Facing the Way Forward

Facing the Way Forward

February 22, 2026

Guest Minister: Rev. Karl Jones

Readings: Luke 9:51-62

Download a printable PDF of this sermon here.

In preparing today’s message, I have been thinking about some of the challenges facing the world and I have been thinking about each of you.  There are a lot of challenges.  There are more than a few of you.  I will try to be brief.

There is much that we can—and someone should—address in our world.  I will touch on just some of those things. Species extinction.  Global warming.  Political polarization.  Protection of the marginalized.  Raising a responsible, thoughtful next generation. The list seems endless.

Then there are tasks you take on collectively and individually: feeding those seeking support, seeing and journeying with those who are in grief, standing beside the marginalized, creating works of beauty, fostering conversation across difference. This list is much shorter than it could be.

Finally, there are all the places you can be about any sense of call you may have.  You may see a clear future and be on fire to make it happen.  You may be so daunted by the work at hand that you are virtually paralyzed.  You may struggle to make sense of those voices opposed to your vision.  You may have hit a point where the need used to be clear but seems to have morphed into something yet to be identified.  You may feel underutilized, knowing you are called to something but not sure just what or how.  You may be exhausted.  You may feel like you could use a gentle nudge to get yourself out of your understandable focus on simply addressing day-to-day concerns.

Wherever you are at with regards to having a sense of call and living it out, welcome!

Let’s look at the situation Jesus finds himself in here in the passage you just heard.  Just in the eighth and ninth chapters of Luke, Jesus has taught, he has calmed a storm, he has healed several people, he has fed five thousand—all this and more.  And now, after all of that, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.  Or you could say he adopts an attitude of grim determination and sets out on a difficult and threatening path.  Did he know it was going to be difficult?  Well, not much earlier he had said that he was going to be betrayed into human hands so apparently, he did.

That was his life, uniquely his, and it was, of course, different from those of his followers and from our situation in this time.

I’ve been thinking of my own journey.  While it has not always been in response to a call, at times, it has been.

When I was in my 20s, I got it in my head that I should work with a nonprofit dedicated to ending world hunger that was based out of San Francisco. I was living in Minneapolis at the time. I had a living that I was satisfied with. I was doing work that I had dreamed of doing. After giving the organization a call to say I was planning on coming out, I quit my job and I put all my stuff in storage, and I got on a bus.  I arrived and they let me know that they were in the middle of a hiring freeze.  Let me back up and stress that I arrived knowing no one, with very little, with no place to stay, and no job.

I won’t go into all the details of what happened next, but let’s just say it turned out. It didn’t turn out because I had a great plan and had mapped out every step. It turned out—at least in part—because I was determined to live into the call I felt I must respond to and there was no turning back.

That may sound like an isolated instance but, at least in my life, that kind of thing has happened several times.

I’m guessing the question of what you feel called to has come up in recent months in response to the presence of ICE in our community and their conduct in going about their work.

To put it in religious terms, how do we go about loving our neighbor as ourselves in this situation?  I would also add that it brings up the question: How do we love our enemies?

In the community, some have responded with whistles and video-taping. and singing and seeking out ways to support struggling businesses.  Members of this church have marched and boxed up food and protested in front of the Whipple Building.  Fellow ministers protested at the airport and at least one valued colleague was arrested.

As I mentioned at the start, there are a few problems in our world; responding to aggressive, armed and masked agents in our city is just one.  If you are anything like me, this may well be a confusing time. There’s so much going on.

In my mind, much of our faith is largely about discovering our sense of unique call and pursuing it.  I don’t know about you, but when I come to church, I come to be part of this community. In part, I come because I want to be called to something more than myself and because I want to be sustained in that call.  We each find our call.  The question becomes: Are we doing what we feel called to do, what we feel equipped to do, what we have the resources to do?

To return to today’s passage, Jesus turns his face toward Jerusalem and urges others to follow.  That would seem to the end of it—a unique turning point, after which there was no going back. And perhaps it was.  But it was not the only instance found in this gospel.  Numerous times Luke writes that Jesus turned toward Jerusalem or words to that effect.  It wasn’t one and done.

Once we have committed to our sense of call and are on the journey, there is perhaps a temptation to judge and even consider stopping those who don’t share that vision. We find that kind of tension in the verses we just heard.

As soon as he turned his face and was on his way, Jesus met up with those who did not see things as he did—they objected to his choice to turn his face toward Jerusalem.  While those who accompanied him wondered if they should punish the Samaritans—consistent with other instances in the biblical tradition— Jesus rebuked them for the suggestion and moved on and so did they.

Jesus knew that this path he had chosen could end his life.  Though his followers weren’t in the same position and likely didn’t view their future as Jesus saw his, clearly, they knew that this was where they needed to be.  Though his disciples and followers were along for much of the journey, their call and their response to that call were not exactly his.

Our situation is not that of Jesus or of his followers.   But, if we are to be followers of Jesus in our own time and in our own way, we too may find ourselves needing to make a way forward. Life has no set instructions. In life the rules are unclear, the players are sometimes unclear.  In actual, real life, we make our own way. In actual, real life, even when we “win” it’s oftentimes unclear what’s next.

We each have our own sense of what most urgently needs to be addressed, and perhaps a sense of how to address it.  Thankfully, while we will not address every challenge we face, others may step forward when we cannot.

Jesus’ final words in the passage we heard were to someone who sought to follow.  “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”  I think there’s a temptation to hear that and think that we are lost if we pause on the path we are on.  Lest you go too far with that thought, remember that despite the unrelenting needs facing Jesus, he still took time to get away by himself and pray, not just once but routinely.

Recently, JT has more than once referenced the work of John Dominic Crossan. For my part, I have been reading Henri Nouwen.

In writing of our response to grief, he noted that, looking back in years to come, we will likely not remember a given day, a given week. But “much in our fleeting lives is not passing but lasting, not dying but coming to life, not temporary but eternal.”[1]   If there was a time when we did turn our faces, we may remember that point of turning.

When I think back on those days arriving in San Francisco, desperate as the situation might have been, I don’t remember my concerns of those days. I do remember the broad sweep of the outcome.

While I mentioned the period of going out to San Francisco, there are numerous similar times in life I could describe. I doubt that I’m unique in having responded to a call, making it up on the fly, and discovering things along the way.

Our faith is a demanding faith.  In the course of just twelve verses here, Jesus sets his face toward the work that must be done, he prevents his followers from taking vengeance on those who have competing views, he instructs his would-be followers on ways in which they need to adjust their views, and he tells them to not look back.  That’s a lot.

We are called to love God with our whole heart and mind and soul and love our neighbor as ourselves. Neither of those is necessarily accomplished through the everyday activities of life.  Neither is the default.  Each calls for something out of the ordinary.  There are things that we must do to simply live our lives and then there are the challenge of living out these larger calls.

As followers of Jesus, we too can turn our faces in the direction we feel called, not necessarily seeing the way ahead, maybe not even sure it will all work out in the end, but turning nonetheless.

May each of us hear our call at this moment and turn in response.

Amen.

[1] Henri Nouwen Turn My Mourning into Dancing, p. 48