Hands on the plow

"No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:62)

Jesus says many things that are hard to understand... they are troubling things, and it sometimes makes you stop and wonder if you even are on a Christian path. Some demands seem so hard that you have to ask yourself, would I even be a Christian by his standards?

This is one of them. He says this to a man who asks, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." Seems like a reasonable enough thing, no? But God does not lower his standards. He doesn't make compromise the benchmark. If you know something is the right path for you to tread, the right change of course, you just do it.

I propose to you however that it would have been a very simple thing for this man to satisfy Jesus. If he had said, "Lord, I will follow you. I will return to my home, and teach the good news to my friends and family, and though I am not worthy to receive you, just say the word and you will be with me," how do you think Jesus would have reacted to that? I think Jesus would have said, just like he did the centurion, that he'd never seen such faith!

There are are many callings in life. This man claimed his calling was to be Christ's disciple. That is a hard calling - in his day, it meant persecution and execution by Romans or the Hasmonean temple authorities. In today's day and in many denominations, there are still monks, contemplative communities, and even ordinary folks who devote themselves so wholely that they give up any vestige of a normal life. (Did you know that there are Lutheran nuns?)

Not everyone was meant for this - as Jesus said, not everyone was meant to be "Eunuch for the kingdom." For some of us, discipleship is what I thought the man from Luke might have offered - follow him, yes, but follow him home!