As the disciples were called, we are called to serve Jesus. We are to listen for the call to serve and respond to it immediately.
In the first reading from the book of 1Kings Elisha is called to follow Elijah but he first ran home to say good-bye to his mother and father. In the Gospel according to Luke 3 different men responded to the call to follow Jesus two of them wanted to take care of other business (one to say good-bye to his family and one to bury his father) before following Jesus and He told them that to follow Him they had to leave those things to others to take care of and follow Jesus now. Elisha was allowed to go home and say good-bye to his parents because he was meant to replace Elijah when he died in service to the Lord. The call was not as urgent as that of Jesus who is the living Lord and whose followers must be ready at a moments notice to follow Him.
Jesus tells the man who wants to first go bury his father before following Jesus, “Let others worry about things like that. You go and tell others about the Kingdom of God.” It seems rather harsh that someone is not allowed to care for their dying or dead father. If you think about this with detachment you will realize that there is nothing that can be done to or for this person in this earthly life anymore. Even to go and speak words to their physical body is useless since their soul is no longer residing in that place. Burying the dead is important for several reasons but telling people about the Kingdom of God is much more critical because it will save the souls of people who will, like Jesus, be resurrected into new life! Likewise the man who wants to return home to say good-bye to his family, Jesus says, “Anyone who begins to plow a field, but keeps looking back, isn’t ready to follow God.” We cannot choose earthly attachments and pleasures over Jesus and we should not regret giving up these things to follow Jesus. We must re-examine our priorities here to understand what this means. The flow of devotion in our lives should always be God FIRST, then everyone else and lastly ourselves. If you live your life in this way you will be exactly like Jesus. That seems so simple and yet we cannot do this because we form attachments to earthly relationships and earthly enjoyments, etc. We are human and we have an especially hard time with what seems to be a simple choice but is actually very difficult for us to make. We make choices everyday. Are those the choices that lead us to follow Jesus? Mostly not because most of those choices involve the moment we are living and how we can better enjoy that moment. We do not live FOR the Kingdom of God and our love of God but for our earthly pleasures and love.
Can we even hear the Lord calling us? We have so much going on in our lives every minute of every day that it drowns out the voice of God. We must train ourselves to tune in to the Lord speaking to us. We can do this by quieting our thoughts, by setting aside special time with the Lord to LISTEN. We can do this through daily devotions of prayer followed by quiet meditation when we don’t think or speak about anything but just be quiet and listen for the Lord speaking to us. Sometimes we pray about something that is troubling us or an illness or injury that is diminishing our daily lives. We hope for an answer to that prayer. Often times it comes in a way that you do NOT expect and therefore you do not “HEAR” the Lord speaking to you. I prayed on something and for the next two weeks I was bombarded with all kinds of information from all kinds of sources (radio, TV, print, the Priest’s homily). I didn’t realize how much the Lord was shouting at me for some days when all at once I realized how amazing it was that my prayer was answered in all these different ways! Well, what do you do when you’re trying to reach someone you want to talk to urgently? You call their home…you leave a voicemail…you call their cell phone and leave a voicemail…you send a text message…then you send an email…perhaps a “poke” on Facebook… You see what I mean; you are not content to rely on just ONE means of communication because your message is so important so you leave messages on every device and in every way that you can! Once you have gone to that much trouble it is really out of your hands to ensure that the person responds to your urgent message. It is EXACTLY the same with the Lord. And since we have been given free will we are entitled to ignore those urgent messages from Jesus. Would you consciously choose to do so? I’m sure you wouldn’t but since our minds are so involved in our earthly lives it is very easy for us to miss the urgent messages of the Lord in favor of doing things that are less important, even useless, when compared to following Jesus NOW.
The trick for us is letting go of everything that is of the world we live in and holding on to the promises of Christ Jesus and the Kingdom of God. We can do this if we can love God first, love others second and love ourselves third. We will clearly hear the voice of God when we are not listening to everything else first.
The Psalm this week is Psalm 16: You Are My Inheritance O’ Lord and you can find a demo of the Psalm and the lead sheet for the lyrics & music on Matt’s site. Follow the link.
Have a blessed week. Make this the week you begin anew some practice that will focus your thoughts, your words and your actions on following Jesus NOW.
In Christ,
Elaine