Answering the Call...or Not
AM Psalm 89:1-18 • PM Psalm 89:19-52
Ezek. 4:1-17 • Heb. 6:1-12 • Luke 9:51-62
Today’s gospel message from Luke is one of those head-scratchers for me. Jesus telling one person that he is to let “the dead bury their own dead” instead of being able to go and bury his father. Another person wants to let his family know he is leaving. He is told, “No one who puts his hand to plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” My first take is that Jesus is being unreasonable in his expectations. So the literal interpretation doesn’t work well (as is often/always? the case). What might be gleaned from these passages in a more metaphorical sense?
I suggest that letting the dead bury their dead could be inviting me to let go off the stuff I am dragging around—the woundedness, the resentments, the imagined (and real) slights, the self-judgment about not being a better person, and not having lived a better life—all of the dead stuff that no longer serves me. I can turn everything over to God. Wow! I feel lighter already.
What about looking back after putting one’s hand to the plow? This admonition reminds me of a zero-tolerance policy which tends to emphasize the letter of the law at the expense of the spirit. (See my reflection of November 4, 2020) “The law killeth— the Spirit giveth Life.” Here we are presented with a dilemma, do we follow the letter of the law and count ourselves unworthy because of a brief backward glance at the family we are leaving without a word of explanation or good-bye? How do we reconcile these conflicting directives?
I have no succinct answer to the question posed above. In attempting to reconcile seeming contradictions in the Bible—in this case in Jesus’ own words—we are left with a “silence too deep for words.” We are left with Mystery. We each are left to decide in the real decisions of everyday life how to apply the words of Jesus.
One might offer that Jesus was speaking about theory rather than practice in these two vignettes. Perhaps Yogi Berra may be of help here: “In theory, theory and practice are the same—in practice they’re not.” So, as is often the case, we are left to ponder the seeming paradox, the Mystery. In my own spiritual journey, I find myself feeling closer to God in the questions rather than in the answers.
Written by Nick Cole
...who is celebrating the gift(s) in every experience. Cowabunga!