Our Homeless Rabbi--July 1, 2025

Our Homeless Rabbi--July 1, 2025

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." (Luke 9:57-58)

If we think that following Jesus will put us on the fast track to a McMansion, Jesus has some bad news for us.  If we think that being a Christian is a means to getting a predictable and comfortable life without any surprises or crises, we should be prepared for some disappointment.  And if our primary reason for being disciples of Jesus is to help us pursue that cookie-cutter life with the spouse, 2.5 kids, white picket fence, and a dog... well, it may be a sign we haven't been listening to Jesus at all.

Jesus isn't opposed to families, houses, or routines--it's just that he tells us up front that following him will probably look more like going on a journey and less like living in a gated community than we might have wished.  And the reason for that is Jesus himself--if we are following him, then we'll end up traveling light, meeting new people, crossing boundaries, and spending our energy on build other people up rather than constructing ever-bigger houses to keep us withdrawn from our neighbors. In other words, we'll go where he goes and do what he does... so we shouldn't be surprised that Jesus tells a would-be follower that would mean letting go of the cookie-cutter life.  If Jesus "has nowhere to lay his head," then we should expect his circle of disciples to be as homeless as their rabbi.

These words from Luke's Gospel, which many people heard in worship this past Sunday, keep us from seeing Jesus as just our ticket to a comfortable, "successful" life.  Jesus turns that claim upside-down.  When someone comes to Jesus pledging to follow him wherever he does, you get the sense he wants to ride Jesus' coattails into glory, success, and prestige.  Jesus' own inner circle sometimes wrestle with the same temptation, too, of course--there's that famous story of James and John trying to weasel their way into getting the spots at Jesus' left and right hand when he comes in his glory, after all, only for Jesus to insist that following him will mean the way of the cross, not the way of comfort.

We need to be clear about this because in an awful lot of what passes for Respectable Religion, we treat Jesus as a means to an end: believe in Jesus so that your finances will be better, your family more stable, and your kids will make the honor roll.  Or we assume that Jesus' goal with us is just to help us get our lives into a comfortable routine and make us into fine upstanding citizens, rather than to be a part of his daring movement in the world to welcome in outcasts, humble the proud, and rearrange our priorities.  In other words, quite often, we treat Jesus as merely a good luck charm to help power us along on our quest to get what we want, rather than to surrender our wish-lists and to seek what Jesus wants... for all of us.

And what Jesus wants for all of us is not reducible to a bigger house, greener lawn, and new cars in the garage.  In fact, it's because Jesus' mission takes him to the margins, among the people who suffer, who struggle with sickness, who are outcast, and who are without homes of their own that Jesus calls us to be homeless along with him.  Jesus is always picking up and going to some new place--a new town where he's never been, or across the sea to the far side where the outsider Gentiles live, or among the people who are so easily overlooked by everybody else around.  So if we want to be his followers, we shouldn't be surprised that he gives a warning that even though "foxes have holes and birds have nests," he doesn't have a place to call his own.  The cost of going into the midst of the most vulnerable people and the folks on the edges of the community is that we can't stay forever safely inside the controlled environments of our houses like they are castles to keep us safe from the outside world.  

If we find ourselves uncomfortable with Jesus' response to this would-be follower in the Gospel passage, it's worth asking ourselves what we think Jesus has come for.  A lot of pop Christianity (and virtually all of the health-and-wealth prosperity gospel messaging of televangelists) sells some version of the faith that says basically, "Jesus has come to cater to MY wishes and to make life more comfortable as a reward for people who sign up to be in his club." By contrast, Jesus himself sees that he has come to bring abundant life all around, which means in particular going to those who are stepped on, left out, hurting, or lost.  "It's not the well who need a physician," Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospels, "but rather the sick--I have come to seek and save the lost." And to do that, Jesus will have to go to the places where the sick, the suffering, and the sinful are--to meet them where they are--and restore them to life. If we want to follow Jesus, we can't stay sequestered inside our perfectly manicured yards and expertly curated comfort zones. We will have to go where he goes, in order to be among the people whom he seeks, in order to bring to life all the people waiting to be lifted up and made whole.  So it's not that Jesus is just trying to make us suffer or prove our dedication by giving up our comfortable lives--it's simply a matter of being where Jesus is.  He is the one leading us ever onward; the real question is whether we actually want to be where he is, or whether we just want to use Jesus as a means to keeping the comfortable arrangements we may find ourselves in.

I'm not saying you have to sell your house or else you're going to hell.  But I do think that we may need to re-evaluate whether we have been trying to use our faith merely as a means of shoring up the stability of our lives and routines and households, rather than seeing faith as an adventure into the unknown, for the sake of those Jesus is leading us to meet.

So, today, dare we ask where Jesus is really leading us today?  Dare we follow in the footsteps of our homeless rabbi?

Let's dare indeed.

Lord Jesus, take us by the hand and lead us where you will.