30 June 2019 - you are my inheritance

Today's Readings

(Audio)

And to another he said, "Follow me."

Jesus invites us to follow him not as some secondary hobby but as the primary purpose for our lives. We are called to seek first the Kingdom and let God worry about the rest. We imagine ourselves up to the challenge.

"I will follow you wherever you go." 

But we realize quickly that there is more involved than we are able to guess or imagine at first.

"Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests,
but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head."

We want to follow him. We also want to remain comfortable. We want to follow him but we want to balance that desire against our other obligations. We make him one of many priorities. He will not allow himself to be thus subjugated. Jesus is LORD. If he is not first in our hearts, something else, something less than God, has usurped his preeminence.

But he answered him, "Let the dead bury their dead. 
But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." 

In this Jesus shows that he is greater even the Elijah. Elijah is willing to let Elisha say goodbye to his father and mother.

Elisha left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said,
"Please, let me kiss my father and mother goodbye,
and I will follow you."
Elijah answered, "Go back!
Have I done anything to you?"

Whereas Jesus, greater even than Elijah, must take precedence even over family.

And another said, "I will follow you, Lord,
but first let me say farewell to my family at home." 
To him Jesus said, "No one who sets a hand to the plow
and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God."

This is what Jesus means in another place when he says, "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Jesus is the LORD of all. If we refuse to put him first, if we love even the best people around us more than him, we won't love them or him as well as if we love him more than all others. When Jesus is first in our hearts we are able to love others through him. That love is empowered by the Spirit. It is more greater than anything we can do on our own.

I say, then: live by the Spirit
and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh. 

The LORD himself is our inheritance. He is more than enough!