Luke 9:51-62

It is so good to be here. To be here with you at my St. Thomas home. I have missed you. It feels like I've not been gone. It seems like just yesterday that I was serving where Ann is serving today. I look out and I see many of you sitting where you were sitting when last I served at this table. I find myself wanting to linger here a bit longer. I find myself wanting to stay a while.

Luke tells us: As they were going along the road, someone said to Jesus, "I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "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." Another said, "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."

Isn't it tempting to look back? to look back with longing at a time or place where you felt comfortable? loved? competent? secure? I surely find it tempting to look back at those moments in my life when I've been in the midst Ļof people who know me and still love me. I find it tempting to look back with longing at those places in my past where I've done work I know and am good at--those places where I've felt competent and secure. It is so tempting to look back.

There;s a story about a farmer whose heart was swelled with pride. There's a story about a farmer who was so pleased with the looks of his farm--the shiny new deep blue silos for storing grain harvested from his abundant fields; the big barn painted a crisp white and home to his new state-of-the-art John Deere tractor; the inviting Victorian farm house with a wrap-around porch.

The way the old-timers tell it, one spring morning that farmer drove the new John Deere tractor out of that crisp white barn and headed out to plow the field west of the Victorian house with the wrap-around porch and the crisp white barn and the shiny new deep blue grain silos. That farmer's heart just swelled with pride as he turned back to take just one more look at his beautiful farm. Looking back, he didn't even notice the approaching banks of the Zumbro River that bounded his land on the west. He didn't notice those banks until he found himself in the Zumbro River.

Jesus says, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." Now scholars tell us that "fit for the kingdom of God" is a shorthand way of saying "fit for proclaiming the Gospel of the kingdom of God." Taking up the work of plowing and then looking back is bad farming practice. You can't do the work of plowing if you're looking back. If you look back, you miss the work and the wonder at hand.

So it is with the work of proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God; so it is with the work of following Jesus. We can't follow Jesus when we're looking back because he is moving forward.

There's a gospel song that puts it this way:

I've got my hand on the Gospel Plow
I wouldn't take nothin' for my journey now
The only thing that we did wrong:
Stay in the wilderness a day too long.