Today’s passage is Luke 9:51-62. On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus finds he is not welcome in a Samaritan village and his disciples want to destroy it but Jesus rebukes them. Although many want to follow Jesus, they discover their level of commitment does not match their desire.
Are the disciples any better than the Samaritans or the unwilling followers?
Why does Jesus have nowhere to lay his head?
The disciples vindictive attitude towards the Samaritans betrays a little of their own attitude.
Jesus is heading to the cross, he’s told the disciples about it a couple of times, but they don’t get it.
Later, when Peter rejects the cross for Jesus only to have Jesus call him “Satan”, do we see that the disciples resenting the idea of Jesus being crucified.
Like the Samaritans, they’re interested in a Jesus without Jerusalem and without the cross.
They’re destructive anger against the Samaritans is misplaced; it’s actually anger at Jesus.
That’s why he rebukes them (55) as he later does to Peter.
To accept Jesus fully means paying a huge price.
Nowhere to live, no burial of the dead, no goodbyes to your family.
Just following him to the cross and then carrying your own cross.
Jesus’ call is to suffering, death and new life.
That was the main message to Pastor Kim’s sermon last night.
I didn’t always believe in Jesus.
I didn’t always believe that my true home was in God, in heaven.
But I have always felt restless, that I didn’t really belong anywhere, that I was a stranger in a strange land.
Until I was halfway through my life, however, I didn’t connect that restlessness with God.
I thought it was connected to my upbringing as a child in a military family always moving to a new place.
I accepted my restlessness and pursued moving to new places and traveling to new places in between my moves.
When I graduated from high school, I went to Europe for the summer and hitchhiked through twelve countries by myself.
I dropped out of university and went to Europe again, this time with my girlfriend and on a motorcycle.
I left Canada and moved to the US where I took students on trips to Italy.
I went to Spain on a pilgrimage.
Then I moved back to Canada, then to Korea, then to India, then back to Korea.
In between I visited China, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand.
I took a train across Mongolia and Russia.
I worked on the pack ice in the Arctic for a summer, and I’ve traveled across Canada three times.
Growing into Jesus didn’t stop my restlessness because only he can do that, but it has stopped my empty traveling.
Without a focus on worship, traveling and moving is a waste of energy and a waste of money.
Pastor Kim warned against this in last night’s sermon.
Today’s passage shows me how much I distracted myself from God with my traveling.
My restlessness is God’s call to worship him and follow him.
I have squandered so much of myself by not accepting that.
Like the three men in today’s passage who want to follow Jesus, I have been busy with other things.
I thought I could follow Jesus and wander around the world too. I can’t.
There is no compromise in this. Jesus “resolutely set out for Jerusalem”(51). Resolutely, not half-heartedly.
My lack of resoluteness in worshipping the Lord has evacuated much of the meaning of my life.
Life is a journey, yes. But it’s to God, with God, for God.
That’s what I missed in taking in too many sights.
God is my destination and by persevering to him he will show me more than I could ask or imagine.
Application: Give thanks to God for my restlessness that brings me to him. Persevere in my QT.
Lord, let me be joyful in my journey with you to your heaven.
