postID: 6918; title: The Sixth Sunday After Pentecost
no collect_text found
groupKey: secondary
groupKey: other
Array
(
[date] => 2016-06-26 11:00:00
[scope] =>
[year] =>
[month] =>
[post_id] => 1269
[series_id] =>
[day_titles_only] =>
[exclusive] => 1
[return] => formatted
[formatted] =>
[show_date] =>
[show_meta] =>
[show_content] => 1
[admin] =>
[debug] => 1
[filter_types] => Array
(
[0] => primary
[1] => secondary
)
[type_labels] => Array
(
[primary] => Primary
[secondary] => Secondary
[other] => Other
)
[the_date] => 2016-06-26 11:00:00
)
1 post(s) found for dateStr : 2016-06-26postID: 6918 (The Sixth Sunday After Pentecost)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6918; date_type: variable; year: 2016
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6918
displayDates for postID: 6918/year: 2016
Array
(
[0] => 2016-06-26
)
postPriority: 3primaryPost found for date: 2016-06-26 with ID: 6918 (The Sixth Sunday After Pentecost)
The Sixth Sunday After Pentecost
Array
(
[date] => 2016-06-26 11:00:00
[scope] =>
[year] =>
[month] =>
[post_id] => 1269
[series_id] =>
[day_titles_only] =>
[exclusive] => 1
[return] => simple
[formatted] =>
[show_date] =>
[show_meta] =>
[show_content] => 1
[admin] =>
[debug] => 1
[filter_types] => Array
(
[0] => primary
[1] => secondary
)
[type_labels] => Array
(
[primary] => Primary
[secondary] => Secondary
[other] => Other
)
[the_date] => 2016-06-26 11:00:00
)
1 post(s) found for dateStr : 2016-06-26postID: 6918 (The Sixth Sunday After Pentecost)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6918; date_type: variable; year: 2016
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6918
displayDates for postID: 6918/year: 2016
Array
(
[0] => 2016-06-26
)
postPriority: 3primaryPost found for date: 2016-06-26 with ID: 6918 (The Sixth Sunday After Pentecost)
The reading_id [73540] is already in the array.
No update needed.
Scripture citation(s): Luke 9:51-62
A Sermon by
Fr. Daniels
on
Luke 9:51-62
✛
The Cost of Discipleship
Array
(
[0] => 60757
)
book: [Array
(
[0] => 60757
)
] (reading_id: 73540)bbook_id: 60757
The bbook_id [60757] is already in the array.
No update needed for sermon_bbooks.
Every once in a while we come across a strange and surprising depiction of Jesus in the Gospels. It doesn’t happen all the time. After a while you may get a general sense of what’s going on, most of the time. But in today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke, we see something strange.
As the scene opens we find that some of the disciples have been traveling throughout the surrounding area, telling people about Jesus. This includes a village of the Samaritans, where they had gone in order to prepare it for his arrival. But the Samaritans would not receive them. They were inhospitable to Jesus and his followers, so James and John, with characteristic militancy, wanted to kill all of them. They ask Jesus, “Wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?” (Luke 9:54).
The two disciples are referring to an event recounted in the second book of the Kings, in which Elijah calls down a firestorm from the sky to kill a group of fifty soldiers of a king who had turned away from the God of Israel; then, to make the point more definitive, he kills the next fifty, too (1:9-12).
This is the punishment by Elijah that James and John are referring to. Like Elijah, they are also in Samaria. There with this recalcitrant group, the two disciples want to imitate Elijah’s response, but Jesus says no. No more of that. That is not what he is aiming to do. Instead, he says, “The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them,” to bring life, not death.
I would tend to think that this is a nice thing to say. It paints a picture of Jesus who, in modern terms, we might say is “tolerant.” Tolerant of other people with different beliefs, willing to go along with a diversity of opinion. So the Samaritans don’t want to receive Jesus? Fine. He just goes on to the next place instead, without further discussion.
Then it comes to seem like maybe it isn’t such a nice thing after all. Shortly they come across other people and, unlike the Samaritans, these are aspiring disciples. They don’t want to resist Jesus; on the contrary, they want to be his followers. They are drawn to him. They must see in him possibilities for life, for new life, life with God. Whatever preparatory work the disciples have done with them has really taken hold, and they are ready to follow Jesus, wherever he goes.
All of the sudden, the seeming tolerance that Jesus had expressed to the Samaritans evaporates. The live-and-let-live attitude disappears. He doesn’t welcome them. He doesn’t say, hey, glad you’re on board, I look forward to working with you. Instead, to the first he promises a life of iterant instability; to the second he prohibits the fulfillment of burial duties; to the third he says that his desire to say goodbye to his family makes him unworthy for the kingdom of God.
It wasn’t so for Elijah and Elisha in today’s reading from Kings (1 Kings 19:19-21). After Elisha was ordained, he told Elijah that he wanted to go say goodbye to his family. Elijah responds cryptically, but not obviously critically. Elisha says goodbye and then they continue with their ministry. His hesitancy didn’t him unworthy of anything, it seems.
Elijah was indulgent and understanding with his friend and protégé, but he would be vindictive to his enemies. Jesus, on the other hand, gave grace and mercy to his enemies, but would be harsh and inflexible with his friends. If you want to follow Jesus, you will be a servant of Jesus Christ and of nothing else, to a shocking degree.
It is especially shocking with the second aspiring disciple who wanted to bury his father. This is, I think, an understandable desire. The burial of the dead is an act of mercy. Not being cared for after death is understood as one of the worst things that can happen to a person. In Jeremiah, a lack of burial is the vile curse leveled at a disobedient people: the prophet says, “They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried” (16:4-6; 25:33). In Ezekiel, the Valley of Dry Bones is what is left of unburied fallen soldiers, and their lack of burial is one of the things that makes the scene so desolate (chapter 37). After Jesus’ death, the Gospels make a point of naming Joseph of Arimathea as the person who treated Jesus’ body with respect, wrapping it in linen and putting it in the tomb.
The burial of any dead is an act of mercy, but the burial of one’s parent, as far as it is possible, is a matter of divine decree. Remember that, in the Ten Commandments, the commandment to honor one’s father and mother is the first of the duties to other human beings that appears. Before the prohibitions against murder, or adultery, or stealing, there is first “Honor thy father and … mother.” And the obligation to arrange for burial is among the most important duties of this most important commandment.
It is not just the Hebrew people who think these ways. This sentiment runs throughout history, and perhaps even pre-history: it may even be the case that a desire for orderly burial practices is part of what contributed to hunter-gatherers forming stationary communities, which then facilitated the development of agriculture.[1] In other words, the inauguration of stable burials led to the foundation of civilization, not the other way around. So this felt responsibility to parents and to the dead is deeply ingrained, a practice dating to pre-historical times, an ancient religious obligation. This is what the aspiring disciple wanted to do.
And to all of this—to one of the very pillars of civilization itself, in the face of all custom and obligation—Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their dead.” A good-hearted man who loves Jesus wants to bury his father. “Let the dead bury their dead.” He wants to obey a religious commandment. He wants to honor the one who raised him. He wants to praise the one who loved him. He wants to accord his father the respect he deserves. He wants to engage in this practice that is a mark of universal human social values. “Let the dead bury their dead.”
Jesus says, “The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” But it may be worth asking: Is it such a good thing to have Jesus want to save your life? Would it not be easier if he were to just pass on without comment to the next village? There won’t be any fire from heaven, after all. And then you can do all the right things, no matter what: respect your parents; be loyal to your family; have a place to lay your head.
Jesus wants to save your life. Wherever death reigns, and evil persists, and suffering occurs, Jesus himself wants to be there, with you and for you. For the sins that keep us alienated from God, he offers absolute forgiveness. The spirit of God who moved upon the face of the waters at creation moves among the people of God today with sanctifying love. The Father to whom Jesus prayed has adopted us as his beloved, the people for whom he would do anything. No more sin. No more death. No more darkness. Life eternal in the land of light and joy, in the presence of the triune God.
Jesus loves you and he wants to save your life. All he asks of his disciples, those who love him back, is everything.
_______________
[1] See Rene Girard, Evolution and Conversion (T&T Clark, 2008).
