Looking For Mr. Right

I expect most of you know that fear of commitment is endemic in today’s society. It's not surprising. I expect many if not most of us have experienced - or at least witnessed - bad relationships or are the children of divorce ourselves. If you've gotten burnt, you're more than a little afraid of making a mistake. Relationships are messy and difficult and can even be dangerous; the easiest thing to do is avoid any that go deep enough to hurt. The way not to be disappointed is to expect little and promise less. Both men and women are equally wary of commitment. Gun-shy, I suppose you could call it. At any rate, cohabitation pretty much always precedes the proposal, much less the wedding vows, and pre-nuptial agreements are becoming more and more common. You always have to have either an escape hatch or a safety net. The fear of commitment goes even further than marriage, though; it shows up in lower membership in volunteer organizations from churches to Toastmasters, and most alarming of all, the reluctance to have children.

Well, things certainly were different back in Jesus’ day. Yes, divorce was easier than it should have been, but it still wasn’t common in the Jewish community. The fear of commitment showed up on a different plane. You see, there was a lot of religious fervor. Roman rule was pretty oppressive, and the only real hope they had of change was from divine deliverance. There were all kinds of religious movements that people could hook up with, from the Essenes to the Zealots. Think of the Essenes like a cross between a monastery and a cult: people moved into communes and practiced strict religious observances, to try either to be ready for the Messiah or to create the conditions that would bring the Messiah. And think of the Zealots as armed revolutionaries. They all had one thing in common, though: they were looking for the promised redeemer.

But most people weren’t ready for anything that extreme. And besides, not too long before there had been an unsuccessful rebellion under a self-proclaimed prophet named Theudas which had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people. And besides, there were plenty of people who were doing just fine under the occupation, from un-savory people like tax collectors to reasonably decent sorts like merchants. Why risk what you have for some unproven unknown? What are you, a romantic? Yeah, I now, God promised and all that. But how do you know? Better to wait and see.

Jesus tells a story about someone who “gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’ Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.’ Another said, ‘I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.’ [Lk 14:26-22] In the version Matthew tells, some of the people who were invited to the feast actually beat and kill the servants who come to remind them of their obligation. That’s what we see in the passage we are looking at this morning.

Jesus has been trying to wake up the people to the reality of the kingdom of heaven, trying to get them to see beyond their everyday lives to the possibility of something greater, comparing it to a priceless pearl, assuring people of God’s love and faithfulness, wooing them with every possible combination of challenge and patience and tenderness. And yet what happens? One set of people - the Pharisees - hate Jesus because he’s not “religious” enough, and another bunch - King Herod and his crowd - hates him because he’s too holy. Jesus just can’t catch a break. Which is exactly what we see in this passage.

Now, it may be that the Pharisees who come to warn him are among the few who have actually been listening and rethinking their theology. But it’s more likely that they’re using Herod’s threat as an additional lever to get Jesus to shut up and move on. And he does move on. He knows when he's not wanted. He's not interested in winning a popularity contest, he's interested in moving the people in a different direction. Jesus wants to be loved for the right reasons.

But Jesus makes it clear that he’s not moving on under pressure, but according to a very clear timetable. He shrugs off the threat from Herod, calling him a fox, a sly and crafty animal but not really terribly dangerous. He lets the Pharisees know that he’s not about to be intimidated. He is going to finish the work God has set for him to do, regardless of who’s saying what, regardless of the sniping and criticism and the dismal showing in the polls. And then Jesus tells them that far from being intimidated into dropping out of the race or at least toning down his rhetoric, he will soon be going right up to Jerusalem, right up to the center of established religious and political power, and that nothing they can do will stop him.