ORDINARY WORLD YOUTUBE FREE
Paul reminded the Galatians that the love that leads to following Jesus is a free response to God's love. Disciples will surely make mistakes, but the worst mistake is to become stagnant. We can recognize ourselves in the person who kept looking back whenever our comfort with the familiar or fear of being wrong prevents us from venturing out in risky hope. Whether it's a question of making a life choice or deciding when to dedicate time to prayer, we put it off, forgetting that, as a popular saying intimates, not to decide is to decide not to. When we act like the first one, we avoid the urgency of following Jesus. None of them were perfect, none totally lost.įirst of all, those who didn't accept Jesus' invitation weren't put off by the threats or hardship. What are we to learn from watching Jesus and these folks? Some followed and some didn't. (The good old days misremembered can be a stumbling block to God's future.) Jesus told this person that God's reign is about hope for what can be, not nostalgia for what once was. The problem for the second seemed to be a love for the past that kept him/her longingly looking backward rather than plowing wholeheartedly into the future. This was a decisive moment he was on the road to Jerusalem he had no time to waste.Īfter one person turned him down, Jesus invited another.
There is no indication that there was a funeral in the offing rather, he saw care for his parent(s) as a more immediate priority. This person liked the idea, but wanted to defer Jesus' offer because of family obligations. The first sounded a bit like the guests who made excuses for skipping a banquet (Luke 14:15-24). Jesus responds with a poetic warning, saying that foxes and birds (probable allusions to Herod and the Romans) make themselves at home in the land, but that, from his birth through the day he walked to Emmaus, he would possess no place to lay his head.Īfter this, perhaps because one volunteer bravely joined them, Jesus invites two others to follow. Love cannot be coerced.Įven with the precariousness of their venture, someone soon volunteers to join the group. Jesus (how exasperated was he?) simply told them to look for a more hospitable spot.Ĭontrary to some traditions, Jesus and his Father are not in the business of obliterating unbelievers and evildoers. When a Samaritan village refused them hospitality, the disciples, imagining that they possessed some magical or divine power, proposed destroying it as if it were Sodom. Jesus had just told them that the temple authorities were determined to eradicate him (Luke 9:22), and with that, he "set his face" for Jerusalem. Jesus and the group we meet on the road are quite vulnerable. Today's Gospel reflects on four expressions of that activity.
Following is not a status, but an activity. There is no dogma, rule or rite that makes one a follower. The verb "follow" occurs 80 times in the New Testament, but it is never rendered as a noun.
The word disciples simply means students.
Gerhard Lofink comments that there is no New Testament noun for followers of Jesus. Today's liturgy asks, "What does it take to be a follower of Jesus?" In his book Jesus of Nazareth, theologian Fr.
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