I don’t know about you, but I think Jesus sounded rather cranky in the Gospel today. He is not quite the all-loving, all-patient, all-calm, all-compassionate Jesus that we are used to. He is still compassionate, it’s not like he lost it. When the Samaritans reject him and the Disciples wanted to rain down fire upon them and destroy them, Jesus said no. He has compassion on the Samaritans, and he rebukes the Disciples for suggesting such a thing. Rather than being calm and suggesting we review what we talked about when someone rejects us: wipe the dust from our feet and move along. It is not our place to rain down fire upon people. If there is going to be anything like that, God will take care of it, not us.
And there are the examples of people coming up to Jesus, and they either want to follow him or he invites them to follow him, but they have important things to do before they can do that, and he has no time or patience for them. He says that anyone who looks behind them isn’t worthy of the Kingdom. He is a little bit short with them. He is cranky.
Why is he cranky? I don’t know. Perhaps he is just having a bad day, as we all do. He is fully divine, but also fully human, so he gets to have some bad days. Maybe he is a little hangry, hungry/angry. Maybe a few crackers and a cheese stick would make this all better.
But I think there is more going on here. The hint is in the line early in the Gospel where it says that Jesus had set his face to go to Jerusalem. His ministry in the Galilee area, going from town to town, preaching and teaching and healing, is mostly over. He has gone up the Mount of Transfiguration, and has come down and set his face to Jerusalem. He knows what is going to happen there. He knows he is going to die, and he does not want that to happen. Do you remember that in the Garden of Gethsemane, he begs God that the cup will pass from him. He does not want this, but he know that is what has to happen.
Maybe Jesus is a little anxious right now, a little distracted, but he also has a sense of urgency because there is not much time left to proclaim the way of love that he has been sent to proclaim. As Paul says so beautifully, the whole law is summed up in the commandment “you shall love your neighbor as yourself”. That is what Jesus is showing and teaching in his life and in his words, and he needs to get the message proclaimed to people. And he has to waste his time with Disciples who keep getting it all wrong, and he is tired of people finding excuses not to move forward with him, but putting it off to tomorrow. There is an urgency to Jesus’s proclamation, his life, his ministry, his work.
Do we have the same urgency that Jesus does, or do we put it off until tomorrow? And then when tomorrow comes, do we put it off until tomorrow again? Are we always putting off the Good News of following Jesus to the next day? Jesus has invited us, called us to follow him in this way of love, and how often do we say tomorrow I will do that, but today I’m going to walk down a different path? I hope it is not the path of hatred you are walking down. Maybe it is the path of apathy, but Jesus says I want you to walk with me on the path of love, the way of love. And it is urgent.
Why is it so urgent? Well, life is short. As we often say in the final blessing, quoting the Swiss philosopher, Henri Frederic Amiel: Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel the way with us. So be swift to love and make haste to be kind.
It is true, life is short. I know some days it doesn’t feel like it, but it is. Maybe your life isn’t as short as the one Jesus has in front of him. His is coming to an end pretty soon. Maybe you have time, or maybe you don’t. I buried a woman yesterday who died in a car accident. Life is short, so we may not have a tomorrow to put it off to.
It is also urgent because every day we are walking down one of these other paths, we are forming ourselves in the way of that path. We might be forming ourselves in the way of envy, or the way of enmity, and every day we go down that path the harder it is to get back on the way of love. It is urgent that we start backtracking and getting on the way of love and start forming ourselves in that way. That is the dream and the vision that God has for us.
So, my friends, the proclamation, the invitation is urgent. The question is, do we hear that urgency, do we listen to Jesus’s urgency and start following him, or do we say that it sounds like a nice idea, but I’ll take care of it tomorrow?
AMEN
