Progressive reflections on the lectionary #70

Monday 23rd June 2025

Luke 9:51-62 - On the road again

I’ve two fairly quick things to say about this morning’s passage, which is the story in Luke’s gospel of the start of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, during which he passes through some Samaritan villages.

First a little context - the Samaritans are/were the people who were left over from the lost tribes of Israel. If you remember, ten tribes had been taken into captivity several centuries before Jesus, probably 722BCE. This was long before Judah were taken to Babylon.

Unlike the Judahites who were released and returned from captivity, the ten tribes were scattered across Assyria, they were ‘in the east’. The few who were left behind when the majority were spirited off intermarried with other tribes and the resulting population became the Samaritans - thus they represent the most enemy like people: near neighbours, almost relatives, but still ‘other’. They are the neighbouring town in the football derby match.

In this story Jesus is rejected by the Samaritan villages, his disciples suggest they could ‘call down fire’ on them as a result but Jesus demurs and then encounters some ‘would be’ disciples each of whom has a reason why they cannot join Jesus’ movement.

So what’s happening in this passage? Well quite a lot actually, but there are just two things I’m going to dwell on briefly.

Firstly we have to recognise that Luke’s writing is sophisticated, it’s not a pure ‘regurgitation’ of history as some would like to claim. He deliberately orders his stories into a sequence in order to make a series of theological points.

So the initial thing I want to say is that this passage is part of a larger sequence where the author has Jesus address the concept of ‘eternal life’. Here we encounter people who are not worthy of this ‘eternal life’ - people who reject Jesus’ message, and people who are not willing to make the sort of sacrifice required.

As you go on through Luke’s gospel you will find this larger narrative extending onwards and the preoccupation growing more obvious, it culminates in the ‘who is my neighbour?’ discourse, but this passage is just the start of Luke’s exploration of the idea. It highlights the fact that for Jesus this ‘eternal life’ is actually open to everyone, it’s available to all not just the Jews - a crucial idea that will go on to be developed more fully in Luke’s later writing as well as in the writings of Paul and his followers.

The Messiah, the hoped for figure who will restore the glory of Israel, must necessarily have his sights set more broadly than those of pure blood or clear ancestral descent. Samaritans and even ‘gentiles’ are welcome to be part of the community of resistance if only they will learn to make the sorts of sacrifices required. The examples of would be disciples, then, are given as indications of the sort of sacrifices that would be required.

These are interesting, actually, because here Luke strings together some sayings that seem to reflect the gnomic utterances of the historical Jesus. “Let the dead bury their dead,” is one of them, and famously it’s a somewhat harsh and apparently offensive response to a man who wants to go and bury his father. Opinions vary on exactly what Jesus is saying in these phrases, but perhaps the most interesting thing about them is that they are considered to be authentic sayings of Jesus (the basic argument being: why on earth would the evangelists have repeated them if they weren’t?) I do have some thoughts on these, but I am not going to go into them now except to say that I don’t think the idea that this is a ‘supersessionist’ (replacement theology) approach to Jewish law holds water.

So the first thing I’ve said is that here we have the first part of a narrative that will explore the idea of ‘eternal life’. The second thing I want to say is that here the evangelist uses some call backs to the the story of Elijah in 2 Kings.

This begins in the first verse of the passage, where Luke writes: “When the days drew near for him to be taken up...” this mirrors the idea of Elijah being ‘taken up’ to heaven in a whirlwind (2 Kings 2) - in other words, like Elijah Jesus is nearing the end of his ministry, although Jesus’ ending will be dramatic in a very different way to Elijah’s story of chariots of fire etc.

Then when a Samaritan village rejects Jesus we hear two of the more aggressive disciples, James and John, ask, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” Here again is a direct reference to the Elijah story, specifically 2 Kings 1 where the prophet calls down fire on hostile messengers. Here though Jesus rebukes his disciples, demonstrating that his ministry is based on the principle of love and mercy, not punitive vengeance.

Both characters make ‘final journeys’ - Elijah’s journey is to the Jordan which he parts like Moses before ascending in a whirlwind. Jesus on the other hand makes his final journey to Jerusalem where he heads not to a triumphal escape but to suffering and humiliation.

The writer of Luke, then, uses this final journey narrative as a kind of template to demonstrate that Jesus is not just a new Elijah— rather he is the one who elevates and transforms (or perhaps restores) the prophetic tradition into a path of sacrificial love.

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