We were having lunch at a retirement community not far from here, and I was explaining that I served both as a part-time priest in a parish and as a part-time choral director at a school in northeast Philadelphia. That’s when she said, “Oh, I’m happy to send checks to the school, but I won’t go there. I’m afraid to park my car on the street in that neighborhood.”
At that moment in my life, I was living in a constant whiplash of service between a Main Line parish and an under-resourced neighborhood of Philadelphia. I had been deeply touched by ministry in that school; perhaps I had become even too proud of myself for serving there. It was, therefore, quite easy for me to judge the honest remarks of the woman with whom I was having lunch.
But I had no reason or place to judge. I didn’t live in Zip Code 19132. I lived in Center City in a nice apartment building, and although I wasn’t afraid to park my car on the streets near the school, I spent only a handful of hours there a week. If I had looked more closely at my own life, I would have found plenty of ways in which I rerouted my life to avoid discomfort. Like the well-meaning person with whom I was dining, in the messiness of life, there were numerous metaphorical neighborhoods where I would have refused to park my own car.
We all do it, don’t we? We find excuses for taking an easier path in the Christian life, of following Jesus with our lips but not with our lives. We veer to one side of the room to avoid talking to our enemy, and then we receive Communion in the next breath, not thinking twice about it. We limit our social circles to people who think like us and refrain from challenging our own views. We blithely profess Jesus as Lord and Savior and then identify reasons why Jesus really isn’t calling us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. It’s a part of being human, and this becomes our excuse.
But the scandalous doctrine of the Incarnation makes a claim that both challenges us to more faithful living, while simultaneously filling us to the brim with hope. There’s no place on this earth where Jesus hasn’t been and where he isn’t already present and where he won’t be in the future. And as further proof of that astounding claim, we need to look no further than the Gospels.
If we start by viewing the Gospels as far more than mere historical accounts that present realistic geographical itineraries, we’ll see that the evangelists, such as St. Luke, are primarily imparting theological insight to us. It’s highly unusual—if not downright crazy—for Jesus to journey from Galilee—in the north of today’s Holy Land—to Jerusalem—farther south—by going through Samaria. As the crow flies, or as Google maps might plot it, it makes complete sense. It’s a direct path.
But Jews didn’t willingly pass through Samaria, nor did Samaritans voluntarily interact with Jews. Remember the Parable of the Good Samaritan? Jews and Samaritans were sworn enemies. And yet, Jesus, a Jew, did go through Samaria. It wasn’t the usual path taken by Jews at the time, who would circumvent Samaria by veering slightly to the east of Jerusalem. Jesus went right through the heart of enemy territory.
This, of course, suggests that St. Luke is telling us something far more important and theological than what route Jesus took. St. Luke affirms that God in Christ will not shy away from the world’s troubled places. God will not limit his good news to one particular group of people. God will not leave human-born animosities to eternal fighting or estrangement. God will, in fact, go right into the midst of the fray to bring good news, healing, and mercy.
That’s reassuring, indeed, except that it doesn’t stop there. When the Incarnation goes deep, we are touched and become part of the story, too. The Gospels show that God is in the thick of things with us. God doesn’t stay far removed from our affairs, waving a magic wand when the time is right and remaining silent the rest of the time. God dives right into the depths of the human condition to save and redeem it. And in doing so, Christ bids us follow him.
And this is where things begin to get complicated in the Gospels. Jesus is rejected by some. We see that the good news isn’t always easily accepted by others. And we see Jesus’s disciples brutally misunderstanding what that Gospel is all about. Jesus doesn’t stay in a place where he’s shunned in order to force the Gospel down the throats of his antagonists. He doesn’t bring judgment upon them with fire and brimstone, as the disciples wished to do. As one ancient manuscript of this text has it, Jesus responds to the disciples’ demand for condemnation with these words: Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.[1] Jesus’s words may be rejected by some, but those places of earthly dissension, touched by the feet of our Lord, will never be the same again. The Gospel has already sown its seeds there.
As Jesus continues, we see more mealy-mouthed professions of discipleship. As Jesus calls people to follow him, they’re willing, but the flesh is weak. One wants to honor the ancient tradition of burying one’s dead. Another only wishes to bid his family goodbye. Jesus’s replies sound harsh, but the point is clear. No one who decides to follow him can look back. And everyone who follows him must decide whether they are all-in or whether they want to have their cake and eat it, too.
In an age brimming with a plethora of choices, we must surely sympathize with the excuses offered by those who would follow Jesus but have it on their own terms. They make reasonable excuses after all. But Jesus is suggesting a drastic reorientation of one’s life to follow him. It’s so demanding that it sounds unreasonable, even cruel. The cost of discipleship can easily begin to seem like an arbitrary difficulty doled out by a God who demands our suffering for the sake of suffering. But the challenge of Gospel living is never difficulty for difficulty’s sake. It’s only difficult because our sinful world is oriented around values other than the gospel. It’s difficult because to prioritize God in our life means that we must put all our trust in him, not just a part of it, with strings attached. The Gospel asks us to choose one thing, no matter the cost, which is the new life given to us in Christ.
The temptation is to re-route our lives according to our own comfort, and usually such perceived comfort stems from a scarcity mindset. The thought of giving all our lives—our selves, souls and bodies—to God, seems as if we’re giving too much away. We think that if we prioritize our weekly worship on the Lord’s Day, we won’t have enough time for other things. And so, we re-navigate our journey through the nicer neighborhood, avoiding the gritty one. We imagine that if we give sacrificially towards Gospel ministry then we won’t have enough to save for retirement or our children’s education, and so we remap our path forward through a more secure route, glancing at the riskier path as we pass it by. In this mindset of scarcity, we become afraid of the risky, bold moves that require a firm trust in God’s gracious provision. We opt for safer paths that align with our desire for security. We compartmentalize our lives into church matters and secular matters. We fear integrating the components of our lives lest the affairs of the world impinge too much on the safety of our religious beliefs and vice versa. There’s no shortage of excuses to justify our reasoning.
But since the Son of Man didn’t come to destroy our lives but to save them, then the demands of discipleship are not fickle whims of a distant God but beautiful invitations to the way that leads to eternal life. As such, we no longer follow Jesus because we fear him; we follow him because we know that in every sacrifice, in every humbling moment of failure, and in every assumed risk, we come to rely more deeply on the abundant grace of God.
When Jesus passes through Samaria on the way to Jerusalem, he shows that there’s no place on earth God will avoid. He shows us that in losing ourselves, we find true life. And in his unrelenting journey to the cross, he shows that from the depths of hell we’re raised to newness of life.
The unyielding devotion required of Christian disciples is nothing more than a passionate quest to find our way back to the God who is utterly in love with us, who is bent not on destroying us but on saving us, even when we resist it, kicking and screaming. Although we may choose the easier path from time to time, God will always find us, even in the shadow of death. And he will place us on his shoulders and lead us safely to the other side.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 29, 2025
[1] King James Version translation