Have you noticed that whatever church you go to, it’s usually the ladies that look after the catering? There’s no law against men making cakes and serving coffee (and indeed you do find notable exceptions to the rule) but hospitality is a ministry that seems to particularly charm the fairer sex to its often impressive ranks.
Even in the gospels there are ominous signs of a pattern emerging. Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding feast in Cana sets the tone. Mary, the mother of Jesus, seems to have been the first person to notice that the wine was running a bit low. She is the one who leaves the dance floor to see if anyone knows where there might be a few spare bottles in a cupboard somewhere and, when it becomes clear that that’s it, she tells her boy to sort something out in that way that only Jewish mothers can!
Straight into Service
Our Gospel reading today finds Jesus halfway through a typically busy day that has seen him descend a mountain, get mobbed by a crowd, cleanse a leper, give a couple of impromptu sermons while travelling from A to B and heal a paralysed man from a distance.
That’s a decent morning’s shift isn’t it? You can appreciate why even God Incarnate might be ready for a nice cup of tea and a custard cream after that. So he turns up at Peter’s house to put his feet up for a few minutes.
But when he gets there, the only woman mentioned is in bed with a fever (the commentators think it was probably malaria). So who’s going to make a brew? Did the disciples think to do it? Well, no. (They were men after all so they had probably never even seen a kitchen). How telling is it, how inevitable is it, that the minute Peter’s poor mother-in-law is back in the land of the living, she is up putting the kettle on and going round with the fig rolls?
I want to commend this woman. I believe she’s the only mother-in-law mentioned by that title in the Bible. It’s strange that these sometimes formidable women are the butt of so many jokes. Do you know what I mean?
Ken Dodd: “I haven’t spoken to my mother-in-law for eighteen months. I don’t like to interrupt her.”
Bernard Manning: “My mother-in-law has come round to our house at Christmas seven years running. This year we’re having a change. We’re going to let her in.”
Les Dawson: “My mother-in-law fell down a wishing well. Amazing - I never knew they worked.”
But the Bible’s one mother-in-law is an absolute legend.
This woman’s response to Jesus’ touch upon her life was to get out of bed, put her apron on and begin to serve. Her response to a work of grace in her life was to immediately offer her life in giving to others. I like her style!
Has the Lord blessed you? Has your life been touched by God’s love? Have you known the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in your heart? If so, let me ask you - are you asking “How can I best express my gratitude back to him?”
Christ Only and Christ First
Notice how she contrasts sharply with the two men in the second half of our short passage. One is told that following Jesus means a future with no fixed abode. The other learns that following Jesus means scrapping his plans for his father’s funeral.
Neither in Matthew’s Gospel, nor in Luke’s, is the response of these men recorded. Was it muted? Was it marked by indecision and wavering? Did they protest? Or did they drop everything and follow Jesus? I think it’s left open as if to invite our own response. Would my response be “Thou and thou only the first in my heart”?
Let’s look more carefully at the passage. In v18, Jesus decides to leave Capernaum because the crowds are getting impossible to manage - he’s had large numbers of people tugging his cloak all day - and it is time to move on.
So we read “When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake.”
Inevitably, crossing the Sea of Galilee is going to mean a parting of the ways. There’ll be those who are absolutely committed to sticking with Jesus who will get in the boat and those who just make the most of him when he’s around. Those ones will stay.
There wasn’t a ferry with posh cabins waiting to head over to the other side. There will have been several rough fishing boats pulled up to shore and that’s it. Space was limited for those who were ready – right now – to get on board and set sail.
The first man is a teacher of the law. These men were consistently opposed to Jesus according to the Gospels. But this one seems to be something of an exception because he comes to Jesus just as he’s about to get into a boat and says, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go” (or literally “wherever you may be going.”)
Jesus says, “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
There is no guarantee that following Jesus is going to be easy or comfortable. In fact it usually calls for great cost and sacrifice.
The 100th Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey once said: “Do not worry about status... There is only one status that our Lord bids us to be concerned with, and that is the status of proximity to himself.”
You may find that following Christ the Radical costs you popularity, friendships, family favour, leisure time or even your job. You may have heard this week that our Government will support a case at the European Court of Human Rights that will, if passed, remove the right of Christians to wear a cross at work.
Is wearing a cross a required article of faith? No. But is meek, obliging compliance with any such new law, without a whimper of protest, tantamount to being ashamed of Christ? It seems to me that it comes perilously close.
The cost of following Christ has always been high. The reward of being his disciple is higher.
My perception is that the pressure in this country to compromise our faith and deny Christ is now greater than it has been before in my lifetime. And I can feel which way the wind is blowing. I suspect that it is going to get worse, not better. It is very tempting to swim with the tide, but Jesus usually swam against the tide of popularity, status and public acceptability.
A team of doctors decided to conduct an experiment to study the ways in which group pressure influences people. Ten people were invited into a room apparently to assess their eyesight.
Three cards were to be held up, each with a line on it. Each person was told to raise their hand when the longest line was shown. When nine of them (who had been primed) voted incorrectly, despite their obvious mistake, the other one voted with the group even though he could see they were wrong.
They repeated the test with dozens of other test groups. 75% voted similarly. They sat there time after time saying a short line is longer than a long line. They simply didn’t have the courage to say “I think the group is wrong” even though they believed otherwise.
As Christians, will we follow Jesus whatever the cost?
The first half of our passage looks exciting. Big crowds, amazing healings, extraordinary deliverance, fulfilled prophecy and even a nice cup of tea and a ginger nut! I’ll follow Jesus if it’s like that! But the second half promises sharing a crowded boat with sweaty men, seasickness and sleeping rough. That’s not quite so charming is it?
And then this - v21: “Another disciple said to him, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ But Jesus told him, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.’”
One of Jesus’ toughest words. It smashes every taboo. It breaks every respectable social convention. It takes the breath away. Can Jesus be serious? How many marks out of 10 would he get in Vicar School for pastoral sensitivity here?
There are in fact several possibilities here that we might miss because our family structures and burial customs are different to those of Jesus’ day.
Firstly, as seems to be the case, it is possible that the man was simply asking permission to attend his father’s funeral which seems a reasonable request for an essential obligation. In the Middle East, even today, bodies must be buried quickly and in Jesus’ culture they had to be interred within 24 hours, meaning the man’s father must have died that day. To be honest that seems unlikely – though it is possible. The thing is, Jesus was getting in the boat now and he could not wait another hour, let alone 24.
Secondly, it is possible that the man’s father was not yet dead. KE Bailey and Michael Green both point out that “to bury one’s father” was in fact an idiomatic expression meaning “to wait until he was dead and buried.” In other words, the man was asking for an indefinite postponement of commitment. He was spiritually dead which makes better sense of Jesus’ otherwise brutal reply.
Thirdly, adding a bit of colour to the second point, if the father was still alive, had the man been the firstborn son he would be jeopardising his chances of claiming his inheritance if he left his family to head off all over the Middle-East with a radical preacher. Or perhaps he didn’t want to face his father’s wrath by deserting the family business? Reading through the lines a little, maybe his main concern was really financial gain or family approval.
Whatever the exact facts the point is clear; (and this is where we need to take heed) he didn’t want to commit himself to Jesus just yet. And Jesus discerned that he was not willing to put him first.
Ending
How familiar does this sound to you? All through life people find ways of saying “No, Lord.”
“I’ll follow Jesus when I’m a bit older, or when I’ve done my exams, or when I’ve got a job, or when I’m less busy at work, or when the kids have grown up, or when I’ve paid off the mortgage or when I’ve seen the world a bit or when I’m not so tied up with the grandchildren or when…”
Life’s too short to not follow Jesus now.
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 18th March 2012
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