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Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost – June 29, 2025
1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21, Galatians 5:1, 13-29, Luke 9:51-62
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Benjamin Franklin once said, “He that is good at making excuses is seldom good for anything else.” Harsh? Perhaps. But it seems to be a sentiment shared by our Lord Jesus.
Today we hear two people respond to Jesus’ call to follow him with excuses. They don’t say no, but they say, “not yet.” They give Jesus excuses for why they cannot start following him right away.
To be fair, they are really good excuses! The first one said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” This is an awfully good excuse! You could make a case from scripture itself that it is a righteous request. We don’t know if the man’s father was already deceased and his funeral was pending, or if he was elderly and in need of care, but either way, this becomes his excuse for not following Jesus. And it’s a good one!
But to Jesus, even a good excuse is no excuse. And so Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
The next person responded to Jesus’ call to follow by saying, “I will follow you, Lord!” But he too had an excuse for why he couldn’t do it just then. He had some business to take care of first. “First let me say farewell to my home,” he said. This too is a good excuse! It seems like an entirely reasonable request. The lectionary reminds us this morning that there is even Biblical precedent for it. As we heard in the reading from 1 Kings, when the prophet Elijah called Elisha to follow him, Elisha asked if he could go home and kiss his mother and father first, and Elijah allowed it!
Is Jesus more demanding than Elijah? It sure sounds like it! In response, Jesus said, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” This sounds an awful lot like Franklin’s quote: “Those who are good at making excuses are seldom good at anything else.” His excuse, reasonable as it might sound, made him unfit. Jesus couldn’t use him.
There will be no looking back, Jesus is saying. There will be no “not yet.” Jesus will not be penciled in on our calendars. He won’t be patronized like that. Following him will not be a hobby to be fit in when it is convenient, when it fits into our schedules. It will demand one’s whole life. There will be no excuses, not even good ones, when it comes to following him.
Does this mean we should neglect or abandon our families for the sake of the gospel? Absolutely not. The Lord God established the family and cares about it deeply. Two of the Ten Commandments concern the family: The Fourth seeks to protect and preserve the family by honoring mothers and fathers, while the Sixth seeks to protect and preserve the estate of marriage.
The issue here is the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods.” The issue here is not letting anything else, even good things, become more important than God. Jesus is making a First Commandment claim about himself here, demanding that we have no other gods before him. This is actually for our benefit. It is actually for the good of our families! We serve our families best when we put Christ first.
If you have ever been on a plane with kids, you know that the flight attendant tells everyone that if the plane loses cabin pressure, the adults should secure their oxygen masks first before putting one on their child. This is not a selfish act. It is simply the case that you are no help to your child if you are slumped over in your seat from lack of oxygen! In the same way, we need to put Christ first. We need to first breath Christ in so that we can be filled with his life and love, and in so doing have something to share with our families and friends.
In our gospel reading last week we heard how Jesus cast demons out of the man in Gerasa. When he was at last clothed and in his right might, the man said he wanted to follow Jesus. I find it very interesting that in this case Jesus instead sent him home! “Return to your home,” Jesus said, “and declare how much God has done for you.” His ministry was in his home. He would follow Jesus by serving him there. This is the case for many of us. Perhaps most of us.
Jesus’ concern in our gospel reading for today is how even good and godly things can come to take first place in our lives, the place the First Commandment reserves for God alone. There are no excuses, Jesus says, not even good ones, for not putting him first. There are no excuses for not responding to his call with immediate trust and obedience.
Sometimes we are like those Christians in Galatia Paul is writing to who have somehow gotten the idea that Christian freedom means freedom to answer Jesus’ call on our own terms, to shape and mold his call to fit our own thoughts and desires, to fit it in according to our own priorities and schedules. Not only does Paul say otherwise – Jesus does too. Jesus tells these would-be disciples that following him will involve a radical reordering of their lives. He tells them, and us, that he sets the terms, not us. If we are going to follow him, we need to put him above everything else – even those things we cherish the most.
The truth is, we all have our excuses. Even those of us who have said yes to following Jesus have our excuses as to why we might not be able to follow him in this area of our life, or on that day of the week. You are here today because you have been called to follow him, and probably all of you are eager to do so. But we all have our excuses, right? I know I do. And I’m in good company, because you know who else did? Every single one of the disciples! Peter ended up denying Jesus because he was afraid. Thomas doubted Jesus had risen because he had not seen him with his own eyes. All the disciples failed Jesus at some point, and they all had their excuses.
The Good News for us would-be followers of Jesus is found by reading between the lines of our gospel reading for today. The context here matters very much. The demands Jesus makes of his followers are not the only thing we hear today.
St. Luke tells us in this gospel reading that “Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem.” Luke tells us this twice in three verses! The language and the repetition here is drawing our attention to it. This is more than just stage direction. This is significant! Luke is telling us that Jesus was now resolutely headed to the cross. That’s what it means when he tells us “Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem.”
In the end no one was willing to follow Jesus to the cross. Everyone had an excuse. But “Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem.” He set his face towards the cross. Jesus went there for the sake of the Samaritans who said no to him. Jesus went there for the would-be followers who said “not yet” to him. Jesus went there for the disciples, who all had their excuses. Jesus went there for you and he went there for me. And in dying on the cross for us and rising again, Jesus has established a new covenant with us. He has made us fit for the Kingdom of God. He has established a new relationship with him based on grace, which we enter into through faith in him – by simply trusting in him and what he has done for us. In spite of our excuses, in spite of our failures, through his sacrifice for us in Jerusalem, we now belong to him.
And because we belong to him, we no longer live “by the flesh,” as the Apostle Paul puts it. “The flesh” is New Testament shorthand for our human nature, our standard operating system as fallen human begins. We no longer live according to the flesh. Instead we live by the Spirit.
Left to ourselves we will never follow Jesus. There will always be excuses. But when Christ’s Spirit goes to work on us, we begin to set aside those excuses and joyfully give ourselves over to a life of discipleship. When Christ’s Spirit goes to work on us, we find ourselves breathing him in and then pouring ourselves out in loving service to others, including our families, our neighbors, and those who are in need, near and far.
Another quote, not from Ben Franklin. You’ve probably heard it before. The quote is: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”
This quote often hits our ears as a warning. It warns us to not get so caught up in the future that we put off or ignore what is important or precious today.
It sometimes hits our ears as a judgement. It convicts us of all the times we have let life pass us by because we were focusing on what is coming next rather than what is right in front of us.
It can also be heard, however, as an invitation. It can be heard as an invitation to lean into the present, to live the life we have been given with intentionality and gratitude.
We can hear these words of Jesus in all these ways too. These words of Jesus warn us that there are no excuses for not responding to his call with immediate trust and obedience. These words judge us. They convict us for all the excuses we have already made to avoid following him at certain times or in certain ways.
But in light of the forgiveness and new life he has won for us by setting his face towards Jerusalem, they can also be heard as an invitation. In light of his death and resurrection and the forgiveness he has won for us, we can hear these words as a renewed call to follow him. Christ alone makes us fit for the kingdom of God, and by his grace he is inviting us once again into this new life guided and empowered by his Spirit, a life where he comes first – not at the expense of others, but for their benefit.
The Christian life is not something we can pencil in for later. It is not something we can put off until it is more convenient for us. There are no excuses. The Christian life is lived now. Following Jesus starts now.
What could possibly be more important than this? Why would we want to wait?
Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church