July 1, 2007

By Harry T. Cook

Luke 9: 51-62

Today’s gospel reading begins on an ominous note: When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up . . . as if what has gone before must now yield to the thing that is to come, as if there can now be no turning back. Luke gives words to that very effect for Jesus to speak where this gospel reading ends: No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.

Anyone who has ever farmed, or even roto-tilled a city garden, knows what that means in a practical sense. If one looks back to the furrow he has plowed, the furrow he is then in the process of plowing is likely to veer off in a wrong direction. You have to keep your eye on the marker ahead in order to get the job done correctly.

Putting one’s hand to the plow suggests purpose and goal. It suggests determination. And that’s the idea. There comes a time when the task at hand needs to be begun, stuck to with no diversions and, in the balance, done right.

In Luke’s narrative, today’s gospel reading is the continental divide. Everything has led to this point. Everything to come will flow from it. Jesus wanted his disciples to live up to their title. He bade them follow him. One was ready: I will follow you wherever you go. Jesus warned him or her that it would be one long itinerancy with no Motel 6, just a journey until the end.

Another begged off, saying his father had died and that he must attend to the funeral and other arrangements. In what seems an insensitivity, Jesus tells him Let the dead bury their own dead. In other words: a person has to choose. Whatever mandate he accepts, that is the urgency. The mandate here is to follow, to go and set forth the terms of the coming kingdom. One who cannot or will not do that is unfit for it. Not necessarily excluded from it, nor yet excused from it, simply not fit.

What does it mean to be “fit?” Ask those who go to Curves or to Vic Tanny’s. It means to be as well off physically as time and effort allow. Another meaning of the verb “to fit” is to be appropriate for and accommodating to the place or task at hand. To be “fit” for it or “fit” to do it. And the sense of the statement about him or her who puts hand to plow is somehow unfit if the look is backward rather than forward.

In this passage, Luke is sending Jesus off on what will be his final journey. Luke knew that because he knew the story just as we know it. And the story is all about the entity known as “the kingdom of God.”

The word “kingdom” is a somewhat unsatisfactory translation of a Greek word which means “rule” or “dominion.” In the First Century, it made sense to translate it as “kingdom” because rule was almost always the purview of a king or of a kingly subordinate.

In 21st Century America, however – and despite some Presidents who seem to think they are kings – we do not recognize kingdoms. Our dominion is that of republican democracy in which the people rule or suffer themselves to be governed by leaders whom we, the people, elect. So then: “the rule or governance of God.”

There is yet another problem, however. Our nation was uniquely conceived with a prohibition of any established religion. We enjoy freedom of religion up to the point of imposing it on others by statutory requirement – an effective separation not only of church and state but also of religion and government.

So for what kind of rule or governance shall we be fit, if not that of God?

I tried to solve that quintessentially American problem in my 2003 book Seven Sayings Of Jesus: How One Man’s Words Can Save Your World. The book’s publisher seemed to have treated it as a classified document and did not do much to promote it. Yet the book’s thesis is important. It is that certain sayings commonly attributed to Jesus of Nazareth are both universal in their appeal and unconnected in any direct way to theological dogma.

Turn the other cheek; walk the second mile; give up your shirt as well as your coat; forgive 70 times seven (or as often as it takes); love your neighbor; love your enemy; do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

One can credibly say that those sayings constitute, if not a system, at least an ethic or code of behavior which, when put in practice and lived out routinely, can become a rule or governance that any benign deity would will or approve of.

Those sayings have become commonplace to persons raised in Protestant Sunday Schools and reared on the Bible – so commonplace, in fact, that they are no longer heard as radical, as surely they must have been when first uttered.

Think about it: We do not by nature turn the other cheek to a second blow; we do not willingly walk a first mandated mile, much less volunteer to do a second; we collect shirts and coats and only part with those we no longer want or need; we find it hard to forgive the first time, never mind seven times – and forget 70 times; at best we tolerate our neighbors; loving an enemy is altogether counterintuitive; and the “do-unto-others” thing always seems like a great idea for somebody else.

But that is the plow to which we will have to put our hand and not turn back if we wish to save our world. Look at, listen to or read the news. Push has come nearly to shove. Like Jesus in today’s gospel reading, we are at the point of departure, maybe even at the point of no return.

The rule of a consistent humanist ethic is the only way to achieve happiness and security in this life. Are we “fit” for that rule? Or will we strive to make ourselves fit to live in it and under it?

This may be a case of “do or die.”

© Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.