Daily Liturgy and Scripture

A lot about spiritual warfare is happening today, but Jesus doesn’t shy away from it. The center of spiritual warfare is always prayer. (Remember the demon that the disciples couldn’t cast out? Jesus said prayer was the missing key.) And in that vein, Jesus gives the disciples both the model for prayer that we use daily, accompanied by a couple stories. One is about praying diligently, but the other one is about driving out a demon. How do we keep the demon from moving back in? By filling the space with Christ.

When Jesus gives someone a specific challenge to help them better understand his Kingdom, it’s not a universal answer. Previously, he told the rich young ruler to sell all he owns. In this passage, speaking to a man who seems to be from a similar background, he tells him that he needs to learn compassion. Martha needs to learn to listen, and Mary needs to be left alone by her nagging sister! Certainly, we are all on different paths, and the Spirit has something unique to say to each of us.

For hospitality to exist, it must be both offered and received. Nobody can be hospitable if someone else doesn't have a need. Jesus sent this large group of followers out not to become powerful and hand out free lunches, but to enter with nothing and allow themselves to be cared for. What an odd way to introduce yourselves. It's unlikely that many in our modern world would be comfortable with so complete an abandonment of material goods.

It must have been lonely to be Jesus. We don’t really know why he chose to lead his group through Samaria. The region was not particularly friendly to Jewish folks, most would have gone around that region to get to Jerusalem. Whatever his reasons, Jesus walks straight through the heart of the place and is rejected by the Samaritans. You really have to wonder if that influences what he says later in this passage, that foxes have dens, but he has no place to lay his head.

It seems like the disciples are always falling asleep at the wrong times. Now as Jesus meets with the great men from Israel’s past who are the symbols of the law and the prophets, and later when Jesus is praying before his arrest. But when did Jesus sleep? Remember back in chapter 8? During a storm. Jesus is at rest in the midst of trouble, but the disciples are flatly unaware of what is going on around them. (I have wondered if Peter didn’t know what he was saying because he was still waking up.) Hopefully we will follow Jesus, resting when we should be at rest, but fully awake with God is doing something we won’t want to miss.

Jesus’ ministry was all about giving away. In this period, he’s doing everything to help the disciples understand what it is they’re receiving. He sends them out with nothing, so they can understand what it is to start from a position of weakness, both receiving from those they meet and giving back to them of the Kingdom. When they come back, they excitedly tell him what they have done… and immediately flunk the test. “You feed them” is yet another lesson. But Jesus is patient. When the disciples miss the point entirely, he doesn’t send them away and do the work himself. He still includes them. You have to wonder, as they are collecting those baskets of leftover food, if they were thinking, “maybe we should have tried this.”

It’s revealing, the way that Jesus reacts to those he meets. Certainly he wished to bring wholeness to all, but he isn’t impressed by titles and status… or urgency, for that matter. When going to heal the daughter of a synagogue leader, he finds himself coming into contact with a woman who took control of her own healing, taking the initiative to touch him. Most of us, if we can even imagine knowing that we had just accidentally healed someone, would probably have kept going without stopping. Somewhere to be, after all. Not Jesus. He stopped, dead in his tracks, delaying the urgent situation, and looked for her. It must have taken a few minutes, because she realized she, “could not stay hidden.” Once she was found, he did more than heal her: he wanted to give her peace. That’s exactly what he did, and it could never have been the case if he hadn’t taken time for her.

Jesus came to live among us so that we could know how to live like him, but he returned to the right hand of the Father so that he could be Lord. We are not left alone. As Ephesians tells us, he gave us the gift of the Church, guided by the Spirit. It's not just so we have a social club. We are to be changed, made more and more into his image every day.

We hear that a Pharisee has invited Jesus into his home, and we later see that other teachers of religious law are already there. Before we jump on Simon just for being a Pharisee, let’s acknowledge that he's already gone a lot farther than most of his kind seem to. Jesus had been saying some pretty convicting things about these guys, and one of them invited him over for a meal. (The culture is also different… they did a lot better being civil with those who disagreed with them that we do today.) I don’t think Jesus was dismissing Simon completely, reprimanding him in front of his guests to tear him down. Some may disagree, but he seems to be using the instance of Simon’s lack of hospitality as a moment to help him understand Kingdom hospitality. It's based on more than polite social practice, rooted in love. Jesus was certainly focused on helping people understand their place in the Kingdom, and his effort may have gotten this Pharisee a little closer.

The sense of purpose in Jesus’s ministry is starting to fully emerge. He is aligning himself with John, who was already making disciples when Jesus started his ministry. He is hinting at himself as being the person John foretells, which is a rare occurrence of Jesus revealing who he is. (Usually he tells people not to tell anyone.) He is also starting to divide disciples from power-hungry religious politicians. All of these things are headed somewhere, and it’s shaped like a cross.