that. The game was on. You had a powerpoint presentation you had to get ready. Your spouse just wanted to stay in. There was a free yoga class. You needed some me time after a long work week. You just got back from the vacation on Friday and needed some time to catch up on sleep. There's always something.
We have this natural tendency to want to build nests for ourselves. A nice family. A good career. One more degree. Entertainment. Politics. Weekend projects. We just want to crawl into that nice warm hole in the ground and wait there until we're taken up to heaven. But Jesus says he's not talking about nesting. He's talking about actions, movement in a yet-to-be-specified direction. He's asking us to be responsive and aware. Alert, not asleep. Now, not later.
That's not to say we should be spending all of our waking hours in prayer and monastic study. We obviously have to pay the bills and take care of ourselves and our loved ones. But if you find that every time you want to pray or read the Bible, you can't because you've got to text your friends, or wash the dishes, or study, or look up something on the Internet, ask yourself if maybe you're more interested in nesting than in following.
The same with living the stuff you read about in the Bible and talk about in prayer. If you find that you almost never hang out with other Christians, or help people in need, or share the gospel with people, because you've got too tight of a schedule, or your friends want to do something different, or you and your girlfriend wanted to have some alone time, or there's a YouTube video you've got to see, or you're just plain tired, maybe you're in your nest already.
So how do you fix it? If the time for following God always seems to be in the future, make time in the present. If something or someone else always seems to be more important than what you're saying in the nice words you say every Sunday, make some adjustments. You can't plow forward if you're always looking back at whatever keeps calling you away. Let the world run itself for a bit while you look after the things of heaven. You have to leave the nest if you want to learn to fly.
Comments
Post a Comment