Luke 9:51-62

Intro

The passage for this morning is one that has always caused me a fair amount of turmoil because I have never known what to do with it. This is not to say that I wanted to explain away some very difficult statements that are placed in Jesus’ voice. My job as a preacher is not to minimize any perceived upset that may be caused by the reading, and listening of scripture. Instead, my job is to provide a context for those statements and then allow the message that God is trying to speak through these stories to become a guiding principle by which we live our lives today.

Here’s the thing, there is not a single commentator that I have read who has been able to provide, at least to my satisfaction, a context that makes sense for what we are about to hear.

That being said, there was an event that took place during this past week, that has led me to preach on this text. This event revolved around an individual who had some level of belief in God, but his focus on the world, or at least his perverted view of the world, was so great that he was not able to live out the sort of life that one action he had professed he believed in. It was in his hideous actions that I began to find a context for this passage.

So with that sort of ambiguous lead up let me ask you this question: what are the priorities of your life? What is at the center of all that you do? The scripture reads this way.

Luke 9:51-62

51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; 53 but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. 54 When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" 55 But he turned and rebuked them. 56 Then they went on to another village.

57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." 58 And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." 59 To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." 60 But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." 61 Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." 62 Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

"The Heart of the Matter"

As a kid, one of the shows that I always looked forward to watching on Saturday morning, at least for a few minutes, was professional wrestling. The reason that I say only a few minutes was because my parents didn’t like when I watched it so I snuck a few minutes here and a few minutes there. As a young boy, the individuals who were on the screen were human action figures. They were what cartoons would have been if they were put into flesh and bone. There were good guys and bad guys with names like the Junkyard Dog, the Iron Sheik, Brutus the Barber Beefcake, and Jake the Snake Roberts. It’s not as if I knew all the storylines, bought the magazines, or wanted the toys, but I did follow it.

This ‘keeping an eye on it’ interest continued through high school and into college and it was during my freshman and sophomore years that a fledging wrestling program called ‘Monday Night Raw’ was getting started on cable TV. Initially the show was filled exclusively in NYC. However, there were some weeks when they would take the show on the road, or more appropriately said, up the road to the Mid-Hudson Civic Center in Poughkeepsie. I happened to be home when one of these road trips took place, and I’m sure that if I looked through my parents VHS tapes I could show you video evidence of my brother Joel and I standing all of 10 rows from the ring. I even remember what I was wearing: my gray Hope College hooded sweatshirt (I’m sure everyone in Holland, MI was so proud when they saw one of their students providing free advertising for them at a wrestling event. Just the sort of crowd they market too.). While my interest has severely waned over the last decade, I still check in every now and again to see what’s going on.

One of those times happened to be this past Monday night as I’m clicking through the channels and there are these larger than life men inflicting their choreographed moves on one another. However, the match that was on Monday was from 2004, and I couldn’t figure out why they would be showing something three years old. Then, in the lower left hand corner of the screen popped up the words, ‘In Memory of Chris Benoit’. That took me by surprise because I hadn’t heard even the smallest whisper of that news so I went to the computer did a quick news search and there were two outlet that were carrying the information of the death of Benoit, his wife, and his son (and at that point it was only that police were investigating their deaths): the WWE, and a TV station out of Canada. That was it. By the afternoon of the next day, as most of you know, the story had horrifically grown, both in the number of people covering it, but even more so in the details that they were reporting.

For those you who haven’t heard the story, let me give you some of the details. At some point of Friday or Saturday, Benoit overpowered his wife, taped her wrists behind her back, placed his knee in her back, and choked her death. Their seven year-old son was in the house when the murder took place. Then at some point on Saturday or early Sunday, Benoit killed his son. I’ve heard he did it by smothering him, or choking him to death with his bare hands. Seven years old.

Benoit then took another day or so to send a variety of strange emails and text messages before hanging himself in his home gym. The media immediately (and probably justly) began to look at steroids as a possible reason for these senseless murders (as if any murders make sense). Benoit has been a big name in wrestling for almost 20 years. However, over the last couple of years his star has begun to wane in favor of younger, newer faces and characters. There have been some rumblings that he began to take a greater number, or stronger version of steroids to ‘remain competitive’. Just to show how deep this mentality to ‘remain competitive’ went, Benoit’s seven year old son, who had a disorder that left him physically small and possibly borderline autistic, has what looks to be needle marks, a bunch of them. There is some guesswork being done that is saying that his father shot him up with steroids to get him ‘bigger’, so he could be ‘more competitive’ in the long run.

Here’s why I’m bringing this up, and what got me really fired up about this horrific story. Benoit, before he killed himself, proceeded to place Bibles next to the bodies of his wife and his son. Bibles! I’m not here to say that Benoit didn’t have faith. I’ll go so far as to say that he did. However, I will say this: what a bastardization of whatever faith he had. In his actions, his faith was something that was peripheral, not central. What was central to Benoit was himself, what he thought, and what he wanted to do. He was a narcissistic individual whose faith was something that he used like a commodity, as opposed to the arbiter by which he lived the entirety of his life.

Now I realize that you may be wondering how these murders down in Georgia relate to the scripture passage. I believe this is how: Benoit is the extreme version of the individuals who said to Jesus, "I will follow, but…". We are told, right at the beginning of this passage, that Jesus has become focused on Jerusalem. He has become focused on the journey to the cross. Everything that takes place in the rest of the passage is sent through that filter. What Jesus is saying to all those who would follow him is, "put away the excuses. No more buts. Don’t say one thing is at the center of your life and then live a different way." God is not something that is meant to be a piece of your life. God is meant to be at the heart of it. Everything else spins off of that central hub. I don’t believe that Jesus is anti-family when he makes those statements to the two people who want to go home first. Jesus was the same person who, when he’s hanging on the cross looks down and sees his mother and the Beloved Disciple and says, "Mother, behold your new son. Son, behold your new mother." Jesus cared for his family.

At the same time, Jesus wants God to be at the heart of what matters in your life, not something that you get to when everything else gets done. If that’s how our lives worked then we would almost never get to God because there is always something else that is pressing for our time and attention.

Staying with the Benoit example, this was a guy who, seemingly had everything. He made a good salary in a job that he had a passion for, he was adored by his fans, and respected by his detractors (this was a guy who you can find action figures at almost any toy store), he had a, from all reports, a great family with kids who loved him like crazy, and a home that, while not extravagant, was substantial. All of the things that the world tells us to base our lives around, he had, and ultimately, he was empty and fell apart taking his wife and son with him.

Unfortunately, many (dare I say most) of us have many of those same tendencies where we base our lives around things that, while important, are not the most important. And how many of us who have done that, have ended up, figuratively speaking, falling on our face because what we based our life around could not handle the weight and pressure that life is sure to have?

If God is at the heart of our lives then our lives begin to gain the order that we were looking for. If God is at the heart of the matter, Benoit doesn’t meltdown if he gets fired (or downsized). Instead he recognizes that his wife and kid need his help and support and that he has been given the opportunity to do that very thing. If God is at the heart of our lives, we begin to find the balance that all of us long to have.

Who’s at the heart of your life? Is it God? Or is it something of the world; something of you and you alone? Who is at the heart of your life? I pray that as we move forward you will begin to place God at the very core, the heart of all you hold dear.

After Sermon Prayer

Holy God, in so many days and in so many ways, we have placed anything but You at the heart of our lives. In doing this, we end up basing our lives around things that will never provide the support and guidance that You can; that You will. Grant us the wisdom and strength to place You at the heart of our lives. Help our lives to based on You and You alone. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.