13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 27, 2010

(1 Kings 19:16-19-21; Galatians 5:1, 13-18; Luke 9:51-62)

Sunday’s gospel tells us something about disciples and something about
discipleship. In the first case we get an insight into how James and John handled
rejection (not very well!) In the second we see sample responses from those who
are called to be disciples.
Jews and Samaritans did not mix well. The reasons for the bad blood between
them are too many to list here. It is enough for our purposes to know that their
mutual dislike had endured for centuries and that it bordered on out and out hatred.
It would be somewhat similar to the Catholic/Protestant dispute in Northern Ireland.
It was/is blind and universally shared.
Thus James and John are rebuffed when they try to make arrangements for a
stopover on their way to Jerusalem. The rejection had nothing to do with the fact
that they represented Jesus. It was due solely to the fact that they were Jews trying
to find a place to stay in a Samaritan town before continuing on.
James and John react like the hotheads they were supposed to be. In Mark’s
gospel, Jesus had nicknamed them “sons of thunder” (Mk.3:17). When they are
refused hospitality in this unnamed Samaritan village they ask Jesus if they ought to
curse the place (“would you not have us call down fire from heaven to destroy
them?”). Calling down fire from heaven is the same as asking God to destroy it.
Jesus scolds them for their reaction, implying that they should not share the hatred
that their contemporaries had if they would be his followers.
On a less intense scale, one senses a like kind of tension between urban and
rural people in general. One often notes a patronizing kind of arrogance that city
folk have for country folk. When they make their way out into the country many
city folk do so with a view to returning “to civilization” as quickly as possible. By
the same token country folk distrust the motives and the manners of city folk whom
at times we pity for the rat race in which city folk are forced to live. Often enough
we are happy to see them return to their “civilization” so that we can return to our
peace. Neither group necessarily calls down a curse on the other, but more than a
few have probably thought to! Followers of Jesus ought not to.
In the second part of the Gospel, we see two disciples who volunteer to follow
Jesus and one whom Jesus calls directly. With each of these disciples, a saying of
Jesus is attached. What lies beneath the surface here is that discipleship is not
without its cost. Whether one is a volunteer or one directly called, to be a disciple of
Jesus requires a price to be paid.
In the first case, the saying is an observation about life which came to be
associated in time with the lot of Jesus, who wandered everywhere and for most of
the period covered in the Gospels never really seemed to have a home. Thus: “foxes
have their dens, and birds their nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his
head.” To be a disciple is to reckon with homelessness.
In the second case, the one invited asks for a grace period (“Let me bury my
father first”). What seems like a reasonable enough request is rejected by Jesus
(“Leave the dead to bury the dead”). The call to discipleship is immediate and total.
There is no room for dallying or delay. To be a follower is to make sacrifices,
which sometimes means even at the expense of family obligations. To announce the
Kingdom of God is a more important task.
In the third case, the volunteer is like Elisha in Sunday’s first reading, who asks
to bid his parents farewell before becoming a disciple of Elijah. Elijah permitted it.
Jesus didn’t. If you’re going to be a disciple, then be one. Don’t keep looking back
at what you left behind, or what once was. Attend to the business at hand. That
business is the Kingdom of God. If you keep looking back then you’re not suited
for it.
The cost of being a disciple of Jesus has been summarized then this way: “a
sacrifice of security, of filial duty and of family affection.” For many, in every age,
that’s too high a price to pay.

Father Hummer