A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. As Jesus and his disciples were making their way along, someone said to Jesus, I will be your follower wherever you go. Jesus said to him, the foxes have lairs. The birds of the sky have their nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay even his head. To another, come after me.
But the man replied, let me first bury my father. And Jesus said to him, let the dead bury their dead. Come away and proclaim the kingdom of God. Yet another said to Jesus, I, Lord, will be your follower. But first, let me take leave of my people at home.
Jesus answered him, whoever puts his hand to the plow but keeps looking back is unfit for the reign of God. And this is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. This text this morning from Saint Luke can be very misleading, can be very misleading, and I'm sure our blessed lord didn't intend that. I ask you to recall Exodus.
Now I'm not a great champion of the old testament, But the story of the chosen people leaving Egypt where they were an enslaved people, and then how any number of marvelous things happened to them to manifest god's love for them. And yet, the story of exodus is a story not merely of a wandering people in the Sinai Peninsula. It's a story of a people that blew hot and blew cold, that one minute was enthusiastic for God, for Yahweh. And in another minute, we're off going off to the to the alien peoples involving themselves in their worst practices, even human sacrifice. And then being called back, getting straightened out once again, and once again going back, slipping back.
You recall how they they weren't in the the so called desert. They worked their heart scarcely any time when they started to berate Moses. Why in the world did you bring us out here to starve? After all, we were so much better off back in Egypt. We could eat.
We had good food. Now you bring us out here and look what you're doing to us. Exodus, to me, this is a well, of course, I'm not discovering it. But this is a powerful story of human nature. And by human nature, I'm not talking in the abstract.
I'm talking about you and me. We are human nature. There's no such thing as human nature. There are only human beings. This is a terribly important point to remember.
I said the last week or so that there's no such thing as a community. It's only a concept. Of course, it has a has a foundation in fact, but the only reality to community are the individual human beings. And just recently, I read something about a famous radio commentator who made a tremendous reputation on the way he handled his advertising. And lo and behold you, here's what he said.
He said, if you think when you're in front of a microphone that you're talking to ladies and gentlemen, forget it. He says you're talking to single people in this room and that room and that room. And that's so true. We the human nature has no reality except human beings, individual human beings. And when Exodus gives us that picture of the Jews, the chosen people of God, who were the object of tremendous signs of God's favor, and how one minute they were all for God, we are with you.
We will never leave you, and scarcely scarcely has the echo of their voices died, then they're running off to alien people and to heinous practices. And that's simply way we act. The point I want to make in regard to our lord's words this morning is this. Notice, our lord said turning looking back, he didn't say that you would not have confused feelings. There are plenty of instances in life when we know we should turn away from what we have or do or what we're doing because we know it's god's will.
We know it's grievous sin we're involved in. But remember this, sin can be fun. Sin can be pleasant. Sin can make you, for a time at least, extremely happy. Don't ever forget it.
The only people who can look upon sin in all its ugliness are people who are approaching sainthood. We're not attracted to wrongdoing because it's wrong. We are attracted to wrongdoing because in some way or other it has something attractive to us, something good. Never forget that, unless you're a Presbyterian or a Calvinist. So when we turn away from what we call sin, don't think for a minute that you may not from time to time have regrets, that you will look back to the flesh pots of Egypt and say, why am I in this desert?
I was better off when I was back there. I've seen this, for example, in cases of alcoholism, where a person straightens out their life, starts walking straight, faithful to the job, and extremely unhappy. Now if any of you are acquainted with this problem, you don't know what's wrong here. What's wrong is you're dealing with a person who isn't drinking. Well, neither is that marble railing.
That isn't drinking either. See the emptiness of a negation. But the person in that state is not sober. They have not achieved sobriety, which is an entirely different thing from not drinking, from drying up as we say. Remember, a dried up pea isn't a very good thing to eat.
Not if you're making a salad of it anyway. And so our blessed lord here don't think for a minute that serving the lord means a straight passage, that everything is just going to be tranquil, that that we are going to see the truth, love the truth, pursue the truth, and just have no attraction to things around us. That is so totally unreal. Unreal. We are beset with many good things.
The man who steals money isn't just he isn't doing it just to commit sin. He wants money. Money can buy things. It can give an operation to his kids. It can give a home.
He can give all all kinds of things. You think of that woman several years ago in Virginia, Northern Virginia, who over the course of years, I don't know how much money she took out out of the the company she was working for. Huge amount over the years. She didn't spend a single penny on herself. She gave it to the poor.
After all, no one was suffering from the money she took up took as far as she could see, and it was doing so much good. Now when she goes to jail, you mean that the people who were who were the recipients of her gratuity, You think they're not going to to have some kind of Gee whiz. I'm sorry this happened. We were so much better off when she was giving us our weekly allowance. So let's be realistic.
Realistic. Don't forget we are human beings, and our lord knows we're human. He knows that. The whole thing is this. It's in a nutshell.
We have to be followers of Saint Peter of Saint Peter and not victims of a Judas. In the name of the father and the son and holy spirit. Amen.