I Kings 19: 15 - 21; Psalm 16; Galatians
5: 1, 13 - 25; Luke
9: 51 - 62
This homily was given by Fr. Gene
Tucker at Trinity
Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois, on Sunday, June 30, 2013.
"BASIC TRAINING FOR DISCIPLES”
(Homily text: Luke 9: 51 - 62)
Every
soldier worth his/her salt goes through basic training. Basic training is meant to transform the
individual from being a civilian into a soldier. Part of the transformation process involves
loosening the ties to home and familiar surroundings that were a part of life
before becoming a soldier.
Basic
training also gives the new soldier a sense of the army’s mission, and it
strives to instill in the new soldier the focus and concentration that will be
needed to do whatever mission or task comes along.
In today’s
gospel passage, Luke describes Jesus and his band of recruits, the disciples
and those who traveled with Him, as they are being formed into a band of
soldiers who would eventually come to make up the Lord’s army.
We can look
at today’s account as a sort of road march, as Jesus makes His way directly
through Samaria on His way to Jerusalem.
Let’s recall that, normally, observant Jews of Jesus’ day wouldn’t go
through Samaria at all, but would opt to take a western route along the shores
of the Mediterranean Sea, or an eastern route through the Jordan River valley,
to get from Galilee to the city of Jerusalem.
But Jesus
is determined to get to Jerusalem by the shortest and most direct route
possible. Luke’s language conveys the
sense of urgency as he says, “When the days drew near for him (Jesus) to be
taken up, he set his face to go to
Jerusalem.” The Lord is determined to
accomplish His mission, which is the encounter with the ruling authorities in
Jerusalem, where He will suffer, be rejected by those authorities, die and be
raised again on the third day. His
singular focus on that mission demand that those under His authority also
engage in a singular focus of their own, in order that the work that the Lord
assigns to each one may be accomplished.
To do this, along the way, Jesus begins to make changes in the attitudes of His followers. Looking at the text, we see three distinct training exercises that He engages in:
· Lesson One:
People will be treated in an
entirely new and different way: “Lord,
do you want us to call down fire from heaven and consume them?” James and John
ask. As we look at the text, we see that
James and John make this comment in response to the lack of hospitality that
the Samaritans had shown the group. If
we put ourselves in their shoes, we might imagine that we would react the same
way. That is to say, we might want to
repay ill will with ill will, or lack of consideration with anger. But Jesus rebukes these two disciples,
rejecting their idea. Why might this be
so?...I think the answer is that Jesus knows that, eventually, the good news of
what God is doing in the person of Jesus Christ will come to the Samaritans, who
will receive that good news. Recall that,
in Acts 1:8, the Lord tells the disciples that they “will be my witnesses in
Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
· Lesson Two:
Travel lightly, and be ready to go
anywhere: Unnamed persons approach
Jesus as He is making His way southward, and each encounter offers the
possibility to see the important values that will be a part of this spiritual
army. A man comes up and says to the
Lord, “I will follow you wherever you go,” to which Jesus replies, “Foxes have
holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay
his head.” The point here is that being
a part of the Lord’s army will involve a lot of time sleeping in the field, and
moving wherever the mission demands going.
· Lesson Three:
Ties to family and to home fade
into the background: Two others come
forward, each one offering to follow, if only the Lord will allow them to take
care of family matters. The lesson here
is that family relationships will fade into the background once one has taken
up the oath of enlistment.
It is worth
noting that the original disciples, those who would soon become apostles, led
just this sort of itinerant life, cutting ties to familiar places and familiar
people. They left, in many cases, the
areas where they had grown up and the people they knew and loved.
So the
basic training that Jesus conducted on the road to Jerusalem would provide
crucial survival lessons for these new soldiers of faith.
In time,
however, as St. Paul and others traveled around the known world, establishing
communities of faith here and there, it is clear that not everyone engaged in a
wandering, itinerant lifestyle.
Established churches were made up of Christians who remained where they
had lived.
In time, the
local churches became the bases from which to carry out the Lord’s ministry,
mission and work. These bases were meant
to equip and train the new Christians who were coming into the Lord’s service,
and to sustain and support them as they carried out the business of proclaiming
the good news of Jesus Christ.
And, if we
remember the Lord’s refusal to treat the Samaritans as enemies, we can see that
this new force will be constituted for the purpose of spreading the good news
that God has loved the world and the people in the world deeply. This new sort of an army would be dedicated
to the task not of destroying others, but to bring life in its fullest and best
sense to everyone.
Today, the
local church continues to be the forward-operating base from which the good
news goes forth. Its individual members
consider their ties to the Lord to be the highest and most important calling, a
calling that sheds light on all other callings and relationships.
Like the
original disciples and the early Christians, we are called to “travel lightly”
and to regard our ties to family and friends in the light of our relationship
to Christ. Only then will we be fit to
take up the mission that the Lord has in mind for us.
AMEN.
