13th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2025c

Old Testament - 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14 

New Testament - Luke 9:51-62

 

“Nasty Particularities”

 

INTRODUCTION: Truth in advertising. It’s the principle and legal requirement that advertisements should be honest and not misleading. 

 

Ads for particular products, in other words, shouldn’t use imagery, language, or implied claims that lead consumers to believe something untrue or inaccurate about the item for sale.

 

And even a closet libertarian like me who is known to harbor concerns about the role of government in our lives, well, I can’t really find fault with such an idea. After all, consumers, in the name of the free market, should be able to make informed, fair decisions about the products they might wish to purchase, right?   

 

It's the Federal Trade Commission that has the primary responsibility for enforcing truth in advertising laws. And so every year, along with issuing notices and assorted reports, the FTC also files various lawsuits on behalf of consumers. You might recall Skechers got in trouble several years ago for claiming their Shape-Up shoes could help people drop weight, firm up their tushes, and increase fitness simply by walking around in them. Wonder of wonders, that turned out to be a false claim.

 

And then there was Volkswagon a few years after that. For years they ran a “clean diesel” campaign claiming their cars powered with such engines  were low emission and environmentally friendly. Well, that also turned out to be a false claim. 

 

Apparently, Volkswagen installed software on millions of diesel cars that circumvented emission tests. The software gave the impression the car was producing nitrogen oxide at, or below, required standards during emission tests. When in reality, the cars were sometimes producing nitrogen oxide up to 40 times past the legal limit. 

 

So I actually think having things like the Federal Trade Commission and Environmental Protection Agency, which brought the lawsuit against Volkswagen, are good things to have around. For they keep an eye out for companies and businesses eager to use nefarious methods to sell their products.       

 

ONE: Well, if the FTC had existed in Jesus’ day, it’s a safe bet he would have been the least of its worries. 

 

Jesus, after all, is anything but slick, flashy, or even remotely disingenuous when it comes to making his sales pitch to would be disciples. In fact, Jesus is so blunt and honest about what it means to follow him, it’s easy to wish he’d be a little bit more like those prosperity gospel preachers that are popular on TV. You know, the ones that make it sound like following Jesus means you’re guaranteed to be rich, famous, healthy, beautiful, and above all else content in your own skin. Why can’t Jesus sound like one of those preachers? I mean, look at that auditorium with all those people crammed into it! It’s packed!!       

 

Preparing to officially start his slow walk to Jerusalem and that cross, Jesus is wanting to make sure those who choose to follow him understand the weight of such a decision. In the same way Jesus refuses to allow anything to draw him away from his mission, Jesus’ disciples should also have the same kind of focus and single mindedness when it comes to being a disciple. 

 

To the first man who pledges his allegiance, Jesus replies, “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Meaning, if you think following me means an easy life, well, think again. 

 

And then a touch later, Jesus extends the call to follow to a second man. While professing his readiness to indeed follow, the second man asks for a few days so he can bury his father before getting started. To which Jesus replies coldly, “Let the dead bury their own dead.” Clearly, Jesus missed his pastoral care classes while in seminary. 

 

And then there is the third would be follower. Declaring his allegiance as well, he requests the chance to say his good-byes to family and friends. “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God,” says Jesus. 

 

The point being, it seems to me, is that discipleship should be the most important thing in our lives. While things like family and careers and friends are important, the priority in any follower’s life should always be discipleship. 

 

TWO: Well, it should hardly be all that surprising to hear that one well-known seminary professor likes to tell students that many of their failings as preachers down the road will actually have nothing to do with them. 

 

Oh, there will be occasions when they lay a real egg from the pulpit all on their own, for sure. (I have laid plenty of those myself over the years!) But more often than not, their failures as preachers, according to the professor, won’t have anything to do with them.  

 

Nope. As far as the seminary professor is concerned, the blame, instead, will be easily attributable to Jesus. Jesus Christ has more to do with sermons that crash and burn with congregations than the ministers delivering them. After all, Jesus doesn’t really give preachers a whole lot of friendly material to work with on Sunday mornings, does he? He has all those “nasty particularities,” as one man has put it, when it comes to discipleship that can make the gospel unavoidably hard to hear.   

 

For if following means seeking to be like the one who is followed, if discipleship means striving to conform our lives to our Lord’s life, well, that hardly seems like an enticing offer:

 

“Take up your cross,” says Jesus. Well, that hardly seems like much fun. Jesus, don’t you mean for us to drop our crosses?     

 

“If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer them the other.” So what, Jesus? We're just supposed to be doormats for people to stomp on?

 

“Love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you.” Listen Jesus, the enemies I have, I have for a good reason. Are you out of your mind?  

 

“Do not judge...Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own?” I am sorry Jesus, but some people deserve what’s coming to them.

 

“Those who wish to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” That’s just dangerous and unhealthy talk Jesus. I wonder if you don’t need to be evaluated by someone.  

 

“Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, while those that humble themselves will be exalted.” Thanks for the advice Jesus, but it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. So it’s best everyone just looks out for themselves.    

 

No wonder Jesus repeatedly asks folks to really give some thought to the journey they will be taking if they should dare to sign-on as one of his followers. 

 

After 9/11 occurred, there was a couple being interviewed for a TV segment. Having lost their oldest adult daughter in the attack, they were, understandably so, still distraught.

 

After sharing some tidbits about their daughter and with the interview coming to a close the reporter asked, “And so will you be going to worship this weekend to receive some consolation?” “

 

“Oh, no!” replied the mother. “You see, our religion teaches that we ought to forgive our enemies. And we just aren’t ready for that right now.” Well, that couple, to their great credit, had apparently given a lot of thought to the nasty particularities that come with discipleship.        

 

THREE: In T.S. Eliot’s Tony Award winning play from the 1950s called The Cocktail Party, a young woman named Celia Coplestone is trying to make sense of her life while talking to a mysterious psychiatrist.

 

Although her life is a good one and she has no major problems to speak of, Celia has an unshakable feeling that something is still wrong nonetheless. Even though she can’t pinpoint the problem with clarity, she is certain her life isn’t quite right.

 

Or as she says to the psychiatrist at one point: “It’s not the feeling of anything I’ve ever done, which I might get away from, or of anything in me I could get rid of…[it’s more a feeling] of emptiness, of failure towards someone, or something, outside of myself. And I feel I must…atone.” 

 

To which she then asks the psychiatrist, “Can you treat a patient for such a state of mind?” 

 

The mysterious psychiatrist, for his part, assures Celia that there is indeed a cure for her illness. However, if she is to take the treatment he is offering, she must be willing to take a journey that leads to an unknown destination.

 

Or as the psychiatrist says to her, “The destination cannot be described; you will know very little until you get there; you will journey blind. But the way leads toward possession of what you have sought for in the wrong place.”

 

And amazingly, despite such sketchy and vague words from the psychiatrist, Celia decides to take him up on his offer. With nothing more than instructions that she should go home, say her goodbyes to family and friends, and be ready to leave at 9:00 o’clock that night, Celia commits to taking the journey proffered by the psychiatrist.

 

And with that, Celia leaves the psychiatrist’s office with these parting words from him: “Go in peace, my daughter. Work out your salvation with diligence.”  

 

Of course, it’s not until the very end of play that the real nature and character of Celia’s journey is finally revealed. Several years after her sudden departure, as old friends of Celia’s engage in chit-chat late one afternoon over cocktails, one of them announces that he has sad news to share about her life.

 

Celia, he informs everyone, had been tragically killed. While serving as a nurse for a Catholic convent in some remote far-flung region of the world, a civil war broke out between two warring tribes and Celia, caught in the middle, was a casualty.

 

Turns out the mysterious journey with the unknown destination offered to Celia by the psychiatrist ended up being, of all things, discipleship as a follower of Jesus Christ. 

          

CONCLUSION:  Well, I won’t lie. There are occasions when I wish Jesus would actually engage in some false advertising. Instead of being so blunt and direct, I wish he would dress up his sales pitch and maybe even stretch the truth a bit. 

 

What could be the harm in that? After all, you attract more bees with honey than vinegar, right? But alas, that just doesn’t seem to be his style.

 

So I guess the only thing for any of us to do, myself included, is to trust - trust that Jesus’ strange message with all those nasty particularites really is the way to life and beauty and even joy.  

 

Not just for ourselves, of course, but everyone. 

 

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are God’s judgments and how instructable God’s ways! For from God, and through God, and to God are all things. To God be the glory forever! Amen.