But Jesus turned and rebuked them (9:55)
We’re in the 9th Chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel. The beginning of this Chapter has Jesus investing the Twelve with power and authority, and sending them out to preach and to heal. In a very similar way, at the beginning of the next Chapter, Jesus will extend this delegation to Seventy Two others. When these joyfully report back from their mission, Jesus speaks words of solemn blessing over them. He identifies their authority with his own, just as his own authority is identified with that of God (10:16). He declares that their names are written in heaven (10:20). He contrasts them with the Kings and Prophets of old, who longed to witness Messianic times, but never actually did so (10:23-24).
And yet: here, in this Chapter 9, Jesus again and again rebukes his disciples, or corrects them, or contradicts them, or at least wrong-foots them, leaving them looking shame-faced and foolish. In this Chapter alone he does this 10 times. And we who read are to take note. We don’t imagine ourselves to be better than the disciples Jesus himself chose. With them, we definitely believe in Jesus, we trust him, we want to serve him, and follow him. But also, with them, we so easily fall short of perfect conformity to him. We fail truly to have the mind of Jesus in us (Phil 2:5). Yes, we recognise his goodness, his beauty, his holiness, his power, his divinity, his glory. We rightly look forward to our share in all that, according to his promise. But his humility, his suffering, his Cross, his death: this is hard for us to understand; hard for us to accept; very hard for us to desire.
To look now at the first rebuke in today’s Gospel. What on earth could have prompted James and John to think of calling down fire on this Samaritan Village? Actually, according to St. Luke, quite a lot. The narrative of this Gospel is very carefully constructed, dense with internal echoes and allusions, as also with references to the Old Testament Scriptures. When Luke tells us that Jesus “sent messengers ahead of him” (v.52), we’re meant to recall the text in Malachi (3:1) that refers to Elijah, and is then applied by extension to St. John the Baptist (cf. Luke 7:27, 1:17, 3:4).
Yet precisely here in Samaria, Elijah called down fire from heaven to consume those attempting to arrest him (2 K 1:9-14). As for St. John the Baptist: Luke has him speaking of Jesus as one who would bring unquenchable fire (3:16-17). So we need to be careful not to reduce Jesus in a facile way to one who is merely meek and mild. Twice in these Chapters 9 and 10 Jesus instructs his disciples: should they encounter an inhospitable town, they are to shake off its dust from their feet. That’s a prophetic gesture of condemnation and rejection. And Jesus himself has very terrible words for the Galilaean towns that rejected him. For them, he evokes fire, and worse than fire. It will be more tolerable, he says, on that day for Sodom than for that town (10:12-16).
So, in the circumstances, it was rather natural for James and John to think of fire from heaven. Nevertheless, of course their suggestion was wholly inappropriate. Jesus has deliberately now begun his journey towards his Cross (9:51), and the disciples who accompany him have above all to learn this way, which alone is our way of salvation. In addition to that: Jesus knows what James and John do not know about this Samaritan village. Among its reprehensible inhabitants, surely, must be counted a leper whose faith Jesus will highly praise, after he returns to give thanks for his healing (17:15). Doubtless also here lives one who will serve as a model for the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:33). And in the Book of Acts, when Philip comes to evangelise in Samaria, the whole town welcomes his message with joy (Acts 8:6).
There follow three little dialogues with would-be disciples, each of which centres on the word “follow”. St. Luke does not tell us the end result of any of these exchanges, so we can easily read ourselves into them, and apply their message. This message, always more or less of rebuke, is certainly not easy, but it is very important, and at the deepest level, consoling.
With these three put-downs, Jesus strikingly underlines the place he must have in the life of all of us. He’s not just very important for us, along with other important things. He’s simply our greatest good: greater than all other possible goods put together. Jesus doesn’t just give us life: he is our life. He’s not just our teacher and example: he’s our Lord and our God. So the supreme object of our life must be to cultivate his friendship, to become his worthy disciple, to live in union with him, to share his mystery. Nothing else whatever must be allowed to stand in the way of that: no other attachment, no other duty, no other love.
The words of Jesus here are strong: well designed to strengthen and encourage the martyrs in an age of persecution. They will be less palatable for Christians who have become maybe a bit over comfortable; who find themselves rather much at home in this world, and maybe all too ready to compromise with it; who are perhaps somewhat complacent about their own goodness, and more inclined towards self congratulation than towards humble acceptance of correction. It seems to me though that the Church will be renewed in our day only by a renewed preaching of the radical demands of the Gospel. We need ever new witnesses to Jesus, messengers of his Good News with fire in their belly, who will effectively proclaim the message of salvation to a broken world, even when it seems the world is not interested, and does not want to listen.
Meanwhile for ourselves the lesson is clear. We have to grow ever closer to Jesus, so that we can truly say with St. Paul: no longer I, but Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:20). Last Friday’s feast reminded us of how we do that by contemplating the Heart of Jesus; entering into it, identifying ourselves with it, drinking ever and anew from the life and love that pour out from it. We are here now to come into direct contact with that Sacred Heart, through the Eucharistic mystery. And so we pray that our own hearts may be perfectly conformed to the Heart of Jesus; that we might have his mind firmly established in us; and that we might truly be called his disciples.