Jesus Didn’t Look Back / Luke 9:51-62 / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday June 29th 2025 / Season of Pentecost / Mount Olive Lutheran Church

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday June 29th 2025: Season of Pentecost / Luke 9:51-62 “Jesus Didn’t Look Back”

When the days drew near for Him to be taken up, [Jesus] set His face to go to Jerusalem. And He sent messengers ahead of Him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for Him. But the people did not receive Him, because His face was set toward Jerusalem. And when His disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But [Jesus] turned and rebuked them. And they went on to another village.

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.” To another He said, “Follow Me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends there’s this Advent hymn that we sing almost every year called, “Saviour of the Nations, Come” in verse five we sing, “God the Father was His source, Back to God He ran His course.  Into hell His road went down, Back then to His throne and crown.”[1] This verse gives you the big picture of the race —a big picture of the course —that the Lord Jesus is running. Starting with His incarnation by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary where He was made man Jesus followed the course. Running from this miraculous conception the road broke forth and He walked it without sin, without fault, without stumbling in the law, every step flawlessly placed this was devotion, dedication and discipline the likes of which the world had never seen and would never see again. Jesus knew where this course would take Him. He knew where all His devotion, and dedication and discipline along this road would lead Him. It would lead Him to a day, a Friday in Jerusalem, where death with every nail, with every thorn, with every insult, would wrap Him in its strong bands and seek to hold Him forever. Death would lick its lips and try to hold God, would try to swallow God up into its putrid belly of decay. Yet as the song goes, and as Scripture teaches that would not be the end of Jesus’ course.

Jesus had over and over again told His disciples how, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”[2] Our reading in the Gospel of Saint Luke today marks the point where Jesus turns from His time of healing and teaching in the countryside of Galilee to press on to Jerusalem the very place where He knew that this would all take place. A little later in our Gospel from Saint Luke we hear Jesus say as He looks with compassion on the city of Jerusalem, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!,”[3] which is to say Jesus desired people to stay close to Him, to follow where He leads, because the path He walks goes through death to life.    

What does Jesus’ walk along the road laid out for Him look like? Well when Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem He didn’t drag His feet as He went, He didn’t take the long way round to avoid what He knew was coming when He arrived, no Jesus had been sent and in His sending He faithfully pressed on. As our Gospel unfolds the time had come to complete the course. There had, however, been times when people prematurely wanted Him dead but it hadn’t been His time[4] or it wasn’t the proper place. You’ll remember how one time in His home town of Nazareth His fellow twonfolk “rose up and drove Him out of the town and brought Him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw Him down the cliff. [They were trying to kill him] But passing through their midst, He went away.”[5] It wasn’t His time that day but now as He sets His face toward Jerusalem Jesus knows that His time was soon coming and there was going to be no turning back.

Think of it like this, “If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.”[6] Basically the train is going to its destination and once you’re a passenger on it you’re going where the train’s going. The same can be said if you’ve boarded the right train. Once you’re moving in the right direction it is better to keep doing so, turning back will be of no advantage in that case either. This idea is the key to unlocking our Gospel Reading today. Jesus is having all of these interactions with people who don’t seem to like where He’s headed or personally want to avoid for one reason or another getting on “the right train,” the one that Jesus is on, they want to avoid joining Jesus on the way to the destination of the Cross, they don’t want to run the race He’s on or follow the course laid out before Him. Or at the very least they want to put following Jesus off until later for reasons they count as more pressing, more important. A little earlier in the Gospel of Saint Luke Jesus says, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?”[7] Let’s run these conversations Jesus is having in our Gospel today through this teaching of ‘taking up your cross daily and following Jesus:’ 

Someone said to [Jesus], “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.”

There is no promise of a comfortable life in these words - Jesus is acknowledging that pain and suffering and self denial are the traveling companions of those who daily take up their cross and follow Him. That walking the road can require downgrading things like a roof over your head from a necessity to a luxury. Now for those who consider a roof over their head as a luxury in life they will naturally have a better time being content because they will not see the roof as something owed to them by society or by their hard work but rather they will be able to see it as a gift, a mercy.    

To another [as Jesus walked the road to Jerusalem, Jesus] said, “Follow Me.” But [the man to whom Jesus said this replied to Jesus], “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

This on the surface seems to be rather heartless, and harsh. Surely Jesus would allow someone to bury their father? It’s easy to apply this reading first to ourselves, because in our personal selfishness and pride and ego everything is about us; but how about if we first look at this passage as it applies to Jesus. The Gospel of Saint Mark tells us how Jesus had come “into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God ... saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”[8] Jesus was not about to be distracted or tempted away from His task by personal concerns. These words from Saint Mark’s Gospel come hot on the heels of Jesus’ baptism during His temptation in the wilderness where the Devil tempted Jesus seeking to leverage Jesus’ physical hunger, trying to tempt Him with earthly power, by trying to appeal to some sense of personal entitlement. None of this worked. Proclaiming the kingdom of God had to come before any of these base concerns, in fact proclaiming the kingdom of God, for Jesus, came before maintaining His personal dignity or family honour.[9]    

Yet another [one called out to Jesus, as Jesus walked the road to Jerusalem, saying], “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Do you feel the pressure yet? This walk to Jerusalem with Jesus seems to grow harder with every step. “Pastor,” you say, “I am not as disciplined and dedicated as Jesus, my devotion to The Way, the path, the road, the course laid out a head of me is poor indeed. The harder I try to take up the cross to follow Jesus the more it seems to slip through my fingers. With my hand on the plow I look back; with my hands of the shovel I burry my father; most night with my head on my soft pillow I slip into sleep in comfort in my own bed without even a ‘thank you’ to God the Father for my home and for all that I’ve been given. Weak, ungrateful, undisciplined and in my sin — full of rejection for what God has called good — I can almost hear the Sons of Thunder, Saint James and Saint John, saying to Jesus, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume [this good-for-nothing reprobate]?”      

Dear ones what does Jesus say to these Sons of Thunder? He rebukes them. He rebukes them in favour of mercy, love and patience. And while the only thing I’m entitled to in my sin is destruction Jesus instead gives grace. Instead of destruction the Holy Spirit graciously brought you here today to listen to the public reading of Scripture and the preaching of the Gospel, He brought you and me here today to the place where the kingdom of God comes from heaven to earth in the Sacrament of the Altar, Holy Communion with Christ and where for Cole and Alayna the kingdom of God comes from heaven to them in their Baptisms.[10]

For each of these conversations Jesus has, as He presses on to Jerusalem, it is Jesus Himself who fulfils them. He fulfills the requirements of the Law of God with every step, every thought, every word, and every deed. He carries the cross faithfully in your place. And from the cross Jesus sets His face toward you. With His head wreathed in a crown of thorns Jesus says, “Forgive them Father for they know not what they do,”[11] and to you — you and I; men, women and children — who plead along with the thief who was crucified with Jesus saying, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” Jesus says to him, to you, to me, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”[12] Jesus sets His face toward this man and says this to him not because this thief had perfectly walked the road, or faultlessly completed the course laid out for him in God’s Law but because Jesus Himself had done so in this man’s place, in your place. 

As Jesus looked out from the cross He could see that the foxes had their holes, and birds of the air had their nests, but He the Son of Man had nowhere to lay His head, His head now crowned with thorns. In fact soon He wouldn’t even be able to burry anyone’s father, it would be mortal men who would take His dead body down from the cross of His crucifixion and lay it in the tomb. Nailed to the cross He wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to anyone back at His family’s home in Nazareth. It was bittersweet mercy that His mother was standing at the foot of the cross with one of those Sons of Thunder, Saint John. High and lifted up Jesus wouldn’t even be able to kiss His mother goodbye as death approached. With His hands nailed to the cross furrowing salvation for you and me, as with a plow, with every drop of His shed blood and with each laboured breath Jesus didn’t look back.

And now from the cross He looks out to you with blessing, “The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you, the Lord look upon you with favour and give you peace.”[13] Jesus having accomplished all He was sent to Jerusalem to do sets His face toward you. And on Easter morning the risen Lord Jesus breaks the bondage of Death’s strong bands. Triumphantly He stands with hell in subjugation beneath His nail pierced feet. The face of Christ set towards you in love becoming eternal sunshine to your heart. And in His ascension His crown of thorns is exchanged for the crown of life. A crown He gives to you: “God the Father was His source, Back to God He ran His course.  Into hell His road went down, Back then to His throne and crown.”  

Dear ones, when you fail in your devotion, and dedication and discipline to Christ Jesus, when you are tempted off of the Way prepared for your walk through in this life, when you fail to heed the voice of Jesus calling “take up your cross and follow Me,” remember as a baptized child of God — who has been given the gift of faith — to set your face toward Jesus in repentance for He has set His face towards you in love and forgiveness. He is your forgiveness and your salvation. Today is the day to set your hand to the plow, to endeavour to look forward to Jesus and not turn from Him, to put a life of virtue as the goal however hard and to leave your life of vice whether great or small behind you as Baptised Children of God. Jesus give you the freedom to follow Him, to follow were His heart leads, to be turned away from selfish concerns to a life of sacrifice to the glory of God and the good of your neighbour in need: a life of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”[14] Amen.    

Let us pray: Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] Saviour of the Nations, Come, Lutheran Service Book, Concordia Publishing House 2006, #332 stanza 5
[2] Luke 9:22
[3] Luke 13:34     
[4] John 10:22-42
[5] Luke 4:29-30
[6] Bonhoeffer – Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. By Eric Metaxas, Thomas Nelson 2010, Page 176.
[7] Luke 9:23-25
[8] Mark 1:14-15
[9] John 2:3–5, Matthew 12:46–50
[10] Titus 3:5-7; Romans 6:3-11; 1 Peter 3:21
[11] Luke 23:34
[12] Luke 23:42-43  
[13] Numbers 6:24–26
[14] Galatians 5:22

Photo Credit: Main photo tinted photo of man with hand plow by Peter Henry Emerson. A Stiff Pull. [Suffolk.] from getarchive.net.