Year 1, Day 218: Luke 9

Wow.  So many varied stories – so hard to run a common thread between most.  What is Jesus telling us in this aspect of His ministry?

Two Sides of The Middle

Often, the transfiguration is lifted up as the “halfway point” of Jesus’ ministry.  Before the transfiguration Jesus is building His ministry, teaching the people, healing the general public, and generally being a good itinerant teacher and prophet.  After the transfiguration Jesus takes on a much more serious tone as he heads toward Jerusalem, looks ahead to the crucifixion, and argues with the Pharisees far more frequently.  This isn’t to say that each of these activities is exclusively on one side of the transfiguration or the other.  But we can see that Jesus’ time on the mountain with Moses and Elijah adds confirmation to Christ that He is going forth to die.

The transfiguration is about the middle of this chapter, as well.  If we look to the two sides of the transfiguration we see a bit of what I am talking about.  Before the transfiguration we have Jesus sending out the twelve to talk about Jesus and what He is doing in this world.  And they must have been pretty effective, too, for not too long after we have a gathering of 5,000 people out listening to Jesus! 

Notice the parallels between these stories.  Both stories teach us to rely upon God.  Jesus essentially tells the disciples to take nothing for their journey, but to go and to trust that God will meet their needs through the people to whom they talk about Jesus.  The message of the feeding of the 5,000 is pretty much the same.  Trust that God will see to your true needs from the way that He has blessed the people among whom we do ministry.  Both stories remind us that God’s provision is good, well-timed, and beyond explanation.

Both of these stories also tell us that God may not ask for the impossible, but He does ask for all that we are.  In the sending out of the apostles they go and do the work themselves.  They live and breathe the ministry for a time.  It is a heart and soul moment – not simply a “do ministry as my daily routine allows for it to happen.”  In the feeding story, all the food that the people have is brought forward to Jesus.  Imagine giving up your only food to Jesus so that it could be spread among 5,000 people.  Perhaps it would have been a meal for the disciples, but logically it seemed only a fraction of a morsel for the whole crowd.  Yet they gave up every fish and every last loaf.  When the disciples gave all, God did miraculous things.

Peter and Jesus

Of course, this ties in quite naturally with Jesus’ conversation with Peter.  Peter tells Jesus that he believes Jesus to be the Messiah, the One-to-Come, the Lord.  This gets Jesus to tell the disciples about taking up crosses.  Jesus teaches the disciples what they just learned through practice.  If you want to follow Jesus, you have to give Him your whole person.  Jesus tells the disciples that He doesn’t want compromise.  He’s not interested in time-sharing with the world.  If you want to follow Jesus, you have to give Him everything.

Jesus Is Not Our Trophy

After the transfiguration we have a quick healing story as if to indicate to us that things are back to normal.  But it isn’t back to normal at all.  Immediately after the healing story we find Jesus handed over to mankind.  No, He isn’t handed over to death yet, but He is handed over for the disciples to argue as to who is the greatest disciple.  Jesus becomes the trophy, if you will. 

Rather than pausing and remembering that God bids them to take up their cross and follow Jesus, the disciples begin to argue over who gets to claim Jesus as the biggest prize.   So Jesus teaches them that the least is the greatest.  The one who no longer cares about himself but rather allows himself to die to the world so that Christ can live in them is the greatest.  Jesus is no trophy, for we are not worthy of possessing that trophy.  We do not claim Jesus, but thanks be to God that it is Jesus who claims us!

Rejection

We also have two stories at the end of this chapter about rejection.  A Samaritan town rejects Jesus.  Suddenly the disciples see what appears to be a chink in the armor of Jesus.  Up until now things had gone well.  But the closer he now draws to Jerusalem the more rejection he will face. 

Unaccustomed to rejection, John and James seek to pay back, but Jesus rebukes them.  Again we see James and John display their humanity.  Again we see Jesus denounce it.  It is human nature to want to react violently against those who reject us.  But Jesus knows that it is also in our human nature to reject God and His Christ.  Those who follow Jesus deny human nature and adopt God’s ways.  If we wish to truly follow Jesus, we also must accept rejection.

As if this is not bad enough, Jesus then meets up with three people who seek to be His disciples.  We don’t ultimately know the fate of these disciples according to Luke, but tradition takes the stance that each of these three ultimately did not follow Jesus. 

Whether they do or don’t, we can see Jesus again talking about what it means to follow Him and deny the human nature around us.  Through the first one Jesus reminds us that to follow Him is to trust God’s provision and recognize that we put aside what our nature tells us should be first.  Through the second man we learn that our love of family should not be greater than our love for God – and that itself seems to go against our human nature.  Through the third man we learn that we should not spend time looking back when God is calling us forward.  In other words, we should not be concerned about our personal glories when God is calling us forward to become His servant.

Yes, in the end I think we have found a theme for this chapter.  Deny yourself.  God wants all of you to be His servant.  Sometimes that is easy and fun and miraculous.  Sometimes that means making hard decisions and tough prioritizations.  But it is what Jesus bids us to do.  It is what God asks.

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