"Depend
upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it
concentrates his mind wonderfully." (Samuel Johnson)
I don't know if Jesus needed to
have his mind concentrated. After all, he was, and is, God. Even while he was
walking around the Palestinian countryside, he was God in the flesh. But,
having said that, he was still God in the flesh. He was a real human
being who felt all the normal things that human beings feel and I have no doubt
that his impending death had an affect on him. (In fact we’re told that in the
So I have no doubt that as the
time of his death drew closer, Jesus found himself reflecting more and more on
what awaited him in
Verse 51 says, "As the time approached for him to be taken
up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for
[In the movie "Twister,"
Bill Paxton plays a meteorologist who is trying to get his ex-wife’s signature
on divorce papers. The problem is, it’s tornado season and his ex-wife is also
a meteorologist who is running around the US Mid-West chasing tornadoes so she
can study them. By half way through the movie Bill Paxton's new fiancée
has had enough of buildings and animals flying through air and close brushes
with death. Eventually she blurts out, "When you said that you used to
chase tornadoes, I thought it was some kind of metaphor."]
I'm sure that the disciples were
in a similar position. Whenever Jesus told them that he was on his way to
But Jesus knew it was no metaphor.
He knew that when he eventually arrived in
That clearly had a sobering effect
on him. I haven't been around many dying people but I have been around enough
to know that the prospect of your own death is a sobering thing. Jesus was no
different. He was aware that his death was near and so he resolutely set
out for
According to Luke, one effect that
it had was to focus his mind on the urgency of transferring his teaching. He
only had so much time left and it was really important that he teach as much as
he could. So the whole section from Luke 9:51 to 19:11 (what scholars call the
Travel Document) is filled with teaching, some of it unique to Luke's gospel.
The same journey to
As Jesus walks towards
For the last three years Jesus has been teaching about something he called “The Kingdom of God.” He has been calling people to follow him and to live according to the values of the kingdom. But still people, even those closest to him, didn’t really “get it.” They didn’t really understand what it meant to follow Jesus.
James and John always struggled with Jesus’ counter cultural message…
52 And he sent messengers on ahead,
who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; 53 but the people there did not
welcome him, because he was heading for
This section of Luke is called the
Travel Document because Jesus is travelling. One of the consequences of
travelling is that you have to stay in different places every night, so Jesus
sends a couple of guys ahead of him to book hotel rooms in the village that they'll
be staying at that evening. That's where the trouble starts. They're travelling
from Galilee in the north to
It would be like driving from
However, Jesus' openness towards
non-Jews didn't mean they always reciprocated. When his advance party arrives
in the village they went up to the local inn and started booking rooms.
"Do you have any rooms vacant
for tonight?"
"Yes, I do. How many are in
your party?"
"Thirteen."
"Great. On your way to a
wedding or something south of here?"
"No actually. We're going to
"Oh really... You know what? I
just noticed that we're actually all full up tonight. You'll have to find
somewhere else."
James and John are livid. They
want to call in an air strike against the village to teach them a lesson. If
they'd been in
Who did they think they were? I
believe they thought they were the chosen lieutenants of a conquering hero who
was about to take over the country. Perhaps they wanted to get some practice at
throwing around some supernatural weapons of mass destruction before they got
to the main event in
If you had asked James and John
what it meant to follow Jesus, they would probably have said something about
being on the inside of a revolution that would change the country and put them
in positions of authority. Jesus rebukes them, he tells them off. They simply
don't understand that Jesus' ministry isn't about the religious, ethnic and
political divisions between Jews and Samaritans. Nor is it about forcing his
will on people through the use, or threat, of violence.
In the following verses Luke shows us Jesus’ response to three potential disciples to teach us what it really means to follow him.
57 As they were walking along the
road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." 58 Jesus replied, "Foxes have
holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay
his head."
James and John thought that
following Jesus was a way to secure their future. In Mark 10 we see them asking
for the two top jobs in Jesus' new administration once he takes power in
Then along comes some anonymous
volunteer who offers to follow Jesus, "wherever he goes." But Jesus
wants to make it plain that there are no perks involved in following him. Just
in case this guy also thinks that following Jesus will lead to some cushy job
in the new government Jesus cuts him off. “Foxes
have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to
lay his head.”
“If you want to follow me you have
to be prepared to live with insecurity.” Following Jesus is much more likely to
lead him into the ranks of the homeless than the homes of the famous.
The first guy was a volunteer and,
far from receiving him with open arms, Jesus does his best to discourage him.
The second guy is someone Jesus approaches.
59 He said to another man,
"Follow me." But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and
bury my father." 60
Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and
proclaim the
Ouch! What happened to,
"gentle Jesus, meek and mild"? Like a lot of popular Christianity,
that particular stereotype of Jesus has more to do with Victorian romanticism
than it does with the Jesus of the Bible. Jesus didn’t pull his punches. He
said what he meant and he meant what he said. In this kind of situation our
little pocket Jesus (the one that we keep on hand to reassure us that
everything is OK) would have said something like, "Yes, I understand your
concern for you father. I feel your pain. Go ahead and deal with that situation
and come back to me when you're less stressed."
The real Jesus says, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but
you go and proclaim the
That probably wouldn’t have made
him very popular with his family. I’m sure they misunderstood. But, you see,
the real Jesus is staring his own death in the face and he knows there simply
isn't enough time for all that. He knows that he has to make his priorities
clear. “This is life or death stuff,” he says to the second guy. “You can
choose to focus on death, or you can choose to follow me and preach life. You
can't do both.”
The next guy gets it even worse...
61 Still another said, "I will
follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-bye to my
family." 62 Jesus replied, "No one who puts
his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the
He doesn't want to go home and
deal with family business, bury his father or whatever. He just wants to go say
goodbye, let them know where he is, maybe give them a forwarding address. Jesus
hammers him too. "No one who puts
his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the
Doesn't Jesus know that he's
supposed to draw people in with promises of what he can do for them - how he
will make their lives better, sort out their family lives, make them healthier
and wealthier, all that sort of stuff - and then ease into the idea that what
he really wants is their whole life?
Obviously he never read that book.
He lays it on the line. If you're going to follow me, then it's a whole heart,
whole life thing; no half measures.
(I just want to point out again
that Jesus never actually asks anybody to invite him into their heart, or even
to have a personal relationship with him. Again and again he invites people to follow
him, to put their lives in his hands, to walk with him, to proclaim the
kingdom, to serve in the
That shouldn't surprise us. That's
what happened to him. Remember, as he's saying these things he's walking
"resolutely" towards
Luke is actually answering two questions here. The first question is “What does it mean to follow Jesus?” The other is a little more subtle. It’s, “Who is this Jesus person anyway?”
When James and John suggested
calling down fire from heaven the idea was probably prompted by where they
were. It was in this neighbourhood that Elijah called down fire from heaven to
burn up the offerings in his contest with the priests of Baal on
Luke is answering the same
question that John was answering last week, “Is Jesus Elijah, the greatest
prophet of the Old Testament, come back from the dead?” And Luke’s answer is
the same as John’s, “No.”
Jesus is different from Elijah.
Elijah called down fire from heaven and ordered people killed. Jesus came to
bring a message – a kingdom – of grace and peace, where there is room for
forgiveness. The only person who’s going to get killed here is Jesus himself,
as he gives his life for us all. He’s a sacrificial saviour, not a fiery
prophet.
Jesus is also greater than Elijah.
When Elijah called his disciple there was room for negotiation. That’s only
appropriate. Elijah was still just a man. Jesus is more than a man, he is God
in the flesh. When Jesus calls there is no room to negotiate. You either follow
him, or you don’t. You don’t negotiate terms.
Jesus is stilling calling people
to follow him, and the terms are still the same; all or nothing. Like the song
says, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back…”
At the other end of this "Travel Document," in Luke 18, there is the well-known story of the rich young man, who came to Jesus and wanted to know what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus tells him that he has to give away all his wealth and come and follow him.
Where was Jesus going at that
point? The same place he was in chapter 9. He was going to
After the rich man had left, Jesus
spoke of all the blessings that come from following him. And there are great
blessings in following Jesus. I don’t want anyone to go away this morning
thinking it’s all hard slogging. In Luke 18:29 and 30, Jesus says, "no
one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake
of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and,
in the age to come, eternal life." But blessing is always a by-product
of discipleship, never the goal. If it becomes the goal, we've missed the
point.
Jesus calls us to come and follow
him, come what may.
He warns us that it will cost
everything, perhaps even our lives.
But he also promises to be with
us, even to the end of the age.