June 27, 2010
(Fifth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 8)
(From The Lectionary Page)
What Is My Intention?
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
I’ve been thinking this past week about a rector who took a chance on me almost exactly 17 years ago to the day. I was a newly minted transitional deacon at a time when women clergy were not exactly welcomed with open arms in the Diocese of Chicago. And Dick took me on. That parish was an amazing crucible in which to test and be tested by my calling, and I owe an enormous debt to my one-time mentor and now dear friend. I had been there for maybe 3 months when I had one of those ah-ha moments. Dick and I had been processing a particularly lively Vestry meeting we’d both endured the evening before, and I remember asking him how he could remain so calm in the midst of all of the energy that clearly was swirling around the room. Dick, who had been an Air Force pilot for 20 years before becoming a priest, leaned back in his chair and said, “I learned long ago, before going into any meeting or any mission, to ask myself, ‘What is my intention?’”
What is my intention? What a fabulously centering question! In other words, before embarking on this important thing – whatever that thing may be – where should focus be placed? What is God calling forth and how can I be an effective conduit for that, rather than an obstacle to it? What within myself do I need to be aware of when the emotional energy begins to swirl? And on what should my heart be centered?
In our gospel passage for today, Jesus has set his face to go to Jerusalem. Chronologically, we are at the end of Jesus’s ministry in Galilee. Peter has discerned that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God; and Peter, James and John have seen him transfigured on the mountain, appearing between Moses and Elijah. What now is his intention?
His intention is to journey to Jerusalem where he will be arrested and executed on trumped up charges. Much will happen along the journey which we will hear about in the upcoming weeks in our Sunday lectionary – and all of it will proceed from this single-minded intention: completing the task that his heavenly Father has given to him: to embrace the cross for the sake of the world. His is an intention of radical love and radical forgiveness rooted in God’s love for all creation.
And today’s gospel passage wastes no time highlighting what a challenge it is to stay focused on one’s intention. We hear first of the aborted mission to the Samaritans, through whose territory Jesus and his disciples most likely would have passed on their way. There follows the three would-be followers who offer to join up. And Jesus is absolutely uncompromising in his responses to each. He rebukes the disciples for wanting to retaliate against the Samaritans, not only because they suggested such an abuse of divine power but also because the suggestion was completely at odds with his earlier instruction to shake the dust off their sandals in whatever towns don’t receive them. His tone seems to grow even harsher with those he encounters on the road. Followers of Jesus must lay aside claims of home and comfort. They must lay aside all past claims of community and even the claims of kinship and the demands of the Torah.
What are we to make of this? Certainly the church over the centuries has used this gospel passage as a call to detachment, or as a Scriptural imperative for a monastic life devoted to poverty, chastity, and obedience. But I want to suggest something else. I think part of Jesus’ intention of embracing the cross for the sake of the world, in radical love and in radical forgiveness is to challenge us to think more deeply about the things we love. Fundamentally, the things that get in the way of discipleship aren’t limited to the catalog of vices that Paul spells out for us in Galatians today. For heaven’s sake, we know that strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions and the like are problematic in the life of Christian community. That’s a no-brainer. The challenge for us is to recognize that the self-emptying love of Christ, to which we are also called, can sometimes – often – be at odds with the things we love best. And that makes us uncomfortable. What do we do when the demands of discipleship put us at odds with our creature comforts? What do we do when the demands of discipleship put us at odds with our devotion to how we’ve always done things in our families, with our friends, at work, in our church? Our conception of love and devotion to the persons, the organizations, and the things in our life pales in comparison with the depth of love that Christ shows us. As one writer put it, everything – friendship, familiar connections, piety, leadership – necessarily looks different when viewed through the lens of God’s sacrificial love.[1]
And so on this day, we are invited to ask of ourselves, What is our intention? As the Body of Christ, who live through and into our baptismal ministry at the Cathedral, in our places of work, in our neighborhoods, and in our families, what is our intention? Let us hope that it is to lean into the task of discipleship in the here and now, come what may, cost what will. And when we do experience the occasional discomfort that comes from viewing our labor through the lens of God’s sacrificial love, and the emotional energy begins to swirl around us, may we pause and ask what God is calling forth from within us.
[1] David Lose, commenting on this passage in Feasting on the Word, Year C., Vol 3, p. 195
