Fr. Michael Williams

In the gospel we’ve just heard it’s clear that Jesus has great energy great passion to proclaim God’s kingdom to a world that didn’t always want to hear about it.

“Jesus resolutely took the road for Jerusalem”; Jesus’ passion was to go to Jerusalem and proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God. He was passionate to tell people about God’s love for them and he wanted his followers to have that same kind of enthusiasm.

The gospel from Luke today relays how some people make excuses after Jesus has called them. One of those called wants to “bury [their] father first” and another wants to “say good-bye to [their] people at home”. To be fair these seem reasonable excuses. But the point Jesus is trying to make is that we can’t keep making excuses about doing God’s will. We need to be enthusiastic about being a follower of Jesus. Jesus gave everything for us; he wants us to do likewise.

One of the special features of God’s kingdom is that it is a kingdom of mercy. One of Jesus’ beatitudes says, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy”. Jesus says this because he is the Man of mercy. Jesus was resolute that he would go to Jerusalem to proclaim mercy. We know that Jesus practiced what he preached. When he was being crucified the prayer that fell from his lips was, “Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing”. Jesus came into the world to show mercy. We could say that Jesus’ overriding passion was his mercy.

However, the two disciples, James and John, who were following Jesus to Jerusalem, were thinking differently to the Lord. These two disciples went into a Samaritan village, but unfortunately they were not given a very good welcome. Because they were not given a good welcome they “wanted to call down fire from heaven and burn” the village up. The disciples in this case were not practicing mercy. They wanted to destroy a village of people, just because they did not receive a welcome. Jesus rebukes this reaction from his disciples. Calling fire down on people is not what the kingdom of God is about.

We too like the disciples can sometimes be tempted to call down fire upon people who upset us or disagree with us. But that is never the way of God’s Kingdom.

God’s Kingdom is “loving your neighbour as yourself”. It means not only loving the people who we like, it means loving the person who may slight us or irritate us in any way. Jesus loved those people who treated him with contempt and he prayed for them. The people in the Samaritan village didn’t appreciate His potential visit, but Christ still loved them.

Jesus calls each one of us to be enthusiastic and passionate about His kingdom of God’s mercy. Let’s pray for the grace to be as passionate about it as Our Lord.