This is the time of year when lots of people head South. Some people go to Texas or Arizona or Florida for the winter. Some people can’t afford to be gone all winter, but take a couple of weeks’ vacation in one of those places, or maybe they go to somewhere else like Hawaii or Cancun or the Bahamas or something.
Sometimes, those of us who stay here all winter get a little envious of that. When we hear about someone going on one of those trips, we say something like, “I sure wish I could go with you.” The thing is, of course, that we can. There’s nobody stopping us. It’s just that to do it, we have to be willing and able to pay for the plane tickets and the motels and the food and all the other things it takes to be able to take a trip like that. In other words, to take a trip like that, we have to pay the price.
We’re doing a sermon series called “Road Trip!” taking a look at the things that happened while Jesus and his disciples went on trips. One of the things that happened, as we heard today, is that people would say to Jesus, “I sure wish I could go with you.” But the thing is, they could have. Jesus did not stop them. Nobody stopped them. It’s just that to do it, they had to be willing to pay the price, and they were not.
In our reading from Luke, three different people come to Jesus and say they want to go with him. The first one says, without qualification, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And that sounds fine. But Jesus says to him, I don’t have any resting place I’m going to. If you follow me, you’re going to have to keep on going and going.
The second one says he wants to follow, but “first let me go and bury my father.” That sounds reasonable to us. But Jesus says, there’s no time for that. Go proclaim the kingdom of God now.
The third one says, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.” That sounds reasonable to us, too. And Jesus says, there’s no time for that, either. If you’re going to keep looking backward and saying good-bye, you’re not going to be able to go forward and serve the kingdom of God.
Now, if you read about this section, you’ll read explanations that try to soften what Jesus said. For example, I’ve read that when the guy said “let me go and bury my father”, that this was an expression. His father was still alive. What he was saying was that he would not be able to follow until his father died. And there are ways people interpret this to soften the other things Jesus said, too.
I think, though, that looking at the specifics like that misses the point. Regardless of how you interpret these things, what Jesus was saying is that if we are going to follow him, we have to be willing to follow unconditionally. There can be no putting it off. There can be no waiting until tomorrow. There can be no putting other things first. There can be no putting other responsibilities first. Even if those other things, those other responsibilities are good things, they cannot be put first. Everything else in our lives needs to be second to following Jesus Christ.
We can follow Jesus. There’s no one stopping us. The only one who’s stopping us is us. Ourselves.
Most of us here, maybe all of us here, would say we are Christians. But can we honestly say that we always follow Jesus? Can we always say that we, at all times, in all places, and in all circumstances, put following Jesus Christ first, ahead of everything else in our lives?
Maybe you can. I don’t know. I cannot. I’m more like the people Jesus was talking to. I want to follow Jesus, all right. I absolutely do. But…
I want to follow Jesus, but I want to be able to watch the football playoffs, too. I want to follow Jesus, but I want to be able to watch Doctor Who, my favorite TV show, too. I want to follow Jesus, but I want to do lots of other things, too.
Now, it’s not that the other things I want to do are bad things. They don’t hurt anybody. Chances are the things you want to do are not bad things, either. Chances are they don’t hurt anybody, either. But the question we need to ask ourselves--the question I need to ask myself--is whether those things are getting in the way of following Jesus Christ. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether there are times--not all the time, but sometimes--when we allow those things we want to do to get in the way of following Jesus Christ. I suspect for many of us, the answer is yes.
Most of us probably know that. But what we do--what I do--is to make excuses for it. We say, “Well, after all, I’m not perfect. Nobody’s perfect. I cannot be expected to follow Jesus Christ 24/7/365. No one can say they’ve given one hundred percent of their lives to the Lord.”
Well, that could be. It would be extremely hard, if not impossible, to give one hundred percent of our lives to the Lord, to have absolutely everything we ever say or do every day of our lives be something that serves God. It would be really hard to never have a time, even if only for a little while, where something got in the way of following Jesus Christ, to give one hundred percent of our lives to following him.
And it’s also true that God knows that. God knows we’re are flawed, imperfect, sinful people. God knows we’re going to fail at this. And God will understand and forgive our failures.
But the thing is that we are not allowed to use that as an excuse. That’s why we read the passage from Romans today. People were making that argument to Paul. They were saying, look, if God knows we’re sinners, and if our sins are forgiven through the death of Jesus, and if we’re saved by our faith and by God’s grace and mercy, then why should we change anything? Why can we not just go on living our lives the way we have been and trust that God will forgive us?
The thing is that unless we change our lives, we cannot really say that we have faith in Jesus Christ. Because if we have faith in Jesus, if we truly believe that he was and is the divine Son of God, then we’ll do what Jesus told us to do. We’ll live the way Jesus told us to live. We’ll be willing to give up those things that get in the way of following Jesus, not because God will send us to hell if we don’t, but because we’ll want to. If we truly love Jesus, we’ll want to please Jesus, and the way we can please Jesus is by doing what he told us to do and living the way he wants us to live.
The people who came up to Jesus on the road said they wanted to follow Jesus. And they may actually have believed that they did. But they all had reasons why they could not follow right now. They all had reasons why they could not follow all the way. They wanted to be able to follow Jesus part of the time, and go part of the way, but they also wanted to be able to do other things part of the time. They wanted following Jesus to be part of their lives, but they did not want following Jesus to be their whole life.
What Jesus told them is exactly what he tells us. He told them it does not and cannot work that way. We cannot just follow Jesus part of the time and go part of the way. We cannot just have following Jesus be one of the many things we do. It won’t work. If we try to do it that way, then whenever things get tough, whenever we run into someone who does not like our faith, whenever our faith gets us into trouble, we’ll abandon it. Or we’ll hide it. Or we’ll soft-pedal it. Or we just won’t talk about it. And when we do something like that, we all of a sudden find that we’re not following Jesus any more. We’re just following the crowd.
The only way we’ll be able to follow Jesus is if we make a total commitment with our entire lives. Is that easy? No. Will we fail sometimes? Yes. But we’re not allowed to use that as an excuse. When we fail, we need to ask God for forgiveness and re-dedicated ourselves to following Jesus. And when we fail again, we need to ask God for forgiveness again and re-dedicate ourselves to following Jesus again. Because we will fail. We’ll fail many times. But God knows the difference between when we’re trying and failing and when we’re failing because we’re not really trying. And deep down, we know that difference, too.
So what are the things that are getting in the way of you following Christ? What are things that are getting in the way of me following Christ? Let’s ask ourselves those questions until we get some answers. Then, let’s ask God for forgiveness and dedicate ourselves to following Jesus. Because we can follow Jesus. No one is stopping us but ourselves.
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