This reflection was delivered in Christ Chapel at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas.

Zechariah 8:20-23 | Psalm 87 | Luke 9:51-56

When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”  But he turned and rebuked them.  Then they went on to another village.

When I was growing up, my Mamita, which is what we called my maternal grandmother, had several dichos, little sayings she regularly shared with us.  Whenever we parted ways—whether it was as common an occasion as the end of one of her visits to my parents’ house or as significant as a major move—she would say a little blessing over us in the midst of many besos and goodbyes.  Que nuestro Dios te acompañé, she would say to us.  May our God be with you.  It was one of the ways she took care of us when we were apart.  And it served as a reminder that we are not alone, that God is with us on our journeys—whether they be literal or figurative. 

When we meet Jesus, James, and John in today’s Gospel, they, too, are on their way.  This passage comes at the start of what Scripture scholars call the Central Section or the Travel Narrative of Luke’s Gospel.  During the Travel Narrative, Jesus comes to know more fully the mission to which God has called him.  When I say that Jesus comes to know his mission, I mean that in both senses of the words we have for “to know” in Spanish, saber y conocer.  If you’re using a conjugation of saber, you’re usually talking about head knowledge.  As in, I know about this topic, this mission, in Jesus’ case.  And when you’re using a conjugation of conocer, the connotation is more heart-oriented, more intimate.  As in, I know this person well.  I know who she is and how she lives and moves and has her being in the world.  Jesus is coming to know his mission, not only up here but also in here and out here. 

They are on their way; Jesus is enacting his mission.  Jesus already has proclaimed his mission aloud, in his hometown of Nazareth.  If we remember Luke 4:16-30, we know that he invoked the prophet Isaiah, proclaiming that text, which reads, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  And we remember that he goes on to claim that this passage is fulfilled in the hearing of those gathered in the synagogue.  His friends and neighbors were so moved by the message he shared with him that the one we know as our Savior the Christ narrowly escapes being thrown off a cliff. 

Between that proclamation of the mission of Jesus and the time we meet him, James, and John in the Gospel for today, Jesus busied himself with the work of what mujerista theologian Ada María Isasi-Díaz called “the Kin-dom of God”--that radically egalitarian familia that is freed from the bondage of the inequalities that are designed to prevent us from living fully into who God calls us to be and what God calls us to do.  Between then and now, the Gospel tells of a Jesus who sent out unclean spirits, healed those who were ailing, preached in synagogues, called his first disciples, debated with the religious authorities of his day, called more disciples, taught what is true to those who began to follow him, forgave sins, told parables, sent out his disciples to follow in his footsteps, caught the attention of civil authorities, and began to speak of the suffering he would endure as a result of his ministry.  Especially in the Gospel of Luke, we meet a Jesus who begins to enflesh a God-given vision of a future that is infinitely more just and loving and compassionate than the social, political, and religious circumstances of his day.  He does not just know it in his head.  In these intervening passages, he shows us that he knows it with his heart and with his hands, as well.

Before we return to the text of today, we must recall the advice of one of the earliest and most compelling mainline Protestant voices in what many now call Latinx theology, Justo González.  He writes about what it means to embrace our noninnocent history, as Christians and as Americans.  González calls on us to be wary of the implications of selective readings of our sacred texts, or readings that allow us to laud “the great and sinless heroes” of the New Testament.  He encourages us to be curious about how complicated these figures were as individuals, to be curious about the political and religious circumstances of their day, circumstances that surely affected the choices we hear about in the text.

This advice helps us appreciate more fully what is happening in Luke 9.  By choosing the most direct route to Jerusalem, one that went right through Samaria, Jesus made a choice that New Testament scholar Sharon Ringe advises that most Jews would not have made.  While the nature of the hatred between Jews and Samaritans is contested, we do know that it was long-standing, reaching back fully eight centuries before the time of Jesus.  When we meet Jesus, James, and John in this passage, most Jews would have seen Samaritans as corrupt and unclean (Luke, 149).  Yet Jesus invites his disciples to go into the land of those whom their community regards as corrupt and unclean.  When they arrive, they are not welcomed there.  The Samaritans do not recognize Jesus’ mission of building up the Kin-dom of God.  They reject him. 

James and John, these sons of thunder, are ready for a fight.  Gifted with Jesus’ call to accompany him on his mission, their actions show that they do not know the implications of that call.  They’re ready to engage with those whose religious practice is different from theirs in a way that Jesus knows will not bear good fruit.  Rather than allowing James and John to seek vengeance on those whom they perceive as rejecting his mission, Jesus says no, re-focusing their attention on movement toward Jerusalem, on work that will support his God-given mission.

If we follow Jesus’ no, if we acknowledge that our mission is not to tear one another down, that it is not to attack those who think and do differently from the ways we believe to be right and just—we find room to live into Jesus’ yes, to follow in the mission into which he invites us.  To be clear, Jesus’ example in this text is not inviting us to collapse into a kind of irresponsible relativism that allows injustice to run rampant for a lack of accountability.  Rather, his mission to build up the Kin-dom provides example after example of walking alongside those who are most vulnerable—the economically poor, those who are held captive, those who do not see what is right and just, those who are oppressed.  It is a mission that is marked by movement, one that asks us to go beyond the boundaries of what is familiar and what is comfortable.  It is a mission that invites us—as disciples who often are not unlike James and John, in our messy-ness, in our fiery questioning—to allow our hearts to be moved by the one whose example is unflinching in his commitment to those whom society pushes to the margins of our common life.

What is the Good News of today’s Gospel?  As we discern that together, I encourage us to reflect on Jesus’ yes, on this mission of building up the Kin-dom of God.  To what does Jesus invite us this day?  Alongside whom will we walk in our ministries?   What particular role are we—as individuals and as a seminary community—called to play in enfleshing God’s egalitarian dream for us?  As we reflect on these questions, let us be blessed by my Mamita’s dicho, Que nuestro Dios te acompañe.  May God be with you.