Plowing Ahead

Luke 9:51-62

When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to prepare for his arrival, but they did not receive him because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” And Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Sermon

In my first or second semester at Belmont University’s college of music, I was required to take the first of many music history classes. For some, that sounds exciting and interesting. For others, it might remind them of a stern, lifeless piano teacher from elementary school.

We studied quite a bit of opera, given its significance to Western music. We started from its very beginning—all the way back in the early 1600s—with one work in particular: L’Orpheo by Claudio Monteverdi.

In this opera, Monteverdi retells the Greek legend of our protagonist, Orfeo. Orfeo has fallen deeply in love with a woman, Eurydice, who satisfies his every longing. 

But! Tragedy strikes. Eurydice is bitten by a venomous snake, whose venom is so potent, that she dies within minutes. Orfeo is overcome with grief.

So Orfeo embarks to the river Styx, and crosses it into Hades itself. Orfeo travels this land of the dead all the way to its queen and king. He arrives at their feet, pleading with them: “Let me take Eurydice back to the land of the living.”

The king ponders it. He eventually accedes to Orfeo’s request, but offers one condition: a single glance back at Eurydice will condemn her to the shackles of death once again.

Orfeo is nervous; how could he be sure that Eurydice was following? But trusts that she is, traversing Hades once again, all the way to its banks, when a loud commotion happens nearby. Orfeo instinctively turns his head back, trying to ensure Eurydice is safe, only to see the image of the beautiful Eurydice clawed back into the underworld.

He looked back. Out of love. And in doing so, lost the bright and loving future with his Eurydice.

Today, Jesus offers us a somewhat similar warning, which begins with a similarly odd story.

…

In sending messengers of his gospel to Samaria, we see Jesus’ determination to be with them. Whenever we see Samaria in our Bibles, alarm bells should start going off. This isn’t any ordinary place; this is a place that is overflowing with significance and symbolism.

This is the people of the “Good Samaritan,” which is a parable that is only included in this Gospel of Luke (Lk 10:25-37). It is one of Jesus’ more lengthy parables, and interestingly, positively depicts a Samaritan after their rejection of him this morning. This is also where Jesus is reported meeting “the woman at the well,” (Jn. 4:1-30) a scandalous Samaritan woman who’s had five-and-a-half husbands. In Acts, it’s where Philip has a run-in with a sorcerer who tries to buy the Holy Spirit off him. Finally, in case it wasn’t clear enough, Samaria is also where the evil King Ahab of the Hebrew Bible erects a temple to Baal, including an altar for human sacrifices.

In the Gospels, Jesus keeps trying Samaria. Sometimes, he is welcomed. Sometimes, he is rejected.

Our modern sensibilities say that Jesus should have given up after this first try. After this try, the disciples should have said, “we did it once, and it didn’t work.” Or “we tried that last year, but it wasn’t a sustainable ministry.”

But Jesus, throughout the Gospels, doesn’t let his history with Samaria chain his ministry.

So what does he do in today’s moment, when the disciples are asking about fire and brimstone? “Jesus turned and rebuked [his disciples]. Then they went on to another village.”

It’s consistent with a command Jesus offers not just once, but twice in the Gospel of Luke: When a village rejects you, Jesus says, “as you are leaving… shake the dust off your feet.”

The disciples are commissioned with a similar command to Orfeo: don’t look back. Don’t turn back. Keep moving forward, step by step, shaking the dust off your feet. What was their destination? Into discipleship. Deeper into the ministry of Jesus Christ, in all its pain and joy and complexity. It wasn’t going to be an easy road; but it was nevertheless a road led by hope and gospel of Jesus Christ.

“The disciples should have said, ‘we [went to Samaria] once, and it didn’t work.’ Or ‘we tried [Samaria] last year, but it wasn’t a sustainable ministry.’”

Then, after Jesus exhorts the disciples to shake the dust off their feet, Jesus explicitly offers a teaching that goes hand in hand with this: “Let the dead bury their own dead… No one who… looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Honestly, this is a challenging teaching. One that I don’t always know what to do with. But I think there’s a piece of context that might help us understand it.

The full teaching that Jesus offers is actually a little more specific than what I paraphrased a moment ago. He says this: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back…… is fit for the kingdom of God.”

To gain some insight, we’ll need to put on our overalls!

Jesus is describing a plowman of his day. We actually have what is essentially an ancient Greek farmer’s almanac. And in that almanac, a plowman is defined as someone who will, “make the furrow straight”—the trench straight—by “paying close attention to his work.” 

Plowmen kept their eyes forward as they plowed these long, narrow trenches. If they looked back for whatever reason, they were at great risk of plowing jagged, crooked, shallow trenches, rather than the deep, steady, straightened trenches they needed.

This isn’t a flat command to the disciples to forget about the past, or somehow ignore their track record with Samaria. But instead, Jesus might be telling us that discipleship requires longevity, persistence, intentionality, and an unshakable focus on what God is doing in our very midst; Focus on what God is doing today and tomorrow. Jesus might be saying, “don’t look back, because the kingdom of God is always arriving, always happening, and we’ll miss the kingdom of God if we navel-gaze on what’s behind us.”

“The kingdom of God is always arriving, always happening, and we’ll miss the kingdom of God if we navel-gaze on what’s behind us.”

So if Jesus is commanding us—his disciples in 2025—to remain led by the ministry of today, what do we do with the past? Do we just ignore it? Do we write it down and put it on the shelf?

Let me tell you about the opera again. When Orfeo looks back, his love Eurydice is pulled back into the underworld, fading away in this bizarre conclusion. And as she is clawed back into the underworld, she offers a parting word to Orfeo, asking him a searing question: “Losest thou me through too much love?” Or to rephrase it, “You lost me? You lost me through too much love?”

Eurydice was condemned to the bowels of Hades because Orfeo’s passions—his overwhelming love—prevented him from his mission and focus in the present. His love kept him from accomplishing the immediate task: to save Eurydice, and to bring her back to life. His great love, expressed in fear, made him turn back, and disintegrated everything he worked to accomplish, and even the future he planned.

As disciples of Jesus Christ, we cannot pretend away the past, or forget it, or try to rewrite it. Far from it; our history and our stories are assets to our ministry and mission today and tomorrow. But everything that is in our rear view mirror cannot become an end unto itself; it cannot be the lover we are trying to save from Hades, and it can’t be the legacy we are trying to spare from death. Because if look back and navel-gaze on what’s behind us, we will plow jagged, crooked trenches that are far too shallow for today’s ministry.

The kingdom of God is always arriving, always happening, and we’ll miss it if we try to resurrect a ministry of the past, or our former ways of life, or the passions which draw us back into Hades.

To minister to children, and youth, and young families, we hear a command from Jesus. Don’t look back at your furrows from years ago; look ahead at what you are plowing today.

To minister to Newton and Sussex County, we hear a command from Jesus. Don’t look back at your furrows from years ago; look ahead at what you are plowing today.

Or if we are tempted—even for a second!—to turn our facilities into a coffin for ministry that died off, or a memorial for a church that was, or a tombstone of what we hoped for, then Jesus has an uncomfortable, disquieting command: Let the dead bury the dead.

“But nothing that is in our rear view mirror can become an end unto itself; it cannot be the lover we are trying to save from Hades, and it can’t be the legacy we are trying to spare from death.”

Far too often, we are tempted to look around this sanctuary, see the balcony, and remember the days when every pew was packed, and we had multiple services to fit everyone in. But in doing so, we often fail to look at the plowing ahead: there are 140-something members of this church, and I know you are trying your darndest to be kind, openhearted, and the very best neighbors a town could ask for. That’s who we have for the plow set before us, and for the ministry ahead.

And something that is common in every church is to refer to rooms by their names from fifty or a hundred years ago. Even here, the community room was called the “old nursery.” The rooms leased by Family Promise are sometimes called the “Sunday school rooms.” It’s natural; sometimes it’s the easiest way to refer to it. At the same time, I think it sometimes betrays our mindset. Is this a Sunday school room? Are we hoping it will be a Sunday school room? Or is it vacant space that a community member needs, in order to do good?

Jesus says, let the dead bury their dead. Don’t look back.

I hope that by now, you all know that I am absolutely neurotic, especially when it comes to junk, cleaning, and facilities. Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes it’s not and needs to be reigned in.

But this command is partly the reason that I am. Jesus is asking us to plow ahead. Let the dead bury the dead, and start making room for the living. Make room for literacy programs. Make room for adult faith formation. Make room for the seeds of ministry that haven’t even been planted, because we know and trust that the Holy Spirit surely has some seeds scatter in our midst. 

If we stare at the past, we will inadvertently make our ministry more of a series of ditches than a plowfield; we’ll become Orfeos and Eurydices. Everything—our facilities, our finances, our homebound members, our visitors, our Christmas-and-Easter friends, and our education for all ages—everything depends on plowing ahead. Not for the next year. For today, tomorrow, and the next fifty years. Everything depends on plowing a field, getting ready for the seeds of hope, and anticipating a harvest that our children and grandchildren will reap.

Don’t look back.