The hand set to the plough...

 

2nd Sunday after Trinity - Year C – Eucharist – 26.vi.2022 

(1 Kings 19.15-16, 19-21; Galatians 5.1, 13-25; Luke 9.51-62)

 

‘No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’

These are Jesus’ final words in Sunday’s Gospel reading. It’s both a call to us from Jesus and also a warning. Are we ready to say, “yes – we will follow Jesus?” Are we going to be able to see it through?

Those of you who get my weekly parish email might have read how the first essay I was asked to write when I started my Theology Degree 44 years ago was on this passage of scripture. I’m afraid I still haven’t written it – and it keeps coming back to haunt me! Perhaps at the time I was too much out of practice after a “year out” from academic life. But mainly, I think, it was the sense of so much that needed to be grasped and tackled. How could I work my way in to the subject? So I’m sorry that I didn’t produce any more than a few notes for the supervision which followed. Yet again I’ve been back to look at the shelf in my study on which Joachim Jeremias’s “New Testament Theology (Volume 1)” is sitting. I’d hoped that that book would give me a way in, and I think I’m going to have to take it off the shelf and read it again…

All these years later, I find Jesus’ call to seek the way of his kingdom both compelling and daunting. Things haven’t changed. I did get round to writing the other essays which needed to be written, I passed the various required courses and was duly ordained. But every day that challenge from Jesus remains.

During the coming week, actually tomorrow - 27^th June, I reach the 40^th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. I’m glad that I have the opportunity to celebrate it in St. Cuthbert’s Church next Saturday 2^nd July – and I hope that as many of you as possible will join me in the celebration. I’d invited a friend from university days, and he wrote back asking if this was some sort of pre-retirement occasion. He asked kindly – and shared the observation that I shall soon reach an age when I will no longer be paying National Insurance contributions! To which the answer is, “No, it’s not a herald of retirement.” This 40^th anniversary is a personal milestone. But it would never have been possible without the people who have enabled me on my way – which means YOU! I hope Saturday’s Eucharist will be seen as OUR celebration.

Ordination is in a sense a setting of the hand to the plough, but other vocations no less so. And the call to priesthood can only be pursued in acknowledging a common journey. We are all called to put our hand to the plough – and we shouldn’t be put off by a sense of personal unworthiness. Because it’s a journey we undertake together, with mutual support – and when we fall short we have God’s grace, forgiveness and mercy to make up for our deficiencies.

It's not just the anniversary of my ordination which is almost upon us. Nearly all clergy these days are ordained in the season we call Petertide – the period around the Feast of St. Peter & St. Paul the Apostles which falls on 29^th June. Priests for our diocese of Durham will be ordained next Saturday in the Cathedral, and Deacons the following day. Please pray for them and the parishes in which they will serve. If you go onto our Diocese’s website or Facebook page you can find potted biographies of those who are to be ordained – and more importantly the sense of calling which each of those ordinands has known. What first prompted them towards ordination? In many cases they have to deal with the still more important question of what brought them to their first understanding of Christian faith? What led them to commit their lives to Christ in such a way that their vocations could develop?

It's encouraging and inspiring to read the stories of these people who are now to be ordained. But I’d like to add two things. First, this is not the ministry of these people alone. Christ’s call to us to follow is not directed only to people who will be ordained as priests and deacons. It’s a calling to every person who is baptised in his name. It’s for us all to act upon. Priests on their own would be clergy without a Church. And a priest’s ministry is not so much to minister to other people as to exercise ministry with them. All of us are called into what Dom Gregory Dix called “the plebs sancta Dei – the holy common people of God.” Each one of us receives a calling – each one of us is called to make a response.

And the second thing to add is that that response is not just a one-off answer. It calls us to follow – and to go on following. “I will follow you wherever you go,” says one of the people to whom Jesus calls – and Jesus’ response to him (or her?) is enigmatic: are they really ready? – can they really stay the course? Another wants to follow Jesus, but first wants to go and bury his father. Perhaps we need to observe that he doesn’t say whether his father has actually died – is he just using delaying tactics? And another will follow Jesus but wants to say his farewells at home first. Not only does he fail to see the urgency of his calling… That’s the point at which Jesus tells him (and us), ‘No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’

Is the call of Christ just too demanding? Follow me – and keep on following, Jesus is saying. You can’t just start ploughing and then give up mid-furrow.

There’s a contrast with the story of Elijah and Elisha in our first reading today. Elijah wants Elisha to take up his work as a prophet – literally he throws his mantle over him. But first Elisha wants to kiss his parents goodbye – and Elijah lets him go. He lets him go, but it gives Elisha the chance to return all the better prepared. Elisha takes a yoke of oxen and offers them as a sacrifice and as a shared meal for the people amongst whom he lives. Henceforth he will plough in a different way.

Jesus calls his disciples to put their hands to the plough. It’s another metaphor, like that of calling the very first disciples from their nets to fish for people. The point about a plough is that you need a sense of direction as well as the willingness to stick at the task which has been begun. But the effort isn’t all ours. The picture I’ve used to illustrate the Gospel reading in our pewsheet might make it look as though the man ploughing is pushing the plough along himself. But that’s not the case. Oxen or horses would pull the plough – or today a tractor. We’re not left to do it all in our own strength. “Take my yoke upon you,” Jesus says elsewhere. It’s not to add to our burdens. It’s to know that Christ is there to bear the load, to relieve us in our labours, to share with us his love, forgiveness and mercy. His gift to us is Grace, so that we might share that Grace with others – so that we can point them in the right direction, so that we can journey together.

I’m full of admiration for people who today respond to Christ’s call – not least those who will be ordained in the next few days. It’s a time of so much uncertainty – not only in the life of the Church but in our wider society and world. After 40 years as a priest, 41 as a Deacon, and still longer on the journey, I can’t say just where my path / our path will lead.

What does the future hold? – for any of us? I end with some words of Dag Hammarskjold, former UN Secretary General, whose book “Markings” was an inspiration to me from the time when I trained for ordination: “For all that has been, Thanks. To all that shall be, Yes.”