[Intro - moving around the people, shaking hands, ‘electioneering’] Good morning, sir. So glad you turned out today. That was Jesus you just heard, Jesus of Nazareth, and I do hope he has your support! Go home and tell your friends, ma’am, today you heard from Jesus. And wasn’t it like hearing the sweet, silver sound of a lark?

What’s that? You heard him say something about ‘the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head’? Well, maybe you didn’t quite hear that right...maybe he said…“Au Bon Pain is where I get my bread!” You heard something about leaving the dead to bury their dead? Oh, don’t worry about that. Jesus was just off the teleprompter, speaking in a metaphorical sense, you see. Same with that stuff about not looking back and saying goodbye - don’t you pay any mind to that! It’s best not to get too hung up in what Jesus says, friends - but I do hope when you leave here you’ll remember how he made you feel!”

At a time when “campaign season” seems never to stop, maybe it should reassure us what Jesus never seems to do. He never panders to bring in spiritual independents. He never uses focus groups to figure out how to sell his message. And he never says just what we want to hear in order to win our support!

Unfortunately, that he refuses to do these things is not very reassuring at all. What we confront today in Luke 9 are several of what are called “the hard sayings” of Jesus - and that’s how they fall on the ears, hard, even after all these years. I know of nobody who has picked this for a favorite memory verse: “no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God”! As we in the Church bob and weave, trying to woo unchurched families and skeptical singles, a person might just begin to wonder why Jesus would say such unreasonable things, and thereby make our job in the Church so difficult.

Perhaps we can rescue ourselves from this “leave-the-dead-to-bury-their-dead, you-come-follow-me” kind-of-language by telling ourselves that the world has changed a lot in 2,000 years. Maybe Jesus, out recruiting ‘don’t-look-back’ followers was unaware that today, our lives are already pushed to the edge of over-commitment. We successfully juggle demands posed by family, jobs, financial obligations, volunteer work, sports leagues, errands - so we don’t take kindly to talk about neglecting our duty to our parents or our families, or any suggestion that we give up the comforts of home or a safe place to lay our heads. How could any demand be good that threatens the very things about us that make us our very best?

Oh, wait…maybe Jesus is not the only place we hear unreasonable demands. In fact, unreasonable priorities crowd in on us all the time. I remember feeling sick at a District pastors’ meeting some years ago, early in ministry, when a young colleague told me that his little boy had brought home from school a picture he’d drawn of his family. There, off to the side, was my friend in blue crayon, the boy’s father, in a tie and holding a Bible - very preacherly. At bottom, the child had scrawled, “This is my Dad. He’s a pastor, which is why he’s never around.”

Sad story, to be sure, but what’s even sadder is that stories like this are not unique to preachers. Most of us know something about the tyranny of the urgent, about being a slave to a day planner or a project deadline or a sense of obligation. Running errands, paying bills, texting, returning calls or e-mails, mowing, weeding, shopping, cleaning, making meals, missing meals - “I wish I’d had time to enjoy this day,” we think from time to time. But thoughts like that are easily set aside when you’re moving on to the next pressing task of early summer. And what choice do we have? After all, the Bible says honor your parents, love your children, do the task before you with all your might. Ought not the Church, an “all-volunteer organization” if ever there were one, just take its deserved place in line, one more demand for a slice of our time, our money, and the very scare currency of our attention?

But we do not come to Church in order to learn to submit to the Church. The Church can’t save us. We come to Church to encounter Jesus, and to connect with others who are seeking to do the same. Here, we are called to follow him. And run ragged as we are, we might come expecting Jesus to fix things for us. Because surely he has noticed that we are running as fast as we can, carrying water in our colanders. Because he loves us, we think, surely he’ll do his job and teach us to run faster and somehow also keep our shoes dry.

But here’s the thing: giving a person one more thing to live for is very little help, when their life is already overflowing with worthy priorities and countervailing loves. Jesus doesn’t come to make things easier for us, running as fast as we can to stay in place in these lives that have happened to us. Somebody once told us that Jesus has come to call us away from drinking and stealing and carrying on, but when we actually meet him, as we do in Luke today, we discover something strange and scary: Jesus didn’t come to ask us to choose him over the bad things in our lives. He came to call us to choose his way over the good things in our lives. That’s why his words are so painful about our noble desire to put our families first (and for others of us, to put our work or our lifestyle or our sense of duty first).

You see, we dutiful parents, loyal children, loving grandparents, we turn out to be in need of a Savior. “Jesus, suffer me to go and bury my father,” somebody says. “Suffer me to spend more time with my family,” “suffer me to give my children a better life than the one I had.” But this is not the suffering for which Jesus came. He came to suffer for us. And if we don’t give our children the example of an obedient, godly life, why would we think that anything we will pass on to them can ever yield life? Or maybe we just expect our kids to be as scattered, as well-intentioned but spiritually bankrupt, as are we? This attitude of ingratitude, this generosity with our leftovers, this discipleship of Sunday convenience - will this be the inheritance of the next generation? And do we really think that having more time with our families is going to change that?

Jesus offers us the free and freely-given grace of his loving Father. But the discipleship he opens to us is costly. In fact, he even says that it will cost us what it cost him to show it to us: life itself, his life, our lives. He is not here today to find out what we want out of life. He does not show up once each week on Sunday, so we can charge our batteries and sustain our unto-death quest for happiness and success. What Jesus offers us is the way of obedience, his way, the way that leads to a constant seeking after God’s will, and eventually to the joy of Master and servant alike.

When we like the fellows we met in Luke 9 are inclined to bargain with him, to put limits on our obedience, to say “well, Jesus, right now my health, my time with family, my career have to come first,” he turns toward the road that leads to the Cross. Now I don’t know what roads you will travel this summer. I suspect some of you will get back from your vacations even more tired than you were before you left! But wherever you go, I pray you will invite into each new day a simple truth: we’ll never love anyone in our lives more faithfully than when every one of our priorities radiates from the center who is Jesus Christ.

And that’s why we don’t look back. Because all that truly satisfies lies ahead of us. (Thanks be to God.)