Episode Details

The Christian life is to be a follower of Jesus, which means listening to him, being like him, and doing what he did but in our own day and in our own lives.In our passage today, we receive some very deep insight into what this means. This insight is, in fact, so deep that we can only touch on it briefly.To summarise what we just heard, we begin with a Samaritan village rejecting Jesus and his message. The followers of Jesus are angry about this and they invoke the spirit of the prophet Elijah, who called down fire from heaven to consume the prophets of Baal. Jesus, however, rebuked them and led them on to another village.In some manuscripts, a further saying of Jesus is recorded. These days, scholars believe that this further saying was probably not part of the original text, but it is nevertheless interesting. After rebuking the disciples, Jesus said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are; for the Son of Man came not to destroy people’s lives but to save them.”Then, we have three encounters. The first person says he will follow Jesus, but Jesus reminds him that “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”. The second person is called to follow Jesus but he wants to bury his father. “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But, as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God,” says Jesus. Finally, someone else wants to follow but also wants to saw goodbye to the folks at home. “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God,” Jesus responds.I think we can glean at least three insights from this text which speak powerfully to our modern predicament.Dissociate from the Love of The WorldThe first is that we must dissociate from the love of the world. That is, we must not allow the opinion of others and of our message to distract us from God’s calling upon our lives.When the disciples came to the Samaritan village, they may have been excited at the prospect of a successful evangelistic mission. Their hopes were clearly disappointed and they responded with anger, we might say murderously so.Jesus’ response is very telling: Let’s move on to another village. We noted also that a further saying was attributed to Jesus to the effect that had not come to destroy but to save life.The first principle here is that we must be prepared to be rejected and ignored as followers of Jesus. A pupil is not above his master. It’s a hard thing to recognise but God has not promised us success in evangelism or in church growth. In our world today, we experience widespread indifference to the Christian faith and rejection of it.What we are told to do is find fertile ground for the Gospel and to sow the seed when we find it. I believe that this is what is behind Jesus’ saying in the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not give to dogs what is holy, and so not throw your pearls before pigs” (or, more famously, “Do not cast your pearls before swine”). What Jesus means by this, I think, is that many simply will not receive the treasure of the kingdom and so we should expend our energy on sharing it with those who will.In the first letter of Peter it says, ‘Always be prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect’ (1 Peter 3:15). The fact that not everyone will ask such questions because many have no interest in the answers. But, for those who do ask such questions, we must have some idea of what we are going to say.Yet, whatever we do say, we must do it with gentleness and respect. That is, the way that our message is delivered must match the content of the message. We must do so with love, respect, gentleness and, very frequently, with courage.So, if you are rejected and ignored for being a Christian, pray for those who do those things and move on to the next place, to the next person who may be willing to receive the treasure of the Kingdom.Find Rest in GodThe second principle I draw fro