March 26 - Lenten Devotional

(The person said) “…but let me first…” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:61-62)

If someone asks me about texts for discipleship there are three that immediately jump out at me – three texts that stand in my mind above all others. John chapter six (particularly the last half of it), the call of original four disciples in Matthew 4 (and the continuation of it into the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 5), and these verses we’ve just read that sit at the end of a series of calls to discipleship in Luke 9.

Each of these stories cuts to the heart of the radical nature of Christ’s call. Each of these texts are “favorites”… and yet I find each of them convict me – because I struggle mightily to live into any of them.

Sticking with Jesus as the only place to find words of life…
Dropping nets and following Jesus…
Not looking back…

There is no halfway disciple. This is the great rub… one either is a committed (in Jesus mind)… or one is not. You are either ready to place your whole trust in Jesus, and ready to put Jesus at the center of your life – or you are not.

Honestly I’d like to offer an easier read… an invitation with more wiggle room. But these examples don't leave room to. They come to us from three different Gospels (and its not that Mark doesn’t do the same, its just not as stuck in my head – I assure you the urgency and absolute sense of commitment is there too). They come at the beginning, in the middle, and near the end of Jesus journey with his disciples… throughout his ministry and from various perspectives the message is the same – you have to jump in... completely!

As a small child I loved water – absolutely loved it, and that love never went away. However – when I was four years old I was at my granny’s swimming pool and I slipped while running around the pool and hit my head on the side of the pool and immediately sunk to the bottom. My mother fished me quickly – I was fine, no harm. But for the next eight years I refused to put my face under water. I still loved it – but I also feared it.

The waters of Baptism are just like that pool... they are waters we all ought to love, and yet fear. We use water because water is a sign of life and death. Water is necessary for us to live – and yet to plunge into water is be in a state of death. In baptism that death is a death to the world. It is a death to sin. It is a death to holding onto our nets, to needing a non-offensive God, to putting a hand to the plow and looking back. It is death – but not for death’s sake… on the other side...

There is life! On the other side of that death we find in Christ the only place that offers words of eternal (abundant) life.

But you have to be willing to trust… to jump in, let your face plunge deep into the waters – let go of other priorities, concerns, and voices that control us. You have to let go – and die… and then life abundant springs forth. It’s the vision Tom gave us in his sermon a few weeks ago of the man who would just float in the ocean waters… a dead man’s float! And yet how relaxing to find that in such abandon… in such a state of release – we are born up on the waves by the love, grace, and steadfast faithfulness of God.

Are you willing to drop your nets, stopping looking back, and place you whole trust in Jesus?

Have you let go… died to the need for control and the desire to live the ways of the world?

Are you ready to dive deep in discipleship and float upon the grace of God?

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Radical God,
Your ways are truly beyond us.
Your call asks so much of us.
Our trust is shallow and the waters are deep.
Give us the strength to not need strength.
Guide us in letting go… looking forward…
Bear us up on your waters of life.
Amen.