by Marcus

Created on: October 30, 2007

Jesus is determined to return to Jerusalem and begins the path to his death. Luke uses Isaiah's language and states that Jesus set his face like flint. Because he was looking to Jerusalem, the Samaritans do not receive him nor welcome him and James and John wish to send fire on them in the same manner Elijah caused fire to rain down on 100 Samaritans. Jesus rebukes them and the move onward.

Along the way Jesus and his disciples encounter would be followers. At this place and time in his ministry Jesus becomes binary, either you follow him or you don't. He is focused on his end goal, his death, and has no time or patience to argue or debate with indecisiveness or hypocrisy. He simply leaves them and continues on his way.

The first one says, "I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus replied. "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the son of man has no place to lay his head." It is not clear that the man who spoke this follows him or not. What is clear is that Jesus is not welcomed in Samaria and therefore has no place to sleep. He calls himself the son of man, which is to say, "I have no father, or I don't know who my father is." He does not call himself son of Joseph nor Son of God. Basically, Jesus is saying that according to this world's standards he is nobody and he has no place in this world.

To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord let me first go and bury my father." But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you go and proclaim the kingdom of God." The man's father wasn't dead yet, and his response to Jesus indicates that he has no intention to follow Jesus. Apparently, Jesus thinks of this man as being alive because he tells him to follow him and tells him to proclaim the kingdom of God. Only those who are spiritually alive can do this. So he tells him to let the spiritually dead bury the spiritually dead. It seems that this one did not follow Jesus but Luke isn't clear on that.

Another said, "I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those who are at my home." Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." Here is the point of this section in Luke's Gospel. There seems to be several fence sitters in Samaria. Jesus who is only looking forward has no use for anyone who cannot commit to following him. Apparently this binary approach did have some positive results because at the beginning of Chapter 10 Luke writes, "After this the Lord appointed seventy others and them ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go."

The seventy had to come from somewhere and perhaps these three men did indeed follow Jesus. The first man could have left his father and followed Jesus leaving his impending burial to someone else to manage. The second man perhaps did not care that Jesus had no place to stay; perhaps he felt it better to follow Jesus than to sleep in his own bed again. The third man could have very well forgotten about his family and followed Jesus not giving them a chance to talk him into staying and forgetting about Jesus.

Following Jesus is a difficult path, but Luke is saying if we wish to belong to kingdom of God then we have to look away from everything that belongs to the kingdom of the world.

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