The Uses and Costs of Discipleship — Bible Reflection for Monday, October 21

Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:

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Luke 9:51-62

 Samaritan Opposition

     ⁵¹As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.  ⁵²And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; ⁵³but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. ⁵⁴When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” ⁵⁵But Jesus turned and rebuked them. ⁵⁶Then he and his disciples went to another village.

 The Cost of Following Jesus

     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 dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

     ⁵⁹ He said to another man, “Follow me.”

     But he 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 kingdom of God.”

     ⁶¹ Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”

     ⁶² Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

In the past, when this reading has come up in the lectionary, we’ve skipped the first part, in which the residents of a Samaritan village have refused to welcome Jesus. So the disciples proposed to “call down fire from heaven to destroy them.” The reason we’ve skipped it might be obvious: The question of whether or not to call down fire from heaven isn’t exactly one we deal with every day in our lives of faith.

But now I think that’s been a mistake, because these verses raise an issue that has obviously been around as long as people have followed Jesus. That’s the tendency to think that those who disagree with us, or who refuse to support us, are evil and deserve to be destroyed. That kind of thinking has led to countless religious wars and skirmishes that have brought shame on the church throughout its history. Not to mention the brutal suppression of “heretics” – like William Tyndale, the ‘dangerous heretic’ burned at the stake for the sin of translating the Bible into English.

But fortunately, Jesus rebukes the disciples for their violent urges. And if rejecting Jesus personally isn’t worth calling down fire over, surely human theological disputes aren’t either.

The second part of today’s reading deals with the cost of following him. You might remember the we’ve sometimes made the distinction between disciples and church members. In the church of our time, there’s not much of a cost to being a church member. You go to church once in a while, and drop a few bucks in the collection box, and if anybody tries to pressure you to get serious about being a disciple, you can just take your business elsewhere – to a church that won’t ask so much of you.

But judging by the teachings of Jesus, discipleship is meant to be different. Being a disciple means making a commitment to be actively engaged in learning from a master – and learning in a way that makes a real difference in the way you live.

That’s the part of discipleship that lots of people find disturbing. But there’s no getting around the fact that when Jesus calls people to a life of discipleship, he calls them to a complete break with the lives they’ve been leading. Jesus said that following him means being willing to “lose your life” for him. Genuine discipleship has to become the highest priority in a person’s life. It becomes their identity, more central to ‘who they are’ than even family ties.

In the second part of today’s passage, Jesus makes three points about the life of real discipleship.

First, the life of true discipleship will almost certainly include making sacrifices. And those sacrifices will be both material and emotional. Following Jesus is not a way of life that carries much material benefit. It can even make you feel like a stranger – an alien – in this world. Jesus says even wild animals and birds can feel like there’s a place for them, while the followers of Jesus can feel like outsiders from the culture around us.

Second, genuine discipleship is urgent. There will always be reasons – and even good reasons – to put off making a real commitment to discipleship. In today’s reading, the second prospective disciple wants to wait until he’s buried his father. Jesus refuses that request, which seems a little harsh, but the Bible scholars say the point might be that the man’s father wasn’t dead – or even on his deathbed. They say what the man was probably asking was an OK from Jesus to stay at home until he had inherited his father’s estate. So the man’s motivation may have been financial gain rather than family loyalty.

The point Jesus seems to be making is that the true follower has to be willing to commit now – not sometime in the future. ‘Someday’ can too easily become ‘never,’ and the chance to follow Jesus can be lost. And Jesus no doubt knew what church scholars are just discovering: The longer you wait to make a commitment to discipleship, the more likely it is that you’ll never do it.

The third point Jesus makes about true discipleship is that it disrupts our earthly relationships. Jesus warned that he would be the cause of division in families – that he would come between some believers and those they cared about the most. This is a hard truth, but people of real faith sometimes tell me that friends, business associates, even members of their own families discourage them from being “so religious.” People talk about their faith, and friends and family roll their eyes and say, “Oh no, not that Jesus stuff again!” The sad truth is that, even today, some people are forced to decide who their primary allegiance is to: Jesus or their family and friends.

Our circumstances are more complicated, because most of us have been more-or-less raised in the church, so we tend to think of ourselves as disciples of Jesus. In our time and place, following Jesus usually doesn’t mean leaving home or walking away from family responsibilities. But even for us, this passage makes a hard point: that there is still a cost to discipleship. If you’re really living a life of discipleship, it almost certainly will cost you something.

Let’s pray. Lord, you know that nearly all of us have tried to practice our faith in a way that doesn’t threaten our worldly interests – our material comfort, our standing in the community, our relationships with family and friends. But now, we invite you to call us to greater commitment to following Jesus, and a greater willingness to bear the cost that goes with that commitment. Amen.

Every Blessing,

Henry