Monday, June 28, 2021

28 June 2021 - counting the cost

“Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”
Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests,
but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”
"This was not to send him away, but rather to convict him of evil intentions; at the same time permitting him if he would to follow Christ with the expectation of poverty."

- Saint John Chrysostom.
Jesus refused to misrepresent himself and wanted his would-be disciples to know what the decision to follow him would mean. Many people were hoping that Jesus would lead them to a place of earthly wealth and security such that they would find there a place to rest. This was the case for the rulers of this world. After all, Jesus had called King Herod a fox (see Luke 13:32). This Scribe could not, then, look forward to the palace of an earthly kingdom. Neither would Jesus find welcome in the religious establishment. It was true that "the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young" (see Psalm 84:3) at the altars of the Lord, but Jesus was not welcomed at the altars of the temple by the religious leaders of his time. This scribe would need to evaluate his reasons for following Jesus, to count the cost (see Luke 12:25-33). If he set out with his heart set on the wrong sort of rewards he would not be likely to continue when he did not receive them. On the other hand, the scribe didn't need to have the true end of the kingdom of God perfectly conceptualized as his objective. He just needed to be willing to follow Jesus, knowing that the sorts of rewards that used to motivate him would have to be surrendered along the way. The implicit promise was that there were better rewards for those who did so.

What of our hearts? Do we afford the Son of Man somewhere to lay his head?
"Otherwise; The Son of man hath not where to lay his head; that is, in your faith. The foxes have holes, in your heart, because you are deceitful. The birds of the air have nests, in your heart, because you are proud. Deceitful and proud follow Me not; for how should guile follow sincerity?"

- Saint Augustine
Jesus finds a place to lay his head in us and in our faith when are willing to follow him on his terms, motivated by the same love and zeal for God that motivated him. When we take up our crosses, like Simon the Cyrene, we do give Jesus a place to rest in us, as we cease to fight back against the healing he desires to bring.

Another of his disciples said to him,
“Lord, let me go first and bury my father.”
But Jesus answered him, “Follow me,
and let the dead bury their dead.”

Jesus wants us to understand that nothing can take precedent over him, even the otherwise essential obligations to family. This is an allegiance only Jesus can claim. Even Elijah permitted Elisha to go and say farewell to his family (see First Kings 19:19-21), but there was one greater than Elijah here. Now that the Kingdom was so close at hand at had an urgency too great to let anything else interfere. We must love Jesus more than father and mother, brother and sister, if we want to love them well. If we put family over and above Jesus we can only do so by having something less than their greatest good in view. We may, for instance, try to tone done the extreme nature of the Gospel in order to make it comfortable and convenient so that the family lifestyle can continue as ever. But to do is to act as if the life of the family as we find it imperfectly instantiated on earth is the greatest good. It is not. It looks forward to a completion it can only find as part of the family of God, with each individual member loving the others as Christ by the power of the Spirit given to them all.

Jesus wants his disciples (that is, us) to be trained in mercy. He does not desire that we simply care for our own and call down fire on the rest (see Luke 9:54). Rather, he desires us to plead for the cities and nations in which we live, even though they have strayed far from their Christian heritage. Why hasn't America already been destroyed for crimes such as abortion? It can only be because people of faith are pleading with God for our nation. It must be that he found at least a few righteous for whose sake he continues to have mercy on all. Still, mercy is meant to give us the opportunity to get our acts together, to give our nation time to change. Let us continue to plead for that mercy and work for that change.

Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance (see Second Peter 3:9)








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