I have a friend who is a staff member for a US Senator, and he has some great stories about that particular Senator having an uncanny ability to stand up, talk extemporaneously and say just the right thing. He also has almost as many stories of that same Senator getting on the opposite sort of “roll.” The kind where you dig a hole, and it gets deeper and deeper as you say all the wrong stuff to the wrong crowd!
I wonder if Jesus’disciples ever felt like this? Sometimes he would just get on a roll and say the hardest, most unpleasant, unpopular things. We looked at a section in Matthew two weeks ago where he seemed to do this, and today, we will look at the closing verses of Luke Chapter 9, where he gives us perhaps his most unpleasant example of this.
“I’ll follow you Lord…after my father’s funeral.” “I’m about life not death,” Jesus says. “Let the dead bury the dead.” “I’ll follow you Lord, but I need to at least have the courtesy to go back and say goodbye to my family.” “I need people who are serious,” Jesus replies. “No one who starts plowing a field and looks back is fit to join my crowd.”
I wonder if the disciples felt like crawling in a hole somewhere after Jesus said, “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but we are not going to be staying in the best hotels!” I can just see the disciples working the crowd afterwards. Surely there must have been a few of them who were sort of like me--spin doctors who said with a nervous laugh, “He has not had a lot of sleep lately. Go say goodbye to your family and meet us in the next town. He’ll never notice.”
Today in our series, The Inconvenient Truth, we look at what Jesus meant when he said, “Put your hand to the plow and don’t look back.”
I wonder if Jesus’disciples ever felt like this? Sometimes he would just get on a roll and say the hardest, most unpleasant, unpopular things. We looked at a section in Matthew two weeks ago where he seemed to do this, and today, we will look at the closing verses of Luke Chapter 9, where he gives us perhaps his most unpleasant example of this.
“I’ll follow you Lord…after my father’s funeral.” “I’m about life not death,” Jesus says. “Let the dead bury the dead.” “I’ll follow you Lord, but I need to at least have the courtesy to go back and say goodbye to my family.” “I need people who are serious,” Jesus replies. “No one who starts plowing a field and looks back is fit to join my crowd.”
I wonder if the disciples felt like crawling in a hole somewhere after Jesus said, “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but we are not going to be staying in the best hotels!” I can just see the disciples working the crowd afterwards. Surely there must have been a few of them who were sort of like me--spin doctors who said with a nervous laugh, “He has not had a lot of sleep lately. Go say goodbye to your family and meet us in the next town. He’ll never notice.”
Today in our series, The Inconvenient Truth, we look at what Jesus meant when he said, “Put your hand to the plow and don’t look back.”
Mark
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