Some of you know that most of the time I preach from the lectionary.
What that means is that I preach from a prescribed set of readings
which are fairly common throughout the Christian church.
The word lection is Latin and means ‘a reading,’ thus lectionary.
Each week of the year usually has an Old Testament reading, a Psalm,
a New Testament reading and an Epistle reading assigned to it.
There is a three year cycle, years A, B and C, to the Revised Common Lectionary,
which Presbyterians share with many other denominations.
In each of the years a particular gospel is featured.
In Year A it is Matthew, in Year B it is Mark and in Year C the focus is Luke.
The gospel according to John is featured in all three years.
One of the strengths of the lectionary
is that the readings follow the church year,
beginning with the birth of Jesus at Advent
and moving to Lent and Easter and finally to Pentecost.
The weeks after Easter to Advent are sometimes called ordinary Sundays
and that is where we find ourselves this morning, the 13th Sunday in ordinary time.
One of the weaknesses of the lectionary is that in three years
you can hardly cover every passage in the Bible
and so you rarely hear sermons preached on the passages
which are not covered in the lectionary.
And on some occasions, particularly in ordinary time,
the choice of texts does not seem to follow any discernable logic.

This morning we find ourselves in the gospel according to Luke
and the lection which we read covers
what most of us would consider to be two very different ideas.
The first half of our reading, from verse 51 to verse 56,
deal with Jesus and his disciples being rejected in a Samaritan village.
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, also known as the sons of thunder,
appropriately, given their names,
ask Jesus whether he would like them to
command fire from heaven to come down and consume the Samaritan village,
and I suppose all those who lived therein.
Jesus, thankfully, rebukes them and they went along to another village.
I imagine that there wouldn’t be a place on earth left unscorched
if Jesus had gone along with his disciples’ vindictive request.

But as we move to the second half of the lection we find a very different story.
This section seems to be about the incredibly high cost of following Jesus.
Someone says to Jesus, I will follow you wherever you go,
and Jesus more or less says in return,
you have no idea what you’re talking about.
You don’t know how hard it is to do what you say.
If you follow me, you won’t have any place to call your home.
To one who asked that he first be allowed to bury his father before following Jesus,
Jesus’ reply is, “Let the dead bury their own,
but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
Seems somewhat at odds with the command to honour your father and mother
and besides, how many dead have you seen bury their own?
Then to one who asks that he first go and say farewell to his family,
Jesus’ response again seems impossibly difficult.
“No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
But Jesus, we would argue, wouldn’t it be the right thing to do
to at least get my things in order before I follow you?
It doesn’t seem right to leave behind chaos so that I can work for the kingdom of God.
The call to discipleship, at least in this passage, seems incredibly high,
in fact it seems pretty much impossible.
And besides how do these two passages fit together?
Why does the lectionary put these verses together in one reading for this Sunday?
I wondered over this early in the week before finally deciding
that perhaps the best way to tackle this passage is to work from back to front.

The cost of discipleship is indeed high as evidenced by our reading.
But some would say, we can’t take this literally,
Jesus is using hyperbole to make a point here.
And perhaps they would be right.
Jesus often used hyperbole to get his point across.
Not that he was lying, but he used exaggeration
to make something so obvious that no one would miss the point.
Think about Jesus admonishing us to get rid of the log in our own eye
before we offer to pick the splinter out of someone else’s eye,
or about how, if we have faith as small as a mustard seed
we can tell a mountain to move and it will.
What about a camel going through the eye of a needle?
All these are examples of hyperbole, used by Jesus to make an unmistakable point.
So in this text is Jesus just trying to help us understand
how truly difficult it is for anyone to be his disciple?
It might be tempting for us to believe so,
to say that its ridiculous that anyone would expect us to take Jesus’ words at face value, and anyway at least it takes the pressure off us to live up to such impossible standards. But theologian Fred Craddock argues in his sermon, The Gospel as Hyperbole,
that it’s all a little less ridiculous once you come to realize
that the kingdom of God Jesus came to announce,
and whose arrival and presence he calls us to likewise announce,
really does contain the cosmic power for salvation unto all people and all creatures.
If the kingdom of God is anything close to what we think it is,
we really cannot overstate its power or beauty.
We cannot exaggerate enough to convey the true impact of this kingdom
and of the God of all grace who through our Lord Jesus Christ
has saved us from darkness into light.

Craddock goes on to say, most sermons just aren’t big enough,
and he dares us to imagine what would happen
if we actually believed all the hyperbole and exaggeration in the gospel.
What if we took it all seriously?
Obviously Craddock is trying to make a theological point here
and I doubt that he would expect us to pluck out our eye if it causes us to sin
or to cut off our hand if it causes us to sin, as Jesus said on the Sermon on the Mount.
But at the same time his comments make us think, they make us search our souls.
“Go sell what you have and give to the poor.”
Some young foolish preacher took that seriously, Craddock said,
and led his congregation to bring all their stuff to the church to sell,
and they raised $2 million dollars.
Didn’t he know it was hyperbole?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer read, “Take up the cross,” and he gave up his life.
Didn’t he know it was exaggerated speech?
Craddock talked about William Sloane Coffin preaching on the passage,
“Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Craddock teased, “If you start saying whoever, whoever will show up!”
(Fred Craddock, “The Gospel as Hyperbole”)

All of this to say that maybe we shouldn’t be so quick
to dismiss the words of Jesus in our text as mere hyperbole.
So if what Jesus says about discipleship is to be taken seriously,
who then among us could follow Jesus?
Obviously there would be none among us who could.
And perhaps that’s the entire point.
We follow Jesus, not because we are able due to any ability of our own,
but because God’s grace allows us and enables us despite our own inability.
If we are disciples, it is because of the grace of God,
the same generous grace that announces the gospel’s power of salvation for all creation.

And here’s where we go back to the first section of our text this morning.
The power of the gospel is the salvation which is offered to all creation,
all people of every land, culture, background,
everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.
And yet like James and John, are there not times when we want to judge others,
when we would like to pronounce God’s judgment upon them?
Aren’t there people in our lives
upon whom we would dearly love to call down fire from heaven?
Aren’t there Samaritans in our lives
who we are convinced have refused to receive Jesus,
at least in the way we think Jesus ought to be received?

Interestingly in our text this morning, there is a textual variant,
meaning that some early manuscripts of the gospel
had other additional words which did not make the final cut.
When James and John ask Jesus for permission
to destroy the Samaritan village which had refused to receive Jesus,
Jesus rebuked them.
The text does not say what the rebuke was
but some early manuscripts of Luke record that Jesus said to them,
You do not know what spirit you are of,
for the Son of Man has not come to destroy the lives of human beings,
but to save them.
For some reason or another the church chose not to include these words
in the final version of Luke’s gospel, but the tone of the words rings true.
We are reminded of the words of John’s gospel where Jesus says,
“Indeed God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world
but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
If that is Jesus’ attitude towards a sinful humanity, including us,
why is it so often the case that we don’t give as good as we get?
We are not Christ’s disciples because any goodness of our own
gives us the right to claim discipleship,
but because the grace of God to us makes us disciples despite our faults.
We are the church because God’s grace has been given to us,
because we have gotten the grace of God.
Is it not then only right that we give as good as we get?
Jesus rebuked James and John
because they didn’t understand how much he loved all people.
They didn’t realize that their following Jesus
wasn’t due to any outstanding achievement of their own,
but that they followed Jesus because in his grace he called them to himself.
Its only when we realize that in his love Jesus will call us, even us,
that we begin to understand the grace Jesus modeled
when he refused to allow James and John to be so vindictive in their judgments.
For if we are loved by such a Saviour, who else might Jesus call?
Rather than judging others to be unworthy,
either of God’s love or ours,
ought we not take the same approach as Jesus,
offering grace, mercy and compassion
so that the saving power of the gospel might be known by all?

My friends, our world is full of people who know little else but exclusion.
And probably all of us have known the pain of exclusion as well.
It may be some form of discrimination,
being excluded because of how we look,
how we speak, where we’re from, what we believe.
Imagine what it would be like to be an Aboriginal person in Canada.
It may be not getting picked to be on a sports team,
or being shunned by the popular kids in school.
It may be not being able to know or share in experiences that others take for granted, whether due to physical, emotional or mental disabilities.
It may be due to our age, that we are not seen as contributing,
that we are past our prime, that we are a liability more than an asset.
How often have I experienced seniors who have felt isolated, marginalized and forgotten, when they have so much to offer, so much wisdom, love and perspective.

Whatever excludes can cause pain and hurt and anger.
We live in a world where there’s more than enough
of that pain, hurt and anger to go around,
and tragically we have see far too often the consequences of what can happen
when its allowed to fester in the human heart.
We might feel that there’s precious little that we can do about any of this,
but we would be wrong.
It isn’t up to us to change the world,
but God invites us to change ourselves.
God invites us to know that we are the recipients of his wonderful grace
and that we should be giving as good as we get.
Think about how we exclude people in our lives.
Think about the times when we just can’t be bothered with the extra effort,
after all we are all very busy.
Think about how many times when we just feign ignorance,
pretend we didn’t hear that quiet plea for help, that timid request to be included.
How quickly we rush to judgment when someone’s choices
don’t measure up to our standards.
The wonder is that there can be so many in our world
who would call themselves followers of Christ
and yet have it make so little difference in their lives.
And that’s no hyperbole.
We can make a difference, in the words of the choir anthem from last week,
God calls us to go make a difference.
That’s what the church is to do.
The church, you and I, need to be a community which gives as good as we get,
which gives grace because we have received it so abundantly.
We need to be a community which welcomes and includes,
rather than shuns and excludes.
Who would be unwelcome in this sanctuary,
who would be unwelcome in our hearts?
If we are followers of Christ, by the grace of God,
then it should be so obvious that we must give as good as we get.

This summer, friends, make it a priority to give as good as you get.
Take time to be reminded that God sent his Son Jesus Christ
not to destroy but to save human life, our lives.
Be humbled that we have gotten God’s best
and that God would invite us to be Jesus’ followers,
to be disciples of his Son,
not because we are so good,
but because God is.
If we know that we have receive this remarkable grace,
then God sends us to be a people and to be his church,
to be a people of grace,
to give as good as we get.
To God be the glory, now and forevermore, Amen.