Sermon for the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost (transcribed)
29 June 2025
Emmanuel, San Angelo
Luke 9:51-62, 1 Kings 19:15-16,19-21, Galatians 5:1,12-25
I don't know how many of you keep up with the news of what's going on in the Roman Catholic church, but in case you haven't heard, they got a new Pope recently. He goes by the name Leo the 14th. He replaced Pope Francis, who is now of blessed memory. One of the surprising things about Leo, the 14th is he's an American, from Chicago. And maybe next time they pick an American Pope, they'll pick a good Southern boy, but at least we got an American this time.
Now I have to hand it to the Roman Catholic church, because when a position like that comes open, they have a system for filling it rather quickly. You've got the period of mourning for the Pope who has died, and then the conclave, and then they start taking votes and when you see the white smoke, there's a new Pope. In the Anglican Communion, we don't have such a system for choosing a new Archbishop of Canterbury. When that position becomes vacant, which it is, by the way. Justin Welby stepped down at midnight on January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany, and so since January 7th, there hasn't been an Archbishop of Canterbury to guide the Anglican Communion. Now, the Archbishop of York is trying to hold things together till they pick someone. And so the Roman Catholic church has a pretty smooth system for those kinds of transitions.
Another thing the Roman Catholic Church doesn't have that we have is a rule about when you have to retire. In the Episcopal Church, when you hit 72, they put you out to pasture. So if the Roman Catholic Church had that rule, Pope Leo xiv would have about 2 years and 3 months left to be Pope, because he turns 72 in September of 2027. But they don't have that rule so Lord willing, he'll be able to press on.
Today, the prophet Elijah gets a notice from his church pension group that his retirement date is coming up. He gets this notice when the Lord says, I want you to go across the desert of Damascus, and I want you to anoint some kings for me. Anoint Hazael to be the king over the Kingdom of Aram, the Aramaean Kingdom. It was just to the north of Israel. It stretched on the west from the Mediterranean coast, through parts of what is now Lebanon and parts of what is now Syria to the Euphrates River on the east, that was the Aramaean Kingdom. And the Lord said to Elijah to pick Hazael to be their king, and then he said anoint Jehu to be the king of Israel, which by that time was the 10 northern Jewish tribes and they had their own capital at Samaria. They didn't have much to do with the Judeans down in Jerusalem. In fact, they didn't like each other at all. And then he says, I want you then to anoint Elisha to take your place as the Lord's prophet.
So Elijah does these things, and when he goes to find Elisha, he finds Elisha out working on his farm, and he is driving a 12 oxen team, uh plowing, and that's a sign that his farming operation was very prosperous, if you can have 12 teams of oxen hooked up. You've got some resources. It would be like today, having like a $600,000 combine with an air-conditioned cab and Bluetooth, so you can listen to your Spotify while you're plowing, and instead of a steering wheel, you've got these joysticks, because the thing can do like a 0 turn that's the kind of equivalent of Elisha's operation. So Elisha is out there, working his farm, and Elijah comes up and he throws his cloak over Elisha. It’s a way of saying God has picked you for a special job. And Elisha is not quite ready to drop everything and go with Elijah, so he says, let me go say goodbye to my mom and dad and uh, Elijah says no problem, go do what you must do. Maybe he's a little bit relieved at the delay in his upcoming retirement date.
So after the family farewell, Elisha does something that shows he is making a complete break with his old life. He Burns his tools. He roasts his oxen, and he gives the meat to his neighbors. It's his way of saying I'm done with it, I'm moving forward, because this is what God wants me to do. Elijah allowed Elisha to do what needed to be done before he started following Elijah and like I said, maybe Elijah wasn't all that excited about his approaching retirement, but you know, the story of Elijah about his retirement party. The fiery chariot comes down and takes him up to his place in glory. There's no need for a gold watch because he gets immediately translated to that place beyond time. And that's quite a retirement party.
Jesus, on the other hand, his face set toward Jerusalem, is not as easygoing as was the prophet Elijah. His call to follow is quite serious and urgent. So when someone says to him, I'll follow you wherever you go. For some reason, Jesus looks at that guy and he says to him, foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere is to lay his head. What was it about that person that made Jesus say that? Maybe he was wearing some fine robes and Jesus could tell he was used to leading an upwardly mobile life. And so Jesus is telling this person, don't expect upward mobility and an easy life if you're going to follow me.
There's a wonderful example of someone who embraced that not so easy kind of lifestyle in our church's history. His name was Philander Chase, and he is an ancestor of Dr. Ralph Chase, a member of this parish who's now of blessed memory and the husband of Virginia Chase. Well, in 1819 Philander Chase was serving as the rector of a nice parish in Connecticut, on the East Coast. It was a pretty good, pretty good living. And he was chosen to be the missionary Bishop of this out west frontier place called Ohio. Imagine Ohio being the frontier, the old west of our country. And Philander Chase accepted that ministry and he went out to Ohio to this rugged frontier. He found a place to live, and when the bishops back in the Church of England found out about where Bishop Chase was living, they were absolutely appalled, because the bishops in England they had gotten past that foxes have holes and birds of the air have nest, they had a place to lay their head because they lived in palaces. And they were members of the House of Lords, so they enjoyed a very regal English lifestyle. And when they found out that Philander Chase's Bishop's palace was a log cabin, they were absolutely appalled, and they thought, Well, this is just ruining the whole reputation of bishops. And I think that our American bishops have taught the English something about that. Sometimes you gotta live out on the edge a little bit.
I remember one night I called our Bishop, Scott, and I needed his advice about something, and this was back in the time when he was serving as Bishop of Northwest, Texas, and also taking care of Fort Worth, and I called him, and I said, I hope I'm not interrupting something. And he said, No, I'm just pulling out of a McDonald's somewhere on I-20 And I was like, oh, the lordly life of a Bishop. And you can pull up to the drive through and go, I'll have the Bishop's meal, please. And yes, I guess you get a few extra fries or something like that with that. So, um, uh Don't don't expect upward mobility to be part of the deal. If you're gonna follow Jesus, let's expect to be faithful and expect it to be joyful because you'll be doing his will. The call of Jesus is also urgent because time is short.
Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem and the great showdown that is going to happen there. Someone else comes along and says I'll follow you. But first, let me bury my father. Now this person, if his father was already dead, would not be out in public to see Jesus. He would be walking the mourner's path and he'd be getting funeral arrangements settled. So this guy is saying, what, but really I'll follow you after my dad dies and I do what I need to do for him. But Jesus says there's no time for that. The time is short. There is so much for the followers of Jesus to learn And then someone else says, let me follow you. But first I want to say Goodbye to my family just like Elisha got to do, and Jesus says, no, there's no time for that, because time is short, and there is much for my followers to learn.
Much to learn. Even for the 12, the first ones to answer the call to follow, they have much to learn. Jesus is walking towards Jerusalem and he's going through Samaria, and they get to this village, and the people in this village don't want to welcome Jesus because they can tell he's going to Jerusalem and uh they're like, so why are you going to Jerusalem what's wrong with Mount Gerizim, because the Samaritans, they had their own temple on Mount Gerizim, they didn't, they felt like they didn't need the temple in Jerusalem. And uh, why don't you favor us with a visit to that temple? And so they don't make Jesus welcome, because they can tell he's on his way to Jerusalem. So James and John, the sons of thunder, have a solution for this Samaritan village. Let's burn them out. And what do they get from Jesus? They get a sharp rebuke, they get chewed out. James and John can say, but man, he tore us a new one. Jesus just didn't put up with that kind of stuff, he says, that's not the way for my followers to respond to a provocation.
So how should followers of Jesus then respond to provocation? Well, I've got a story that to me illustrates it so well. It's a sports story, so I hope those of you who don't like sports will tolerate this for a minute. So there's this baseball player he plays for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and to the Colorado Rockies Fans, I'm sorry. His name is Shohei Ohtani. And last weekend, the Dodgers were having a series against the San Diego Padres, and that's kind of become this heated rivalry, and in the first game of the series, one of the Padres hitters got beaned by a pitch, and it caused both dugouts to clear out. And they were scuffling around and the two managers actually got into it. And they're still mad at each other. I don't think they'll be sending each other Christmas cards this year, and so then the next day, the game's going on, it's the bottom of the ninth inning, the Padres are up by 3 runs and Shohei Ohtani comes up. And the pitcher for the Padres, the first 3 pitches go way outside. It's obvious I'm going to pitch around Shohei, so he doesn't hit a home run. And then ball 3, the count is 3 and O, and the next pitch comes in high and tight and fast, and he turns his back like that and the ball beans him going a 100 miles an hour. And how does he respond? Most baseball players respond by reacting to the pain and then staring at the pitcher to say, I'm still here, or sometimes they charge the mound, maybe you remember the time that Robin Ventura charged the mound on Nolan Ryan, yeah, that was a good one. Shohei didn't do any of that he didn't stare at the pitcher. He just put his bat down and he started towards first base and out of the corner of his eye, he could see his teammates were starting to come out of the dugout, so they could defend him and he waved them back into the dugout. And then he got to first base, and by this time the umpire has thrown out the pitcher because he knew he hit him intentionally and so the new pitcher's warming up. So there's some time before the game starts back up again. So Shohei walks over to the Padres dugout, and he's talking with those guys, and he spoke to the guy that got beaned the day before. He's probably like it hurts, doesn't it? Yeah. And then it ends with they're all smiling as he smiles and he goes back to first base, and he chit chats with the Padres' first baseman, and they're smiling, and then they shake hands.
And that whole situation that could have erupted into basically a war between these 2 teams, it becomes peace and a sense of fraternity and maybe just like calling them back to their senses. We're playing a game here. There's big problems in the world, this is pretty small potatoes, and it's had an effect even beyond that game, I read a headline that one of the pitchers who pitches for the San Francisco Giants. Has said he's no longer gonna try to pitch and to hit batters, because there's kind of this unwritten rule in baseball that it's okay to hit a batter once in a while, if he needs a little bit discipline, and this guy is saying I'm not going to do that anymore. And so it's like there's like peace spreading through the league because of this.
Now Is Shohei Ohtani, a follower of Jesus? I don't know, maybe he's a member of Nippon Sei Ko Kai, which is the Anglican Church in Japan, there's about 200,000 members of the Anglican Church in Japan, but whether or not he's a follower of Jesus, he has done something very Christ-like. That was it's just very inspiring to me. He teaches us how a follower of Jesus should respond when provoked by diffusing the tension, not feeding it by not giving in to anger or a desire for retribution, not to charge the mound, not to empty the dugout. Not to get on your Facebook and talk about what a dirty rat so-and-so is or to talk to someone else about the person you're mad at. There's so many ways we express our, our dissatisfaction with other people.
At our wedding some years ago, the sermon was given by Dr. Gene Wilkes, who was Beth's youth pastor and Dr. Wilkes during his sermon, we're standing there, and he starts to make mention of a 16th century Spanish monk known as St. John of the Cross, and I was like whoa a Baptist knows about St. John of the Cross I better. Listen to this. And he told us something that St. John of the cross said. He said, when you are wronged, and you deserve an apology or some form of vindication, or some kind of justice to make the wrong right, think of our Lord Jesus on the cross. . .And say nothing. Because no one was ever more wronged than Jesus. Think of him on the cross. . .And say nothing.
The way of those who follow Jesus is the peaceable way, the way of true freedom. Freedom from acting out of our fallen human nature. Freedom to, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be filled with the power and presence of Christ, in order to bear the good fruit of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. These are the fruits of the Spirit, the fruits that blossom in those who follow Jesus, who live by the Spirit and are guided by the Spirit.