Note: I gave the following guest sermon last Sunday at Holy Trinity Anglican Church here in Broomfield.
Good morning, everyone! G-d’s peace be with you.
For those of you who I haven’t met, my name is Marrton Dormish. I’m a local minister and ministry partner of Holy Trinity and it’s an honor to offer today’s homily and to share in a small way in the life of this special community of faith.
I’d like to begin by reminding us that we’re meeting this morning on the treaty-recognized homelands of the Arapaho, the Cheyenne and the Ute nations. They lived in and stewarded these lands for many generations before they were forcibly displaced from this area during and after the Pikes Peak Gold Rush. In fact we can trace back to that time the names of nearby towns like Gold Hill and Golden and our NBA franchise, the Denver Nuggets. Members of the Hinono’eiteen, more commonly known as the Arapaho, likely stayed in this very area on their travels to and from larger camps in what are now Denver and Boulder, which the Arapaho call “the Place Where it is Steep.” The trails they followed, in fact, became stagecoach routes, including one known as the Overland Trail or the Cherokee Trail, and later became larger byways, including the road right over there which we know as Highway 287 or Wadsworth.
This story is important to me because as some of you may know, I help lead the Broomfield Sister Cities partnership with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma. And these things are important for us all to know and remember and to act upon in a good way, because we are part of this story.
Our lectionary readings for today, trace another long history, enshrined in the Scriptures that seem to me to culminate in a question: “What does it look like to follow G-d? And more specifically, what does it look like to follow G-d in the way of Jesus?”
I think it’s particularly appropriate for us to be asking these questions today, because our foremost national holiday is coming up later this week, and in light of that holiday and all that is going on in the world around us, this is a good time for some self-reflection.
May the Spirit of Life who inspired these texts interrogate us in our 21st century context, just as they have interrogated people of many tribes and nations and cultures and backgrounds throughout history, and may these passages do their work in us. Amen.
Let’s start with the Hebrew Scriptures. If we’re familiar at all with the story of Elijah, we know him best perhaps for his prophetic duel with 450 prophets of Baal. Elijah challenges them and their god of fire to consume a prepared sacrifice of two bulls. They pray their loud prayers and cut themselves to demonstrate their devotion and need, all while Elijah basically yawned, and then when their god didn’t show up, Elijah took his turn. He had buckets of water poured on the bulls until the water flowed down the altar and then he prayed to G-d and G-d consumed the bulls with a great ball of fire. That’s the same Elijah we encounter in 2 Kings, at the culmination of his ministry, where he does mundane things like part the waters of the Jordan River and then is taken up to Heaven by chariots of fire!
And in the companion 1 Kings passage for today’s lectionary, Elijah follows G-d’s command to go find this guy named Elisha who will succeed him as the foremost prophet of Israel. So he goes and finds this young farmer, plowing what is presumably a big field, directing the twelfth of twelve sets of oxen. The number twelve is symbolic here for echoing the number of the tribes of Israel, and the fact that Elisha is perhaps the youngest of the 12 plowing farmers, also echoes the story of King David, who authored our reading from the Psalms today.
So Elijah throws his mantle over Elisha. Knowing what this symbolic gesture means and that it’s akin to a medieval lord dubbing a peasant a knight, “I dub thee, Elisha, my servant,” Elisha immediately responds by leaving the oxen and running after Elijah. “Just let me kiss my folks goodbye and then I’ll follow you,” he says, and Elisha takes his yoke and oxen and offers them as a sacrifice in honor of his new G-d-given vocation, from farmer to prophet. Then Elisha throws a feast, presumably for his family and all the other farmers who had just witnessed this astounding event. And then Elijah and Elisha leave and go on their way, two men on a mission from G-d.
In both Psalm 77, by Asaph the worship leader of David and Paslm 16, a song of David himself, the quintessential king of Israel, they point to total reliance on and hope in G-d as their refuge who will not abandon them, physically or otherwise in the midst of all the challenges that they face, and David especially contrasts that faith and hope with the folly of those who pursue idols and their bloody cups and empty promises. Again, there’s perhaps a reciprocal echo here of passages like the one from 1 Kings and the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal.
As for our lectionary reading from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, a portion of it, in fact, was drilled into me in college — so that I would avoid sinful behaviors and instead to bear the fruits of the Spirit. But what wasn’t emphasized to me so much back then, was precisely why and how it fit into the call to follow Jesus — namely, that it was for freedom that Christ has set us free, from slavery to the ways and attitudes and various gospels of the world. Yes, that call applies to each of Paul’s readers individually, but the primary context of his words is for all of them corporately, as in, the community of faith in Galatia. Paul says become “slaves to one another,” and lest they take that as an offhand endorsement of Roman-Empire-style slavery, he explains what he means by that by echoing the Book of Leviticus, “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'” Of course, we also know the recipients of Paul’s letter would have known that verse is quoted and elevated as one of the Great Commandments by Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels and as highlighted in the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
So where do our lectionary readings lead us? I would say, toward the conclusion that this calling to follow G-d, embodied in the Hebrew Scriptures by Elijah and Elisha and David, and again in Galatians, culminates in the call to follow G-d in the way of Jesus the Christ, as recorded in the Gospel according to Luke.
Luke chapter 9 is a particularly action-packed chapter that begins with Jesus sending out his chosen Twelve disciples with authority to cast out demons and cure diseases and preach the kingdom of G-d. When word of Jesus and his disciples and their exploits reaches the regional ruling tetrarch Herod, he is puzzled and wonders if perhaps Elijah has re-appeared or another prophet has risen from the dead and he tried to see him. But many other people heard about Jesus, too, and they gathered in multitudes near Bethsaida by the Sea of Galilee to follow him. And he healed many of sicknesses and taught about the kingdom of G-d. When they had gone all day without food, Jesus has an extraordinary exchange with his disciples that ends with him multiplying five loaves of bread and two fish to feed them all, which included at least 5,000 men. This wonder performed by Jesus echoes Scriptural census counts of the number of Israel’s fighting men as well as the royal characteristics of Someone who feeds and provides for the people.
After they all eat and are satisfied, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” And again Elijah’s name comes up in the crowd’s speculation. Then Jesus asks, “What about you, disciples, what do you say?” And Peter declares, “You are the Christ of G-d.”
The connotations of that title “Christ,” or the “anointed one” are many, and echo that which is done to appoint Hebrew prophets, priests and kings. The more immediate context tied to this title of “Christ” also had to do with the rule of the Maccabees several generations before the time of Jesus and the expectations around the coming of One who would lead a triumphal, militaristic, nation-building and -restoring effort to make Israel great again.
Jesus quashes that expectation right away, “The Son of Man must suffer and be betrayed and killed and raised on the third day,” but his followers and the multitudes and the rulers of the people alike are slow to take that in. Jesus expounds, “Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” And to punctuate his words, Jesus takes Peter and James and John up on a nearby mountain and pulls back the curtain so to speak. They suddenly witness his appearance being drastically altered, he’s clothed in dazzling white, and two men appear and talk with him. Somehow the three fearful disciples identified those men as Moses and Elijah. There is Elijah again!
After the four of them come down from this mountaintop experience, Jesus casts out a demon from a child. But the disciples end up arguing about who is the greatest among them, and so Jesus brings a child to them to say, “For he who is least among you will be great.”
…And then, Luke suggests the time comes for Jesus to “be lifted up,” an oblique reference to Jesus’ coming crucifixion, perhaps because the act of crucifixion itself was so horrible that it was difficult to acknowledge that the Christ of G-d suffered in that way. So here we are at the time when Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem, knowing that, like all the other prophets, he is going to suffer there. I think perhaps Jesus knew this in a similar way to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., knew he was likely to be assassinated for his preaching and teaching and marching and work for Civil Rights and opposition to racism, economic exploitation and militarism.
So on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus sends out messengers ahead of him. Again the royal implications of this act are clear. That’s what kings do. And he and his disciples travel through a particular Samaritan village, but the people there don’t welcome him.
The key cultural and religious dynamic here that’s not always apparent to us is this — the Samaritans weren’t then considered to be good people who help wounded victims on the side of the road, like we do today because of Jesus’ famous parable. On the contrary, Samaritans were considered to be half-breeds and traitors to the true faith. You see, after Israel was divided into two kingdoms, their ancestors aligned with the Kingdom of Israel as opposed to the Kingdom of Judah, and after they were forced into exile in Assyria, many of them intermarried with Assyrians. Their faith in G-d was considered to be diluted and syncretistic at best, not least because it was centered on Mount Gerizim and not properly at the temple in Jerusalem.
So James and John, fresh off their mission to preach and heal and cast out demons and fresh off seeing Jesus interact with Elijah and Moses and be transfigured on the mountain, they figure now is the time for things to go down. The Samaritans seem to them like the prophets of Baal, so, perhaps eager to follow G-d via Elijah’s example, and perhaps to prove their own worthiness and greatness, they ask Jesus, “Shall we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” Considering the militaristic messianic expectations they must have grown up with, it’s not so far-fetched for them to have interpreted their present moment in that way.
The trouble is, that’s pretty much the antithesis of Jesus’ and their own ministry to heal and restore and welcome, and so Jesus rebukes them. The King James and New King James Versions add here Jesus saying, “The Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”
As New Testament commentator Theodore Jennings has said, “Jesus approaches Jerusalem…surrounded by a multitude of disreputable followers who chant freedom songs and enact a symbolic coup [that] indicates Jesus’ claim to dominion over Jerusalem, over Judah, over Israel, over the earth itself, and is a challenge to every pretension to earthly rule. He, and not they, have the divine right to rule. His empire of solidarity and generosity marches against the citadel of earthly rule and enacts its overthrow. Those who observe this action cannot but know that Jesus is throwing down the gauntlet. They must either accept his claim or execute him as a rebel — there will be no room for compromise.”
As Jesus and his retinue continue on their way to another village, the news gets out, and people are gathering, and here Luke records three brief dialogues Jesus has with people along the way, about what it looks like to follow him:
“I will follow you wherever you go,” says one, and Jesus responds, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
You want to follow me, wherever I go? Well, I don’t have a home. I have no belongings. My disciples and I have no idea where we’re staying tonight or what we’re going to eat. Yes, I’m the king you seek, but I bring a new kind of kingdom that brings good news to the poor and recovery of sight to the blind, the brings a jubilee of debts forgiven and relationships restored and power structures upended. Yes, I’m leading a revolution, but I do not command my followers to undertake a bloodbath of violence on my behalf. I’m heading to Jerusalem to suffer and be rejected and to die and to shed my own blood. I’m heading to Jerusalem to pronounce judgment and woe on it for its hypocrisy and oppression of the weak and neglect of justice and mercy.
The rulers of this world lord it over others. They seek and hoard all that which can be found. They accumulate wealth and power and prestige and luxuries and resorts and passive income. They praise themselves and hold grudges and retaliate against their enemies. They flaunt their authority and store up treasures for themselves and care little for others unless they have the right credentials or complexions or creeds.
Not Jesus, the true lord. He welcomes and serves the people no matter where they’re from. At the same time, he relies of the hospitality of others. He casts a line into the water to catch a fish to pay his taxes. He says, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor.” He says “Love your neighbor as yourself.” He says, “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.”
On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus calls another man, “Follow me.” When the man replies, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father,” Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of G-d.”
Don’t spend your time on things that are passing away. Now is the time, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe the good news. There’s no time to lose. When traditional family ties keep you from following me, leave them behind. I’m creating a new family of those who put their trust in me and my way, and the forgotten, discarded, weak and poor find it easier to join this family than the rich and powerful.
Yet another man says to Jesus, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus responds, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of G-d.”
Remember Elisha? Be like him who received his call and vocation to follow and “repented” or turned away from his life as a farmer and took tangible steps so as not to turn back. He sacrificed the very plow and ox team that facilitated his old life. Because he believed everything had changed.
What does it look like to follow G-d? What does it look like to follow G-d in the way of Jesus?
It means believing that in and through Jesus everything has changed in this world and in the world which is to come. It means setting aside the ways of the world and rejecting the idols we make from the otherwise neutral human creations, impulses and needs of our lives and structures.
As I have wrestled with the lectionary this week, it has led me to examine what I have allowed to become an idol in my own life, and what I have allowed to turn my hand from the plow, so to speak, of following G-d in the way of Jesus. My idols include “financial security” and “the respectability of family and work obligations” and “sports fandom” and too many moments of “not giving a rip.” All too often, I allow these idols to demand my allegiance and time and tie up my life and resources and isolate me and keep me from following Jesus.
What might your idols be?…
What might our idols as a city be? Financial sustainability? The setting of protective boundaries around our neighborhoods? The primacy of property and profit over the well-being of vulnerable people? The accumulation of belongings for ourselves and our families and our indifference while others made in the image of G-d suffer? Our preferential option for the wealthy? Our assent to fear, scarcity and provincialism?
What might our idols as a nation be? Might one be our tendency to applaud everything done by those we identify with and to decry everything done by those we do not identify with? Where we excuse the destruction of hospitals in one territory, while denouncing the destruction of a hospital in another? Where we dismiss the targeting of children and of hungry people lining up for food in one place, while vilifying the targeting of non-violent protesters asking for the release of their captive relatives in another?
Might one of our idols be our patriotic belief that we are always the “good guys”? Or might it be time to acknowledge that our history and our continued way in the world reveal that both are littered with heretical ideas like the doctrine of Christian discovery, slavery, racist xenophobia, and manifest destiny as God-ordained institutions? We cherish founding documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, for example, which holds “these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…” But do we even know that the very same document refers to the Indigenous people of this continent, who had already been violently displaced by and lived on the frontiers of the Thirteen Colonies, as “merciless Indian savages”? Might one of our idols be invoking the name of G-d and the name of Christ to advance such unabashedly anti-Christ policies and practices both here and abroad?
Might our idol be The Market, perhaps, for which we have developed extensive financial lectionaries and liturgies and forecasts that shape our everyday lives and policies and values? Because remember Jesus said we cannot serve both G-d and mammon…
Both Paul and Luke exhort us, as people who have self-identified as Christ-followers, to live in a visibly and tangibly different way. Because the world is watching and so many are in great and terrible need.
What is it that makes us different from others who don’t follow Jesus? Is there anything that’s truly different about us? Are we like Jesus in the way we live and in our love for our neighbors? Or are we more like the misguided James and John who thought following G-d meant destroying a village of people who believed differently than they do? Does the world and do people around us know us by our love? Or by something else?
What does it look like for us to follow G-d in the way of Jesus, today, here at Holy Trinity? Here in Broomfield? Here in the United States of America in 2025?
I’d like to close with a blessing from Grace Church Ealing in the U.K.:
May God bless us with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships
So that we may live from deep within our hearts.
May God bless us with anger
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of God’s creations
So that we may work for justice, freedom, and peace.
May God bless us with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejections, hunger, and war,
So that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless us with just enough foolishness
To believe that we can make a difference in the world,
So that we can do what others claim cannot be done:
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and all our neighbors who are in need.
Amen.
