Sermon Seeds: Along the Road

Sunday, June 29, 2025
Third Sunday after Pentecost| Year C
(Liturgical Color: Green)

Lectionary Citations
2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14 and Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20 • 1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21 and Psalm 16 • Galatians 5:1, 13-25 • Luke 9:51-62
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?z=p&d=62&y=384

Focus Scripture: Luke 9:51-62
Focus Theme: Along the Road
Series: Raise Her Voice: Into the Deep (Click here for the series overview.)

Reflection
By Cheryl A. Lindsay

Following Jesus places demands upon us. Certainly, the Holy One blesses and guides, provides and protects, and redeems and loves. There are benefits to belonging in Christian community. At its best, the community offers a sense of shared identity and inclusion in the kindom. We may find meaningful relationships, support, and encouragement. There are opportunities to serve, receive care, learn, and develop as a person. We rejoice together, weep together, pray together, ponder together, and break bread together. We hold onto the assurance of the Holy One’s commitment to being with us, in our coming and goings, before the foundations of the world, and to the end of the age. We find strength during times of trial, and we gain confidence to lament and question God when nothing seems to make sense.

Yet, we balance the promise and purpose of Christ’s coming that we might have life abundantly with the responsibility and authority delegated by Jesus to make that real for one another. Jesus shows us the way to do that work through his years of ministry, and they also assured us that in this life there would be trials and tribulations. The road is hard; the Christian journey does not always take us on even, paved streets. Our journey may be beset by potholes, barriers, roadblocks, and detours. And, the gospel passage suggests, there may be roads we’re denied entry to entirely or that the cost of entry may be higher than we’re willing to pay.

A public ministry of teaching and healing in Galilee has won Jesus the attention of large numbers of people: many are impressed by the authority evident in both his message and his acts of power, but others are disconcerted by his words and especially by the company he keeps. From a larger band of followers, he has chosen twelve to take a leading role in extending his mission to the whole people of God. Jesus makes a decisive turn; from now on, his destination is Jerusalem (9:51). In a circuitous journey toward Jesus’ exodus, occasional healings continue, but the narrative is dominated by teaching—including many memorable parables—and dialogue. A pattern of alternating audiences displays Jesus’ two primary tasks on the journey. Addressing disciples, often in the company of the crowds (potential disciples) that still flock to Jesus, he furthers the preparation of the apostles and a wider circle of disciples for their role in mission. Indeed, they even have on-the-job training in a second mission tour (10:1–24). Addressing critics and adversaries, Pharisees usually among them, Jesus insistently presses his vision of God’s reign and its expression in communal life. He still seeks to convince but finds unrelenting and vociferous criticism. Radical teaching about such things as status inversion—and its embodiment in practice—will inevitably provoke those who enjoy favorable position in the present social order. Especially as Jesus nears Jerusalem, but at other points en route as well, he will point beyond the present conflict to its future resolution. What does Jesus’ experience of acceptance and rejection among his people say about the character of his messianic vocation and about the meaning and shape of God’s realm? The repeated, disconcerting announcement that God’s Messiah and prophet will meet rejection and death at Jerusalem places the entire journey under an ominous cloud. Nevertheless, God’s purposes continue to drive the story, embracing everything Jesus says and does and everything that is done to him.
John T. Carroll

The irony in this passage presents itself as the continually rejected prophet, Jesus, seemingly discourages or rejects potential disciples for what might seem to be minor or inexplicable reasons. At the same time, there are real cautions in following Jesus. To one person, he advises them of an itinerant ministry. Jesus has no home, and one cannot expect those comforts. To another, Jesus seems impatient and unable to wait for a son to bury his father. While the choice may seem unnecessary and cruel, those types of tests certainly await any of the early disciples. And clearly, for Jesus, nostalgia and sentimentality have no place in the proclamation of good news. This road is hard; others are easier. Jesus wants those who seek him to make a clear and informed choice.

This approach contrasts with the call to the ones that Jesus sought who received the invitation to follow him. At the same time, they make the same choice–to leave behind their former lives to journey along the road with Jesus. How do we, who respond to the call to the joys and costs of Christian discipleship today, understand that same choice before us?

There was a meme circulating on social media during recent days. It suggested a number of different ways to confront the challenges of our times. Some may protest. Others may contact their legislators. Some may donate funds to worthwhile causes. Others will create organizations to meet needs. Some may simply vote their values. Others may decide to run for office.

While the alternatives were helpful, perhaps the strongest part of the message was that everyone had a part to play and it was not the same. Who would assemble a symphony with only violinists or bass players? That would not only reduce the type of music that could be played, it would also limit the artistic expression and interest of the performance. Diversity, in all its forms, including personality type and responses to external conditions, expands the opportunities and possibilities for progress, growth, and transformation. That is part of the reason the reach of Christianity increases so expansively in the early church as it moves from a small segment of a specific religious group to encompass others tangential as well as remote from that group, culture, and identity.

That makes the interaction between Jesus and the Samaritans in this passage particularly curious:

The Samaritan village turns the messengers away, refusing to welcome Jesus because of his intention to go to Jerusalem (lit., “because his face was going to Jerusalem,” 9:53). The narrator neither discloses how the Samaritans know this about Jesus nor explains why the Jerusalem destination is problematic for them. Nevertheless, this brief, enigmatic encounter with Samaria links Jerusalem and rejection of Jesus, thus contributing to a crucial plot development. At the same time, it raises a question for Luke’s audience: What will become of Samaria? Given the history of hostility between Jews and Samaritans, implied in the village’s response to the messengers (knowledge Luke evidently assumes the audience possesses), it is conceivable that rejection will be the final word, that Samaria will never hear the good news of the in-breaking reign of God. Certainly that is what James and John think; indeed, they want to help ensure that outcome, volunteering to petition heaven for a response—destruction by fire—like that summoned by the word of Elijah, also in Samaria (v. 54, echoing 2 Kgs 1:10–12). Before the next chapter is over, however, Jesus will have told a parable in which a Samaritan exemplifies life-giving Torah observance (Luke 10:30–35), a surprising twist after initial rejection by this Samaritan village, and one that builds suspense for the outcome of a future mission to Samaria (Acts 1:8; 8:4–25). Jesus anticipates a more favorable future for the people of Samaria by enforcing restraint on the rebuffed disciples. The Samaritan village has refused them hospitality; now Jesus adds his own reproach, refusing to endorse the desire of James and John for retaliation, and they proceed to another village (Luke 9:55–56). Despite the special privilege accorded to the sons of Zebedee, who together with Peter have witnessed the miracle of restored life and a mountaintop disclosure from heaven of Jesus’ identity (8:51; 9:28), their perceptions and thinking are not attuned to their Lord’s (cf. Jesus’ correction of John in 9:49–50). The formation of the apostles for leadership has a long way—a journey to Jerusalem and significant further events there—to go.
John T. Carroll

Even for Jesus and the first disciples, diversity, equity, and inclusion required ongoing work–deliberate action and intention–to manifest the goals of restoration and harmony established at Creation. It is another hard road to travel, but the destination will be evident at the time of the Ascension when Luke recounts the Acts version of the Great Commission. Jesus informs the disciples that they will be his witnesses in named places—Jerusalem (a persistent destination), Judea (the surrounding region), and Samaria (seemingly hostile territory). Jesus also explicitly rejects any limitations on the commission as he states the witness will extend to the ends of the earth. No one, for any reason or relationship, will be excluded from this ministry, and this is the road the disciples, then and now, must travel and sometimes pave.

Along the road.

Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent
The 33rd General Synod adopted a Resolution to Recognize the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). As part of its implementation, Sermon and Weekly Seeds offers Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent related to the season or overall theme for additional consideration in sermon preparation and for individual and congregational study.
“Mother to Son”
By Langston Hughes
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

For Further Reflection
“Sometimes the most scenic roads in life are the detours you didn’t mean to take.” ― Angela N. Blount
“Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy.
There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.” ―Charlotte Eriksson
“Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.” ― Erol Ozan

Works Cited
Carroll, John T. Luke. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012.

Suggested Congregational Response to the Reflection
During this series, Raise Her Voice: Into the Deep, in the season after Pentecost, we invite the local church to listen to Spirit speaking among us by developing the practices of testimony and exhortation. In testimony, one recounts how the Holy One has been present, moved, and guided in the past. In exhortation, one shares discernment based on what Spirit is still speaking to the church today. This may be done during worship as an immediate response to proclamation or in another format (i.e. blog posts, short videos on social media).

Worship Ways Liturgical Resources
https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/after-pentecost-3c-june-29/

The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves a local church pastor, public theologian, and worship scholar-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities. You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.

A Bible study version of this reflection is at Weekly Seeds.