A Demanding Discipleship? Reflections on Luke 9:51-62, Pentecost 3, Year C
by John C. Holbert on Saturday, May 3, 2025
The passage for today has clear echoes from the cycle of stories concerning the prophet Elijah. Luke uses that cycle to inaugurate the long middle section of his Gospel that deviates from his close following of the Gospel of Mark, a following that does not resume until Luke 18. The reader is alerted that the narrative is taking a sharp turn toward Jerusalem at two obvious places: “he deliberately set himself (“set his face” more familiarly) to travel to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51) and “But they (the Samaritan village) did not welcome him because he was heading (“his face was set”) toward Jerusalem” (Luke 9:53). This movement toward Jerusalem, the ultimate goal of Jesus’s life and ministry, and the place of his murder and resurrection, employs the language of Elijah’s narrative in 2 Kings to emphasize the story’s deep significance.
“When the days drew near for him to be taken up” (Luke 9:51) recalls a similar passage in 2 Kings 2:1: “When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind.” Like Elijah, Jesus will also be “taken up” by God. The noun translated here, analempsis, is used only here in the New Testament, but, as Johnson notes in his 1991 commentary on the Gospel, “the verb form analembano, is used by Luke in Acts 1:2,11,12 which makes clear that Jesus’s exodus and analempsis refer not simply to his death but to the whole sequence of events, climaxing in his ascension.” (Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, 162) Thus, this small section of the Gospel is a crucial introduction to the most important journey that Jesus will undertake.
Luke 9:54 gives another reference to the Elijah story when the disciples, reacting to the poor welcome they all received from the Samaritan village where they had gone to prepare them for Jesus’s arrival, ask Jesus a patently absurd and cruel question: “Lord, do you want us to order fire to fall from heaven to destroy them?” The disciples, angered by the rejection of the Samaritans, can think only of destruction, which is a complete misunderstanding of their and Jesus’s ministry. Earlier in chapter 9, Jesus heals a boy possessed by a demon (9:37-43), tries to help the disciples understand what true greatness is, in the face of their search among themselves for which of them is the greatest (!), by confronting them with a child (9:46-48), and rebukes them for rejecting an outsider who was casting out demons in Jesus’s name (9:49-50). And here again Jesus feels the need to rebuke the dark passion of his followers who think their role is to limit and purge Jesus’s ministry of any who do not act as they think they should. We note that the NRSV footnote suggests that other manuscripts of this passage add the following to make the point of the disciples’ foolishness: “Jesus rebuked them, and said, ‘you do not know what spirit you are of, for the Son of Man has not come to destroy the lives of human beings but to save them.’” Samaritans were seen as enemies due to the rivalry between the shrines on Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Zion as well as a long list of disputes about how to read the texts, about who is the Messiah, etc. Though they were enemies, destroying the Samaritans will not prove to be the way Jesus’s followers will respond. This will become crystal clear for Luke at the cross when Jesus demands forgiveness for those who have killed him (Luke 23:34, though that famous sentence is disputed as not in the best of our manuscripts).
The section ends with three examples of the seriousness of discipleship; to follow Jesus is to alter one’s life in profound ways. This may be another echo of the Elijah story where Elisha three times vows to follow Elijah (2 Kings 2:1-6). First, someone says to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go” (Luke 9:57). Jesus’ reply is withering: “Foxes have holes and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” In other words, to follow Jesus may lead to homelessness and poverty. Then another says, “I will follow you, Lord. Allow me first to bury my father” (Luke 9:59). This is far from a trivial request: honoring father and mother is one of the Ten Commandments, and when a parent dies it is expected that a child will be a central actor in the rites surrounding the burial. Jesus again is dismissive. “Let the dead bury their own dead. You go and announce the rule of God” (Luke 9:60). Really!? The dead can hardly bury their own, and to turn from the parent’s funeral rites is to risk fury and rejection by the community. Surely, I can bury my father! No, says Jesus. The announcement and spread of the Gospel comes before everything. Finally, a third person wants to follow Jesus, but asks if he can first say good-bye to his family (Luke 9:61). Again, Jesus offers a harsh response. “No one who has once grasped the plow yet keeps looking backwards is fit for the rule of God” (Luke 9:62).
Goodness gracious! Then who finally can be a follower of Jesus? Only those who have determined to give their all in the service of the Gospel. It was this passage that led so many down the centuries to turn away from families and friends, to lock themselves away in monasteries and convents, to deny the joys of parenthood and family to become priests, to take up difficult and dangerous missions to the wild places of earth in order to share the gospel of Jesus Messiah to all whom they encountered, wherever and however they lived. Even those like me, who chose the path of ministry, a path that did not require privations such as I have just described, but who was also motivated by the call of Jesus to serve, have attempted to employ whatever skills I possessed for the work of the gospel. This text has been central for many who have heard Jesus call, and who have answered. Those of you reading this essay have no doubt experienced a similar call. That call remains strong for us, however we answer, however we respond. Jesus will end up in Jerusalem, whence he will continue that call, and Luke 9 starts all of us on that journey with him.