Sunday, June 26, 2016 | 8:00 a.m.

Setting One’s Face

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 77
Luke 9:51–62

I have decided to stick with love.
Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

On the evening of June 12, the same day that began with news of the horrific mass shooting in Orlando, the Tony Awards ceremony was held. That evening, when Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of Hamilton, received his award for Best Original Score, he offered a sonnet rather than a traditional acceptance speech. These were some of his words:

We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger.
We rise and fall and light from dying embers,
remembrances that hope and love last longer
and love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love
cannot be killed or swept aside.

It was an emotional and impassioned moment. It was a proclamation that love is stronger than hate.

In the middle of that same week, Broadway singers and actors and some of their family members gathered at Avatar Studios in New York to produce a recording. All of them came together to sing the Burt Bacharach/Hal David song “What the World Needs Now”: “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.” The proceeds from that recording will go entirely to the LGBTQ Center in Orlando. In the video that accompanied that production, several of the participants made preliminary remarks. There was a refrain that ended their remarks. Several times, various participants said, “Love must prevail. Love must prevail.”

Love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside. Love must prevail.

And then, in the same week, David Brooks wrote an article about his visits to depressed areas of this country. He was struck by how everywhere he went, in the worst of economic situations, there were always healers in those places, people who were helping and healing. He wrote, “The social fabric is tearing across this country, but everywhere it seems healers are rising up to repair their small piece of it. They are going into hollow places and creating community, building intimate relationships that change lives one by one” (David Brooks, “A Nation of Healers,” New York Times, 21 June 2016).

Love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside. Love must prevail. Healers rising up to repair, changing lives one by one.

Over the past several months and even years, we have been pummeled by the news of tragic events, events of all sorts of violence. That news is in addition to the ongoing news of wars. Those events have caused real pain in real lives, and in the rest of us they have caused fear and sadness, discouragement, times when all we want to do is escape. We throw up our hands in confusion. We put on a good face. But I think we are increasingly suffering from external stress, and I’d venture to say that even those of us far away from these events are starting to experience subtle symptoms of post traumatic stress syndrome. I find myself hesitant when I enter a public restroom and a little worried about going to places where there are huge crowds. I never used to be like that. And then there is another kind of news like Friday morning’s news about Britain’s vote to exit the European Union. Our stock markets plummeting. Verses from a psalm came to mind Friday morning: “The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter” and yet “ the God of Jacob is our refuge.”

Lin-Manuel Miranda proclaims “love is stronger than hate.” A host of Broadway actors and singers produce a recording and proclaim that, indeed, what the world needs now is love. David Brooks sees people providing hope and healing in the midst of the most depressing circumstances. Could it be that we are at a turning point? Could we hope for as much?

In C.S. Lewis’ beloved story The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, several of the characters encourage each other with reports that Aslan, the great lion and the true ruler of oppressed Narnia, has reappeared to fight the evil witch. Their words of encouragement to each other are that “Aslan is on the move.” And in today’s verses from Luke, Jesus is on the move. He is on the move after having heard the call that it was time, time for him to set his face to Jerusalem, to that final portion of his mission. It was a turning point, a time when his face was set even more resolutely. Could we hope that we are at a turning point? That Jesus is still on the move and that we are more resolutely on the move with him?

I hope so.

But frankly, the ending of this passage in Luke is discouraging to me. The ending is the part we are most familiar with. Enthusiastic disciples and people along the way want to follow Jesus, and he replies three times with discouraging remarks. One of the commentators on Luke calls him Cranky Jesus in this passage. His replies sound cranky. They are like rebuffs to those who tell him they want to follow him, to be on the move with him. To one, he says something like, “Don’t think this journey is a piece of cake, because it’s not”: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” So, in other words, you’d better think twice about this.

Another would-be follower of Jesus responded to Jesus’ invitation to follow him with an enthusiastic yes, but also with a request that he first go back and bury his father. That would have been a reasonable request and, in Jesus’ day, a time-honored duty. Jesus’ reply is off-putting: “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” And then finally another would-be follower asks for time to go home and say good-bye to his family before he starts following Jesus. Sounds reasonable to me. Reminds me of the good-bye parties we gave our kids when they set off to their first jobs or went off somewhere for a big endeavor. But Jesus replies with “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

To me, these are discouraging words. I know the message is that this journey isn’t a piece of cake. I know that following Jesus supersedes all other demands in our lives. I know it is the highest calling. And I get discouraged by these words because I know how much my family relationships mean to me and I know how timid I am about giving up everything for Jesus. And I know the gap that exists between my being “all in” for Jesus and yet “all in” for a lot of other things too.

It’s the first part of the story that I’ve been able to grab onto—the description of Jesus “setting his face” toward Jerusalem. I’ve been thinking about what I have my face “set toward.” In what direction am I faced, if not all of the time then most of the time? The term “setting one’s face” is a term to denote determination and single-mindedness. What are we all called to set our face toward in this particular time in history as followers of this one on the move?

It’s love. Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem out of his single-minded love for God. That’s why Jesus was so single-minded in continuing on toward Jerusalem. Love for God and love for God’s people. When the disciples went ahead of him and found that the people in the Samaritan village would not welcome Jesus, they came back to Jesus and asked him, “Do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” They wanted to incinerate Samaria, seek retribution. Jesus would have none of it. He rebuked them. He had his face set toward something else.

Those Samaritans were people with different beliefs and different holy sites; you can make your own comparisons for today. Instead of drawing a line and dismissing these Samaritans, bringing down fire on them, Jesus led his disciples in a different direction. Keep going. Don’t get distracted by your tendency to even the score or incinerate people who are different or who disagree. Keep your faces set toward the mission—love—even when it doesn’t make sense.

Former President Jimmy Carter seems to be someone who has set his face single-mindedly toward Jesus and love. During his cancer, when interviewed, what came out was his gratitude and joy and his single-mindedness. What was he going to do? Continue to teach Sunday school every week. I heard him recently interviewed about the work of the Carter Center and their mission—almost completely successful—of eradicating the deadly guinea worm in areas of Africa with slow, steady, progress—having his face set—toward love and God’s people and their well-being. And just this week, he was quoted in a speech he made to open a forum of human rights workers. It was a forum hosted by the Carter Center in Atlanta and was attended by more than sixty global activists. He said that the world is at a turning point in history and governments must choose policies of peace and human rights over war and human suffering. In other words, governments must set their faces toward love too and the well-being of people rather than toward the destruction of people. Carter said, “What is needed now, more than ever, is leadership that steers us away from fear and fosters greater confidence in the inherent goodness and ingenuity of humanity. “What the world needs now is love, sweet love.

Over the long haul of Christian discipleship, all of us make mistakes. Our formation takes place slowly. I’ve been convinced that week in and week out we might not be able to quantify what happens to us because of this sermon or that sermon, or because of this class or that class at church, but over the long haul of trying as best we can to follow Jesus, we make mistakes, we fall away, but if we stick to it, we are slowly and surely being formed. Christian formation takes place, and our faces become more and more firmly set toward love, toward a way of being theologian David Lose describes: “To eschew violence, to embrace suffering for the sake of another, to refuse comfort, privilege, status for the sake of fidelity to God’s vision and mission.” It is toward that kind of living that we can set our face. These things are countercultural and may even run contrary to the natural human instincts for preservation, safety, and comfort (David Lose, Feasting on the Word, Year C). Our faces are continually turned and more able to stay set toward unity and reconciliation and justice and to stand with those who suffer.

Jesus is on the move, I think. Still on the move. If we look for it and part the heavy curtains of news of violence and mean words and fear, we can see it. And we are on the move, too. Because we know, along with so many others, that love is love is love is love and cannot be killed or swept aside. We know that what the world needs now and always has is love, sweet love, and we can be those people, if we keep our faces set in the right direction, those people David Brooks ran into, people who are helping and healing and repairing our small place in the world. It’s not an easy calling. It takes more than we can sometimes muster. Sometimes it makes us feel like there is no place to lay our heads. But we keep turning our faces—setting our faces in the direction of love. Over and over and over again, we set our faces in one direction. Amen.