A few years ago I sat in a gathering of local pastors, listening to a speaker advising us about legal questions and policies in regard to use of our buildings. The primary concern was being able to avoid discrimination charges in the process of declining to make facilities available for events we as Christians would find immoral.
It was all well and good, and there was some helpful information about making sure a church’s guiding policies clearly state that building use must be in keeping with the Christian values of the congregation. Denominational churches like ours are also “covered” by our denomination’s overarching policies in that regard.
However, in the process of talking about framing policy, etc., the speaker began to characterize those in cultural opposition to Christian values as our enemies, using some vivid language. In particular, he said more than once that we want to meet such opposition from society around us with “fire.” I believe he talked about “holy fire.” That language immediately raised my hackles and called to mind the first half of our text for this Sunday, Luke 9:51-62.
Found only in Luke, verse 51-56 reports how the disciples responded to the cold welcome they, and ultimately Jesus, received upon their attempts to sojourn in a Samaritan village along the way. Verse 53 says of the Samaritan townspeople, “but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem.” In other words, a Jewish rabbi and His disciples, bound for the Jews’ most holy place (different from Samaria’s holy place), was unwelcome in that town of people presumably hostile to Jews in general.
The disciples’ response in verse 54 is seemingly in the spirit of the prophet Elijah, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” As I pointed out to the speaker I mentioned earlier, verse 55 shows Jesus rebuking the disciples for that angry spirit which wished fiery divine vengeance on those who stood in opposition to Him.
Though the second half of the text seems somewhat disconnected from the asking-for-fire episode, it offers us a glimpse of a disciple attitude more in keeping with the true spirit of Jesus (verse 55’s longer version about the the disciples’ ignorance of the Spirit and Jesus’ salvific versus judgmental mission are probably not in Luke’s original). The spirit of self-sacrifice and submission, which Jesus asks from three different would-be followers along the road, show a gentler, more self-forgetful sort of discipleship in the mind of the Lord.
Those three who ask to follow Jesus are met with His demands to leave something of value behind. Beyond the immediate clear call to engage in a costly discipleship (as Bonhoeffer so eloquently described), perhaps, tying the two parts of the pericope together, we are also called to leave behind our oh-so-human need to respond with anger and vengeance toward those who oppose us.