How to follow Jesus
Jesus resolutely sets out on his journey to Jerusalem. He knows the risk he runs in the capital, but nothing stops him. His life has only one purpose: to announce and promote the project of the kingdom of God. The journey starts out badly: the Samaritans reject him. He is used to it, since the same thing has happened in Nazareth, his home town.
Jesus knows that it is not easy to accompany him as an itinerant prophet. He cannot offer to his followers the security and prestige the experts in the law can promise their students. Jesus deceives no one. Those who want to follow him have to learn to live like him.
While they are on their way, a stranger approaches him. He looks enthusiastic: “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus lets him see, before anything else, that he should not expect from him security, or advantages or well-being. He himself “has nowhere to rest his head.” He is homeless, eats what is offered him, sleeps where he can.
Let us not fool ourselves. The great obstacle that prevents many Christians today to truly follow Jesus is the comfortable life in which we have settled down. Taking him seriously frightens us because we know he will demand that we live more generously and in greater solidarity with others. We are slaves to our tiny bit of well-being. The economic crisis may perhaps make us more human and more Christian.
Another person asks Jesus to let him go and bury his father before he follows him. Jesus replies with a provocative and enigmatic play of words: “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” These unsettling words put in question our conventional lifestyle.
We have to broaden the horizon where we move about. The family is not all there is. There is something more important. If we decide to follow Jesus, we have to think also of the human family as a whole: no one should be without a home, without a country, without papers, without rights. There is more that we can do to bring about a more just world where we are brothers and sisters to each other.
Another individual is willing to follow him, but he wants to say farewell to his family first. Jesus surprises him with these words: “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks back to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.” Working with Jesus in his project demands total dedication. One has to look ahead without being distracted, to journey toward the future without locking ourselves up in the past.
Recently, Pope Francis has warned us about what is happening in the Church today: “We fear that God may force us to strike out on new paths and leave behind our all too narrow, closed and selfish horizons in order to become open to his own.”
José Antonio Pagola
June 30, 2013
13 Ordinary Time (C)
Luke 9, 51-62