Back in the summer of 2006 I knew absolutely nothing about Scotland except for a few common (and mostly untrue) stereotypes. I was immersed in my pastoral work, and if I had any plans for the future, Scotland did not feature in them. A year later I landed in Aberdeen, leaving behind everything I’d known, and facing the unknown. Keeping an open mind and being ready for whatever would come my way was my only plan for the immediate future. How did I land in such a pickle? Well, I hate using overly-enthusiastic religious jargon, but I truly don’t have any better explanation than this: God sent me here. Oh dear, it sounds like the story of Moses; or more precisely like one of the plagues that struck Egypt… Anyway, following God’s call I landed in Scotland, and ever since then it’s been one of the happiest times in my life.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus challenges three different people who either want to be his followers or who are called by Jesus to follow him. We may be tempted to assume that those three individuals were somehow rebuked by Jesus, as he seems to criticise their priorities including ‘leave the dead to bury their dead’ and ‘no one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’ We may assume either that they were rejected by Jesus or that they turned down his call. In fact, the gospel doesn’t go on to say anything about the final decisions of those individuals. What the gospel does say is that Jesus tries to correct those people’s views and attitudes. Whether or not the attempt is successful is quite another matter. The decisions are theirs, and theirs alone. And those decisions don’t have to be made on the spot. If you want to take your faith seriously, it requires serious consideration, because it has serious consequences for your life and it can lead to having to make difficult choices. Unchallenged, we tend to sink into a kind of spiritual dumbness and gradually, imperceptibly we can practically abandon the faith. When we see churches emptying, that’s not caused by any sort of social or moral revolution: it’s a process of falling-off of the faith; the faith that doesn’t mean anything anymore to someone.
Today’s gospel, at the beginning, tells a story involving two close followers of Christ, the brothers James and John. Driven by narrow nationalistic and religious views, they are ready to burn down a Samaritan village that denied them an overnight stay because they were Jews on their way to Jerusalem and the Temple. Perceived as detested foreigners and unwanted strangers, and thrown out of the village, James and John invoke God and in his Name they want to avenge the deliberate insult. Jesus stops them. This is not the kind of religious fervour he wants from his followers. The only religious zeal that Jesus wants from you and from me is the one aimed at ourselves, not at others. Each one of us is called to recognise Jesus’ voice deep in our hearts, to listen to it intently, and to do whatever he calls us to do. Jesus wants you and me to trust him wholeheartedly, whether this involves making difficult resolutions to reconcile with long-lasting opponents, or to forgive those who have hurt us, or to pay a visit to an unpleasant relative. Or, as it was in my case, back in the fateful summer of 2006, to go to a distant land called Scotland. If you wonder what it is that you are being called to do, think about those people and those situations that you don’t want to deal with – they are most certainly your calls to action.