Followers of Jesus (Luke 9)

       Jesus said, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God.”  From Luke, chapter 9, verse 62.

     Today’s Gospel reading begins Luke’s Travel Narrative, Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem. We can divide the reading into two parts: the first, the Samaritan village story, and the second, Jesus’s dialog with three followers. Both parts have a common theme: what it means, and what it does not mean, to be a follower of Jesus. And both parts also make clear, who Jesus is, and who he is not.

     “When the days for his being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem.” In other words, Jesus knows his destiny; ‘days fulfilled’ means ‘days completed’; his Galilean ministry is finished and the next period, his “exodus” (as he says in chapter 9, verse 31), his suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension will take place in Jerusalem. 

      “He sent messengers ahead of him.” There is evidently an organization around Jesus; today we would call these messengers “advance men”. But these advance men are unsuccessful; they are unable to persuade a Samaritan village to accept Jesus. The Samaritans miss a chance to meet Jesus; they may be afraid of him, with good reason perhaps. After all, they’ve likely heard of his healings and powers over demons and so on; and James and John don’t help matters when they propose to “call down fire from heaven to consume them,” for rejecting Jerusalem-bound Jesus.  James and John are thinking of the prophet Elijah, who called down fire from heaven to destroy two troops of King Ahaziah of Israel, a hundred men or so, as the story goes in the Second Book of the Kings. Jesus doesn’t accept the proposal. In so doing, Jesus dissociates himself from the ferocious attitude of his disciples, and rejects identification of himself with Elijah. Jesus is not trapped in the traditional mutual hostility of Jews and Samaritans, and is more than a prophet, and expects his disciples to leave traditional attitudes behind. So “they journeyed to another village, ” that is, they moved on to the next step in Jesus’s revelation of himself, and to the next step in their understanding of what it means to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus. 

      “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus’s oblique reply, “the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head,” is a warning to his disciple, of what following him may mean: no den, no nest, no resting place, no home. As it happened, disciples and apostles and more spread through the Roman world and beyond, far beyond their places of rest in Galilee and Jerusalem. Jesus freed them from their need to remain attached to their homes, their places of origin, their past, their tribe. The Son of Man is not limited to any particular place or time, is free to rest his head anywhere, and he does.

     “Follow me!” And we hear the reply, “let me bury my father.” But not even this family obligation, this filial duty, is more important than proclaiming the Kingdom. Jesus won’t even give leave to someone to say goodbye to his family. Only the spiritually dead, the housebound, would preoccupy themselves with the physically dead, would  allow themselves to be distracted from proclaiming the Kingdom. 

     It helps to keep in mind that Jesus is addressing these remarks to particular individuals, who are ready to hear the teaching. There are degrees of readiness. Jesus has the insight, as any illuminated spiritual teacher does, into the character, the depth, the receptivity of his followers, the level of commitment of which they are capable. He knows who is ready to set his hand to the plow, and who isn’t. It seems to me that Jesus knows who these would-be followers really are, that they are more ready for the Kingdom than they think they are, that they really can leave families and dead relatives behind, can leave behind old tribal attitudes and hostilities, can journey “to another village,” that is, they can journey to the next level of awareness of the Kingdom.

     After all this emphasis on journeying and following and leaving conventional obligations behind, it is curious, jarring even, that the reading ends with a rather conventional, agrarian image, that of a farmer behind a plow. Who is more located in a particular place and in a more traditional way of life than a farmer behind his plow? Who is less likely to leave regular obligations behind? After all, farming is the basis of all civilization. But Jesus says, Don’t look back. No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what is left behind is fit for the Kingdom of  God. See what setting your hand to the plow really means. Plowing in one place is itself a kind of journey, is itself a metaphor for the spiritual life, a life of following an illuminated teacher, leaving behind old conventions and obligations, of not looking back on what was left behind. The Kingdom, which is awareness of spiritual reality, of divine reality, is open to those who look ahead, who journey ahead, who don’t limit themselves to what is , what was, behind them. The plow turns over the soil, leaves it open to seeds of new life, new possibility; when the soil of routine is turned over and exposed to the light, the farmer, which we may call the soul, is making himself or herself, open to the reality of God, to awareness of God, and this awareness is the Kingdom.

     This is what gives Jesus’s teaching its uncompromising, demanding, all-or-nothing character. What can be more real than God? What can be more compelling than God’s presence? What can be more important? That is why Jesus says to those who are spiritually ready, “No one who sets a hand  to the plow and  looks to what is left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God.”

     (26.vi.22 Adv.)