13^th Sunday in Ordinary Time C.  June 27, 2004.  Our Lady of Grace 7:30, 11:30.  1 Kings 19,16b, 19-21.  Galatians 5:1, 13-18. Luke 9: 51-62.

A few weeks ago one of the older members of our parish heard that she had a very aggressive form of leukemia.  The doctor told her that it was certainly fatal.  The doctor gave her about three moths to live with no treatment and perhaps a year, with a slight chance of a longer remission, if she underwent very strong doses of chemo-therapy.  The chemo-therapy would certainly make much of the year she might gain miserable.  The woman told me that she was 78 years old and that if it were time to die, she was ready.  She was still feeling good and she had decided not to do chemo.  I suggested that she have a going-away party and invite the whole family while she was still feeling good.  She did.  Last Sunday we have a powerful family gathering for a woman who had been raised by a single mother, had taken both her mother and her husband’s mother into their home, at the same time, over a period many years, and had raised three adopted children from infancy.  We told many stories and shed many tears.  We laughed a lot too.   The most inspiring part of the day was that we didn’t only look backward.  We looked ahead because that is the way this woman always lived her life.  She has always lived every challenge with courage and moved into the future with confidence in God.  Now she was willing to move ahead again and her faith and courage was a great inspiration to her family and friends.

“As the disciples of Jesus were proceeding on their journey someone said to Jesus, “I will follow you where you go.”   Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”  And to another Jesus said, “Follow me.”  But he replied, Lord, let me go first to bury my father.”   But Jesus answered him, “Let the dead bury their dead.  But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.  And another said “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home.”  Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and keeps looking back to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”

The kingdom of God is ahead of us, not behind us.  Every movement forward demands that we leave something behind.  We eagerly leave behind things that are unpleasant and burdensome.  A time of sickness or pain is easily left in the past and quickly forgotten.  Sometimes we leave things behind reluctantly because there seems to be something even better ahead of us.  Leaving a beloved school, or house or job for a new one may be a time when we both regret leaving the past behind at the same time that we eagerly embrace the future. When I was sent to study theology in Rome I cried all the way to the airport because I was leaving my first parish assignment and people that I loved dearly, but I was going to Rome, and that was very exciting.  The hardest kind of leaving the past behind happens when we do not know what lies ahead.  All we know is that God is calling us and that we must follow Jesus even when we don’t understand.

In today’s readings the Church asks us to deepen our sense of vocation and mission.  Each of us has been called by Christ and empowered by him to move forward toward the kingdom of God.  Jesus tells us very clearly that those who put their hand to the plow and keep looking back are not fit for the kingdom of God.  Every life is a mystery and every vocation is a challenge.  Moving forward in the journey of our lives always demands faith and courage. 

If we got married we had to give up being single – we couldn’t keep looking back or the marriage wouldn’t work.  No one understands at the beginning the challenges that marriage and family life will bring.

Anyone who has a child knows that having children means giving up the freer life style of the past.  Looking backward will not make a person a good parent.  Putting your hand to the plow and continually looking back is the way to disaster.

Every job is an unfolding mystery.  Every new challenge in life is an opportunity.  Jesus reminds us that only those who welcome an unknown future with courage and trust in God will have a successful life and enter into the kingdom of God.

The image in our first reading is a powerful one.  God told the great prophet Elijah to anoint the farmer Elisha in the vocation of being a prophet and speaking for God.  Elisha is plowing the fields with twelve pairs of oxen and a heavy plow when he hears God calling him to his new vocation.  Elisha is so convinced that God is calling him into the future that he slaughters the twelve oxen, breaks up the plow for fire wood, cooks the oxen meat and gives it to the people to eat.  He will never be able to return to farming again.  Elisha enters the future having left the past behind.  His future as a prophet may still be unclear, but returning to the past as a farmer is now totally impossible.  Anyone who keeps looking backward is unfit for the kingdom of God.

A very courageous woman in this parish is embracing the shortness of her life and her rapidly approaching death from leukemia, not because she wants it, but because it is her life now. Her vocation is to live the weeks that lie ahead well and to embrace death with courage and faith.  God always goes before us.  Jesus always calls us to follow him.  Whether we understand the future or not, Jesus is there and our vocation in life must be to go where he leads us.  Jesus said, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and keeps looking backward is fit for the kingdom of God.”  “Follow Me!”

For the courage to live our vocation well and to move forward with deep trust in God’s faithfulness, we give God thanks and praise.