A special didactic perspective in the gospel by St. Luke is Jesus on the road to Jerusalem, the city of His passion and death. We are invited within this travel narrative to trace the steps of Jesus and to follow Him toward His and our Passover (Luke 9:51-62).
No passing through
Bracketing the journey of Jesus is the dimension of rejection, here at the beginning and at the end (Luke 19:28). Jesus and His companions traveling to Jerusalem had to pass through the territory of the Samaritans. As Jesus was “resolutely” determined to go to the city of His destiny to fulfill the Father’s will, so were the Samaritans in their bitter quarrel with the Jews adamant in their view that there really was no necessity for anyone to go to Jerusalem in order to worship God. And they would not allow Jesus and His followers to pass through.
The rejection by the Samaritans elicited a violent reaction from the “sons of thunder,” James and John, who would very much like to have Jesus order lightning from above to strike at these preposterous people. His disciples thought it proper if Jesus would behave like Elijah of old who called down fire from heaven to destroy the men sent against him by the king (2 Kings 1:10-12). But Jesus’ mission was one of mercy and forgiveness (Luke 6:27-35). He would not be pushed into some retaliatory action against anyone by His followers who were children of their time known for the prevalent attitudes of revenge and violence.
Not for the attached
Paradoxically, to follow Jesus who would use no violence against anyone means, at the same time, that one must be rather violent to self. Three would-be followers of Jesus illustrate the radical cost of following Him. To one who said to Him, “I will follow You wherever You go,” Jesus clarified that what lies in prospect is not just walking behind Him or somehow traveling the same road with Him, but adopting His way of life in a symbiosis that includes suffering and self-abnegation. As “aliens and sojourners” on this Earth (1 Peter 2:11), Christians have no fixed dwelling here but are on the way toward “the one that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14).
To the other whom Jesus invited, “Follow me,” but who would like to go first and bury his father, he said in effect that not even good traditional obligations should deter or distract His disciples from proclaiming the kingdom of God. The work with Him is second to none; it is absolute priority. “Let the dead bury their dead”— let others take care of such acts; give yourself completely to the spreading of the gospel of life. Do not delay; do not say you have to wait until your parents are dead and gone. And the third applicant would like to follow Jesus but requested, “Let me first say farewell to my family at home.” Many have stumbled in following Jesus because of their engrossing attachment to their families. Luke elsewhere noted the words of Jesus: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). One must be single-hearted. A man at the plow who is not focused will produce crooked furrows.
Alálaong bagá, the high cost of following Jesus may seem harsh and cruel, but it simply underlines the fact that keeping “our eyes fixed on Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2) means saying with Paul, “For His sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8). We are on the road to Jerusalem with Jesus, in our own respective time and place, following Him to His Passover and ours. It is a long and tortuous road, so we need to be resolute as Jesus was, dealing with rejection and refusal. We must keep our cool and abhor violence. No delay, no looking back, not put off by hardships, and no attachments. We are called to follow Jesus His way all the way.
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