You cannot imagine the relief I felt yesterday afternoon when I found Julie Penington-Russell, pastor of Calvary Baptist in Waco, sitting on the floor in the overcrowded main corridor of the T-Gate terminal of Atlanta’s Hartsfield airport working on her Sunday morning sermon.  I’d been in Atlanta since Wednesday at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Assembly and just knew I couldn’t be the only preacher in town not quite ready to preach this morning.  Since sometime just after I finished here last Sunday I’d turned my attention to today.  But, like biscuit dough that keeps shaping itself to the rolling pin instead of the cutting board, this sermon just wouldn’t turn lose and take shape no matter how hard I pressed it.  So, when I found Julie sitting on the floor still scratching through an unfinished manuscript, I was reminded that our Heavenly Father graciously puts people in our paths with whom we can relate in our very earthly day-to-day struggles.

That’s what made Carroll O’Connor and Jack Lemmon such popular actors.  They gave us characters on screen with whom we could identify in real life.  Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts?!  Beyond pure fantasy, how many of us can honestly relate to that kind of drop dead good-looking athleticism?  But, with Archie Bunker’s double-knit polyester and narrow-minded bigotry and Lemmon’s hapless hypochondria, reckless alcoholism or grumpy old manhood, couldn’t you just see and hear someone who lived under your roof, maybe in your own skin? 

That’s also why I appreciate the biblical characters struggling with Jesus’ call on their lives.  Just over one-third of the way into his record of Jesus’ life, Luke turned to recording the results of that moment when Jesus, with single-minded focus, “resolutely set out for Jerusalem,” the place where he’d pay with his life for his devotion to a higher calling.  Honestly, it’s hard to relate to that.  In Atlanta, I heard a black congressman speak who’d marched with Martin Luther King and faced bloodthirsty State Troopers in Selma, Alabama on bloody Sunday.  The fact that most of us don’t even know what, or when, bloody Sunday was tells you a great deal about how comfortable our lives have been compared to that of a man who was willing to pay with his own blood for what he believed in.

Most of us born since the Korean War have never faced a greater struggle than how we’d balance the budget at the end of mortgage payments, braces for the kids and trying to anticipate a comfortable retirement.  That’s one reason it’s hard for us to understand why crusty old veterans get tears in their eyes when we sing The Star-Spangled Banner on Independence Day or even why some among us will occasionally relocate to a mission field to serve Jesus in a place so dangerous we can’t even know their address.  It’s hard for us to relate to devotion that runs deeper than our passion for comfort and security at all cost.  That’s why it’s also hard for us to relate to Jesus.  How many of us under fifty, have ever had to pay with our blood for what we believe?  On the other hand,who can’t identify with the other characters in this drama?  If you’ll listen closely, maybe you, like me, can hear the O’Connors and Lemmons of scripture who live out very familiar characters, like someone who struggles with lesser passions inside your own skin.

One says, “‘I’ll follow you wherever you go,’” and Jesus warns him, “‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’”  Maybe this is a guy in mid-adolescence.  Remember those days?  We’d write blank spiritual and emotional checks with no idea how we’d actually cover them if someone, especially God, ever actually cashed them?  “Wherever you go, I’ll follow!” we’d say in moments of blind passion to our boyfriend or girlfriend on Saturday night and God on Sunday morning as though we had an inexhaustible supply of collateral virtue to back up ever commitment we made.  Back when we tended to leap before we looked.  Maybe that’s why Jesus wanted this man to take a good look before he leaped.  Even God’s lowest creation has more earthly security than a woman or man, boy or girl, following him with total abandon, Jesus was saying.  Be very sure you want to go down that road before you take even the first step.  For those who intend to finish with integrity, it’s a no-turning back kind of journey, no matter how scary or costly it gets.  Sure you want to go there?

Turning to two he perhaps thought were ready to say yes, Jesus extended a personal invitation, “‘Follow me.’”  And, if you’ve ever once excused yourself for not doing what you knew to be God’s will, you’ll identify with the way these two R.S.V.P.  “‘Lord,” using that term lightly yet, at the same time, betraying the fact that he knew all the while to whom he was declining, “‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father,’” the first says.  Classic struggle.  It’s not that we don’t know that first things should be first.  It’s just that we aren’t always sure what should be first.  Family first, right?  Right?  So, what could be so wrong with what the next guy said, given the same invitation, “‘I will follow you, Lord;’” (there he goes, too, with that “Lord” stuff) “‘but first let me go back and say good-by to my family.’”  First things first, you know.

Almost certainly, with the former, it wasn’t that immediate funeral arrangements had to be made for his not yet late father or with the latter that saying goodbye would take that long.  Or, would it?  This sounds like middle age.  That stage of life when we make the sometimes very traumatic switch to giving care to those who once cared for us.  When some get stuck because they’ve put off saying the kinds of goodbyes life demands as you go along, when children must leave and parents must, too.  Now, there’s an unhealthy backlog of unsaid goodbyes that anchor us to a past long gone, never to be again and robbing us God’s future. 

Hear yourself in any of these characters?  I do.  My first son won’t leave for

three years, yet, and I’m already grieving.  (Except when he talks back to me.  Sometimes I think that adolescent rebellion is God’s gift to parents who once thought they’d never be able to let go of that precious little thing in diapers.)  Anyway, he can’t wait.  Already!  And, when I’m brutally honest with myself, I know that the grief is about me trying to hold on to a little boy who isn’t a little boy anymore.  He’s moving on.  And, every moment I spend grieving I lose what could yet be looking back at what has been.  Anyone here relate to that?

Not to mention the disciples, full enough of passion for sure, but too full of themselves to direct it wisely.  They wanted to call down “‘fire from heaven to destroy’” the Samaritans who had rejected the Jewish Jesus on his way through town.  It was a take no prisoners mentality.  Burn the whole village, kill ‘em all.  Anyone in your past, or present, you wish you could burn because they burned you?  Anyone see or hear yourself in any one of these characters?

There is an old, overused and even cheesy cliché that says some Christians are so heavenly minded they are no earthly good.  Fair enough.  Some are, maybe.  But, what seemed to have bothered Jesus more were those who were so earthly minded they were no heavenly good.  People who heard his call, even some who said they wanted to follow it, but were too busy looking over their shoulder at what they’d have to leave behind to get around to it.  People who were, like you and me, too consumed with consumer affairs, relationships too consuming and all-consuming unresolved anger to serve anything but their own private passion for comfort, security and an unresolved fantasy that life is supposed to be fair even if it means squaring it yourself with a vengeance.  People who lived too much looking back to ever move forward.

Jesus said, “‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom.’”  It’s an analogy simple enough for even the high-tech minded.  Any farmer more concerned about where his plow has been than where it is going will starve to death because, even as he plows, he’ll destroy what could have been by being too concerned about what had been.  Actually, I have firsthand experience with that kind of plowing.

One high school summer I drove a tractor for a farmer, for $1.50 per hour, cutting weeds in peanut and cotton fields.  While moving the tractor from one field to another one day I was driving down a deserted paved road and got worried, for some reason, that someone might be following me.  Since the tractor had no rear view mirrors, I turned around to look and was relieved to see no one coming from behind.  It was what I saw when I turned back to face forward that scared me to death.  While looking back, I had turned the wheel so that the tractor was now headed at full speed for a very wide bar ditch and it was too late to stop.  I made it across the ditch all right but, totally out of control, couldn’t stop before cutting diagonal ruts across another farmer’s freshly planted cotton for several yards.  The rest of the summer, every time I drove by that field, I saw two bald ruts in the middle of his flourishing crop and was reminded that it is impossible to successfully plow forward if you’re looking back. 

As best I can understand it at this point in my own journey, this is what Jesus was saying.  If places and stuff that make us feel secure are too important to us, we can’t be his disciples because we’ll live looking back at what we left behind too much to follow him forward.  That we should love and care for families.  But, if, for example, we’re committed to making sure the kid’s college education is paid for before they even graduate high school and that they always have clothes others will envy and every conceivable toy before we invest any of our resources in what outlives college, clothes and toys then, like the guy who had to say goodbye to his family before he was willing to say hello to God’s future, we “love” our families too much.  And, if we are still wanting to square up old debts then we can’t be his disciples because we’ll always be looking back at those who hurt us instead of forward at those we’ve been called to love.  In short, we’ll lose what could have been because we were too concerned about what has been.

In 1945, as World War II was winding down, General Douglas MacArthur fulfilled his “I shall return” promise and lead 280,000 American troops to start reclaiming the Philippines from the Japanese.  Shortly afterwards, American commanders were made aware of a Japanese prisoner of war camp in which 500 Americans, the last survivors of the Bataan death march three years earlier, were being held.  A special force of Army Rangers under the command of a young captain, Henry Mucci, was assigned the mission of rescuing the prisoners before they could be slaughtered by their fleeing Japanese captors.  Time was of the essence.  As Mucci was handpicking his troops he explained the dangers of what could become a suicidal mission and told them he required three things.  Every man had to be a volunteer.  No one could be married.  And, no atheists were allowed; every man had to visit a chaplain and pray to God on his knees before he left.  They had thirty minutes to decide.  (Hampton Sides, Ghost Soldiers, Doubleday, 2001)  Simple formula for service.  Mucci didn’t want anyone following him into battle who was looking back over his shoulders at unfinished business with God or at home; there was to be nothing, absolutely nothing, more important than obedience to the commander even if it meant dying. 

There are worse things than dying.  You’ll know you’ve begun to discover what they are when you come to the place where you are not as afraid of what will happen to you if you follow Jesus as you are afraid of what will happen if you don’t.  Not that you will end up in a place called hell after you die.  But, that you will wake up one day and realize you are already in hell and you’re not dead, yet.  Except, you kind of are dead.  Because you spend your days looking back you have lost hope that there is anything to look forward to.  And, you are never more dead than when you live looking back. 

Jesus said, “‘Follow me.’”  Whatever else, his words are an invitation to reconsider the course of your life’s journey.  That’s what makes it good news.  You can reconsider.  No matter how old or young, Jesus is always more concerned about where you’re headed than where you’ve been.  “‘Follow me,’” he said.  Where to?  Who cares?  As long as it’s where he wants you to be and it’s somewhere you’ll be more alive than you are today won’t it be worth it no matter where following him takes you and no matter what it costs to get there?

Amen.